Lindsay Souvannarath (right) a recent college graduate from Illinois who was 26 at the time of the planned massacre, and her internet boyfriend James Gamble, who was then 22 and unemployed living in Halifax, Canada, were a fit from the moment they met
The loner virgins who dreamed up a Columbine-style plot to unleash a Valentine’s Day massacre on a Canadian mall romanticized about the violence they could inflict on others and emboldened each other to inflict harm on those who feared them.
The revelations are among new details emerging from the foiled plot Lindsay Souvannarath and James Gamble were planning for February 14, 2015, the day they also planned to take their own lives after consummating their love for the first time.
Souvannarath, a recent college graduate from Illinois who was 26 at the time, and her internet boyfriend Gamble, who was then 22 and unemployed living in Halifax, Canada, were a fit from the moment they met, The Guardian reports.
And they only grew more terrifying as they got to know each other in the weeks leading up to the mass attack they planned on the Halifax Shopping Centre Annex.
The pair wanted to pellet the mall with bullets and burn it with Molotov cocktails before taking their own lives.
Gamble said he would spare anyone who was recording the grizzly event on their phone so there would be more footage, according to the Guardian’s edited extract from a newly published book, ‘Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime and Obsession,’ by journalist Rachel Monroe.
James Gamble (above) said he would spare anyone who was recording the grizzly event on their phone so there would be more footage
The online lovers wanted to pellet the Halifax Shopping Center Annex with bullets and burn it with Molotov cocktails before taking their own lives
An anonymous tipster contacted police the day before the attack was supposed to take place, leading investigators to Gamble, who shot himself in the head as officers approached his home.
Souvannarath was arrested at the airport after flying in from Chicago with a one-way ticket and just $33 to help carry out the act of evil.
A day after being arrested, Souvannarath bragged about the failed plan to an inmate at the jail where she was being held.
‘I had a skull mask I was going to wear, and he had his scream mask. We would’ve looked perfect,’ she said, not knowing the inmate was really an undercover cop gathering evidence that would lead to her conviction and life sentence, wrote Monroe.
Randall Steven Shepherd, a friend of Gamble’s who was 22 at the time, was also involved but was not planning on taking part in the plot himself. He was jailed for a decade in 2016.
Gamble and Souvannarath were no Bonnie and Clyde.
Instead, the pair modeled themselves after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenage killers from the 20 April 1999 Columbine High School shooting, which left 12 students, a teachers and themselves dead, plus another 21 people injured.
Harris and Klebold took their lives, inspiring Gamble and Souvannarath to do the same if they had actually carried out their own plot. They had met in 2014 after they followed each other Facebook and later moved over to Tumblr where they explored their violent desires.
‘I had a skull mask I was going to wear, and he had his scream mask. We would’ve looked perfect,’ Souvannarath (above) said, to a prisoner at a jail she was held at after her arrest, not knowing the inmate was really an undercover cop gathering evidence against her
Randall Steven Shepherd (pictured), a friend of Gamble’s who was 22 at the time, was also involved but was not planning on taking part in the plot himself. He was jailed for a decade in 2016
Both at the time were living with their parents, socially awkward and had much in common, according to the Guardian.
The two walked stiffly and too fast, and signaled others when they entered a room that that they were different.
They could tell strangers feared them and had grown to like it.
At one point, Souvannarath openly fantasized to Gamble about how people might react if the online couple met up in Halifax wearing trench coats, giving each other conspiratorial looks.
‘People would be like OH GOD THERE’S TWO OF THEM NOW,’ she wrote her lover.
‘What a great way to spend a day, just terrorizing normal/inferior people.’
‘I hope to do that on a major scale someday,’ James replied.
‘Same,’ she answered back.
Souvannarath didn’t always sound serious, but Gamble was. He detailed how he was ready with guns, ammunition, a knife, and garb meant to terrorize people.
‘I just wish I had a partner, that could take the shotgun while I take the hunting rifle. Way less chance of getting attacked/jumped if I had a partner,’ he wrote.
‘I could be your Eric,’ Souvannarath replied. ‘How’s about that?’
‘That’d be nice :p,’ he gushed.
The conversations grew increasingly romantic and intense. She claimed to online friends that she no longer felt depressed.
‘It feels like I’ve been dead for years and then I suddenly came back to life and I can actually feel things and it’s like WHOA,’ she wrote to Gamble.
Souvannarath is pictured in handcuffs as she arrives at court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on July 8, 2015
‘It’s such a special feeling isn’t it?’ he said. ‘Knowing that there’s somebody else out there who feels just like you do.’
Souvannarath was no stranger to violent tendencies. While in college she had started writing a book about a boy who fell in love with death, and sounded like she believed the stories and considered the characters her friends.
Gamble wanted to make sure she was up to doing real harm on others.
‘And you feel like when the moment actually calls for it, you could actually shoot people?’ he asked.
‘Yes sir,’ she said.
The plan was for Gamble to shoot his mother in bed and father when he came home from work. Shepherd was to pick up Souvannarath at the airport.
Gamble planned to later shoot Shepherd, who didn’t want to live, but had never been able to finish the job himself.
Gamble and Souvannarath then planned to lose their virginity to each other and follow up with their attack on the mall the next day, targeting people they hated: ‘mindless, unsuspecting Saturday-morning shoppers,’ according to Monroe.
Souvannarath had written a suicide note which she planned to go live on her Tumblr page once it was over.
She had titled it ‘Der Untergang’ which means ‘The Downfall’ in German.
Souvannarath had written a suicide note which she planned to go live on her Tumblr page once it was over. She had titled it ‘Der Untergang’ which means ‘The Downfall’ in German
The plan never unfolded after Gamble took his life and his love was picked up by cops.
A judge said she remained a threat to society as he jailed her for life. Her lawyers asked that she only be put away for 12 years.
In notes found in her prison cell, Souvannarath said she and Gamble considered themselves destined to carry out the mass murder, DailyMail.com reported previously.
‘Eventually, I realized that we really were Eric and Dylan,’ she wrote. ‘Their minds having taken refuge in our bodies some time after their demise.’