Good questions. From what I'm able to gather, this kid never worked, never had to work as he had wealthy parents who showered him with gifts and allowed him to live in their mansion where he apparently played video games most of the day. (He was 22 years old.)
This is a case of "idle hands are the devil's workshop".
Wealthy parents who allow their children to live what I like to call an "unearned lifestyle" are doing them no favors at all. Nothing good comes from handing your kid a BMW and telling him that he never has to work a day in his life. You are snuffing out their ambition and rendering their lives worthless. Just look at the Kennedy family for one example. None of those over-privileged Kennedy kids ever turned out right.
The Kennedy women turned out okay,it was just the men who were pathetic.
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Yep. What I got from this kid's screed was an unbelievable sense of entitlement and a self-obsession that was in and of itself not sane. He was somebody because he had been to five countries by the time he was five. He was somebody because his Dad was a famous director, and "betrayed" when Dad underwent some financial reverses at an inconvenient time for Me. He was somebody because his birth mother dated George Lucas. The high points in his life were two movie premiers into which he got because of his parents' connections, allowing him to "smirk" - his word - at the proles still in line as they were ushered in. His birth mother betrayed him by not marrying into wealth (although he urged her to repeatedly) that would keep him in the style to which he'd like to become accustomed. He was obsessively status-hungry and outraged when his acquaintances had been born into more wealth than he. Binges in First Class airline lounges. Absolutely no sense, not one mention of any of it being earned by him (or anyone else). He was a Man of Destiny he claims several times. Destined for greatness, cruelly denied by other people.
The world simply didn't recognize his magnificence - his word, I could scarcely believe I was reading it - and shower him with the adulation to which he was entitled. Women - blonde girls, actually - especially. When he walked into the bungalow of his step-mother and poured himself a glass of water he was utterly outraged to hear her say, "Hey, you're supposed to knock." "I am the eldest son!" he says in the text, "and you only have what you have from my father. My claim is superior to yours!"
Major drama queen - everything that happened to him was the worst thing that ever happened to anyone. A photographic memory for childhood friends, back to age 4, especially the ones who had rejected or teased him. Major stature inferiority complex.
No, you are correct, no jobs ever except for one building a staircase for a friend and another janitorial position that he stated outright was "beneath him" and that he quit after one day. Everything in his entire life was paid for by other people's money because, Gosh darn it, he's worth it.
He begged the parents for laptops for his game obsession and got them at birthdays and Christmas. The last one he got because the one he had, had somehow gotten "full of viruses" about which he did nothing other than beg for another.
I saw some panic when he realized that his birth mother could cut him off at any time and probably wanted to, which is why he got the janitorial job. But that crisis passed, and he set a floor financially under which he'd have to start his Day of Retribution. That floor was $5000. The kid had five grand in the bank and considered it a crisis.
And so the get-rich-quick schemes. He was going to write an epic novel but discovered that screenwriters don't get paid enough to make him a multi-millionaire as he deserved. And then the lottery. He was dropping $400 and $500 on lottery tickets and driving to Arizona to purchase them when they weren't offered in California. And he was certain, absolutely certain, it was "my destiny" to win the Powerball when it went up to record levels. When he didn't he describes himself as sitting on the roof crying inconsolably. That was when it all started to drain down to the massacre.
The one thing in his life he actually had to "earn" was his driver's license which took multiple tries at the age of 18. Mom gave him her second car, a $65,000 BMW, afterward so that he'd be transportation-independent and so be able to sustain himself (I've lived in California - she had a point) - but the BMW also offered him something he desperately desired, status, and for a time that was enough.
I shouldn't be overly disrespectful to his birth mother, who seems to have made sacrifices so that he could have all these things. His father was distant but he wrote that had he run into him in the bungalow wherein he intended to murder his step-mother and little brother, he'd have called the thing off at that point.
That's just what I can remember off the top of my head. Rich California kid who considered himself poor and oppressed, who never did anything positive in his life. There's a lot of that about, I suppose, but they don't usually murder people out of a sense of self-pity and false retribution.