Herrera has since done more reporting about Page on our Backbeat blog. Here's additional information about the murderer from that item and other sources.
According to the Denver Post, Page, who killed six people at the Milwaukee-area worship space before dying in a gun battle with police, grew up in the Denver area and had a Littleton address from 2000 to 2007. He talked about his background in an interview with Maryland-based Label 56 about his band. Here's an excerpt.Label 56: Are you originally from out in California? How did you wind up moving from one side of the country to the complete other?Wade Michael Page: I am originally from Colorado and had always been independent, but back in 2000 I set out to get involved and wanted to basically start over. So, I sold everything I owned except for my motorcycle and what I could fit into a backpack and went on cross country trip visiting friends and attending festivals and shows. I went to the Hammerfest 2000 in Georgia, over to North Carolina, up to Ohio, down to West Virginia, and out to California and that's when I joined Youngland.
After news broke about Page and this interview, Label 56 pulled down this material and issued the following statement:
Label 56 is very sorry to hear about the tragedy in Wisconsin and our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who are affected. We have worked hard over the years to promote a positive image and have posted many articles encouraging people to take a positive path in life, to abstain from drugs, alcohol, and just general behavior that can affect ones life negatively. Likewise we have never sought attention by using "shock value"/ symbols and ideology that are generally labeled as such. With that being said, all images and products related to End Apathy have been removed from our site. We do not wish to profit from this tragedy financially or with publicity.In closing please do not take what Wade did as honorable or respectable and please do not think we are all like that.
Thank you, Label 56
Page still has connections to Colorado, but they're tenuous. Here's a 9News interview with his locally based stepmother, Laura Page, who says she lost touch with her stepson in the late 1990s:
Earlier in the 1990s, Page served in the Army, but after six years in uniform, he was demoted and received a less-than-honorable discharge, for what the Guardian newspaper describes as "a pattern of misconduct, including being drunk on duty."
In 1999, the Post notes, Page was convicted on a driving while ability impaired charge and served sixty days in jail. He also earned driving citations in El Paso and Arapahoe counties, but his prior record doesn't include acts of violence on anything like the scale of the weekend's assault.
More recently, Page was in North Carolina before settling in Wisconsin -- and an interview on TMJ4 in Milwaukee with Kurt Weins, ID'd as the killer's landlord and former roommate, suggests that Page had plans to leave the area immediately after the temple attack. Here's that report.
Thanks to local officers, Page never got the chance to get away. But he leaves behind him pain, sorrow and frustration over yet another mass shooting with a Colorado connection.
More from our Media archive: "Sikh temple shooting getting less coverage than Aurora theater tragedy: Why?"
