by Walter W. Murray, reporter
The teen psychopath who shot up a Florida school and murdered 17 innocents last month has been engaging in bizarre behavior in the jail that now serves as his home.
Reports from the deputies keeping close watch over 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz indicate he’s every bit as disturbing, deranged, and downright creepy as you’d expect from a sadistic maniac.
Cruz has had strange laughing fits, long periods in bed where he doesn’t sleep, and slurred speech.
He also eats like a child – bread, cookies, jelly and juice – a cruel irony, given all the young lives he cut off.
Cruz has been kept in isolation since the Valentine’s Day mass murder, a move to protect him from the rest of the inmates, who no doubt would like a piece of the infamous shooter to grab their own moment of fame.
He’s also under surveillance so that he doesn’t do the state’s job too soon and kill himself.
And the logs released to the media show he’s anything but a model inmate even when he’s alone.
“Appeared to break out in laughter both during and immediately following his professional visit at 1848 hours and later at 1910 hours,” reads a note just six days after his deadly shooting spree.
Another noticed him “smiling and giggling.”
At times, his attitude is listed as “cooperative” and “calm,” with his thinking noted by deputies as “logical and coherent,” according to the jail records released to local media.
But not always.
In some cases he’s so dull that his “speech is slow and sometimes slurred.”
Perhaps most chilling aren’t the times he’s laughing or slurring.
It’s the long periods where he seems to do absolutely nothing — perhaps listening to the same inner demons that sent him out on a mission of death last month.
Deputies note he’s prone to “lying on his back staring at the ceiling.”
One noted that Cruz is “in bed frequently but does not appear to sleep.”
Still another report said he “(twists) and turns in bunk, does not sleep, stares at wall in deep thought, eyes closed, appears to be resting, not asleep.”
He has had few visitors beyond attorneys and shrinks and a handful of “family visits,” believed to be two visits from his younger brother and one from Rocxanne Deschamps, who took them in when their adoptive mother died of pneumonia last year.
Cruz’s attorneys said not to read too much into the reports.
“They are snippet observations from corrections officers and are not clinical impressions made by his treating psychologist or psychiatrist at the jail,” chief assistant public defender Gordon Weekes told CNN last week. “They don’t show a complete picture. They are generated because Mr. Cruz has a high-profile case and is on suicide watch.”
Also last week, Cruz – indicted on 34 counts – withdrew his “not guilty” plea. As of now, he “stands mute” before the court with no plea at all. The Associated Press reports that a judge will likely enter a “not guilty” plea on his behalf as a result.
He’s said to be looking to plead guilty in exchange for ducking the death penalty.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”