Can social anxiety make people murder?

That seems to be the implication of this rather startling story from Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper:

Suspect called himself a 'fringe individual'

NEWMARKET -- Alicia Ross hit a raw nerve when she called her neighbour Daniel Sylvester a "loser," a murder-trial jury heard yesterday.

In one of several audiotape confessions he made when he turned himself in to police one month after Ms. Ross disappeared from her Markham home in the early hours of Aug. 17, 2005, Mr. Sylvester said the insult "really got me going" and led to his fatal attack on Ms. Ross.

When York Regional Police Detective Rick McViety quizzed him further, Mr. Sylvester said he had been dubbed a loser "many times throughout high school" and even in grade school.

"I just had problems socially, trying to adapt. I never assimilated ... with the high-school crowd ... I did have some friends in high school, but they were never mainstream friends," Mr. Sylvester told Det. McViety.

Mr. Sylvester went on to portray himself as a reclusive and nervous social misfit. He said he had attention deficit disorder and was prone to depression, anxiety and thoughts of suicide.

"I would describe myself ... [as a] fringe individual. ... I feel very ill at ease and I feel very nervous and apprehensive around people."

While straining to recall therapy sessions with up to 15 psychiatrists and psychologists from the early 1990s on, Mr. Sylvester said he prefers not to go any longer because "it just doesn't seem to work out."

Mr. Sylvester, 33, has pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder, but guilty to manslaughter in Ms. Ross's beating death. Crown attorney Kelly Wright has rejected the plea.

When asked what day of the week it was when he killed Ms. Ross, Mr. Sylvester, who rarely worked, and watched television at home most days, said "one day blends with the next."

The eight-woman, four-man jury has heard Mr. Sylvester tell police that as he and Ms. Ross struggled, Ms. Ross kicked at his ribs.

Mr. Sylvester said that after he forced Ms. Ross to the ground and she began to claw at his head, he tried to get her to stop, kneeing her in the chest and then slamming her head into the ground two or three times.

The jury heard Mr. Sylvester tell police that after he realized Ms. Ross was dead, he dragged her body into his garage and then 45 minutes later drove north in his truck and dumped her body near the town of Manilla.

When asked by Detective McViety if he wanted to say something to Ms. Ross's family, Mr. Sylvester, in a rare moment of emotion, said he didn't now if he could face them.

"There are no words that are sufficient to apologize for something like that. I would say I had no right to take your daughter's life ... and I wish I had never done that."