Just so you know, this show is about scary stuff, so don't say I didn't warn you guys.

And remember, don't be scared.

Episode 102.

80 Seconds.

Ward baby here with another episode of murderous minors.

Once the dust has settled around a mass tragedy like a school shooting, it's only natural that we'd want to know why,

though knowing why could also mean placing some responsibility on people other than the shooter.

And it's hard, but the purpose of such fact-finding missions is to highlight the misclos.

The gut feelings that crept in before the tragedy, but that didn't seem serious enough to warrant scrutiny at the time.

In the case of the Arapaho High School shooting and the murder of 17-year-old Claire Davis, several students and staff had concerning interactions with Carl Pearson,

the senior who brought a shotgun, a machete, and three Molotov cocktails directly into the school's library, looking for the librarian.

This week on murderous minors we cover the Arapaho School shooting, which I briefly referenced in the last episode, as told through the Sheriff's official report as well as a commissioned report by the Center for the Prevention of Workplace Violence.

Themes of suicide, bullying, active shooters, and gun violence are discussed, so please be advised.

A little more than five years before the murder of Kendrick Castillo, almost 18 months after 12 moviegoers died 15 miles away in Aurora,

in one year to the day of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut that killed 26, Carl Pearson opened fire inside a Arapaho High School, less than 10 miles away from Columbine High.

On September 3, 2013, the senior turned 18, but it was also the day that his continued inappropriate behavior caught up to him, setting off the months-long chain of events which would ultimately end in the deadly 82nd attack known from then on simply as Arapaho.

Pearson, whose parents divorced during his junior year, had made it known that he wanted to attend a United States military academy, was an eagle scout, constructed a garden on behalf of a nonprofit, and learned to shoot an a scout-affiliated program.

So when he purchased a shotgun at a local Cabela sporting goods store just after his 18th birthday, the people he told weren't surprised or concerned.

Even when two school security officers told an assistant principal that Pearson had been seen looking at gun websites and pictures of school shootings on his laptop six weeks before the shooting, no one reacted because it was his personal computer.

But the journal he left on a thumb drive entitled Diary of a Madman reveals that Pearson was quite effective at hiding his true self even from his mother and younger sister whom he lived with and his father whose new apartment he'd never been to.

According to the Arapaho County Sheriff's Office on September 17, 2013, Arl Pearson's journal began by explaining its existence saying, quote,

I will shoot up my school, Arapaho High School before the year is over. I'm a psychopath with a superiority complex. I intend on going in as follows, I walk through the asshole in the North Trophy Hall, waltz in shooting everyone in my way.

...