THE MAKING OF A KILLER: Payton Gendron's digital diary reveals CHILLING details
BUFFALO, NEW YORK: Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron first became radicalized during the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic. The White supremacist's shocking online diary has revealed that he had been scouring extremist internet messaging boards.
Gendron, 18, spent months planning his attack in his digital diary, claiming that his exposure to 4Chan kept him motivated to stick to his plans. "My current beliefs started when I first started to use 4chan a few months after covid started,” Gendron wrote in the diary. The diary was initially posted on the Discord app but taken down after the Buffalo supermarket shooting.
READ MORE
Buffalo mass shooting: Cancer survivor and teacher among Payton Gendron's 10 victims
What is the Bushmaster XM-15? NY gun shop owner who sold firearm to Payton Gendron ‘feels terrible’
Referring to the message board’s politics section, infamous for racist and anti-semitic content, Gendron said in another entry, "Every time I think maybe I shouldn’t commit to an attack I spend 5 min [on] /pol/, then my motivation returns." The diary was given to New York Post by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalization. It contains thousands of entries offering a peek into the gunman's beliefs and thoughts.
“It’s his diary that really stands out, as it gives us insight into the person behind the image. It shows his uncertainty over whether he could murder people. Over a dozen times he wrote about wanting to commit suicide instead,” Dr Rajan Basra, a researcher from ICSR, said. “He was essentially having a conversation with himself, at times doubting what he was doing, and other times doubling down on his racist beliefs. The diary shows a volatile mix between racist beliefs, white nationalism, and complex mental health issues.”
In many of the entries, Gendron expressed his fear over the attack. He weighed in on his options, which he believed were either to go through with it, or die by suicide. “I’m not proud to kill these lads, in fact I’m desperately looking for a sign or evidence proving that I shouldn’t,” he wrote.
One entry from March reads, "I can’t tell you how much I don’t want to do this attack My only other choice is suicide I can’t go back." Another from February says, "I have wondered if I’m mentally ill, and that’s why I’m planning the attack like I am now." "The past 7 years have hurt so much, I think I’m ready to abandon it all," he stated.
In a mid-January entry, the shooter wrote that he believes he was born thrice, the most recent time being some point between March 15, 2020, and May 5, 2020, which was the beginning of the Covid-19 lockdown phase. "There I lost myself and a bit of my sanity,” Gendron wrote of the pandemic’s earliest days. “I remember I went to my cousin’s house with a mask and full get up and no one else did and seeing that caused me so much pain. Eventually it was too much to bear and I had to leave early and walk home through the woods, I then barricaded myself in the basement for a few days.”
Gendron had initally planed to carry out the shooting in Rochester. However, he later decided it would be Buffalo after finding out that it was a predominantly Black neighborhood. He originally scheduled the massacre for March 15, the three-year anniversary of the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand. But he kept pushing it back until he finally carried it out on Saturday, May 14.
Some of his posts revealed how he procured his equipment, like a military-grade helmet, from websites such as eBay and Amazon. He also wrote about the kind of clothes he planned to wear while carrying out the shooting, including a specific type of socks. His entries also listed the food he ate each day, a daily calorie count and his weight. In his musings, he wrote about his wish to lose weight before the shooting.
Some entries spoke about his relationship with his family, and how he put an effort to raise money for the attack. He wrote about his plans to sell his jackets online so he could make money. He also detailed how he went to the local flee markets to buy silver coins he could later resell at a higher rate to raise more money.
“My parents know little about me, they don’t know about the hundreds of silver ounces I’ve had, or the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent on ammo. They don’t know that I spent close to $1000 on random military sh-t. They don’t even know I own a shotgun or an AR-15, or illegal magazines,” one of his posts from Februrary reads. “Promise me if you have a child you will be there and you will be close, be a friend to your child and make sure they know that you will always help them. Talk about their problems and ways to solve it and NEVER make them feel bad for coming to you.”
Gendron is reportedly believed to have posted a white supremacist manifesto, outlining his step-by-step plan. Officials revealed that Payton Gendron claimed in a 180-page diatribe that he was 'radicalized' on the internet while he was bored during the early pandemic days, not by people he has personally met. The self-described white supremacist and anti-Semite apparently learned through his "research" that low white birth rates around the world was a "crisis" that "will ultimately result in the complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people." In one section of the manifesto, Gendron detailed his step-by-step plans for the day of the shooting. He also wrote about the corned beef hash he would eat for breakfast. He planned how he would drive to the supermarket, wear his body armor and carry his gun. He also wrote about live streaming the attack.
For the uninitiated, 'racially motivated' teen Gendron gunned down ten people and injured three others at a Buffalo supermarket. Payton Gendron, 18, drove from 'hours away' in Conklin, New York, to the Tops market on Jefferson Avenue. The shooting took place in a predominantly Black neighborhood. Eleven of the victims were Black and two of them were White. He was arraigned on a murder charge over the weekend, and federal prosecutors are contemplating hate-crime charges. Gendron has pleaded not guilty.