'My rampage would be unlike any other': Teen diary lands man in federal court decade later
WEST PALM BEACH — A Florida high schooler wrote the names of his enemies and how he wanted to kill them.
Ten years later, the self-described "crossbreed" of notorious mass murderers drew the attention of passersby when he ran out of gas in Jupiter. Police found Chapin Huffman on the side of Indiantown Road in March with almost 3,000 rounds of ammunition, five loaded semi-automatic handguns, three rifles, brass knuckles, body armor, masks and several 10-year-old journals in his car.
There, a teenaged Huffman had kept a detailed record of his worst impulses — sometimes homicidal, other times suicidal.
“My rampage would be unlike any other," one entry read. "Columbine, Boston, Oklahoma, Beltway, Waco. All in one. They’d never catch me.”
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Huffman, now 28, showed none of the bravado or violence brimming in his teenage writings. He sat with his head bowed in federal court last week while his mother urged U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks to spare her son from prison.
Huffman was a good boy, she promised. Troubled and in need of help, but not irredeemable.
He faced up to five years in federal prison for lying about his sobriety on the ATF form he used to purchase two of his guns in March. Huffman's defense attorneys Mark Rankin and Greg Rosenfeld argued that the six months he spent in jail was punishment enough for the crime.
Were it not for the decade-old notebooks, Rankin said investigators likely would have charged the man with a misdemeanor for marijuana possession — not a federal firearms offense.
"This is a young man that does not need prison," Rankin said. "He needs help."
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Rankin attributed Huffman's "dark thoughts" to his troubled childhood. The Tampa-based attorney told Middlebrooks that Huffman's father was abusive and an alcoholic. He threatened to commit suicide once and told Huffman, then a child, that it would be his fault when he died.
When Huffman was a teen, Rankin said his father read his diary and threatened to tell his classmates about the secrets he discovered there. They already ridiculed him at school, Huffman told his attorneys.
He began abusing drugs at 14, withdrew from his peers and filled the pages of his journal with drawings of mass murder, swastikas and racial epithets. A family doctor prescribed Huffman medication for depression, but he needed something stronger, he said.
His mother found a half-a-year's worth of the medicine hoarded beneath the seat of his car after his arrest.
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No evidence Huffman intended to commit murder, prosecutor says
Rankin and Rosenfeld said Huffman took several 10-year-old notebooks with him from his mother's house after cleaning out his childhood bedroom prior to his arrest. Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Dispoto said there was no evidence Huffman planned to carry out the threats in the journals.
Huffman told Middlebrooks ghoulish masks in his car — oversized rat and rabbit heads — were props for photos. The cache of guns was to protect him and his mother from cyberbullies, whose online threats he took seriously as a result of his untreated mental illness, he said.
"I wasn't in the right mindset," he said. "Looking back, I know I have a lot of wrongs to right."
Rankin said the best place for that to happen is back home with his mother in Pinellas County. He argued that rather than protect society from Huffman, more time incarcerated only prolongs the untreated mental illness that made him a danger in the first place.
Middlebrooks agreed. He told the prosecutor that Huffman's need for treatment outweighed the value that punishing him might have in deterring other would-be offenders. He gave Huffman credit for six months time served and sentenced him to three years of supervised release.
"It's better to get him help tomorrow, because he is suffering in the Palm Beach County Jail," the judge said. "It's awful there."
Middlebrooks ordered Huffman to wear a location monitor and abide by a 10 p.m. curfew for the first year of his sentence. He must also forfeit his guns and undergo mental health and substance-abuse treatment.
As a convicted felon, Huffman is no longer permitted to own firearms. Failure to comply with the terms of his supervised release will see Huffman back in court, where he may face a harsher penalty.
Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 'They'd never catch me': Florida man defends old violent diary entries in court
