Oxford High school shooter Ethan Crumbley, now 17, described his thoughts in a video recorded the night before about what led him to become a killer of four classmates on November 30, 2021. The video was introduced during a Miller hearing on Thursday to decide whether he would be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The hearing is continuing today.
Ethan’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley, are the first parents in America charged in a school shooting.
“My name is Ethan Crumbley, age 15, and I’m the next school shooter,” the recording opened.
Ethan sat in the courtroom with his head down showing no emotion as the video played.
- “I can’t stop thinking about it,” the then 15-year-old said in the video. “… Every conversation I have with someone, no matter what, I’m thinking about it and I can’t get it out.”
Ethan described his love of guns, and a desire early on to join the military. He went on a tirade about the education system and how the government was brainwashing people to remain working class.
Ethan said he wasn’t going to kill people because he was depressed or mentally ill.
- After describing the weapon he planned to use in the attack, Ethan said he had “worn my mask for too long. I can’t take it anymore. I broke. I fought it for years and for years, lying to myself over and over again. But it’s taught me the truth. There’s no voices in my head. The voices are me. … I am the demon.”
Ethan referred to a period between 1820 and 1980 as the “Golden Ages of humanity,” when large countries “knew that they could cooperate and live together.”
- “Unfortunately, the people that I kill … I’m sorry that their families have to go through this, but it’s for the right of humanity,” Ethan said. “Democrats and Republicans want to fight, fight, fight, and people are going to keep on taking sides and sides and sides … It is just leading to a collapse.”
- “Now people are just taking that away,” Ethan said in the recording. “What I’m doing is an act to show that people are taking it away and I’m trying to preserve it and show that no one is safe, no matter how hard they work.”
Ethan said he would wear a black jacket, and put a bullet into someone’s skull.
- “I will open fire on everyone in that hallway … ” he said. “I’m going to try and get as many people as I can and then I will reload and I will find people hiding and I’m going to teach them a lesson on how they’re alone, on how they’re being brainwashed.”
Ethan wrote in his journal that he was not suicidal, so knew he would likely spend the rest of his life in prison, since Michigan does not have a death penalty.
“There’s no voices in my head. The voices are me.”
He called the voice that was taking over the thing “that other people call the demons.”
“I am the demon,” he said.
Ethan apologized to his parents. “I made sure you had trust in me, and I disowned you. But you should know it’s for a cause and I am ruining my life and not yours,” he said.
A second shorter video played that was immediately recorded following the first.