Parodite wrote:Stumped too. My wild guesstimate: brother Erik knows about and is probably complicit in some other shady crimes Stephen was involved with. Arms trade a good possibility. Casinos of course deeply involved in lots of shady stuff and home too equally shady individuals. Extortion.
The man traveling around a lot, keeping to himself. Of course. Their father a psychopath who was so good in persuasion that he persuaded a Judge to let him off the hook despite evidence. Erik tries to paint his bro as a normal nice guy and wants to look baffled. He probably is, but he just too often wants to emphasise how normal Stephen always appeared and that he did this alone and had enough money to do whatever he wanted and make things happen he wanted to happen. So it is likely Erik is hiding something, but probably that concerns crimes in the past where Erik was complicit. By telling how strong and independent Stephen Always was, he tries to talk himself off the rader.
One moment in the interview I found odd. Erik talks most of the time in hysteric fashion with a high pitch regularly, but the moment he starts to explain automatic weapens.. his voice quiets and slows down getting a lower pitch. He said something like that "people don't know what it means to operate an automatic weapon." This tells me Erik was/is involved with his brother in something shady; at least he is trying to hide something.
As to the motive: I think people in the underworld were blackmailing, extorting him. Threatened to snitch and/or kill, family, his girlfriend. He basically was full of resentment and rage, somehow knowing his life as a decent citizen would soon be over anyways. I don't think he was a Trump supporter or convert to Islam. But probably vulnerable to psychotic attacks and an amount of psychopathological malfunction. If at all ideologically motivated he maybe simply got inspired by any and all terrorist attacks or mass shootings.
I think you may be right about it being about other shady business. He's made it very, very clear that his brother was his meal ticket to riches (he deserves) for being (to paraphrase about describing his teenage years) "smart enough to hang around dumber kids who'd get caught". Seems to be a guy who still likes to think of himself as
cleaver, cleaverer and cleverest than the average bear.
...and the high voice/low voice change raised red flags with me too. 'Specially after he just said the day before that he didn't know nothing about no guns and neither did his brother...it was part of his whole, "I've not seen him in quite a while/I helped him move and he had a few handguns and a shotgun in a safe. I don't know that much about it."
Now it's "We've been shooting guns since we were teenagers and I've taken my kids to the range and have tried out a variety of guns and...and...and..."
In other words, he is neither naive nor a novice about them; even if he's not an expert. And neither was his brother.
So at the very least, he has already demonstrated that he will lie about minor things if he thinks its advantageous.