The parents of California killer Elliot Rodger are grieving more for the victims than their own son, who blew his brains out after his rampage.
“It’s very difficult to be in their company . . . They are in grief. It would be true to say they mourn the loss of the others more than their son,’’ family friend Simon Astaire told The Post Tuesday.
Rodger’s parents — Hollywood director Peter Rodger and ex-wife Li Chin Rodger — “are unrecognizable” since their eldest child posted a YouTube video vowing vengeance over his failed love life and went on a murder spree that killed six and wounded 13 Friday night, Astaire said.
Astaire, a novelist who sat down with the divorced couple and Peter’s second wife, Soumaya, added that the family is trying to contact relatives of Elliot’s victims.
“It’s in process. They are reaching out. Both sides are reaching out at the moment,” he said, declining to elaborate.
Astaire wouldn’t say if any funeral arrangements were being made for Elliot or if his body had been claimed from the Santa Barbara Coroner’s Office.
Astaire said he met Elliot only a few times and recalled a Christmas party two years ago when Elliot, stepping outside for some air, stood alone. “He seemed at the time a gentle soul, but how wrong can you be?” he said.
Meanwhile, Lucky Radley, a childhood friend of Rodger, said he remembered the killer as “overly quiet” when they hung out together during fourth grade.
In his manifesto, Rodger had called Radley “very nice” in elementary school but said Radley later became “an object of my extreme jealousy and hatred.”
In middle school, “he immediately became popular with the pretty girls of his grade. I hated him for it,” Rodger wrote.
Radley, a University of Utah football player, told the Salt Lake City Tribune, “Literally, I’ve done nothing wrong to him whatsoever. I really hung out with him in fourth grade. After that, he was kind of doing his thing. I was into sports and he was kind of into other things.”