Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley’s recorded manifesto shocks courtroom: ‘I am the demon’
Michigan high school shooter Ethan Crumbley said he was “gonna have so much fun” gunning down his classmates the night before he killed four students and injured seven others, according to his recorded manifesto played in court Thursday.
Relatives of Crumbley’s victims who attended the sentencing hearing heard audio of the killer chillingly declaring that he’d be the next school shooter and needed to “teach them a lesson” by carrying out the carnage at Oxford School.
Crumbley, who has pleaded guilty to the massacre, made the shocking remarks in a manifesto he recorded the night before he went through with his devastating plan, prosecutors said Thursday, according to CNN.
“My name is Ethan Crumbley, age 15, and I am going to be the next school shooter,” he was heard saying on the audio played in court. “I’ve thought about this a lot. I can’t stop thinking about it. But it’s constantly in my head.”
He stated that he would try to shoot as many people as possible.
“I will walk behind someone, and I will shoot a bullet into their skull,” he said, according to the recording. “I’m gonna open fire on everyone in the hallway, I will try to hit as many people as I can, I will reload, and I will find people hiding.”
He said the demon in him would take over.
“I have worn my mask for too long. I can’t take it,” Crumbley said in a monotone, according to the Detroit Free Press. “There’s no voices in my head. The voices are me … that’s what people call the demons. There are no demons. I am the demon.”
Prosecutors also revealed shocking pages from the teen’s handwritten journal as well as horrific texts he sent to an unnamed friend as they asked the judge to sentence him to life without the possibility of parole.
“I want to shoot up the school so f–king badly,” he wrote in one entry, CNN reported. “The first victim has to be a pretty girl with a future so she can suffer just like me,” he wrote in another.
The first victim Crumbley shot was Phoebe Arthur, who survived but was gravely wounded.
“I will continue shooting people until police breach the building,” the teen wrote. “I will then surrender to them and plead guilty to life in prison.”
Crumbley wrote that he didn’t want to die and wanted to be remembered.
“I want all of America to see the darkness in me,” Crumbley wrote in his journal, according to the Free Press. “I want for the parents … to bawl their eyes out.”
Prosecutors also introduced evidence and witness testimony that the mass shooter got joy out of torturing and killing baby birds.
In text messages to a close friend months before the school shooting, Crumbley said he wanted to kidnap, rape, torture, kill and dismember a classmate and described what must be “the best feeling” to drown children, the local newspaper reported.
“Just looking them in their eyes as they look back at you while they know that their entire life is about to end so young,” he texted, adding: “The best feeling.”
The courtroom was also shown a video of the actual massacre, without sound, in which Crumbley emerged from a bathroom with a gun and fired at several students while classes were changing.
Several victims’ families silently sobbed as they watched their loved ones’ murders.
Prosecutors asked that the teenager be sentenced to life in prison without the opportunity of parole.
The defense asked that Crumbley be given the chance at parole, arguing that he is a young boy who was neglected by his parents and can still be rehabilitated.
They pointed to his own calls for help in his journal.
“All one of my teachers has to do is send me to the office and I will tell them about the bird head and I can get help,” Crumbley wrote, according to CNN.
“One call and that can save a lot of lives. My evil has fully taken over in me and I used to like it, but now I don’t want to be evil. I want help but my parents don’t listen to me so I can’t get any help. I feel like I’m in a tiny loop of sadness.”
On the morning of the shooting, the boy and his parents met with a school official after a teacher found some of his horrific journal entries.
He was allowed to stay in school and his bag was never checked for weapons.
The court will hear a second day of testimony beginning Friday morning.
