Michigan school shooter Ethan Crumbley enjoyed listening to the death squeals of baby birds, wrote about wanting to rape a female classmate and idolized cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer, prosecutors said Tuesday.
The disturbing new revelations came from Oakland County Assistant Prosecutor Markeisha Washington during a lengthy hearing on whether the 15-year-old should be moved from an adult jail to a juvenile center.
Crumbley is accused of launching a Nov. 30 rampage at Oxford High School that ended with four people dead and many more injured.
“In text threads with his friend, and his journal, he outlines plans to stalk, rape, torture and ultimately kill a female classmate,” Washington said, according to mlive.com. “He expressed delight in torturing a family of baby birds, and he wrote about the joy of listening to them squeal as he killed them.”
Crumbley said he admired Dahmer and Adolf Hitler because “when you die, you need to be remembered for a long time,” according to Washington. She didn’t use Crumbley’s name, she said, because she didn’t want to encourage him getting notoriety for the shootings.
The accused shooter “wants that notoriety,” Assistant Prosecutor Kelly Collins added.
“He asked in jail, ‘How do I get my fan mail? How do I get my hate mail?’ ” Collins said, according to the Detroit Free Press.
He once texted a friend, “The scary thing is, I like being this f–ked up,” prosecutors said.
“He wants to be remembered,” Collins said, according to the Press. “His actions were not impulsive. They were calculated, rehearsed and well thought-out.”
Tuesday’s three-hour hearing included testimony from the manager of Children’s Village, a juvenile facility where Crumbley was held before he was charged as an adult on first-degree murder, terrorism and other raps, according to clickondettroit.com.
His lawyers, who plan to use an insanity defense in the trial, said he wouldn’t pose a threat to other young people in the facility.
But prosecutors disagreed, painting Ethan as a potential menace if he were to be held alongside juveniles. In the adult jail, Crumbley is locked up in the jail’s clinic to prevent him from seeing or hearing incarcerated adults, attorneys said.
Circuit Judge Kwame Rowe is expecting to issue a written decision on the request next week.
Crumbley’s parents, Jennifer and James Crumbley, are facing involuntary manslaughter charges for buying the teenager a gun in the days before the shooting.
With Post Wires
