Denver, USA - A gunman who killed four people in two shootings did not send hate mail to a Christian missionary training center where some of the victims were shot, authorities said Friday, backing off from their earlier statements.
Police now say Matthew Murray sent e-mails to an affiliated group in which he criticized Christians but did not threaten violence.
Police in Colorado Springs, where Murray opened fire at the New Life Church, had said in a court document this week that the 24-year-old had sent death threats to the Youth With a Mission center in the Denver suburb of Arvada.
Arvada Police Cmdr. Kathy Foos blamed the misstatement on miscommunication between police in Arvada and Colorado Springs.
The e-mails in question are separate from Internet screeds linked to Murray that bitterly condemned Christianity and threatened to kill believers. Police still have not said whether they are certain Murray wrote those diatribes.
Murray shot four people at Youth With a Mission's Arvada dormitory just after midnight Sunday, killing two. More than 12 hours later, he showed up 65 miles away at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and shot five more people, killing two of them.
Murray was shot and wounded by a volunteer security guard before he fatally shot himself, authorities say.
Murray had been kicked out of the Arvada center five years before, and the Internet postings he has been linked to criticize New Life. The missionary training center maintains an office at New Life.
After the shootings, Colorado Springs police filed court papers seeking a warrant to search Murray's home. Part of the documents said Murray had sent threatening e-mails to the training center and its director.
Officials of the training center said they had no knowledge of any hate messages before the shooting.
Arvada Cmdr. Kathy Foos said the e-mails referred to in the documents were actually sent to a separate Youth With a Mission chapter called King's Kids Arvada, which caters to people younger than 18.
That group "received electronic communication from the gunman several years ago regarding his dissatisfaction with Christianity," Foos said. "The communication implied Christians were 'hypocrites' with no threats of violence."
Murray stopped e-mailing King's Kids officials after they asked him to, Foos said.