Court file: LA ex-cop was disturbed, self-obsessed

ORANGE, Calif. (AP) — A photo never tells the whole story, and that's especially true for Christopher Dorner. The images on his Facebook page are essentially the same: Dorner, smiling, seemingly loving life and all it offers.

But they accompany a rambling document where he portrays himself as a real-life Rambo, an expert in weapons, explosives and military tactics who will stop at nothing to avenge his 2008 firing from the Los Angeles Police Department.

It's incongruous and it underscores the complexity of the man who now is the most wanted in America, accused of killing three people as he carries out his vendetta.

Where Dorner sees himself as a warrior, others see someone much different. The 6-foot, 270-pounder is a physical hulk who — despite his size — seemed to battle deep-seated insecurities, lived with his mother and cracked under the pressures of police work.

Court and police files show that Dorner once began weeping while on duty in a patrol car, awkwardly flashed his police badge on a first date and told a girlfriend he kept his emotions bottled up.

Those who study the psyches of criminals said Dorner's aggressive and self-aggrandizing rant indicates a classic case of malignant narcissist personality disorder. Some people with the disorder are extremely thin-skinned and vengeful, said Mary Ellen O'Toole, a retired FBI profiler.

They may seem insecure, she said, but in reality their rages — and even tears — are extreme reactions to real or imagined criticisms because they have such grandiose visions of themselves.

"He's putting in his manifesto that he's going to use all the training he received as an LAPD officer and as a military officer to basically hold Southern California hostage, and to be there when you least expect it," she said. "Is he deadly? Yes. Of course he has killed people."

"But is he capable of taking on some 1,000 officers looking for him? That's someone with a personality disorder," she said.

Dorner, 33, is accused of killing a woman last weekend whose father had represented him as he fought to keep his police job, and the woman's fiance. On Thursday, police say he ambushed two officers, killing one, and then vanished, setting off a manhunt that put police on alert across the Southwest.

The search Friday focused on the mountains around Big Bear Lake, about 80 miles east of Los Angeles. Police said officers still were guarding more than 40 people mentioned as targets in the rant.

The rambling manifesto was on a Facebook page that also includes smiling pictures of Dorner and critiques or politicians, musicians, and comedians. He also offers commentary on topics from gun control — he wants stricter laws for assault weapons — to sexual abuse by priests to the proper room temperature.

Court papers from 2006 show that Dorner requested a restraining order against a woman he had dated for six weeks after he said she posted his LAPD badge number and trash-talked about him on a website called dontdatehimgirl.com.

Dorner attached the lengthy posting he said was by his ex-girlfriend, Ariana Williams, as well as a handwritten note she apparently placed on his belongings when she returned them after they broke up.

In the web posting, Dorner is described as "severely emotionally and mentally disturbed," ''twisted" and "super paranoid." It also said he flashed his police badge on their first date, lives with his mother and hates himself for being black — at one point asking her to act more like a white woman.

"Just be careful because this guy is a police officer and he will probably think that he can get away with anything. ... If you value your sanity, stay away from this guy."

Dorner claimed Williams was harassing him and sent a threatening letter to his home. He asked that she also stay away from his mother and sister. In her response, Williams denied Dorner's allegations.

Records show Dorner did not show up at a hearing in November 2006 and the case was terminated. She could not be reached to comment. Her attorney, Stephen G. Rodriguez, did not return a call or email seeking comment.

In 2008, after Dorner was deployed to Bahrain with the Navy Reserves, he returned to the LAPD and began to patrol with his training officer, Sgt. Teresa Evans. He had worked for just four months after his graduation from the academy before being sent overseas.

In internal police papers, Evans said Dorner repeatedly asked why he was being put back on patrol without reintegration training. On one occasion, he began weeping in the patrol car and demanded to be taken back to the police academy to be retrained, according to a summary of an interview with Evans contained in 2009 court documents.

Evans warned Dorner that she would give him an unsatisfactory rating and request that he be removed from the field unless he improved. A day after she followed up on her threat with a poor review, Dorner reported to internal affairs that Evans had kicked a severely mentally ill man in the chest and left cheek during an arrest.

A police review panel ultimately found the allegation untrue and Dorner was fired for making a false statement.

In the manifesto, Dorner said the LAPD destroyed his life, ruined his relationships with his mother and sister and harmed his military career.

Those types of statements don't surprise O'Toole, the former FBI profiler, who said narcissists feel intense shame and humiliation when outside events challenge their perception of themselves.

"He's somebody I call an injustice collector," she said. "When they respond to an injustice that they think is out there, their reaction is completely over the top."

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Manhunt for ex-cop set to resume in California mountain range

Police officers examine their assault rifles while they protect the scene, where two Riverside Police officers were shot while in their car, in the early morning, in Riverside, California February 7, 2013. REUTERS/Alex Gallardo

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - A mountaintop search was to resume on Saturday for an ex-policeman wanted in three California slayings, after authorities interrupted the manhunt during the night as snowfall kept their helicopters grounded.

Former Los Angeles officer Christopher Dorner, 33, has declared war on law enforcement officers and their families in a manifesto posted to the Internet that complains of his 2008 firing from the LAPD.

The hunt for Dorner has centered on the Big Bear Lake resort in theSan Bernardino Mountains after his burning pickup truck was discovered in the area on Thursday. Authorities have acknowledged he may have slipped away undetected.

Snow fell late on Friday around Big Bear Lake, which is about 80 miles northeast of Los Angeles. The temperature hovered at about 20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 Celsius).

The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, which is leading the manhunt involving over 100 officers, said in a statement on Friday that because of the weather conditions it would not be sending aloft its helicopters equipped with infrared technology used earlier in the search.

With no air support, the search by officers on the ground was also suspended overnight. But it was set to resume at 7 a.m. local time on Saturday, the sheriff's department said.

The heavily armed officers participating in the hunt for Dorner have used dogs and armored personnel carriers equipped with chains.

San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon said the mountaintop hunt, which began with officers following tracks that led away from the truck, would press on "until either we discover that he's left the mountain or we find him."

The truck turned up in the San Bernardino mountain range on Thursday hours after police say Dorner exchanged gunfire before dawn with two Los Angeles police officers, grazing one, in the nearby city of Corona. The officers were trying to catch up to Dorner's truck after it was spotted in the area.

About 20 minutes later, he ambushed two more policemen in their patrol car at a stoplight in the adjacent town of Riverside, killing one and leaving the other badly wounded, police said.

A former Navy lieutenant, Dorner is also suspected in the weekend shooting deaths in Irvine of a university security officer and his fiancée, the daughter of a retired Los Angeles police captain singled out for blame in Dorner's manifesto for his dismissal from the LAPD.

Police said they were providing extra security for about 40 potential targets mentioned in Dorner's online declaration, which was posted to Facebook but has since been taken down by the website.

Dorner, who once played college football in Utah, blamed the police department not just for firing him but also for ending his Navy career and the loss of close relationships.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

Article: Timeline: Hunt on for ex-Los Angeles policeman accused in shootings

Syrian rebels shut down key Damascus highway

BEIRUT (AP) — Rebels pushed forward in their battle with the Syrian army in Damascus on Friday, clashing with regime soldiers in contested neighborhoods in the northeast and shutting down a key highway out of the capital with a row of burning tires, activist said.

In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency said there has been a huge increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries. Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said Friday the mass exodus "is really a full-on crisis right at the moment."

The latest fighting in Damascus, some of the heaviest to hit the city since July, began Wednesday with a series of rebel attacks on regime checkpoints along the main road from Damascus to northern Syria. Opposition fighters and government forces have been clashing in the area since, and regime troops have also responded by shelling a number of rebel-held districts nearby.

The violence has brought the civil war that has destroyed entire neighborhoods of other Syrian cities closer to the heart of the capital, which has mostly been spared heavy fighting. Still, the offensive did not appear to be coordinated with rebels on other sides of Damascus and it was unclear whether the rebels would be able to hold their ground.

Both the rebels and the regime of President Bashar Assad consider the fight for Damascus the most likely endgame in a civil war that has already killed more than 60,000. The government controls movement in and out of the heavily defended city with a network of checkpoints, and rebels have failed so far to make significant inroads.

A spokesman for one of the opposition groups fighting in the area said the rebels sought to open a path for a future assault on the city.

"This is not the battle for Damascus. This battle is to prepare for the entry into Damascus," he said via Skype, giving only his nickname of Abu al-Fida for fear of reprisals.

The fighting revolved around the capital's main highway heading toward the country's north. Abu al-Fida said one checkpoint on the highway changed hands twice on Thursday but was securely in rebel hands Friday. He said rebels were within a half-kilometer (half-mile) from Abbasid square and were firing mortars at a military base near the landmark plaza.

Online videos showed a row of burning tires laid across the highway, blocking all traffic. Smoke rose from a number of areas nearby, reflecting clashes and government shelling.

The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to activist reports.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes in Jobar and shelling and airstrikes on the nearby areas of Zamalka and Qaboun. Rebels also battled government troops in the southern neighborhood of Yarmouk, as well as in the rebel-held suburbs of Daraya and Moadamiyeh, where six people died in a government shell attack, it said.

Also Friday, the Observatory said 54 were killed, including 11 women, in a bombing at a bus stop near a military factory earlier in the week.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said an explosive-laden mini-bus blew up at a bus stop near the factory in Buraq, near the central city of Hama, while workers were waiting for rides home. The factory makes military supplies, but not weapons, he said.

The area is government-controlled, which is why reports on the blast were slow to emerge.

"These people work for the Ministry of Defense, but they are all civilians," he said, adding that no one from the military was killed in the blast.

Facebook pages for nearby villages posted names of the dead and pictures of mass graves. A page for the nearby town of Salmiyeh listed more than forty residents it said were killed in the blast.

Syria's state news agency reported the explosion on Wednesday evening, saying "terrorists" detonated a car bomb near a factory. It did not say what the factory produced or specify the number of dead and wounded. The regime refers to rebels fighting to topple the Assad regime as terrorists.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, which resembled others in recent months that appeared to target buildings associated with Syria's military and security services.

Some of the bombings have been claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group fighting alongside the rebels, Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. had designated a terrorist organization.

As the situation in Syria has worsened, foreign jihadists have flocked to Syria to join what they consider a holy war to replace Assad's regime with an Islamic state in Syria. Most of the foreign fighters are Arabs from Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other countries.

Late Thursday, the chief of the Netherlands' top intelligence agency warned that dozens of Dutch citizens are fighting with Syria's rebels and could return home battle-hardened, traumatized and radicalized.

General Intelligence and Security Service chief Rob Bertholee told the Dutch show Nieuwsuur that hundreds of people from around Europe and dozens from the Netherlands have travelled to Syria to join rebels fighting Assad.

He said propaganda romanticizing the civil war is helping draw foreigners into Syria's maelstrom of violence.

Syria's crisis began with peaceful protests in March 2011 and evolved into a civil war as the opposition took up arms to fight a government crackdown on dissent. The U.N. said last month that more than 60,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Syrian rebels preparing for advance on capital

A Lebanese boy holds up a Syrian revolutionary flag as he listen to Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, unseen, a hardline Sunni Lebanese cleric, deliver a sermon in support of Syrian rebel fighters and Syrian refugees, after the Friday prayer, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. Al-Assir, like many other Sunni Muslim clerics in Lebanon, has been vocal in speaking out against the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

An anti-Syrian regime protester flashes the victory sign with a Syrian revolutionary flag bracelet as he listen to Sheik Ahmad al-Assir, unseen, a hardline Sunni Lebanese cleric, deliver a sermon in support of Syrian rebel fighters and Syrian refugees, after Friday prayer, in Beirut, Lebanon, Friday, Feb. 8, 2013. Al-Assir, like many other Sunni Muslim clerics in Lebanon, has been vocal in speaking out against the Syrian regime and its allies in Lebanon. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian rebels brought their fight within a mile of the heart of Damascus on Friday, seizing army checkpoints and cutting a key highway with a row of burning tires as they pressed their campaign for the heavily guarded capital, considered the likely endgame in the nearly 2-year-old civil war.

The clashes raised fears that Damascus, a major cultural center and one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities, could fall victim to a protracted battle that would bring the destruction seen in other major cities and trigger a mass refugee exodus into neighboring countries.

"Any attempt by the rebels to advance into central Damascus would mean the beginning of a very long fight," said Syrian activist Rami Jarrah. "I imagine Aleppo would be a small example of what is likely to happen in Damascus."

Aleppo, Syria's largest urban center and main commercial hub, has been convulsed by violence since the summer, when rebels launched an offensive to take control of the city. Since then the fighting has been locked in a deadly stalemate, with the war-ravaged city carved up into government- and opposition-held strongholds.

The latest Damascus offensive, launched from the northeastern side of the city, did not appear to be coordinated with rebels on other sides of the capital, and it was unclear whether the opposition fighters would be able to hold their ground.

Previous attempts to advance on the capital have failed. The government controls movement in and out with a network of checkpoints, and rebels have failed so far to make significant inroads.

In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency reported a major increase in the number of people fleeing Syria, with 5,000 refugees crossing the borders daily into neighboring countries. The mass exodus "is really a full-on crisis," agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said.

Some 787,000 Syrians are registered as refugees, mainly in Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Turkey, Edwards said — a number that has shot up 25 percent in January alone.

A rebel advance on Damascus, which has largely been spared the destruction of other cities, is likely to trigger a fresh wave of refugees into Jordan and Lebanon, where resources are already stretched to the breaking point.

Syria's crisis began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests inspired by the Arab Spring revolts elsewhere in the region that toppled longtime Arab dictators. It evolved into a civil war as the opposition took up arms to fight a government crackdown on dissent.

The latest fighting in Damascus, some of the heaviest to hit the city since July, began Wednesday with a series of rebel attacks on regime checkpoints along a key road from Damascus to northern Syria. Opposition fighters and government forces have been clashing in the area since.

On Friday, rebels shut down the highway out of the capital for several hours, activists said.

Online videos showed a row of burning tires blocking all traffic as fighters with automatic rifles patrolled the area. Smoke rose up from a number of areas nearby, reflecting clashes and government shelling. The videos appeared genuine and corresponded to activist reports.

A spokesman for one of the opposition groups fighting in the area said the rebels sought to open a path for a future assault on the city.

"This is not the battle for Damascus. This battle is to prepare for the entry into Damascus," he said via Skype, giving only his nickname, Abu al-Fida, for fear of reprisals.

The city is heavily fortified and activists say it is surrounded with three of the most loyal divisions of the army, including the Republican Guard and the feared 4th Division, commanded by President Bashar Assad's brother Maher.

Friday's fighting revolved around the capital's main highway heading toward the country's north. Abu al-Fida said one checkpoint changed hands twice on Thursday but was securely in rebel hands Friday. He said rebels were within a mile of Abbasid Square in central Damascus and were firing mortars at a military base near the landmark plaza.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported clashes in Jobar and shelling and airstrikes on the nearby areas of Zamalka and Qaboun. Rebels also battled government troops in the southern neighborhood of Yarmouk, as well as in the rebel-held suburbs of Daraya and Moadamiyeh, where six people died in a government shell attack, it said.

Meanwhile, dramatic footage of the shelling of a village in central Homs province on Thursday showed people running and screaming in panic, carrying away children and injured as explosions reverberated and smoke rose from buildings. Areas in Homs were still being targeted on Friday.

Also Friday, the Observatory said 54 people were killed, including 11 women, in a bombing at a bus stop near a military factory earlier in the week.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said an explosive-laden mini-bus blew up at a bus stop outside the factory in Buraq, near the central city of Hama, while workers were waiting for rides home. The factory makes military supplies, but not weapons, he said.

The area is government-controlled, which is why reports on the blast were slow to emerge.

"These people work for the Ministry of Defense, but they are all civilians," he said, adding that no one from the military was killed in the blast.

Syria's state news agency said "terrorists" detonated a car bomb near the factory. The regime refers to rebels fighting to topple the Assad regime as terrorists.

No one has claimed responsibility for the blast, which resembled others in recent months that appeared to target buildings associated with Syria's military and security services.

Some of the bombings have been claimed by an al-Qaida-linked group fighting alongside the rebels, Jabhat al-Nusra, which the U.S. had designated a terrorist organization.

As the situation in Syria has worsened, foreign jihadists have flocked to Syria to join what they consider a holy war to replace Assad's regime with an Islamic state.

Late Thursday, the chief of the Netherlands' top intelligence agency warned that dozens of Dutch citizens are fighting with Syria's rebels and could return home battle-hardened and radicalized.

General Intelligence and Security Service chief Rob Bertholee told the Dutch show Nieuwsuur that hundreds of people from around Europe and dozens from the Netherlands have travelled to Syria to join rebels fighting Assad. He said propaganda romanticizing the civil war is helping draw foreigners into Syria's maelstrom of violence.

Meanwhile, in the northern town of Saraqeb, a fistfight broke out between Islamist rebels and more moderate protesters at an anti-Assad rally Friday, highlighting a growing divide between opposition forces fighting in Syria.

A video posted online by activists showed protesters marching, some carrying black banners favored by the Islamists and others carrying the black, green and white rebel flag.

The fight broke out after some protesters tried to take down the rebel flag. A shouting match ensued, with some shouting, "The people want a civil state!" and others trying to drown them out with chants of "The people want an Islamic Caliphate!"

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Associated Press writers Ben Hubbard in Beirut, John Heilprin and Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

French take back Mali town as bomber attacks Gao

GAO, Mali (AP) — A suspected al-Qaida-linked militant blew himself up near a military checkpoint Friday on the outskirts ofGao in the first suicide bombing attack since the French-led mission began, fueling fears of a looming insurgency by the jihadists who fled into the nearby desert just two weeks ago.

French and Malian forces faced little resistance in initially taking back the provincial capital of Gao nearly two weeks ago, though the discovery of industrial-strength explosives and Friday's bombing suggest the Islamic radicals are far from defeated.

The Malian military blamed Friday's bombing on the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, a group known as MUJAO which had ruled Gao for nearly 10 months before being ousted at the end of last month. The suicide bomber was the only one killed, said the Malian military and residents.

Meanwhile, French forces surged into the country's far north near the border with Algeria overnight, retaking Tessalit.

French military spokesman Col. Thierry Burkhard confirmed Friday that French and Chadian forces now control the town and airport of Tessalit after an overnight assault involving French special forces who parachuted in.

Aicha Belco Maiga, president of the government body representing the area of Tessalit, confirmed the news by telephone from her home in the capital of Bamako, saying she had been in contact with a colleague in Tessalit.

"Since 8 a.m. ... French troops are in Tessalit. They control the entrance to the town, as well as the administrative buildings," said Maiga.

The success of Tessalit, however, was overshadowed by Friday's attack in Gao and clashes between soldiers in the capital in Mali's south.

The suicide bomber ignited his explosives belt just after 6 a.m. near a military checkpoint, according to Malian military spokesman Modibo Traore.

Hours later, the charred and mangled remains of the bomber's motorcycle lay strewn in a field not far from the checkpoint. Blood stained the wall on a building where three soldiers stood guard.

Malian soldiers said that nearby villagers had taken the bomber's remains away and buried them following the attack. Residents said the bomber was known as Al Farouk, who was described as an Arab man of about 18 years old who spoke French well. They said he had been living in a MUJAO hideout in Gao for seven months. The guardian of the hideout said that the building had been visited by Moktar Belmoktar, the Algerian national who has long operated in Mali and who claimed responsibility for the terror attack on a BP-operated natural gas plant in Algeria.

Residents who heard the blast from their mud-walled homes on the dusty road nearby described the attack.

"I was sleeping in my house when I heard the explosion," said Yanoussa Toure, as he sat on his motorcycle out front with a large bag of rice tied to the back.

"It shook so loudly I thought it had hit my house," said his neighbor, Agali Ouedraogo, who later went to the scene nearby.

Fears have been high of such attacks since the discovery of industrial-strength explosives in Gao earlier this week. A land mine also killed four Malian soldiers last week in the town of Gossi, about 200 kilometers (124 miles)away, fueling fears that Islamic militants may be planting them.

Officials at a French military base in Gao declined to comment on the attack.

In Bamako, the capital, Mali's military showed signs of growing tensions after soldiers from a unit allied with the leader of last year's military coup in Mali stormed the camp of the presidential guard Friday morning.

At least one person was killed and five were wounded, witnesses said. The incident underscores that Mali's military is in poor shape to confront the well-armed Islamic extremists in the north.

The red beret-wearing former presidential guard force, based at the Djicoroni camp in Bamako, was disarmed months ago by the green beret-wearing officers loyal to Capt. Amadou Haya Sanogo, the leader of last year's coup. Their camp has been attacked on several occasions by the green berets, who seized the presidential guards' weapons.

When the green berets arrived at the military camp Friday they were confronted by women and children, and fired tear gas and volleys into the air, according to Batoma Dicko, a woman who lives in the camp. The camp includes housing for military families. The attackers succeeded in entering the camp, carried out a search and set fire to the infirmaries, she said.

Dr. Amadou Diallo, who works at the infirmary in the camp, known as Djicoroni Para Camp, said at least one person was killed and five were wounded.

"A young man in his 20s was hit by a bullet in the head and he died on the spot. The bullet pierced his face through his right cheekbone, and came out through his neck," Diallo said. "He was totally disfigured. There are also two women who were wounded, and three children, aged 11, 17 and around 15 years old."

The Red Berets were the elite presidential guard who protected former President Amadou Toumani Toure, who was toppled in the coup last March by junior officers.

The chaos of the coup allowed Tuareg and Islamic rebels to grab hold of north Mali. In April, the Islamic extremists gained control of the territories and began imposing strict Shariah law. France intervened in its former colony on Jan. 11 after the armed Islamic rebels began pushing south toward the capital. Several African nations are also contributing troops to the intervention force.

France has raised with the U.N. Security Council the possibility of establishing a U.N. peacekeeping operation in Mali.

France's U.N. Ambassador Gerard Araud told reporters that he started discussions on the issue during closed council consultations on Mali on Wednesday. He said a U.N. force would deploy only when security conditions permit.

U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said there is widespread international support for replacing the current military operation with a U.N. peacekeeping operation, but this would require approval by the Malian government.

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