🪽

Dylann Roof Romantic Life

Certainly, Dylann is embarrassed when the topic of dating is raised. In his evaluation, he declined to answer questions about dating relationships, saying “I can’t talk about it.” When asked why, he explained “I can’t say. It would give a hint at it.” A coworker told the social historian that Dylann laughed like it was impossible when the topic of getting a girlfriend was mentioned. Dylann gave his “strange grin” and stopped talking as if embarrassed.

Testimony

According to his mother, Dylann said he was never going to get married and no girl would ever date him. His mother said to the social historian that she does not think that Dylann has ever had sex with anyone. She does not know if he has kissed a girl. She said he was highly embarrassed about the topic and if she even tried to ask him about sex, he would say that a mother should not even say the word “sex” in front of her son. When his mother did discuss sex, Dylann “clammed up”, left the room, and said “mom” in an exasperated tone.  

However Joseph Meek, a former friend of Dylann, with whom he reconnected just weeks before the shooting, told the FBI that he did showed interest in girls since middle school.  “Joey recalled that Dylann talked and asked about two Mexican girls that lived in the neighborhood. He said one of the girls was hot and that he had a crush on one of them.” He also stated that Dylann told him that he had sex with a black girl in Eastover. He declared that Dylann was “attracted to a black girl who was a dancer in the club [Platinum Plus] and that he wanted to talk to her, but never did. Joey described Dylann as being someone who would talk to girls, but never wanted to ask them out.”   When he was asked about Dylann’s behavior inside the club he said that Dylann “liked a light skinned black girl who was small or average build. Dylann wanted a dance from her, but she didn’t go up to him. Dylann didn’t have the courage to go up to her.”

Lindsey Fry, Meek’s former girlfriend remembers Dylann putting money on the stage to get the black dancers attention: “ So they would come over and dance in front of him.”  Another former friend of Dylann, Laura P. said that she only recalls Dylann having one girlfriend, during the 8th grade or 9th grade. 

Dylann’s attorneys also reported an odd behavior during the jury selection of his federal trial. Indeed he expressed concern regarding a young lady, described as “attractive" who was being interviewed as a potential juror. According to them Dylann didn’t want her to be selected because it would “increase his anxiety.” He reportedly expressed in a “loud whisper” his outrage and stated that it would “bother him every single day of the trial to know that she is sitting in the jury box looking at him.”

When asking about his relationship and sexual history, Dylann suddenly stopped speaking, turned his head sideways and made a grimacing face. When asked by the examiner if he was o.k., he stated in a strained voice that “I can’t talk right now.” After this episode concluded (~ 1. minutes) he reported that he has “pathological blushing” and that during this episode he felt very hot and uncomfortable. It was notable that no reddening or blushing was evident to the examiner during this time. He refused to speak further about the topics that he felt triggered this episode.

While it is not necessarily unusual for a man in his early 20s to decline to talk about sex with his mother, it is odd that someone Dylann’s age had no known romantic partners at all. This may point to asexuality, which is thought to occur in only 0.5-1% of the population, but may also suggest a lack of social skills required for effective dating, or a diffuse sexual identity.

Sexual Orientation 

Several people who were interviewed stated that they were unclear about Dylann’s sexual orientation.

Dylann’s sister, Amber, in one interview said she thought he might be gay and, in another interview suggested he might be asexual. Amber noted that their father always “wanted Dylann to be more sporty” and “be a boy.” Reverend Metze, said that Dylann was “not normal” and possibly struggling with his sexuality. His former stepmother, Paige Mann, described him as “always different” but said she assumed he seemed odd “because he was gay.”

Journals

In the journal his wrote before his arrest on June 18, 2015,  Dylann stated: “One of my only regrets is that I was never able to fall in love.”  In the journal he wrote while awaiting his trial in the Charleston jail, he talked more about his desires to have a family:  “I don’t have a child but I wish I did and I regret not being able to before I did what I did. I can only imagine the love a parent must feel for their children, especially when young.” And further “I would have love to adopt a white child if I had the means.”

quick sketch of my fav unc

nikityom 😪😪 don’t mind the hand I got lazy

This is a letter that I've been wanting to talk about for a while now, but didn't have the actual picture of the letter until Ruslan sent it to me (who is also the person who received the July 30th letter), so thank you again Ruslan :) This is also part two to this post, where I responded to an ask about Nikita's dependency on Artyom. Disclaimer, there will be a lot of quotes. So here it is:

"Where did you read that Nikita and I often argued? o.O That's total nonsense. He and I didn't argue at all." This is a pretty strange thing to say, considering this quote from Artyom's mother, Nina: "When he fought with Nikita (Lytkin), I always told him: 'Make up, you don't want to lose your only friend.'" (source) And this quote from Nikita's mother, Marina: "Sometimes they quarreled," Lytkin's mother said at one of the court sessions, and this is recorded in the verdict. "When they argued, I usually said, 'You only have one friend, you need to make up somehow.' I was sincerely glad that Nikita wasn't alone, that he had Artyom. And Nikita once replied, 'If you only knew what kind of friend he is.'" (source) So it's decently well-documented that they did, in fact, argue, and often enough for it to be brought up by both of their mothers. He could have a different definition of what 'arguing' means, or he could be lying, trying to rewrite the past. A way to paint their friendship in a better light than it truly was. Either way, I think it's weird considering both their mothers brought it up at the trial. I don't think that that's something you would just forget.

"Friendship just doesn't work out. The essence of this phenomenon is that you can't have many friends. You need to give a friend a lot of time, and if we try to give equal time to everyone we talk to, it won't amount to much if your social circle is too wide." Well, he is right about this, but based on what I've read throughout my research, I theorise that he might mean it differently. This brings me to the analysis of their codependency.

"When friends came to Nikita's birthday, Artyom was jealous. I treated this normally. But Nikita had fewer and fewer friends. He believed that past friends were childish, fake friendships. I tried to talk to Nikita, tried to instill in him that he should value the friendship with Artyom that he had left." (source) - Marina Lytkin There was growing isolation on Nikita's part. Friends dwindled, problems at school worsened, loneliness grew, and the only constant in his life was Artyom. This dependency on Artyom only worsened with time. "In the summer of 2009, a few months before the start of the "hunt," Marina and Nikita gathered to go to the sea. Nikita promised that he would go. The closer the departure date got, the less he wanted to go. But he still boarded the train. However, once on the train, he began to sob. "He cried. He said he didn't want to go. It seems to me he was pulled back, to Artyom. When we got back, he immediately ran to his friend."" (source) - Marina Lytkin This isn't normal behaviour for a 16-year-old boy. There's a difference between loving your best friend and being sad you'll be away from him for a bit, and sobbing, begging to not go and immediately running back to him. "Artyom was essentially his only companion, in whom he found everything, both a comrade and an ideologue, and his psychotherapist, with whom he could spend his leisure time. He literally put everything on this person." (source) - Yevgeniya Smolenskaya, clinical psychologist

Considering Artyom's narcissistic tendencies and Nikita's deeply-rooted dependency on Artyom to the point that Nikita sacrificed a better life for himself by trying to murder a man to be sent to the same prison as Artyom. "…using as a minor pretext, as a justification for the murder of B., the achievement of his goal—increasing the length of his sentence and a new conviction for the committed crime, which N.V. Lytkin deemed necessary for his transfer to another, more preferable correctional institution of the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service…" (source) "When Lytkin was serving his sentence, he repeatedly stated that he wanted to be in prison with Anufriev. Only with him." (source) - Svetlana Kokareva, Artyom's lawyer "This naturally leads only to death. He then has no other options. This is their parting, let's say, of this couple. It was still fatal for Nikita because he couldn't find a person around him who would accept him as he was and help him live. This is a dependence of a certain kind. I think only this led to that action." (source) - Yevgeniy Karchevskiy, main investigator in the ACM case "Two subjects met on the fact that one is clumsy, the second is more spirited. Well, they stuck to each other, created this ideal balance for themselves, and it went on and on." (source) - Yevgeniy Karchevskiy I believe Artyom was aware of this severe dependency and weakness. "Artyom once told me: "Lytkin won't survive in prison without me. He'll be lost without me. They will either kill him or do something else to him. We only need to be together."" (source) - Svetlana Kokareva And I believe that not only was he aware of it, but he exploited it for murders and his own pursuit of power. "And all the time, Artyom says to Nikita, "Come on, come on, you first, come on, come on, come on." That is, he pushed him." "Artyom says, "Nikita, there, there comes the old woman, go ahead and attack her."" "Artyom has always been the ideological inspirer and the leader. If Artyom had not inspired Nikita to do all these things, we would not have had this series. But at the same time, you need to understand that it was only together that they could commit these crimes. They would have never done it alone." - (source) Yevgeniy Karchevskiy

Nikita had always seemed to have two types of people in his life. Those who saw him as needing protection, and those who took advantage of him. I believe Artyom was the light at the end of the tunnel for him. Someone who didn't treat him like he was fragile and weak, but didn't overtly treat him as a plaything. Maybe, for once, he felt like an equal. While Artyom never truly saw him that way at all. I see this as a deeply troubled codependency. Nikita needs Artyom. Artyom needs Nikita. They need each other to feel complete. Artyom helped Nikita feel like he was something. He wasn't a pushover, he wasn't weak, he could stand up to the world that he hated and feel powerful. He could finally prove himself. Nikita was fuel for Artyom's desire for power and control. Artyom wanted power, and now he had someone to help him get it. Extremist groups aren't enough, hating everyone isn't enough, even hating your own ethnicity isn't enough. "We are gods, we decide who lives, and who dies." (source)

They both searched for the same thing. Power. And they matched in their desired form to find it. They just came to it from different directions. Like two equations coming to the same answer. I believe Nikita's desire for power came from a naturally submissive personality coupled with social isolation, and that Artyom's desire came from his mother's parenting, which I believe is the root cause for his narcissism. They wouldn't have done it without the other.

I think Nikita himself put it best.

"When I was in sixth grade, I met Artyom. This was the beginning of the end." (source)

This will just be a large collection of quotes about Nikita before the arrest, from several different sources, though mainly his mother, childhood friends. What he was like as a kid, in school, and as a teen. You'll notice that descriptions of him are very, very consistent. Shy, anxious, and withdrawn. It's also consistently reported that he changed in the fifth grade, going from relatively shy, to severely isolated.

Marina Lytkin - Nikita's Mother

"He could not resist violence. He couldn't fight back at all. He was afraid of everything, he was a coward." Marina says. And in her mouth, this does not sound insulting to her son. It is now merely a fact of Nikita's past life.

"He was always withdrawn. He never complained about anything. But there were depressions and grievances. And he would never tell, you had to drag it out of him with pliers. He never showed initiative. He was afraid of everything. He was even afraid to talk on the phone. His friend Artur would call, and he wouldn't want to pick up the phone. And when he did pick it up, his little hand would sweat."

"In elementary school, Artur looked after him. He took him by the hand and led him around. What did Artur see in Nikita back then? He treated him like an object. But he also helped a lot, he helped him adapt. Nikita didn't know how to refuse, didn't know how to say "no." He had no opinion of his own. I taught him that you need to be able to say that very "no." And when he learned, he and Artur parted ways and stopped being friends."

"At first, Nikita was teased, they bullied him. And then they started extorting money from him. Then one of his classmates offered him protection, and in exchange, together with older guys, demanded money. To put it simply, he engaged in extortion."

"If I understood you correctly, Nikita used to have friends. The press talked a lot about the fact that he was a loner and peers avoided him. Until the 5th or 6th grade, Nikita had many friends. Then he met Artyom."

"Nikita never brought anything to an end. He practiced music a little, played scales, but as soon as it got harder, he quit. He went to the "Iskatel" club to study drawing. He had talent, he even took first place in a city competition. The teacher wanted to transfer him to art school, but Nikita refused. He went to kickboxing in the same way. But there was no success there, he never won. The only time he took third place, but then he kept saying it was undeserved, an unfair result. Then he stopped going to classes altogether. I ran into him on the street once at a time when he should have been at practice. Nikita never found anything constructive, work to his liking. No purpose in life was ever discovered."

"He told me that he considered himself shit, that he was a nonentity, scum, and was not going to live long." Her son's destructive remarks filled Marina with horror. Now she believes that faith could have saved and can still save her son.

"His taciturnity, the desire to keep everything inside, and his withdrawal manifested themselves in full measure in late adolescence. The boy had obsessive movement syndrome. Lately, for example, he was struck by yawning. He yawned often and wide, so that his jaw started clicking."

"... I tried taking him to psychologists in his childhood. We went with him to the city psychological help center on Krasnoarmeyskaya. They didn't even talk to him. We went there for three days and took various tests the whole time. Finally, Nikita declared that he would never go there again. Then I found a female psychologist through acquaintances. We went to her house. She told us about Nikita's lag in psychological development compared to his peers. She advised not to pressure him, to give him more freedom, to give him personal space... We went, but nothing helped. Nikita withdrew further and further. I was already in despair. I even went to see a psychologist-astrologer. I was in such a desperate state."

In the summer of 2009, a few months before the start of the "hunt," Marina and Nikita gathered to go to the sea. Nikita promised that he would go. The closer the departure date got, the less he wanted to go. But he still boarded the train. However, once on the train, he began to sob. "He cried. He said he didn't want to go. It seems to me he was pulled back, to Artyom. When we got back, he immediately ran to his friend."

"He didn't leave the computer since he was about 16. I hid the keyboard, fought it somehow. But it was useless."

Soon Nikita stopped sleeping at night. At all. He demanded sleeping pills from his mother. From being meticulous, he turned into an absolute sloven. His bed was a gray ball of dirty laundry. He slept in his clothes. "I think his soul was getting dirty and he didn't want anything else" (source)

As Nikita Lytkin's mother explained, in elementary school the children communicated normally with the child, but in the fifth-grade math class, where he was assigned based on test results, "his classmates did not accept him." (source)

"One or two years before all this happened, he 'drowned' on the internet. I don't know what went through his mind. I can't explain it to you, I can't explain it." (source)

Irina Lytkin - Nikita's Grandmother

"He wasn't behaving normally. He didn't sleep well, he only fell asleep in the morning. He was always on the computer and his mom can't do anything about it. He stopped taking care of himself, even though he used to be neat." (source)

Sergei - Nikita's Childhood Friend

"Overall, he was quite an unremarkable person. In people's words, he was kind of goofy. He would play by himself during breaks. While the rest of us normal guys were playing volleyball, running around, and so on, he would just walk around, tossing a ball against the wall. He was a bit odd. Like I said, it seemed to us like he was just shy. He didn't have a strong character, just withdrawn."

"At his core, Nikita was a good, reliable friend. He was very interesting, very unique."

"Nikita was bullied constantly, at least whenever he wasn't with me. When he was with me, I would stand up for him. Such moments didn't happen around me because people knew me; I was an influential guy in class, so to speak. There were a few strong guys among us who were always fighting, but nobody touched me, and when Nikita was in my group, nobody messed with him either. But yes, he was bullied. Schoolchildren can be quite harsh. They did mean things, they'd smear his pens or write slurs in his pencil case."

"Do I know why they bullied him? I can guess: for one simple reason: he was different from everyone else. He was very quiet and peaceful, but he never fought back. He was likely weak and fearful. So people thought, "I'll pick on this loser, what's he going to do to me? Nothing.""

"How easy was it for Nikita to make new friends? Extremely difficult. Again, because Nikita was different. Withdrawn, insecure. He was afraid that people would hurt or mistreat him."

"Do I think Artyom noticed Nikita was naive/vulnerable and used it for his own interests? Of course he noticed it. I personally believe that it was under Artyom's influence that Nikita committed all that terrible stuff. On his own, he would never have done it. He was too fearful and cowardly; he wouldn't have done it on his own. He was a follower, he was very easy to control and direct. I never used that against him; I just considered him a friend. But fate showed how it turned out."

"Did I ever notice Nikita being depressed? Nikita was depressed almost all the time. Walking to school, coming back from school, he was always down. He was a homebody, he hated going out or doing activities outside. Just chilling at home was his favorite thing."

"What was he most afraid of? Good question... He was afraid of many things. He was afraid of being considered a coward, even though he was one." (source)

Andrey Kornilov - Nikita's Childhood Friend

In the fifth grade, something incomprehensible happened to Nikita. He withdrew into himself and began looking at his classmates like a wolf cub. "I remember very well the day it all started. When he distanced himself from me, from everyone..." Andrey recounts. "During the first class, Nikita walked into the room; we were all sitting together. He didn't greet anyone. I said to him, 'Hi,' and he muttered something in response. From then on, he never greeted any of us again. He crammed himself into the back desk, stopped studying, didn't do his homework, and stayed silent at the blackboard."

Around the same time, classmates began mocking Nikita. Andrey insisted on a milder phrasing: they were just amusing themselves. Every day, two or three times a day, the kids poked fun at him. Once, the main bully in the class grabbed him by the collar of his jacket. Another time, Nikita was doused with white correction fluid. Andrey himself never touched his former friend. He felt sorry for him, but couldn't do anything. "He might not have been bothered if he hadn't reacted that way. When people poked fun at Nikita, he would say, 'Die.' The kids found this hilarious."

"Why didn't the teachers intervene?" the lawyer asked. "Everything happened during breaks. The teachers didn't see anything. But once, a teacher did notice. She said, 'Leave him alone.'" (source)

Miscellaneous

They recounted that by the fifth grade, Nikita had already become an object of mockery, the kids "picked on" him, and gradually he withdrew into himself. The character reference documents reviewed during the judicial investigation at the last session also generally point to the same psychological changes.

Nikita was a most ordinary kid until he wanted, as he stated in that same interview with our newspaper, to prove to himself that he was not a "trembling creature."

Arts you might know me of;