By , ,
Published August 07, 2018
Parkland, Fla., school shooting suspect Nikolas Cruz told a Broward County Sheriff's detective shortly after the murders of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that he had been haunted by a "voice with no name telling me what to do," according to a transcript released Monday.
When Cruz's interrogator, Detective John Curcio, asked him what the voice told him to do, Cruz answered: "Burn. Kill. Destroy ... anything." He said he had started hearing the voice after his adopted father died in 2004, but "it started getting worse when my mom passed" in November 2017.
According to Cruz, the voice told him to buy the rifle used in the Parkland shooting. He also claimed that if he refused to do what the voice said, it would "tell me to hurt myself."
Cruz described the voice as that of a male about his age, and said that the only person he ever told about it was his brother.
Prosecutors released the partially redacted transcript after a judge ruled last month that non-confession portions should be made public. Multiple media outlets had sought the statement's release under Florida's public records law.
Cruz's attorneys had wanted it suppressed, saying its disclosure could hinder his right to a fair trial.
Over the course of his 12-hour statement, Cruz discussed two separate attempts to commit suicide, once through self-induced alcohol poisoning and once through ingesting ibuprofen. He told Curcio that the second attempt happened two months before the Feb. 14 mass shooting and only made him sick.
Cruz also told Curcio that he did "a lot" of drugs, specifically Xanax and marijuana, but that "no one knew about it."
The transcript indicated Cruz was cooperative when answering Curcio's questions and so soft-spoken that the detective asked the suspect to raise his voice "unless you want me to sit in your lap."
When Curcio left the interrogation room, Cruz turned his anger on himself. He repeatedly declined offers of food and answered, "I don't deserve it" when the detective asked if he wanted water.
When Curcio left the room to retrieve two bottles of water, Cruz said aloud: "Kill me. Just f---ing kill me. F---."
Two hours later, when Curcio left the room to see about recovering Cruz's phone, the suspect raged: "I want to die. At the end, you're nothing but worthless s---, dude. You deserve to die because you're f---ing worthless ..."
Cruz faces the death penalty if convicted of the attack, which also wounded 17 others. His attorneys say he would plead guilty in exchange for a life prison sentence, but prosecutors have rejected that offer.
Fox News' Kathleen Reuschle and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/parkland-suspect-nikolas-cruz-told-police-a-voice-ordered-him-to-burn-kill-destroy