The shooter who wounded six people at his FedEx workplace 11 days ago left a suicide note revealing himself as a sexually frustrated young man who preferred becoming a macabre historical footnote to living a life of quiet desperation.
The rambling pages offer few clear explanations of Geddy Lee Kramer’s actions on April 29. But he cautioned that his hoped-for “massacre”was not due to violent video games or music or another person’s influence.
He said his “first choice” for his massacre would have been his drug dealers.
“I’m a sociopath. I want to hurt people,” the 19-year-old Acworth man wrote. “Maybe part of this is also the fact that a life lived in infamy is better than just another nobody. This is not anyone’s fault but mine.”
He also asserts that he tried unsuccessfully to get help from his therapist.
While the writing revealed a troubled young man, no clear conclusion could be drawn from it. The note left police wishing Kramer had revealed more. Kramer wrote he had hidden both a paper and a digital journal with his reasons. But he gave no clue as to where to find them, and police are not saying if they did.
“There is no silver bullet; there is no smoking gun,” Cobb Police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shortly after police released the five pages of writing Friday. “To me, none of it makes any sense.”
Three pages — including the suicide note, a checklist of weaponry and a list of favorite entertainers — were found during a search of his Acworth home. The last two, including one which acted as his last will and testament, were found in his car.
Kramer shot his first victim, security guard Christopher Sparkman, just minutes before his 6 a.m., quitting time. Sparkman, a U.S. Army veteran who served in Kuwait, made the first 911 call, while bleeding from the stomach.
Kramer, a North Cobb High School graduate, would use a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot five more FedEx employees in the shipping company’s 550,000-square-foot warehouse in Kennesaw.
None of them died – although the 28-year-old Sparkman was wounded critically. Some victims — police have not yet released names —may have survived because Kramer loaded a mix of bird-shot and buckshot in the weapon.
Police arrived within three minutes. Soon afterward, Kramer committed suicide.
Kramer wrote that perhaps the shooting emanated from a slow “snap” over several months, as if a long-fuse was lit and it took until April 29 for the explosion.
“This was a result of my own issues: mental instability, depression, frustration, sexual isolation,” he wrote. “I know I shouldn’t complain. I’ve got a comfortable place to sleep. Warm food. But the fact that a field of nothingness and unconsciousness awaits me if I put a 12-gauge shell in my head is appealing.”
The note painted an internal self that was unrecognizable to Kramer’s friends, family and former classmates. They sounded befuddled in the aftermath of the shooting. They recalled a teenager who liked fishing, hiking and video games, who was disillusioned with his menial job and didn’t have much luck with girls but was anything but shy. He was a jokester; he had a history of being a classroom cutup.
His note listed favorite entertainers as George Carlin, Bill Maher and Lewis Black, but among his favorite bands was Rammstein, a German rock group named after the Rammstein air show disaster in which three pilots and 67 fans died and 346 suffered serious injuries when the Italian Air Force flying team collided in the air and crashed to the ground.
He also listed SlipKnot, a heavy-metal band from Des Moines, Iowa, whose lyrics have been linked to violent crimes, including a 2003 case in which a pair of young killers blamed the band’s song “Disasterpiece” for their vicious act.
Kramer only faulted himself.
His father, Scott Kramer, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that he hoped his son didn’t get his last wish to become history.
While it was unclear at the time if the elder Kramer had seen the note, he said he certainly didn’t want his son glorified by a deranged subculture or even remember in any way.
Geddy Kramer ended the suicide note by repeating the same sentence: “I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place, I’m in my happy place.”
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