FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. _ Just a few minutes after a Broward Sheriff's Office detective started interviewing the Parkland shooter about how he massacred 17 people, he offered the young man some cold water.
"I don't deserve it," Nikolas Cruz told him.
The detective walked outside to get him some water anyway.
"Kill me. Just f---ing kill me. F---," Cruz said, while he was alone in the interview room but still being recorded.
Most of the Parkland school shooter's hourslong confession to the massacre of 17 people was released Monday afternoon by state prosecutors.
Cruz's self-incriminating statement was recorded on video just hours after the deadly mass shooting on Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.
The recordings last about 12 hours, and the transcript spans more than 200 pages, according to attorneys. The video will be released Tuesday.
Broward Sheriff's Detective John Curcio interviewed Cruz at the agency's headquarters a matter of hours after the 19-year-old former student was arrested. Cruz's descriptions of the actual shootings are not be included in the evidence released Monday because state law allows the "substance" of a confession to be withheld until it is either played at a pretrial hearing or during trial.
Cruz admitted he went on the school campus with a legally purchased AR-15-style rifle, killing 17 people and injuring another 17.
His defense team asked a judge to stop prosecutors from making his confession public. They argued that parts of his statement should be exempt from release under the state's public records law and that other portions should be blacked out or concealed out of sensitivity to the victims' families and survivors.
Broward Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer examined the entire confession before ruling that most of it could be made public without any negative effect on Cruz's constitutional right to a fair trial.
The defense lawyers have publicly acknowledged that Cruz is guilty and repeatedly said he is offering to plead guilty in exchange for multiple life terms in prison, which would avoid the need for a trial. State prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, which requires a 12-0 jury vote in Florida.
Three chilling cellphone video recordings Cruz made, outlining his deadly plans before the shooting, were made public by the prosecution in May.
