Georgia shooter expressed 'shame' over porn addiction, says ex-roommate

A former roommate of the Atlanta spa shooter who allegedly murdered eight people at a series of massage parlors expressed shame over an addiction to pornography, New York Post reports his ex-roommate as saying.

Tyler Bayless, 35, claims that he formerly resided in a halfway house known as Maverick Recovery, during which time he shared a room with Robert Aaron Long, the accused shooter.

The two were together during parts of 2019 and 2020, Bayless says. Bayless was in the halfway house to deal with a drug addiction.

According to Bayless, Long had expressed "deep feeling of remorse and shame" over his addiction to pornography, and that he "needed to return to prayer and to return to God."

"In the halfway house he would describe several of his sexual addiction ‘relapses’ as he called them. He would have a deep feeling of remorse and shame and say he needed to return to prayer and to return to God," Bayless said.

He further said that Long was "deeply religious" and that he would become "very emotionally distraught that he frequented" massage parlors.

Investigators have seemed to concur with Bayless's analysis thus far, that Long went on a murder spree over his sexual frustration and addiction problems. However, they have not yet ruled out the possibility that the attack was in part racially motivated given that the majority of victims were Asian.

Six of the eight people allegedly murdered by Long were Asian women, with one white woman and one white man also killed. While social media has erupted with claims that the shooting was racially-motivated, police have not confirmed such suspicions.

Long was eventually turned in by his own parents.