Parkland shooter: Typical of mass killers

Cruz’s pre-attack behavior fits FBI analysis of other massacres

For two years before the Parkland shooter went on his murderous rampage, he warned people — at least four times — what he planned to do.

Nikolas Cruz posted repeated threats on social media for anyone to see. At least three of them were reported to authorities, who did nothing to stop him. At least one other internet posting went unreported.

“The man did everything but take an ad out in the paper [saying], ‘I am going to kill somebody,’ ” said U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as the Senate Judiciary Committee examined how the Cruz case was handled.

Cruz’s blatant warnings were exactly what you would expect from a mass killer in the internet age, as was other behavior leading up to the shootings, according to a new FBI study.

The study analyzed the pre-attack behavior of 63 active shooters who killed multiple people between

2000 and 2013. More than half had communicated to someone — online or in person — that they intended to harm someone. The younger the perpetrator was, the more likely they were to engage in what the experts call “leakage.”

The 19-year-old Cruz followed the murderous playbook in other ways as well: the fact that he spent a considerable amount of time planning the crime; his legal purchase of the AR-15 rifle he used; his decision to record a series of cellphone videos attempting to explain his grievances; his morbid interest in the Columbine school shooting; and a series of personal difficulties in the year before he attacked.

Mass killings like Cruz’s are on the rise.

In 2017, 30 active shootings took place in the United States, the most ever during a one-year period, the FBI said. Halfway through 2018, mass shootings have already included the Parkland tragedy, which left 17 people dead; the Santa Fe High School shooting, which killed 10; and the mass shooting of five newspaper employees in Annapolis, Md., on Thursday.

That killer, like Cruz, made no secret that he was harboring plans of murder. In a 2014 legal pleading, Jarrod Ramos wrote that he had “sworn a legal oath he would like to kill” a columnist he claimed had defamed him.

The commonly held perception that mass shooters are mostly mentally ill people who brood in silence and give few warning signs is incorrect and could hamper efforts to identify attackers before they kill, said Andre Simons, the agent in charge of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit and a coauthor of the study.

“They don’t snap,” Simons told law enforcement experts at a national school safety summit the agency hosted last week in Washington, D.C.

The new research shows that only one in four of the mass shooters included in the study had ever been diagnosed with a mental illness. Cruz does not appear to have been diagnosed with any severe or psychotic mental illness, though state records indicate he was treated for depression, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and emotional behavioral disability. His mom had told officials he had obsessivecompulsive disorder, anger issues, anxiety and autism.

More than 75 percent of the shooters spent a week or longer planning their attacks. Some spent months, even as much as two years. Though it’s unclear precisely how much time Cruz spent plotting his rampage, he bought the firearm he used one year before the massacre. And evidence released Friday showed that he sent a private message to a young friend in 2017 saying that he planned to kill people in a park in 2020.

Why so many mass shooters choose to signal their plans online is still being studied, but experts say many of the potential offenders may be “living in a muted way in real life” but frequently interact “more vividly online.”

Cruz’s disturbing proclamations on social media spanned at least two years:

■ In February 2016, shortly after he began attending Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School full time, Cruz posted on his Instagram account that he “planned to shoot up a school,” a neighbor’s son reported to the Broward Sheriff ’s Office.

■ In May 2017, nine months before the Marjory Stoneman Douglas tragedy, a “Nikolas Cruz” posted a comment under a documentary video entitled “Texas University Clocktower Sniper 1966,” about a mass shooting that left 14 people dead and 31 injured. “I am going to [do] what he did,” the commenter wrote. Internet Association CEO Michael Beckerman told the Senate Judiciary Committee in March that “as far as I know, no users flagged or otherwise brought this comment to YouTube’s attention.” The posting apparently went unnoticed until after the Feb. 14 tragedy and has received little public attention since.

■ In September 2017, a bail bondsman in Mississippi, Ben Bennight, reported to the FBI that a user with the name “Nikolas Cruz” commented on one of his videos that “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”

■ On Jan. 5, 2018, a close friend of the Cruz family called the FBI’s national tip line and reported disturbing posts by the shooter on Instagram. The woman, who has not been publicly identified, said she was worried about Cruz “getting into a school and just shooting the place up.” “He bought all these rifles and ammunition, and he posted pictures of them on Instagram,” she told the FBI. “Uh, on the Instagram, he says, ‘I want to kill people.’ ”

Cruz may have posted other online comments, but Google representatives said any additional ones he shared on YouTube are gone.

“After the incident, YouTube terminated the account and with that every comment made by Nikolas Cruz was deleted as well,” Google reported in March to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Senior FBI officials in D.C. have publicly acknowledged they botched the handling of the two tips about Cruz that were reported to them in the five months before the massacre. At least two internal agency investigations into how they failed to appropriately investigate those warnings are still underway. Officials told the South Florida Sun Sentinel last week that they don’t know when their findings will be completed and released.

The Broward Sheriff’s Office also has been harshly criticized for its failure to follow up on red flags about Cruz. A number of internal affairs investigations and external reviews of that agency’s handling of several aspects of the case are also underway.

Cruz’s actions in South Florida and Ramos’ actions in Maryland were not included in the FBI’s study, which was released this month.

The Parkland shooter, just like 30 percent of the studied mass shooters, left what experts call a “legacy token” — a communication prepared in advance by the offender to claim credit and offer motives.

Cruz recorded three videos on his cellphone, which were discovered after his arrest. At least one of the videos was recorded on the day of the attack. The others appear to have been made beforehand.

“My name is Nik, and I’m going to be the next school shooter of 2018,” Cruz says in the first of his video clips. “My goal is at least 20 people.”

“It’s gonna be a big event,” Cruz says in the video. “When you see me on the news you’ll all know who I am.”

“I hate everyone and everything. … I had enough of being told what to do and when to do. I had enough of being — telling me that I’m a idiot and a dumb ass, when [in] real life you’re all the dumb ass.”

A large number of the shooters shared a sense of victimization and did not handle adversity well. Simons, the FBI behavioral expert, said many of the shooters studied were nursing a grievance — real or perceived — that appeared to have played into their motivation. Though the grievances might not make sense to others, they were “narcissistic and profound” to the individual, he said.

Many were seeking attention or notoriety. And some were intentionally copycatting other tragedies.

Investigators say Cruz researched the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School before his own deadly rampage. “The Columbine effect,” as experts call it, “continues to have a power and mythos” for some potential killers, Simons said.

The shooters also typically experienced at least three stressors — such as financial difficulties, bereavement or conflicts with others — in the year before they attacked. And they exhibited troubling behaviors that were noticed by others.

For Cruz, the year 2017 was tumultuous.

In January 2017, Lynda Cruz sold the family home in Parkland where she had raised Nikolas and Zachary Cruz since she and her late husband, Roger, adopted them at birth. The family moved into a townhouse.

Two months later, Nikolas Cruz was kicked out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where he had hoped to stay through graduation.

And in November, Lynda Cruz unexpectedly died of pneumonia.

On Nov. 29, Cruz was kicked out of the Palm Beach County home of Rocxanne Deschamps, a family friend who had taken the brothers in. Cruz had been in a series of disputes during the weeks he lived with her family.

All but a very small percentage of the studied shooters bought their guns legally, like Cruz. Only five of them, or 8 percent, stole or purchased their firearms illegally.

Cruz bought his AR-15 legally when he was 18, investigators said. He purchased the gun at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs on Feb. 11, 2017, and picked it up a week later, after a mandatory waiting period.

It’s unclear if Cruz fits the profile of another common element identified by the study: Shooters frequently target specific victims. Investigators have not suggested that was a factor in the Parkland case.

The attackers were almost always men or boys and, like Cruz, they typically attacked at places that were familiar to them. The youngest active shooter in the study was 12 years old, the oldest 88. Most had no prior criminal record.

Like Cruz, who was reported to law enforcement and state officials when he cut his arms on Snapchat, drank gasoline and talked about wanting to buy a gun in late 2016, nearly half of the shooters had talked about or attempted some form of suicidal behavior before they attacked.

The study also dispelled the myth that only loners or those on the fringes of society attack. The majority of the shooters lived with other people or had significant real-life or online interactions. Cruz spent the months before he was arrested living with a school friend’s family in Parkland.

FBI leaders, while acknowledging their own failures, say they hope the research findings will dispel common myths and help investigators and the general public to identify and report suspects in the future — before they strike.

By publicizing many of the common trends and banishing the myths, the experts said they hope investigators and members of the public will be more conscious of the warnings signs and more motivated to report and investigative potential offenders.

Many people hesitate or are reluctant to report such suspicions about a family member, friend or peer, they said, but it could make a huge difference in averting violence and getting the person help.

However carefully law enforcement experts study prior mass shootings, Simons said: “I’m aware of offenders who do so even more meticulously.”

“At least one person noticed a concerning behavior in every active shooter’s life,” Simons told the safety summit attendees Wednesday. “We suspect there are individuals out there who are planning their attacks as we speak.”

“We suspect there are individuals out there who are planning their attacks as we speak.”

Andre Simons, of FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit