El Paso massacre gunman Patrick Crusius was a CHOIRBOY before becoming cold-blooded mass murderer – The Sun

THIS is the choirboy who became one of the most cowardly mass shooters in US history.

Patrick Crusius, 21, killed 20 innocent victims as he went aisle to aisle in Walmart in El Paso, Texas gunning down shoppers – including a young mum who died protecting her two-month-old baby boy.

But just a few years ago, Crusius was a member of the choir at his school in Plano, Texas, and stood smiling with his pals in these exclusive school yearbook pictures obtained by Sun Online.

Now classmates are asking what could have happened to cause him to commit such an atrocity.

Paige Ortiz, who went to school with him for two years, said: “I just wanna know what happened to him to make him do this.”

She added: “I know he was apart of extra curricular activities he seemed involved with things and other people – like any one else – he didnt seem like a distant alone person then.”

But she did reveal how many people at the school thought Crusius, who penned a race-hate manifesto praising the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand, was “weird” and how he “kept to his own race”.

Meanwhile a bizarre book written by his dad Bryan – a drug and alcohol counsellor who is still advertising his services online – gives some insight into the evil killer’s chaotic upbringing.

Bryan, who now claims to be a energy and sound “healer”, admits to having a 40-year drug and alcohol addiction that devastated his family.

In one anecdote, Patrick, his twin sister Emily and older brother Blake, who were all teens at the time, appear to have been left alone at Christmas – after their mother ran off to Oklahoma and Bryan was jailed for shoplifting.

After realizing his wife had left him he says: “I don’t remember much of anything else after that, except that I felt a deep sense of disconnection and impending panic. Instead of proceeding to my assignment, or even returning home, I drove to a major warehouse store.

“I entered the store feeling in somewhat of a disassociative state, as if another person had taken over by body.

“I was there for hours, winding around the same four or five aisles repeatedly in a daze. All around me sounded the din of Christmas music and the frenetic chatter of shoppers.

“I do remember grabbing a hard drive and placing it in my basket. I wandered over to the clothing area and grabbed a silk shirt. “Wrapping it around the hard drive, I stuck it halfway down the back of my jeans. I made my way towards the exit, still wheeling the cart, and exited the building.”

He explains how his brother picked him up from jail and he tried to sneak into the house without anyone noticing.

“There a scene unfolded; a horrific moment frozen in time. My seventeen year old son stared at me in disbelief. I sheepishly went up the stairs in a cloud of shame.

“My behaviour of the past few years had placed him in a state of fear and uncertainty. He was the oldest and had taken on responsibility by default as the man of the house.”

The druggie turned self-help guru also reveals how he saw visions of Jesus and how his dead grandmother came to him in “angel reading” in the Life Enthusiasm: A Path to Purpose Beyond Recovery.

Introducing the book, which is on sale on Amazon, he says: “Hi. I’m Bryan. I was an addict for roughly forty years. I lived a life of pretense in a kind of dream, alternating between the lows of apathy and hopelessness and the highs of material success. I survived.

“Today I thrive in order to share my story which is my truth and purpose in this life. I know you.

“I have wandered in and out of recovery programs. I have quit and relapsed countless times.

“This is a true story of my rise beyond chemical dependence to freedom. The powerful nature of Life Energy transformed my dependence into a jewel of love. It is an adventure riddled with miracles and mysteries of mystical experience.”

In the book he confesses to starting drinking at 14 before moving on to harder substances such as quaaludes and magic mushrooms.

“I remember drinking to overcome the social awkwardness and anxiety surrounding those amazing beings called females, he writes.

“I only dated girls that got high. That was the best way for me. I felt more genuine when I was high and I belonged to a group–the heads, as we were called by our school peers otherwise known as the jocks, kickers, and geeks! I was always the one daring everyone else to go over the top in the partying category by taking the extreme amounts of whatever we had, whether Quaaludes, alcohol, magic mushrooms, or something else.”

He only mentions son Patrick – the shooter – once in the book, talking about how after divorcing his first wife and leaving his 3-year-old son Austin, he met another woman and fathered three more kids.

“We agreed on a divorce and I moved back to Texas leaving behind my three year old son,” he writes.

“Texas was not the cure I thought it would be. I was wracked with guilt issues surrounding my son. I quit the pain-killers but compensated with daily drinking.

“I met another wonderful woman that I subconsciously attracted as an enabler. She managed this role for eighteen years. “During this time I became the proud father to three beautiful children. Blake was born in 1994 followed by twins, Patrick and Emily in 1998.”

Bizarrely he also reveals how he had visions of Jesus after visiting a massage therapist.

“I found myself floating in the cosmos once again, a beautiful star field highlighted here and there by color that hinted at the presence of nebulae, but were too distant to determine.

“As I took in the immensity and magnificence of the view, I noticed a distant light approaching from far, far away. It was moving with great speed and quickly approaching me.

“As it approached, it slowed and I saw that it was the portrait of a man. Seconds later, I recognized it was Jesus Christ.”

Then he recalls how “Jesus” turned round and “spoke to him”.

He writes: “Then Jesus, without the slightest movement in his lips told me this story: ‘I have sought you many times, as you have wandered from the flock many times. I would search and search, but you were hard to reach, so obscured by the chemical haze.’”

Bryan also describes how during an “angel reading” with a fellow “healer” he experienced a “visitation” from his dead grandmother Mabel who told how she’d rescued him from overdosing on drugs.

He quotes the healer as saying: “She wants you to know that she has always been there for you. She has helped to protect you many times, even as you approached death.

“You died three times from drug overdoses and she pulled you back. It wasn’t time for you to leave. You have work to do.”

Neighbours at his childhood home told how Crusius looked uncared for – wearing the same clothes every day – and how after his parents divorce he acquired four stepbrothers – so there were seven children in the house.

“I remember he would always be by himself, always alone,” one neighbour revealed.

“The last few years he lived here he seemed he was always in the same clothes he’d walk to school in khaki pants and a white t shirt every day.

“Even in winter he’d have a white t shirt on and it just seemed like he was always alone – I’d see him walking around on his own.

“He graduated high school here and then they moved out. He had an older brother and a twin sister. Friends and teachers of his are shocked its scary knowing that he was right here on our doorstep.

“His parents divorced and his mother remarried and four boys moved in so at one point there were seven kids at that house.

“The mother was a school nurse and the dad I heard he was a counselor, although I don’t remember seeing him much.

“I feel bad for the sister she was a really nice girl she seemed smart, very social.”

Crusius is currently facing the death penalty after he was arrested by cops in El Paso.

Sun Online reached out to Bryan Crusius for comment.

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