HS mass killer is all about ‘love’
Parkland murderer opens up to pen pal
FORT LAUDERDALE — In childlike scrawl with stickfigure drawings, Parkland shooter Nikolas Cruz has been writing love letters from jail to a young woman overseas. In the letters, he proposes marriage, muses about having children and says he wants to name his sons after guns. But he never mentions shooting 34 people in cold blood, killing 17 of them, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The South Florida Sun Sentinel obtained 46 pages of Cruz’s handwritten letters from the Broward County state attorney’s office. They are part of the legal case, as the state attorney seeks the death penalty against the now-20year-old for the Feb. 14, 2018, Parkland shooting. The records did not include any letters to Cruz from the girl.
Cruz never mentions his own crime, saying in one of the letters that talking about it “would be a bad idea.” But he does tell his female pen pal to listen to “Pumped Up Kicks” by the band Foster the People, a song about a school shooting that includes the lyrics, “You’d better run, better run, outrun my gun. Better run, better run, faster than my bullet.”
Inexplicably, Cruz expresses hope he’ll one day be released from jail and have a family. Yet he faces the death penalty, and his lawyers already have offered life in prison without a chance of parole.
“I really want kids. I think of it all the time, you know the joy they bring,” he writes.
He said he would name his sons Kalashnikov, Makarov and Remington — all gun references — and “my wife can name the girls.”
Cruz’s letters are to a young woman in the United Kingdom named Miley, one of his cybersupporters, and her brother Liam, and they are dated from mid-October 2018 to mid-November. A young woman named Miley helped form a Facebook group shortly after the shooting. It was called “The First Victim,” referring to Cruz.
He says he isn’t sure he wants to remain alive.
“I wish life for me could have been different but it’s not. And a part of me is wishing it ends. End with the death [penalty], letting someone inject me with longlast sleep.”
Cruz says he thinks death will be “forever darkness or a flash of light.”
At the same time, he muses about freedom, and a family.
“Would you be OK with me getting a crossbow if I lived with you? It would only be used for sporting and hunting.”
Cruz’s letters are rife with misspellings and childish drawings. A lifelong specialeducation student, Cruz was thought to have autism. He also was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
In his letters, he said he wants Miley to attend his trial and suggests when she moves to Florida, she get a medical marijuana card and a concealed weapons license “cause it’s dangerous hear.”
“I also was wondering if you’d be interested in marriage when the time’s comes. It won’t be for a long time, but would you be interested? I feel like we make a great family together. With lots of kids. I imagine it every day. That’s what’s keeping me strong.”
He said he really wants to have a girlfriend even if the person is “miles away.”
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, maybe I should get the death penalty. IDK [I don’t know], I just want love. ”
“I hope you can understand it’s because of my mother,” he writes. “I feel like I’ll never be loved and I’ll die alone.”
In a letter from Nov. 1, 2018, he mentions the Pittsburgh shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue, where 11 people died. “I put my heart out to these victims and to the shooter because I believe they need all the support they can get,” he says.
Cruz talks about boredom, missing his mother, who has died, and politics. Guns: Cruz said he’s “a huge Second Amendment supporter even though I’m here in jail for being on the wrong side of the law. I still believe it’s a special right to have and I try to encourage everyone including you to take part in it.”
Holidays: The Fourth of July is his favorite holiday. “I love fireworks and the explosions. It’s super fun.”
Politics: Cruz wrote several times about the elections and his hope that Republicans would win —specifically Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott. “I can’t spell his name but I know he’s Republican and I’m voting for him,” he wrote about DeSantis. “I know if we get a Democratic governor he will take away our rights . ... Please pray that Ron wins.” “I really don’t like liberals. I don’t want them winning. They really are dangerous. They spread lies and are destroying America.
We’re going to one day be the weakest country with the highest crime rates.”
Immigrants: “I hear there’s a reason why wear trying to stop immigration and that’s [unreadable word]. They attack people, destroy property’s and spread disease.” He said he is waiting for the whole society to collapse “because of these issues.”
Media: He asked if the news media in the U.K. is “like hear with a bunch of lies or are they honest?”
Emotions: “I’ve been dealing with my emotions heer in jail. Their is this one guard I don’t like but I’m behaving to the best of my ability but I’m starting to [unreadable word]. Do you know any way how I can deal with that so I don’t get in trouble?”
Glasses: He talks about about getting new glasses that look like they’re from the 1960s, “so don’t laugh at them when you see me on TV.”
Cruz regales the girl he’s never met with stories from his childhood, including a hunting trip with his friend during which he says he almost shot his pal’s father.
Cruz seemed to retain hope he’d get out of jail one day. “Since I am into your sister maybe we can go on a double date,” he wrote to Miley’s brother Liam.