>> and last i heard, a balding man with glasses may have gone inside with a gun and there were shots fired. >> reporter: six people killed at a sikh house of worship in oak creek, wisconsin. >> called me from my dad's phone, my dad was shot, on the ground. >> reporter: amardeep kalika's father, president of the temple, would be one of the four killed inside. >> my mom is hiding, she's hyper, scared, saying there are people still in there. >> ambulance up, subject down. >> reporter: among the first on the scene, 51-year-old brian murphree. >> he shot at close range. >> reporter: the shooter, an army veteran, in the files of sift rights groups because of long-time ties to the neo-nazi world, wade michael page. the shooting should help focus attention on the shadowy world

in which page became prominent. >> reporter: officers came in seeking to help lieutenant murphy. >> he'd been shot nine times. one of them very serious in the neck area. and he waved them off and told them to go into the temple to assist those in there. >> reporter: today with oak creek and the country in mourning over yet another mass shooting, three people were still hospitalized, including the hero police lieutenant. and members of the sikh community are trying to understand why they, a notably peaceful religious congregation, have been targeted by what police call a domestic act of terrorism. >> it looks to me that this is a hate crime. i'm very, very scared of this thing. i never expected such incidents, especially in america. >> reporter: civil rights groups say the answer could come from the subterranean world of white

power and its neo-nazi rock bands with its anthems of hate. southern poverty law group said it has tracked the suspect, wade michael page, ten years as he's moved through the skinhead circles. >> he first appeared on the white supremacist scene in 2000 when he started to plan a number of well-known white powered music bands. >> reporter: page's group called end apathy performed at white power festivals across the country with its provocative lyrics. ♪ one of these days you're gonna pay ♪ ♪ adapt to the times or pay with your life ♪ >> the basic idea that these people have that they are lonely defenders of the white race which is being subjected to the genocide by the miserable

multi-culturalists of the world and so on. they see themselves as martyrs. >> reporter: page enlisted in the army at the age of 21 at ft. bragg, north carolina. the army said page was discharged in 1998, after being demoted from sergeant to specialist and deemed ineligible for re-enlistment. his stepmother, laura page, told abc news tonight that the army changed the young man she knew growing up in texas. >> 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 those answers now because he's dead. >> reporter: page appears to have moved to the milwaukee area just this year. where neighbors said he was not very friendly. >> on a scale of 1 to 10, about a 1.5. >> reporter: federal officials say page legally bought the pistol he used in his rampage just eight days earlier. >> if we did everything right, there's nothing i can do to

change it. know what i mean? >> reporter: the purchase came shortly after he lost his job at an area metal works company. today employees at the firm lowered the flag to half staff out of respect for the victims. >> this isn't the kind of thing anymore that gets cooked up in back rooms with large groups of white men. you know, what we are really seeing apparently is lone wolf terrorism. >> reporter: for all of page's devotion to the white power world, some of the movement's most prominent websites today condemned the attack and labeled page as crazy and a coward. cynthia? >> thanks, brian. next up, home on mars? meet the billionaire who says it's possible and soon. ♪ [ male announcer ] start with a simple idea. think. drink coffee. hatch a design. kill the design. design something totally original. do it again. that's good. kick out the committees.

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"nightline" continues from new york city with cynthia mcfadden. today, an historic achievement in space travel, nasa's rover curiosity touched down on mars in what scientists call a miracle of engineering. so just imagine the complications of actually bringing humans to mars. well, one south african-born billionaire is looking to do just that and more, as early as 2025. here's abc's david wright. >> reporter: astonishing new images of our closest neighbor in the solar system. sure, they're not quite the stuff of mission mars as imagined in 1968. not quite ray bradbury's "martian chronicles" either. >> this is a wondrous moment. >> is it? >> reporter: these images are

real, and new. from nasa's most advanced and expensive mars mission to date. curiosity, a $2.5 billion robot, a size of a mini cooper that dropped down to the surface last night. >> this is all built pretty much from scratch. >> reporter: here on earth, there are people already planning the logical next step. >> i think we'll be able to send probably the first people to mars in roughly 12 to 15 years. that's my estimate. >> reporter: meet elon musk, a high-tech executive who recently >> liftoff. space race. >> reporter: accomplishing a feat so difficult only the united states and the soviet union and china have ever done before. that is, developing a spacecraft capable of taking a man into orbit and returning him safely to earth. elon musk did it with a rocket he designed himself. what was inside?

>> well, our biggest payload actually was a wheel of cheese. >> reporter: musk has big plans for mars. not just taking people there, but making it possible for people to live there. >> we know it's possible to get there. the question is is a much more difficult one which is can we make a trip to mars affordable for the average person in the united states. >> reporter: what's affordable? >> well, bear in mind, you would be moving to mars. so it's -- i think affordable, it has to be no more than $500,000. roughly, a middle class house in california. >> reporter: wow. >> that is a long way from actually making it occur, but i know it is possible. >> reporter: elon musk made his first billion creating paypal with his brother and in the process virtually created internet commerce. with his paypal proceeds he proceeded to found tesla motor cars and solar city companies, now at the cutting edge of renewable energy.

and he created spacex, a sprawling rocket design complex not far from l.a.x. in the most recent "iron man" movie, the vast development lab served as the backdrop for billionaire tony stark's company. which is kind of appropriate. you're tony stark. >> in some respects, a bit like tony stark. >> reporter: do you fight crime in the off hours? >> um -- >> reporter: not yet? >> well, no comment on that. >> reporter: musk even has one of the iron man costumes, a gift from the director. >> don't you want it to be that thing where it actually occurs and isn't always fiction? >> reporter: absolutely. and you look at movies like "2001" and think -- >> what happened? right, exactly. >> reporter: he wants to bring silicon valley ingenuity to a process that until recently has been something only governments do. >> we choose to go to the moon

and do other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. >> reporter: musk must have been born after jfk was long gone, but he was inspired by jfk's vision. to you, the idea of not only traveling to mars but colonizing mars isn't just a like, wouldn't that be cool, idea. but to you, it's a real possibility. something that maybe you hope to see in your lifetime? >> yes. i do, yeah. i'm confident that it can be done. i mean, i think it would be the most difficult thing humanity has ever tried to do. think about it, 4 billion years. the earth's been around 4 billion years. in all that time it's been confined to one planet. that is a long time. now for the first time in almost 4 billion years, it's been possible -- very difficult, but possible for life to extend to another planet. and we should take advantage of that opportunity. >> five, four, three, two, one. >> reporter: i'm david wright for "nightline" in los angeles. >> to the red planet and beyond, thanks to david wright.

and just ahead, they compete in the olympics to be the best of the best. but how much is really fair game? ♪ [ male announcer ] start with a simple idea. think. drink coffee. hatch a design. kill the design. design something totally original. do it again. that's good. kick out the committees. call in the engineers. call in the car guys. call in the nerds. build a prototype. mold it. shape it. love it. give it 40 mpg. no, 41. give it a huge display. give it a starting price under 16 grand. take it to the car shows. get a celebrity endorser.

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and now, for today's olympic results, my co-anchor bill weir joins us from london. bi. >> cynthia, i tell you, one way or another, one part of team usa figures out a way to thrill us on a daily basis. here in london dontonight, it w the women's soccer that beat the north american neighbors canada. but disappointment for gabby douglas finishing last on the uneven bar. she has one more shot at precious medal tomorrow on the balance beam. meanwhile, a lot of excitement

and a little bit of a suspicion bubbles up every time somebody puts a world beating number on the score bard in that stadium across the way. despite reinvigorated testing efforts, every game is haunted by doping standards past. this game's no exception. so we wonder how clean are the athletes of london 2012. and the answer, depends on who you ask. >> reporter: in the soft london afterglow, usain bolt's 100-meter win is being called the greatest race ever. >> usain bolt! >> reporter: but those with long memories may remember another sprint. when ben johnson beat carl lewis at the '88 games in seoul. the world swooned over the superhuman speed until three days later when he tested positive for steroids and was sent home in a cloud of scandal. and now 24 years later that final is considered the dirtiest

race in history, because as journalist richard moore points out in his new book, four other sprinters there that race went on to suffer doping standards of their own. so it wasn't just ben johnson? >> no. at the time, he was made a scapegoat. and i wanted to draw a distinction. he probably wasn't the only one. >> reporter: the man who ultimately won that race was carl lewis. after bolt's stunning appearance in beijing, he was the highest profile to raise suspicion, saying, quote, if you don't question bolt's times in a sport that has a reputation in the sport right now, you're a fool, period. but the doping control officer at the salt lake city games disagrees. >> usain bolt is a fantastic runner. when a run start to complain, there might be jealouscy.

>> reporter: when they criticized yang, the chinese were outraged. like bolt, they are athletes with clean records competing in sports with dirty pasts. so what has changed in 20-plus years. >> one thing that has changed, the independent body that the sport has always needed. and in those day, you had sports policing themselves. >> reporter: in addition to this "just say no" campaign, the ioc says a record 5,500 athletes have been tested. so far, they've only ejected five names. a albanian wrestler, a gymnast. >> you see it looks like that over there. >> reporter: chris cooper is a bio chemistry professor at the

university of essex. he believes 10% of olympians are doping. the hard part is figures out which ones. when you watch the game, you see an amazing performance, what goes through your mind? any suspicion? >> no, i enjoy the performance. i know people who say you must have been doping to get this time. so i think as spectators, we should not have that suspicion. >> reporter: and is there more scrutiny for the better athlete? people like in the usain bolt class, is it harder for him to dope than it would be for a discus thrower? >> i wouldn't say it's an unusual performance. it's a pattern of behavior. >> we have a very expensive drug testing program here in london for the olympic games. i wonder whether it's money well

spent with airport security checking everybody. how effective is that way of combatting terrorism. >> reporter: as for bolt, he's long maintained his skills come from his parents. his twitter bio, the most naturally gifted athlete the world has ever seen. bolt tweeted a shot of himself with the swedish hand ball team at 3:45 a.m. and he still has two races left to run. he is superhuman in many ways. cynthia, we'll have all the latest results for you. see you back here tomorrow. >> thanks, bill. and a final note tonight in june, we reported on the decades-long fight for health care for marine families sickened by contaminated water at ft. lejeune, north carolina. today, president obama granted them benefits for a former marine's daughter who died of cancer 25 years ago. thanks for watch. good night, america.

jimmy kimmel right here next. good evening. i'm larry beil. >> i'm care oh link johnson. first, breaking news out of richmond. >> major fire at chevron refinery is now contained. these pictures from sky7hd taken a short time ago. fire officials do have a handle on the situation. however, the fire continues to burn at this hour. >> it has been spewing out a cloud of toxic smoke over the east bay all night long. it started with a diesel leak and erupted into a massive fire. people were told to shelter inside homes. it shut down all production at the largest refinery. that is expected to cause a spike in gas prices.

>> bart service is back up to speed. the chevron refinery sits on the western side of the city of richmond. sergio quintana joins from the plant. >> reporter: the very latest is that the shelter in place warning was lifted about 45 minutes ago, 11:15 for the surrounding areas and half an hour ago that shelter in place warning was lifted here at the refinery site itself. that fire, it is still burning, however it is contained. during the news conference a couple hours ago the chevron refinery general manager said the fire started about 6:30. residents tell us they heard a series of explosions. the fire is by diesel four. workers noticed a leak and called for an inspection team. they realized there was a serious problem so they evacuated the unit and that is