"MOM, I'm not like that," 21-year-old Tom Iland told his mother as they watched a TV news report about a young man with Asperger's syndrome who killed two neighbors in Orange County.
It was a poignant moment for 48-year-old Emily Iland. Her son, who also has Asperger's, was worried that others would think him capable of such violence.
It wasn't just Tom. Since the shootings in Aliso Viejo, people with Asperger's syndrome and their families have been thinking, talking and e-mailing one another. They have been sharing their upset and fears -- and brainstorming some practical steps to allay public fears and forestall such tragedies in the future.
On Oct. 30, 19-year-old William Freund dressed in a paintball mask and cape, entered a neighboring house and killed Vernon Smith and his daughter Christina, 22, with a shotgun. He shot at others, too, before returning to his house and shooting himself. In the days afterward, it was revealed that Freund frequently posted in an online forum for people with Asperger's, a condition that causes profound gaps in the ability to read social nuances but is not generally associated with violence.
Michael John Carley of New York City founded GRASP, a support group network for Asperger's syndrome and related conditions, in 2003. The shootings, he said, have galvanized his group's resolve to expand across the country. "I don't know enough about this young man to deduce if we would have been able to have an impact," he said. "Maybe there was some other diagnosis going on that we don't know about."
Carley, 41, was diagnosed with Asperger's in 2000, along with his son, now 9. "It's a very lonely place if you have no sense of shared experience with somebody with similar wiring to yours," he said.
People in the Asperger's community are not saying their disorder neatly explains the killings. In fact, some are upset that Freund's crime is being linked to Asperger's at all.
"What bothers me is the implication that there's something about Asperger's syndrome that causes people to do this kind of thing -- kind of, 'Look out for the dangerous Asperger people,' " said Jerry Newport, 57, who founded a Los Angeles support group for people with autism and Asperger's in 1993. He now lives in Tucson and travels frequently to speak on the topic.
"The only connection you can make between Asperger's and what happened is that his Asperger's syndrome may have set him up for ridicule as a child," Newport said.
