DENVER -- Backing off earlier statements, authorities said Friday that gunman Matthew Murray did not send hate mail to a Christian missionary training center before he went on a deadly shooting rampage there and at a church.

Police now say Murray sent e-mails to an affiliated group in which he criticized Christians but did not threaten violence.

Police in Colorado Springs, where the 24-year-old Murray opened fire at New Life Church, had said in a court document early this week that Murray sent death threats to the Youth With a Mission training center in the Denver suburb of Aurora.

Arvada Police Cmdr. Kathy Foos blamed the misstatement on miscommunication between Arvada and Colorado Springs police.

The e-mails in question are separate from Internet screeds linked to Murray that bitterly condemned Christianity and threatened to kill believers. Although police have not said whether they are certain Murray wrote those diatribes, he is still widely believed to be the author.

Murray shot four people at Youth With a Mission's Arvada dormitory just after midnight Sunday, killing two. More than 12 hours later, he showed up 65 miles away at New Life Church in Colorado Springs and shot five more people, killing two of them.

Murray had been kicked out of the Arvada center five years before, and Internet postings he is believed to have written are critical of New Life.

Murray was shot and wounded by a volunteer security guard before he fatally shot himself.

After the shootings, Colorado Springs police filed court papers seeking a warrant to search Murray's home. Part of the documents said Murray had sent threatening e-mails to the training center and its director.

Officials of the training center said they had no knowledge of any hate messages before the shooting.

Arvada Cmdr. Kathy Foos said the e-mails referred to in the documents were actually sent to a separate Youth With a Mission chapter called King's Kids Arvada, which caters to youths under age 18.

That group "received electronic communication from the gunman several years ago regarding his dissatisfaction with Christianity," Foos said. "The communication implied Christians were 'hypocrites' with no threats of violence."

Foos said Murray stopped e-mailing King's Kids officials after they asked him to.