HollyMatkinVossburg, MS – The body of a Tennessee man who confessed to having murdered his mother and friend early Sunday morning was discovered by Mississippi police on Monday.
Casey Lawhorn, 23, appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO) said, according to the New York Daily news.
Lawhorn had been the subject of a multi-state manhunt since shortly after 1:30 a.m. on Sunday, when he contacted police, and fled from his East Ridge, Tennessee residence.
Police arrived to find Lawhorn’s mother, Vi Lawhorn, and his friend, 22-year-old Avery Gaines, dead from gunshot wounds, the Daily Mail reported.
At approximately 4:45 p.m., Lawhorn posted a lengthy confession to his Facebook account, and described the homicides in grusome detail.
Mississippi Highway Patrol (MHP) troopers located Lawhorn’s unoccupied vehicle in the area on Sunday night, the New York Daily News reported.
In his Facebook post, Lawhorn said he took “full responsibility” for his actions.
“Nothing anyone has or hasn’t done to me caused this, my decisions and my failures are my own,” he wrote.
He said that Gaines was staying overnight at the residence, because the two friends had planned to attend an Epikos MTG Commander game in nearby Hixon the following evening “like we usually do.”
“He fell asleep on my living room floor at around 00:30, the same time I went to pick my mom up from Buds Sports Bar on Brainerd Road,” Lawhorn recounted. “My mom was completely wasted, and just like every other time she gets drunk, she goes on and on, without prompt, about how devastated she’d be if I killed myself.”
When they arrived home, Lawhorn said he went and retrieved a “stolen .22 LR” from his room, and contemplated what he was about to do.
“I nervously paced for a few minutes, playing the coming events out in my head, which were vastly different from what actually happened,” he wrote.
Lawhorn said he shot Gaines once in the head as he slept, and that he “seemed to die instantly.
He then went into his mother’s room.
“I attempted to shoot her in her bed right then, but the gun jammed,” he recalled. “She didn’t notice what I just attempted.”
He exited the room, fixed the weapon, and returned to find his mother comforting her dog.
Lawhorn said he “rapidly got off 2 shots” into the dark, and hit his mother in her left arm.
“She started screaming the worst scream I’ve ever heard,” he wrote. “Movies really don’t do justice to how true terror sounds.”
While his inebriated mother tried to comprehend what was occurring, the weapon again jammed, Lawhorn said.
“Once I got the jam fixed, I turned on the light so I wouldn’t miss again,” he wrote. “I shot at her twice more and it was over.”
Lawhorn went on to describe the appearance of Gaines’ body, and said he stole his friend’s cash and heroin before he left.
“I was shaking from adrenaline, but I felt nothing other than that, except maybe disgust at the corpse in front of me and the noises it was making,” he callously wrote. “[I] grabbed what I wanted, and left the house.”
Lawhorn noted that he did not hurt the family’s pets, and asked for support for his brother.
“No one will be hurt by this more than my brother,” he wrote. “I’m sorry to him more than anyone.”
“If you want to help him in this insanely difficult time I’m putting him through, actually do something, don’t just think about it,” Lawhorn continued. “If you think you are helping him just by talking to the sky, you’re f*****g wrong.”
He noted that he “barely felt anything” about what he had done, and said that he saw no reason “wasting tax dollars on a lengthy legal process.”
Lawson even contemplated capital punishment, and analyzed what a lifetime sentence might be like.
“After that first year, I can’t imagine I’d have any weekly visitors,” he mused. “Not even family or perhaps especially not family.”
Lawson said he was looking forward to “the nothingness after death.”
“What I did is unforgivable,” he wrote. “If there is a hell, I’m going to be in the lake of ice at the bottom.”