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Professor met Nazi shooter in 2001 while studying racist music scene

Wade Michael Page grew up without his mom and learned racial hate without any help from family, according to a researcher with close ties to the mass murderer.

University of Nebraska at Omaha criminology professor Pete Simi met the future mass murder in 2001 while studying the racist music scene in Southern California, where Page was active.

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Page — who ruthlessly blew away six innocent Sikh worshippers at a Wisconsin temple on Sunday — told Simi in the early 2000s that his family had no responsibility for his attitude toward minorities.

“He said his parents did not share his beliefs,” Simi told The Huffington Post.

“He said he wasn’t very close with his family. His parents divorced when he was fairly young and not long after that he said his mother died. It was clear he wasn’t comfortable talking too much about his family so I didn’t press him much.”

Despite Page’s racist beliefs, he came off friendly and open, according to Simi.

The future killer, though, struggled with social awkwardness and relationship with women. He also drank heavily, making it hard for him to hold a steady job.

Even his racists housemates had a tough time with Page, because he wasn’t responsible about coughing up green to his white pals.

“Page also had a problem paying his share of the rent and food so that created some problems too,” Simi said.

“I know he borrowed money from people around the scene and behind his back people would complain about him ‘free loading.'”

Page was in the Army from 1992 to 1998, six years that apparently changed his life forever.

“He once told me, ‘If you don’t go into the military as a racist, you definitely leave as one,'” Simi said.

“He also talked about meeting neo-Nazis in the military and being exposed to neo-Nazi literature while in the military.”

Simi’s troubling comments seem to answer the worst fears of Page’s one-time stepmother, who wondered out what Army life might have done to the future killer.

The 40-year-old killer enlisted in the Army in 1992 before his discharge in 1998.

“Now I greatly question that direction,” Laurie Page told ABC’s “Good Morning America” today.

“I don’t know if the military was good for him. I don’t know. I wish I had some answers. And we’re not going to have answers because he’s dead.”

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By 2001, Page had already built up a “resume” of racist tattoos, according to Simi, including a simple print of the numer “14.”

The “14” ink is a boilerplate tattoo for racist, shorthand for the movement’s 14-word mantra — “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.”

The bigoted punk described by Simi is worlds away from the “lovely, gentle child” known to his former stepmom.

“I can’t imagine what could have gone through his mind for him to do something like this, or anyone to do something like this,” said Laurie Page, who has since divorced the killer’s dad.

“You can’t be functioning normally obviously. But we’ll never know why.”

Wade’s biological parents divorced when the future mass murderer was a young child.

Dad Jesse Page married Laurie Page when Wade was 10. Jesse and Laura divorced in 2001.

The former step mom hadn’t seen Wade since Christmas 2001.

“He was a happy young man and he was a happy teenager,” she told The Post.

That once happy teenager was killed by responding police on Sunday, in the temple’s parking lot.

Cops ordered him to surrender, but when he fired back officers had no choice but to kill him, police said.