School shooting video and Ethan Crumbley's own words — 'I am the demon' — shock courtroom
School shooter Ethan Crumbley delivered perhaps the most damning and chilling testimony at a hearing Thursday to determine his fate — though not from the witness stand, but through his own video recordings, text messages and journal that detailed his obsession with torturing birds, killing other kids and shooting up his school.
On Thursday, with grieving families in the courtroom, prosecutors played audio clips from a video recording that Crumbley made the night before he carried out the Oxford School shooting in November 2021, a manifesto in which he discusses his hate for the world, his plan to shoot up his school, and his deteriorating mental health.
"I have worn my mask for too long. I can't take it," Crumbley says in a monotone voice. "There’s no voices in my head. The voices are me … that’s what people call the demons. There are no demons. I am the demon."
Crumbley's text messages about bird torture; wanting to rape and kill
The recording marked the first time the public has heard Crumbley's voice before he carried out the massacre that killed four classmates and injured six others and a teacher. The recording was played at his so-called Miller hearing, a mandatory proceeding to determine whether the teenager will face life without the possibility of parole for his crimes, which he committed when he was 15 and to which he pleaded guilty.
The hearing, expected to run at least two days, included video footage of the school shooting, never before shown in a public setting, which brought many family members to tears. It also included gruesome testimony about Crumbley's obsession with torturing birds, which he wrote about to his closest friend in numerous text messages.
But texting disturbing things is one thing. Hearing Crumbley actually say disturbing things is another, which is what happened late in the afternoon when prosecutors played audio recordings taken from a video that Crumbley had made before the shooting.
"There is no heaven. there is no God," the then-15-year-old is heard saying. "The earth is just hell."
'I will shoot a bullet into their skull'
Crumbley also explains that he needs to shoot up his school to teach his peers and the world a lesson, because, as he sees it, "we're on the brink of a downfall." He details what he will wear during the shooting.
"I will have my black jacket on, and I will walk behind someone, and I will shoot a bullet into their skull. I’m gonna open fire on everyone in the hallway, I will try to hit as many people as I can, I will reload, and I will find people hiding. I want to teach them a lesson of how they are wrong, how they are being brainwashed," he says in the video, during which he also addresses his victims' families.
"I'm sorry that the families have to go through this."
But he feels he has no choice, he says. "The demon will take over. There is nothing I can do about it."
He also notes: "I don't want to die."
Prosecutors played the recording for the court, hoping to convince Oakland County Judge Kwame Rowe that Crumbley does not deserve to be free again. His lawyer, Paulette Loftin, disagrees, arguing he is too young, had a difficult home life and can be rehabilitated one day.
Detective: 'His head was held high. He was in charge'
When it came time to show the video of the shooting, Crumbley kept his head down and stared at the floor while his victims' friends and relatives openly wept as they saw images of the gunman roaming through the hall, shooting and killing kids as they went about their day.
A detective offered detailed testimony about Crumbley's every move after he emerged from the bathroom and opened fire, saying: "He had a sense about it, like the proud chest. His head was held high. He was in charge.”
"He steps out and immediately there’s Phoebe (Arthur), with her boyfriend, he immediately levels his gun at them," Oakland County Sheriff's Detective Edward Wagrowski testified, getting emotional at times. He struggled to get the next words out.
"He then turns the gun on Hana and Kylie and Riley, and fires some rounds in their direction," Wagrowski testified. One of those girls was 14-year-old Hana St. Juliana, who was killed.
According to Wagrowski, Crumbley stopped to shoot Hana again.
"At this point, she completely falls over, and then he runs down the hallway," the detective said.
What followed was even more difficult for Wagrowski to get out.
"I don’t know how to describe it. He puts the gun to Madison Baldywn's head, and you see as he turns to walk away, her body just slumps to the ground."
He then testified about Tate Myre, who was also killed. Tate was rounding a corner, not knowing what was going on, and fell to the ground.
Crumbley approached. "And before he gets to where Tate is, he levels the gun to shoot one more time. He walks past Tate without a care."
For reasons unknown, the detective said, Crumbley eventually made a hard right into a bathroom, where he shot and killed his final victim, 17-year-old Justin Shilling. Another boy was in the bathroom with Shilling, and was seen on video running at top speed down a hallway as he managed to escape Crumbley's reign of terror.
"The video lives in my head," Wagrowski said.
Lawyer: Ethan Crumbley can be rehabiliated
After the school shooting video was shown, Crumbley’s lawyer, Paulette Loftin, sought to show that Crumbley's troubled past played a role in the shooting. She did this while cross-examining Oakland County Sheriff's Lt. Timothy Willis, who had testified about the shooting, questioning him about Crumbley's upbringing, grades, parents and bouts of sadness.
Loftin asked Willis to weigh in about Crumbley’s grades, and he conceded that when Crumbley was in middle school, he received A and B grades. But when he entered high school, the year of the shooting, his grades fell to C down to failing levels.
Loftin cited several comments that Crumbley had written in his journal, indicating he no longer had “happiness or optimism,” hadn’t had a “real laugh” in years, felt he was a “burden” to his parents and felt that he was “in a time loop of sadness.”
In other entries, he wrote:
“Oh man my hallucinations are really kicking in.”
“My dark side has now taken over.”
“I’m on the verge of losing it again. I have so much stuff compacted in a tight space and it’s about to explode.”
Loftin also noted that Crumbley also cried out for help in his journals.
“I want help," the boy wrote, "but my parents don’t listen to me.”
Crumbley carried out the shooting with a gun his parents bought him as an early Christmas present. Jennifer and James Crumbley, the first parents in America charged in a school shooting, are jailed on involuntary manslaughter charges. Their appeal to strike the charges is with the Michigan Supreme Court.
More: Prosecution: We have more dirt on the Crumbleys. It's time to try this case.
"It will be clear to you that 15-year-old Crumbley is not one of those rare juveniles who is corrupt and not (able to be) rehabilitated," Loftin argued in court, arguing life without parole is not appropriate for a young, troubled child like Crumbley.
"The fact that it's a vile crime itself is not enough," she said.
Crumbley wanted to torture children, rape a classmate
But prosecutors kept pushing, and presented several text messages between Crumbley and a friend that they argue highlight his "disturbed" and "homicidal" mind.
In one such text, Crumbley said he wanted to kidnap, rape and kill a classmate.
On May 12, 2021, he wrote: “Kidnap her then tie her up then rape her then torture her then kill her then dissect her then take her eyeballs then bury the body,” Crumbley texted his friend on May 12, 2021 — eight months before the shooting.
In earlier texts from that same month, he discussed drowning children, writing things like: “Just looking them in their eyes as they look back at you while they know that their entire life is about to end so young,” adding: “The best feeling.”
He also texted his friend: “Scary thing is I like being this f---ed up.”
Bird torture also came up frequently at the hearing as prosecutors presented numerous texts and journal entries in which Crumbley talked about torturing and killing animals, including an eight-minute video he had taken of himself torturing a bird and talking to it like a child.
“I put a drill in its stomach and skull,” shot a gun at it, chopped it in half and smashed its head, the text read.
In other texts he wrote: "I'm going to snap (the beak) off." and "I want to kill another bird so badly."
'I want all of America to see the darkness in me'
The hearing also included testimony from Willis, who explained how how Crumbley detailed his plan to carry out a school shooting in his journal, but wanted to stay alive.
“Killing myself is too much of a pussy move. People will just forget about me … the only way is to shoot up the school,” Crumbley wrote on March 17, 2021.
He also wrote: “The first victim has to be a pretty girl.”
His first victim was Phoebe Arthur. He shot her in the face, but the girl survived.
“I want all of America to see the darkness in me,” Crumbley wrote in his journal. “I want for the parents … to bawl their eyes out."
All of this, the lead prosecutor argued, is why Crumbley's "rare" case deserves life without parole.
"No one can tell us what he will be like in 40 years. No one has a crystal ball," Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald said. "This is an offense unlike any this country has ever seen … the picking and choosing of who would die."
And, McDonald stressed, that this was not a spur-of-the-moment crime.
"The way he researched and planned the shooting … he stated over and over, 'I know I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison.' He decided in advance that he was not going to kill himself," McDonald said. "He wanted to stay alive because he wanted to witness the suffering he created."
Shooting victim testifies
For the first time Thursday, the court got to hear from one of the shooting victims, Molly Darnell, a longtime educator with Oxford schools who was in her office on the day of the shooting and was unsure what was going on. She saw students rushing, and suspected a fight.
She shut her office door and went to get a door security device when she locked eyes with someone in the hallway wearing a mask and dressed in dark, baggy clothing. Then she saw a gun raising toward her and jumped to the right.
“I believed he was going to shoot me,” said Darnell, who soon felt a burning sensation in her left shoulder, like hot water had struck her. Her cardigan was ripped. She was shot through her left arm.
She barricaded the door and texted her husband: “I love you. Active shooter.”
Darnell struggled during her testimony. She is still healing, she said. And has not gone back to her job.
“I wanted to go back” to the high school, Darnell testified. “I loved the work that I was doing and I wanted to kind of prove that I could go back but it was just too hard to be there.”
Also in the courtroom was plaintiffs attorney Wolf Mueller, who is representing victims' families in civil lawsuits against the school district over the shooting.
“From what I saw and heard today … he’s a very sick kid. And I think he deserves to go to prison for the rest of his life," Mueller said. "I didn’t realize the level of planning, how he carried out his plans exactly, to the point where he wasn’t going to … kill himself or get killed by the police … to surrender so he could inflict pain, emotional pain on the families."
The U.S. Supreme Court and Michigan Supreme Court have held that mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles are unconstitutional and require the Miller hearing, which is named after the 2012 Miller v. Alabama case before the U.S. Supreme Court. It involves an Alabama teenager who got life without parole for murdering a man with a bat during a robbery.
Crumbley's hearing resumes at 8:30 a.m. Friday.
Support for the community
Anticipating community trauma from evidence presented at Crumbley's Miller hearing, the Oxford Resiliency Center, a program of Common Ground, has extended its hours through Aug. 1.
The center has added support staff and has therapy dogs on-site. The center, open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m., is at 1370 S. Lapeer Road in Oxford. The phone number is 248-653-5511. More information: www.allforoxford.org
Contact Tresa Baldas: tbaldas@freepress.com. Contact Gina Kaufman: gkaufman@freepress.com
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ethan Crumbley hearing loaded with gruesome videos, texts, recordings
