Mass killer George Sodini who killed himself following his shooting of 12 women in a fitness club, left digital footprints online which have been pieced together by a hacker called Alex.

Alex, who is from Canada and therefore prefers to be anonymous, has set up a website which links all Sodini's postings to give a portrait of a mass killer. His blog describes his hatred of women and plans to someday carry out such a tragedy. YouTube videos and Sodini's musings about underage girls on online forums have also turned up.

Alex found Sodini's receipts from purchases he made online of ammunition and large-capacity magazines for his guns, as well as records of his Google search history - including queries like "mass murderer profiles," "murder suicide statistics," and "going to die anyway.” Stuff that might have been harmless if it had been anyone else, or seen in hindsight suddenly becomes a foreshadowing of horror.

Alex said that the fascination comes from being able to see into the private mind of a mass murderer. Sodini worked as a systems analyst at Pittsburgh law firm K&L Gates so Alex saw it as a challenge to learn as much as he could about him by hacking Sodini's information.

Using Sodini's Web domain, georgesodini.com, Alex was able to find his e-mail address. From there, he went to the Webmail server that Sodini used and clicked on the box that asked if he forgot his password. Knowing a little bit about Sodini from Google searches enabled him to guess the password and accessed Sodini's e-mail, and from there other, older Web pages the man had kept, his Gmail account, and therefore his Google search history.

Sodini did searches on "corruption of minors" and "age of consent Pennsylvania" whe also looked up phrases as "social phobia," "cognitive therapy," and "avoidant personality disorder.”

Apparently he liked Pink and Van Morrison.