Was Omar Mateen gay? The ex-wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter and her fiance certainly don't seem shocked by that recent assertion.
In the wake of shocking claims about the gunman's sexuality, Sitora Yusufiy made comments of her own in an interview that back them up.
Yusufiy, who was married to Mateen in 2009 for four months, and Marco Dias, to whom she is now engaged, sat down with SBT Brazil TV.
There, she opened up about her ex-husband’s alleged past.
Speaking in Portuguese on Yusufiy’s behalf, Dias stated that his fiancée believed that Omar Mateen exhibited “homosexual tendencies.”
He also claimed that the killer, who shot 49 people dead in an LGBT club on Sunday, was derided as gay in front of her by his father.
Yusufiy previously called Mateen abusive and unstable.
"When we had gotten married, he confessed to me about his past that was recent at that time," she recalls.
"He very much enjoyed going to clubs and the nightlife and there was a lot of pictures of him,” she explained.
“I feel like it’s a side of him or a part of him that he lived but probably didn’t want everybody to know about.”
When asked if she believed Mateen was gay, Yusufiy responded, “I don’t know," but implicitly commented that it was possible, even likely.
"He never personally or even physically made any indication while we were together of that, but he did feel very strongly about homosexuality.”
As reported earlier, patrons at Pulse nightclub, where he committed the worst shooting in U.S. history, believe they saw Mateen there regularly.
One customer recalled to the Orlando Sentinel:
“Sometimes he would go over in the corner and sit and drink by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent.”
“We didn’t really talk to him a lot, but I remember him saying things about his dad at times. He told us he had a wife and child.”
One of the gunman’s former classmates also opened up about his alleged homosexuality, saying he once asked him out “romantically.”
