Why Ayn Rand?

I recently read a thoroughly researched book on the "heavenly creatures," the two 15-year-old girls in New Zealand who murdered one of their mothers by slowly beating her to death with half a brick. That happened about 50 years ago. You might have seen the movie or read some mysteries later written by one of the young ladies, Ann Perry (a name one girl took after being released from prison). This sensational case proved second in commentary only to Leopold-Loeb in the 20th century. The matter of interest is why did the girls do it? They had stupid motives, of course, but what freed them to commit matricide? 

As near as I can tell, the two girls were social outsiders, awkward, reasonably bright, angry nerds, if you can accept that term. To give themselves the illusion of importance, they created a two-girl bubble to live in, a bubble of nonsense in which they were enormously gifted superfolk, living far above the rules of mere conformist society. They were the smartest, most gifted people on the planet. They loved self-centered, sociopathic movie villains and the actors who played them. They turned evil men into their heroes, which is what Ayn Rand did in her writings. Her readership is nerdy adolescent losers, which many people are at one point (many later become successful), but most never commit to evil or they grow out of a mild flirtation with evil without killing a parent or they remain adolescents forever like Ron and Rand Paul.