The ex-wife of the man behind the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history is speaking out.
Sitora Yusufiy spoke to a reporter with the TV show "Crime Watch Daily" which airs at 2 p.m. on NewsChannel 5.
Yusufiy said Omar Mateen led a double-life and she believes that he was actually gay.
"There's no other way to explain him having so many dating site apps and visiting clubs and dancing with gay men and confiding in them," Yusufiy said.
She said his father is extremely homophobic which is why she believes he hid his true feelings.
His ex-wife also believes oppressing those feelings triggered the attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
"I really feel like he was struggling with being himself because he was gay. I really believe that he was," she said.
She continued to say, "There was no sexual connection between us. All he wanted to do was have children, to fit the criteria of his father and to make his family proud and that's what we did. He was never the one to initiate any romance or sexual contact."
Yusufiy and the gunman broke up seven years ago, and she said she became pregnant right before they split.
She said she got an abortion because she didn't want to have a connection to the man she say abused her countless times.
Yusufiy met Mateen when she was 19 through a website. She moved from New Jersey to Florida to be with him.
She said she's now glad she never had his child, because she wouldn't want that child to feel the pain she feels after being connected to the man behind the Pulse nightclub shooting.
"He went and shot so many people in the month of Ramadan which is the holy month for Muslims which is when everything is supposed to be sacred. He might have thought that he was doing this for his father to be proud of him that he finally got rid of so many homosexuals in this sacred month," Yusufiy said.
Yusufiy is now a portrait artist in Colorado and is married. The couple is expecting their first child.
