(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) Could the now-deleted LinkedIn profile of James Westman, the father of Minnesota mass murderer Robert “Robin” Westman, hold the key to understanding what pushed him over the edge?
Online sleuths, supported by the X-based artificial intelligence platform Grok, have confirmed that the elder Westbrook spent nearly three decades at Esri, a tech company with ties to the Pentagon and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, as well as other possible deep-state links.
Hey, @Grok, did the father of Minneapolis Catholic School shooter Robin Westman work for Esri, which reportedly has contracts with the CIA and Department of Defense? pic.twitter.com/wBR3UEPj0G
— Red Pill USA (@Red_Pill_US) August 30, 2025
For leftists, the transgender killer’s Second Amendment rights may have been the reason he gunned down two children and injured 18 during morning prayers at the Annunciation Catholic School on Wednesday.
For gun-rights advocates and others, the reams of documented evidence pointing to mental-health issues and borderline sociopathy may help explain it.
And for the investigative team at the New York Times, Westman’s homicidal motives may remain a mystery for the ages.
Utterly disgraceful propaganda. pic.twitter.com/c9qkhSErS9
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) August 31, 2025
The case resembles a host of other recent mass-shooting incidents—including those of failed Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks and Nashville transgender kid-killer Audrey Hale.
Many of them were engaged via online platforms like Discord with the Satanic cult 764 and other dark-web groups that may have coerced them into sending compromising photos and then blackmailed them into deadly action.
The groups typically prey on mentally weak and emotionally fragile individuals like Westman, including those with autism and those taking gender-reversing hormone treatments.
YOU & YOUR ilk are the problem. Dems created the transgender mental illness crisis. Children aren’t born into the wrong bodies, mentally ill, delusional parents are destroying their own children. Pumping them full of drugs and turning them into violent deranged killers. pic.twitter.com/ydY5xK1yEG
— Savannah (@BasedSavannah) August 27, 2025
Westman’s various manifestos, including a diary written partially in Cyrillic, offer tell-tale indications of his involvement in online cult groups.
The “Russian writing” and symbols on Robert Westman’s guns was a deliberate marker of extremist groups like O9A (Order of Nine Angles) and 764/The Com.
O9A, a UK-based satanic neo-Nazi cult from the 1970s, blends occult rituals with fascism, promoting violence for…
— I AM THAT, I AM (@IAM41776311) August 31, 2025
He also wrote the last names of several other school shooters on at least one of the weapons in his stockpile.
One “mystery” that may never be fully understood, however, is the scope to which U.S. intelligence agencies had a hand in monitoring and directing the activity in these dark-web chatrooms.
I was at an FBI briefing just 6 months ago where “Nihilistic Accelerationism” was a hot topic as an emerging threat. That meant groups like The Com, 764, O9A…
Not sure what happened to that priority but they were very much surveilled at the time. We failed w/ Robin Westman. pic.twitter.com/QHmhCnXYIA
— Brad Maloney 🌿 (@br4dm4l0n3y) August 28, 2025
Like others—including Crooks, who had family ties to high-ranking military intelligence—Westman’s links to the intel community have now become a subject of intense speculation on social media.
James Westman (the murderer's father) is an Esri Employee with a specialization in geospatial surveillance systems for the Department of Defense, State, and local governments, including law enforcement agencies. This includes threat monitoring and dispatch with "real-time… pic.twitter.com/1yE23JRkEn
— Jeff Brinkman (@brinkjay) August 30, 2025
Esri (formerly the Environmental Systems Research Institute), where James Westman worked for 29 years, has received more than $130 million in federal funding, with its primary function appearing to be geospatial intelligence through its ArcGIS system.
As is the case with many Silicon Valley tech companies, political donations from its employees also indicate a strong alignment with Democrat candidates.
DOGE Police Blotter: Evidence from various online sources show that Esri, the company that James Allen Westman, the father of Minneapolis antisemitic, anti-Christian transgender Catholic school mass shooter, works for has received tens of millions of dollars in Federal Government… https://t.co/8p2CKAChNM pic.twitter.com/oFWFw6xrWE
— Saint James Hartline (@JamesHartline) August 30, 2025
All indications point to James Westbrook’s direct involvement with government projects through the Department of Homeland Security and various three-letter intelligence agencies, although his last login appears to have been in May, as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency began scrutinizing wasteful and corrupt government contracts.
Some have further suggested that the anti-Semitism expressed by Robert Westman may be rooted in his dad’s work with Hamas-affiliated organizations backed by USAID.
DOGE Police Blotter: And of course you knew corrupt Hamas terrorist-linked USAID would come up in the deep dive investigation of Esri, the company that James Allen Westman, the father of antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-Christian transgender mass shooter Robert "Robin" Westman, has… https://t.co/BGWAl9Lsoj pic.twitter.com/nrz86JQ3HM
— Saint James Hartline (@JamesHartline) August 30, 2025
Meanwhile, others raised questions as to whether the parents of victims Harper Moyski, 10, and Fletcher Merkel, 8, may also have had government ties in the grid-surveillance industry that might have led to their children’s targeting.
🚨How crazy is it that the parents of the ‘slain’ children are Mike Moyski (VP of C.H. Robinson – global logistics/Navisphere) Jesse Merkel (Xcel Energy – grid engineering), and the alleged ‘shooter’s’ relative is James Westman (Esri/Bay West – GIS mapping) all work in the same… pic.twitter.com/3sGNc5XQp3
— Morgan (@MorganC000) August 29, 2025
It is unlikely that any investigations into the shooting will ever reach a conclusive end to this social-media rabbit hole, so perhaps the New York Times has inadvertently stumbled onto a true statement after all.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
