Parkland suspect told cops about ‘demon’ voice
Just hours after a gunman opened fire inside Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, killing 17 people and injuring 17 more, police sat down to speak to the suspected attacker.
He confessed to carrying out the massacre, police said. But he went on to say more than that during an extended interview, telling police that for years he had heard a “demon” in his head giving him directions.
When asked what the voice told him to do, the suspect said: “Burn. Kill. Destroy.”
The detail emerged Monday in a transcript of an interview that Nikolas Cruz, 19, gave to police in the aftermath of the massacre. Though authorities had previously said Cruz acknowledged that “he was the gunman who entered the school
campus ... and began shooting students,” the newly released transcript shows for the first time some of his statements to police the day of the Feb. 14 massacre and sheds light on his state of mind after the bloodshed.
In the 217-page transcript, much of which is redacted, Cruz told Detective John Curcio of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office that shortly before the Parkland massacre, he had planned to go to a park and start shooting people. He described encountering police before because he was “shooting animals”; recounted trying to kill himself before the attack because of his “loneliness”; and said that he used Xanax and marijuana.
When asked by Curcio early in the interview if he wanted water, the suspect said: “I don’t deserve it.” He described hearing the male voice every day and said it got worse after his mother died a few months before the killings. He said the voice told him to buy the AR-15 used in the attack.
“Personally, I think you’re using the demon as an excuse,” Curcio said at one point, according to the transcript. “You could have stopped the demon any time you want. You didn’t want to stop the demon.”
The suspect argued, insisting Curcio was wrong. At one point, when Curcio left the room, the suspect — apparently alone — is recorded saying, “I want to die.” At another point when Curcio left the room, he repeats over and over: “Why didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he kill me? Why didn’t he kill me?”
At another point, his brother, Zachary Cruz, is brought in. He told the suspect that “people think you’re a monster” and asked, “Why did you do this?”
The suspect responded: “I’m sorry, dude.” The rest of his response is redacted.
After the Stoneman Douglas massacre, police found the suspected attacker in a neighborhood more than a mile from the campus. The suburban school had been transformed into a crime scene that even veteran law enforcement officials said was particularly gruesome. According to authorities, the suspect dropped his gun and vest and walked off campus, blending in with the students who were fleeing.
Attorneys for Cruz have acknowledged his guilt, focusing their efforts instead on arguing that he should be spared a death sentence and offering to have him plead guilty in exchange for life in prison without parole.
Prosecutors have ignored these offers so far, saying they will seek the death penalty for the former Stoneman Douglas student, who was indicted on 17 counts of murder in the first degree and another 17 counts of attempted murder.
“This statement is just more proof of how severely damaged and broken a human being he is,” Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender representing Cruz, wrote in an email Monday. “He is the most damaged and broken human being I have encountered in 40 years of doing this type of work. Everybody knew it.”
Officials who released the transcript Monday will also make public an edited video of the interview this week.
Last month, a judge in South Florida ordered authorities to release both the transcript and the video, with some portions removed.