Nikolas Cruz’s brother wanted to start a fan club for the Parkland shooting suspect, but it looks like someone beat him to it.
Stacks of fan mail, including love letters and suggestive photographs, have been arriving for Cruz at the Broward County Jail, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel, which obtained copies of some of the notes.
In one sent from Texas, the writer identifies herself as an 18-year-old high school senior before sharing her breast size. “Your eyes are beautiful and the freckles on your face make you so handsome,” she writes. A letter sent by a woman in Chicago was accompanied by nine photos. One showed cleavage, another showed a bikini-clad woman eating a Popsicle.
Other letters provide words of encouragement, offers of friendship, or money to be added to Cruz’s commissary account, hovering around $800.
“I’ve never seen this many letters to a defendant,” says Howard Finkelstein, Broward County’s public defender. As Cruz remains on suicide watch, he has yet to receive any mail, which is screened by jail officials.
“We read a few religious ones to him that extended wishes for his soul and to come to God,” Finkelstein says. But “we have not and will not read him the fan letters or share the photos of scantily clad teenage girls.”
It’s that “perverted” mail that “scares” Finkelstein, and a case out of central Florida might explain why: According to the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, a 13-year-old boy who idolized and collected photos of Cruz admitted Saturday that he wanted to be “the next school shooter” and “kill a lot of kids,” per the New York Post. The teen was arrested on suspicion of felony aggravated stalking.