RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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In the weeks after killing two students and two teachers at Apalachee High School in Georgia, the jailed teenage gunman had frequent phone conversations about his online notoriety with his mother, who at one point promised to make him a shrine to him.
Prosecutors played clips of the recorded conversations between Colt Gray and his mother during the teenager's sentencing hearing Tuesday. Gray, 16, pleaded guilty Friday to 55 counts, including murder, in the Sept. 4, 2024, shooting at the school about 45 miles (73 kilometers) northeast of Atlanta. The conversations so alarmed officials that Gray's mother was later barred from talking to him.
Murder carries a minimum sentence of life in prison in Georgia. Barrow County Superior Court Judge Nicholas Primm has to decide whether Gray should have the possibility of parole after hearing testimony and evidence presented by the defense and the prosecution. Tuesday was the third day of a sentencing hearing that began Friday.
Teachers Richard “Ricky” Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53, and students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, died in the shooting . Another teacher and eight more students were wounded, seven of them hit by gunfire.
A jury in March convicted Gray's father, Colin Gray, on charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. He is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday. Prosecutors said he gave his son the assault-style rifle used to open fire at the school.
Ashley Gilleland, an investigator with the district attorney's office, testified that Gray idolized other mass shooters, talking about them online with other members of the “true crime community,” a group of young people online who are fascinated with such attacks. He chatted with other people online about gaining notoriety through a school shooting and his admiration for previous mass shooters.
There were aspects of his preparation and behavior before and after the Apalachee High School shooting that mimicked other mass shooters, Gilleland testified.
He spoke frequently with his mother, Marcee Gray, by phone from a youth detention center in the months after the shooting. During those phone calls, portions of which were played in court, he would direct her to look up what people were saying about him online. When she described “fan art” drawings depicting him or comments people made about him, he asked her how much engagement those posts were getting and seemed excited when they were getting a lot.
Marcee Gray repeatedly told her son she would print some of the images and bring them to him, and during at least one conversation said she was also going to print some photos for herself.
“Have you made the shrine?” Colt Gray asked his mother, indicating that he wanted her to make a shrine to him. His mother responded that she needed to go get some photos printed. “Then I'll make my Colty shrine,” she said.
When Marcee Gray described a request she'd gotten just over a month after the shooting from a journalist who wanted to make a documentary about the case, Colt Gray told her, “Yes. Go for it.”
He also repeatedly asked his mother to communicate with one of the people he'd been speaking to online before the shooting to pass along messages to their online community. His mother assured him she would.
In February 2025, about five months after the shooting, it came out during a court hearing that the district attorney's office was aware of their calls. Marcee Gray told her son that she didn't believe they'd talked about anything inappropriate but that she was being accused of encouraging her son.
Barrow County District Attorney Brad Smith has asked investigators questions designed to discredit claims Colt Gray made during two interviews with investigators the day of the shooting. The teenager talked about hearing people tell him to do things, having uncontrollable urges and acting spontaneously.
When a sheriff's office investigator asked him if he was seeking attention, Gray said no and said he thought it was “really childlike” when mass shooters did that.
But his online conversations, a notebook that included a step-by-step plan for how he would carry out the shooting and the conversations with his mother contradicted his claims and showed careful planning of the attack and his intention to survive it, Gilleland said under questioning by Smith.
Candice Broce, who is director of the state Division of Family & Children Services and commissioner of the Georgia Department of Human Services, was called to testify by Colt Gray's attorney. She managed Gray's case after he was put in foster care while in detention because he was a minor and his father was in prison and there were concerns about his mother's contact with him.
Broce testified that Colt Gray had suffered abuse and neglect and that her agency had opened investigations into the family several years before the shooting. During her initial assessment, she tried to find health records for Gray but said he was unable to recall ever going to a doctor.
“I was really surprised by the complete absence of care,” Broce said.
She testified that Gray appeared to show improvement while being treated. After Marcee Gray was barred from speaking with her son by a July 2025 no-contact order and he started taking medication, staff at the youth detention center later told Broce it “changed him essentially into a different child,” she said.
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