The case of Alton Nolen, the suspect in the Oklahoma beheading,
emerges as terrorists become more adept at disseminating barbaric imagery, stoking American fears.
Yet local authorities have asked the FBI to investigate claims that Nolen had been trying to convert coworkers to Islam. And his Facebook page, under the pseudonym Jah'Keem Yisrael, holds disturbing images and statements. In one, he wrote: "She (the Statue of Liberty) is going into flames. She and anybody who’s with her."
It is the nature of the attack that has brought extra scrutiny, however.
Authorities say Nolen stabbed and then beheaded the first woman before stabbing the second multiple times. He was then shot by the company's CEO, Mark Vaughan, who is also a reserve deputy with the Oklahoma County Sheriff's Office.
In recent months, the Islamic State in Syria has gathered global attention for releasing videos of the beheading of Western captives.
Americans have been affected by the videos, polls suggest. The images have been a primary factor in driving fear of terrorist attack to post-9/11 highs,
notes NBC News.
But Nolen could have been affected by the videos in a different way. Researchers studying mass shootings have noted copycat tendencies. Extensive media coverage of one event feeds the next. Ari Schulman, editor of the journal The New Atlantis, likened the events to a contagion
in The Wall Street Journal last year:
"Mass shootings are a kind of theater.
Their purpose is essentially terrorism – minus, in most cases, a political agenda.
The public spectacle, the mass slaughter of mostly random victims, is meant to be seen as an attack against society itself."