Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz during confession: ‘Kill me’
19-year-old told a detective he hears an ‘evil’ voice or demons
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Just a few minutes after a Broward Sheriff’s Office detective started interviewing the Parkland shooter about how he massacred 17 people, he offered the young man some cold water.
“I don’t deserve it,” Nikolas Cruz told him.
The detective walked outside to get him some water, anyway.
“Kill me. Just f---ing kill me. F---,” Cruz said, while he was alone in the interview room, but still being recorded. Cruz said he had been “hearing voices” or demons speaking to him for years. He claimed it started after his dad died when he was little and that it had gotten worse since his mom died in November.
“Burn, kill, destroy,” he said the “evil” voice told him. It also told him to buy a gun and hurt people — but didn’t suggest specific victims, he claimed.
Two or three weeks earlier, he had planned to go to a park and shoot people there, but he didn’t go through with it, he said. He couldn’t explain why, but later described himself as a “coward.”
Detective John Curcio expressed skepticism to Cruz about whether he was really hearing an evil voice, asking if the voice had suggested details of how to commit the attack, such as ordering the ride service he took to the Parkland school.
“The voice didn’t tell you to take Uber, right?” Curcio asked. “Yes, it did,” Cruz replied. Later, Cruz said he tried to kill himself at least twice in the months and years before the massacre. On the first occasion, he said he was lonely, and binged on vodka, tequila and wine.
Depressed after his mother’s death, he said he attempted suicide again by taking a large dose of over-the-counter drugs, including ibuprofen and Advil. He survived both attempts, he said.
“Cool looking,” Cruz said when the detective asked him why he bought the legally purchased AR-15-style rifle he used in the attack at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The ammunition, he said, he bought online. He estimated he had spent about $4,000 on his guns and ammunition.
Cruz also spoke about a girl, Emily, who he said was the only girlfriend he ever had: “She was the love of my life.”
After the brief relationship with Emily, he said he’d had other dates, but “I scared them,” Cruz said. “I don’t know why I scare them.”
Left alone again, later in the interview, Cruz talked to himself once more:
“I want to die. At the end, you’re nothing but worthless s---, dude. You deserve to die because you’re f---ing worthless and you f---ing (unintelligible) everyone. I want to die.”
Most of the Parkland school shooter’s hourslong confession to the massacre of 17 people was released Monday afternoon by state prosecutors.
Cruz’s self-incriminating statement was recorded on video just hours after the deadly mass shooting on Feb. 14 at Stoneman Douglas High.
The recordings last about 12 hours and the transcript spans 216 pages. The video will be released today.
Curcio interviewed Cruz at the sheriff’s headquarters a matter of hours after the 19-year-old former student was arrested. Cruz’s descriptions of the actual shootings were not be included in the evidence released Monday because state law allows the “substance” of a confession to be withheld until it is either played at a pre-trial hearing or during trial.
Cruz admitted he went on the school campus with AR-15-style rifle, killing 17 people and injuring another 17.
His defense team asked a judge to stop prosecutors from making his confession public. They argued that parts of his statement should be exempt from release under the state’s public records law and that other portions should be blacked out or concealed out of sensitivity to the victims’ families and survivors.
Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer examined the entire confession before ruling that most of it could be made public without any negative effect on Cruz’s constitutional right to a fair trial.
The defense lawyers have publicly acknowledged that Cruz is guilty and repeatedly said he is offering to plead guilty in exchange for multiple life terms in prison, which would avoid the need for a trial. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which requires a 12-0 jury vote in Florida.