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In the fall of 1990 Ferguson enrolled at Adelphi University and got into angry confrontations with teachers and students, accusing white students of racism and black activists of being "Uncle Toms." "Black rage will get you," he told a black professor. He talked loudly of violent race wars and revolution. He interrupted a lecture by yelling "Kill everybody white!" By 1991, he was suspended. In 1992 his ex-wife, who has not spoken to him since their divorce, filed a complaint with police charging that Ferguson had pried open the trunk of her car. Ferguson also clashed with police when he got into a shoving match with a woman over a subway seat. He had compiled a list of complaints and enemies, as did other recent mass murderers -- including Alan ( Winterbourne, who shot four people in Oxnard, California, two weeks ago, and Gian Luigi Ferri, who killed eight people in a San Francisco office building last July. But while officials on the compensation board and at Adelphi were on Ferguson's list, to him almost everyone -- white, Asian or black -- had become a racist and particularly prejudiced against him. (Ferguson had "friends" too. Out of regard for outgoing Mayor David Dinkins, who is black, and police commissioner Raymond Kelly, who is white, he did not open fire until he was beyond New York City limits.)
Early this year Ferguson went to California in search of new opportunities. There were only new humiliations. "He did not like competing with immigrants and Hispanics for jobs," James Clement, a friend, told the Washington Post. When Ferguson applied at a car wash, said Clement, the manager laughed at him. The next day, Ferguson walked into Turner's Outdoorsman and made a downpayment on a gun. As proof of residency, he used a California driver's license he had received on a previous visit and the Royal Motel address. Fifteen days later his security check was completed, and Ferguson paid the balance. By the end of May, he was back in New York City -- with the Ruger. Ferguson thought that the compensation board was going to reopen his case on Dec. 3. On the following Tuesday, when he learned that the news was false, he boarded the 5:33 train to Hicksville.