Killer Think?” (Newsweek) summarizes the three major motivations of mass murderers other than terrorism: depression, psychosis, and, rarely, psychopathy. (The last two sound similar and are often confused by laypeople, but are in fact completely different.) I have written related pieces for the New Republic, Slate, and the New York Times. They are linked at my site.
3
I relied on several sources to document the perpetrator’s actions, including the Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s official report. The New York Times had several excellent pieces: “What Happened in the Parkland School Shooting,” “Parkland Shooting Suspect Lost Special-Needs Help,” “[Suspect name], Florida Shooting Suspect,” and “‘Kill Me,’ Parkland Shooting Suspect Said.” I also consulted “‘You’re All Going to Die’ . . .” (Miami Herald), “Uber Driver Says . . .” (Miami Herald), “What Happened in the 82 Minutes” (Chicago Tribune), and “Teacher Told Students to Run” (CBS News).
4
All quotes in the book from Cameron’s mom, Natalie Weiss, come from my interviews with her. I met her at the first two Spring Awakening shows, and asked if I could interview her. She said she would be happy to, but only if Cameron approved it. He did. I interviewed her for a few hours at their home on May 7, and followed up periodically by text afterward. The descriptions come from my time there. She let me tour their home and take lots of pictures for reference.
It was widely reported that Jackie’s post was made to Instagram, with “MAKE IT STOP” formatted as a picture, and the rest in the text. That is understandable, because her Instagram feed is public, and her Facebook timeline is not. However, Jackie assured me as far back as February that she posted it to Facebook first, and then created the Instagram post, using the last Facebook line for the Instagram picture. (She sent me the Facebook post.) It was also the Facebook post that made its way to the family of Debbie Wasserman Schultz, setting in motion the events described next in this chapter.
5
All the details and quotes about the development of the Tallahassee trip come from numerous interviews and follow-ups with Jackie, Claire VanSusteren, and State Senator Lauren Book in February and early March, primarily the first two. (We also did a lot of fact-checking calls and texts in the late summer, prior to a Vanity Fair piece.)
The primary interviews with all of them took place by phone, about a week after the trip. I spoke to Senator Book several times on that trip, and spoke and texted with Claire constantly—she was invaluable at getting us into sessions, sending urgent texts to hightail it over—but most of the reflection, and re-creating all the details, came later.
I shadowed Jackie through much of the trip, but she did not grant any media interviews during or prior (other than her brief chat on my Sunday call with David on speakerphone with the team).
State Representative Kristin Jacobs made her comments to me in an interview late Tuesday night, immediately after the training inside Leon High School covered in the “Tallahassee” chapter.
3. #NeverAgain
1
The re-creation of the first few days at Cameron’s house come from interviews with many of the kids over the course of several months, as well as trusted media accounts. Emily Witt’s excellent New Yorker piece “How the Survivors of Parkland Began the Never Again Movement” was incredibly useful. I borrowed liberally, checked it all out with the kids, and I’m indebted to Emily for capturing it so well.
Emma’s quotes come from her New York Times op-ed “A Young Activist’s Advice,” and her feature on the Instagram account Humans of MSD.
2
Estimates of attendance at the first Women’s March were determined by crowd scientists who conducted a digital image study, the results of which were reported in “Crowd Scientists Say Women’s March . . .” (New York Times).
Statistics on crowd size for the Women’s Marches and the March for Our Lives come from the professors Kanisha Bond, Erica Chenoweth, and Jeremy Pressman, who reported their articles “Did You Attend the March for Our Lives?” and “This Is What We Learned . . .” (both in the Washington Post). The authors belong to the Crowd Counting Consortium (CCC), which collects “publicly available data on political crowds reported in the United States, including marches, protests, strikes, demonstrations, riots, and other actions,” according to its website. The CCC was formed to collect data for the first Women’s March and its sibling marches, and it has continued to publish data on its website and in monthly articles