Paranoia and mash-up of conspiracy theories gripped surf instructor before child killings

Matthew Taylor Coleman is seen in a surveillance video checking into a City Express hotel in Rosarito with one of his children, according to Baja prosecutors. “A lot of people are exposed to those ideas, but they don’t act in those ways,” said Uscinski, who co-wrote the book “American Conspiracy Theories.” “The question has to be: What about this person is leading him to act?” Signs and symbols The Colemans’ Santa Barbara community has been struggling to square the person they know with the brutality of the crime. Coleman credits learning about lizard people on Twitter and from “that British guy with white hair” — which investigators said was likely a reference to a noted conspiracy theorist who has been accused of being a Holocaust denier and promoting antisemitic tropes in his books. The friend told investigators that Coleman had made similar comments to him about photos of other people, calling them evil disguised as good and describing them as “compromised,” the affidavit says. Uscinski, the conspiracy theory expert, said Coleman’s “I” statements — making the conspiracy theories less about a group of people in power and more about him and his inner circle — are an indication that other, more individualized factors drove the violence.