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The answers to why Stephen Marshall sought out and shot to death two convicted sex offenders may be unknowable after his suicide Sunday night, but authorities are optimistic that the young man left clues.
Today Maine investigators will start analyzing the laptop computer that Marshall had with him when he shot himself on a bus in Boston, hours after he killed two men who were on Maine's online sex offender registry.
A computer can tell investigators who someone corresponded with, what Web sites they visited and even where they were and when they used their computer for various tasks.
Marshall, who was 20, was part of a generation that has grown up with computers and relies on them extensively for communication, entertainment, and storing all sorts of records.
"Kids these days are so wrapped up in the cyberworld that a lot of their social life takes place in that cyberworld," said Maine State Police Sgt. Glenn Lang, head of the Maine Computer Crimes Task Force. "The anonymity of their computer and over the Internet tends to let people open up and either be truly themselves . . . or they can role play to be what they are not."
Marshall has been described by family members and friends as a quiet young man with no inclination toward violence. So his behavior Sunday night seemed out of character. Police...