Episode 61:
The Novelist Who Wrote His Own Killing Spree: 75 Minutes of Terror

"I am now a more generous person. I think more carefully and treat my readers with greater care." That's what novelist Roman McClay told an interviewer. A few months later, he appeared again — covered in blood, holding a gun instead of a pen.

It was hard to believe he was the same person. So who was he, really?

In December 2021, a car pulled up outside Soul Tattoo Shop in downtown Denver. A man in full combat gear stepped out, pockets loaded with extra ammunition, and walked inside.

Seventy-Five Minutes

Gunfire broke out instantly. Shop owner Alicia Cardenas, 35, collapsed bleeding from her abdomen; nearby employees were shot one after another. As customers scattered and bystanders called police, the shooter simply walked away, got in his car, and drove off — calm, as if nothing had happened.

Police traced his car and blocked major roads, but when officers cornered him at an intersection, he opened fire rather than surrender, targeting patrol cars to cut off pursuit before escaping again mid-gunfight. Minutes later, gunfire erupted at a new location, then another — he was moving through the city hunting targets, and license plate records identified him: 37-year-old Lyndon McLeod.

The Making of an "Alpha Male"

McLeod grew up under a strict, controlling father, a former Air Force serviceman. A motorcycle accident at fifteen led to an opioid prescription and addiction that reshaped his life. Later, following an ex-girlfriend into Zendik Farm — a commune that rejected modern society, capitalism, and conventional relationships in favor of shared property and open sexuality — he twisted its philosophy of freedom into something else entirely: the belief that one man should control multiple women, and that he should become an "alpha male" through force rather than merit.

He extorted roughly $20,000 from one ex along with her car and motorcycle, and in 2012 threatened two male coworkers with a gun, receiving only probation. More than ten business ventures failed. His last hope was a tattoo shop, All Heart, co-owned with longtime acquaintance Jeremy Costilow — until his behavior toward staff and customers became untenable and Jeremy asked him to leave. McLeod, convinced he'd been betrayed, retreated to a mountain container and spent months writing a 2,400-page novel called Sanction under the pen name Roman McClay: a revenge fantasy in which a protagonist based on himself kills 40 people, using the real names, ages, workplaces, and addresses of people in his own life.

A Warning No One Followed Up

Published in October 2021, the novel quietly spread through extreme male-supremacist circles, and the praise convinced McLeod the world was finally recognizing him. Eleven months before the shooting, a reader in Germany named Andre noticed the novel's settings matched real locations exactly, messaged the author directly, became convinced he intended to kill someone, and reported the chat logs to the FBI and Denver police. Investigators dismissed it — reportedly concluding that "Roman McClay" didn't exist, apparently without checking whether it was simply a pen name.

Two months after publication, McLeod acted out the novel almost exactly as written. After Soul Tattoo, he went after Jeremy at his apartment disguised as a delivery man; Jeremy's girlfriend refused to open the door, and the couple fled with their newborn while McLeod broke in minutes later, firing into the empty apartment and torching Jeremy's car in the lot. He then killed former coworker Michael at his home, and — four miles away — walked into Lucky Tattoo and killed tattoo artist Danny Scofield, a man with no connection to him at all. At a hotel where he'd planned to hide, front desk employee Sarah Steck grew suspicious and stopped him; he shot her thirty seconds after walking in.

Final Thoughts

About an hour in, officer Ashley Ferris confronted him and ordered him to surrender. Certain of his own invincibility, McLeod shot her in the abdomen, paralyzing her right leg — but she fired back, hitting him in the chest, thigh, and foot. The spree ended there, seventy-five minutes after it began: five people dead, two wounded, and a tip that might have stopped it filed away because a records check couldn't find a name that was never meant to be real.

In the aftermath, some extremist communities didn't condemn McLeod — they praised him as someone trying to "cleanse society," even treating him as a martyr. As long as that kind of justification exists somewhere, the warning signs that were missed once can be missed again.