A long trail of red flags on a Florida man’s escalating hatred toward women was missed by authorities before a 2018 shooting at a Florida yoga studio that left two dead and five injured, says the U.S. Secret Service. In a case study released on Tuesday, the agency said that the attack by Scott Beierle at Hot Yoga Tallahassee highlighted the specific threat posed by “misogynistic extremism,” sometimes referred to as “male supremacy,” the New York Times reports. The report was compiled by the National Threat Assessment Center, which said that the red flags on Beierle multiplied exponentially over the years. They included arrests for battery, repeated allegations of stalking and outward demonstrations of an animus toward women.
Beierle wrote a screenplay about an outcast teenage boy who becomes a serial killer, exacting revenge against the girls who had rejected him. When the police close in, the boy kills himself. “Communities must remain aware of misogynistic extremism, while pursuing prevention efforts that are designed to identify and intervene with those who pose a risk of violence,” said the threat center's Lina Alathari. In the months before the attack, which ended when Beierle, 40, took his own life, he had researched a cheerleading camp in Florida. The Secret Service said Beierle had once visited a sorority house at Florida State University in Tallahassee where the serial killer Ted Bundy had murdered two women and attacked several others.