OfficerBlueEast Ridge, TN – Police have launched a multi-state manhunt for Casey Lawhorn, 23, after he allegedly murdered his mother and friend early Sunday morning.
While he is being actively hunted, Lawhorn posted a confession to Facebook at 4:54 p.m. in which he describes the murders (below.)
According to Lawhorn, the murders happened at around 1:30 a.m. at his house after he shot his friend and mother with a stolen .22 LR firearm.
After the murders, Lawhorn called the police and then fled the scene.
Officers arrived to find his mother, Vi Lawhorn, and friend Avery Gaines dead from gunshot wounds, according to Daily Mail.
There is a multi state manhunt for Lawhorn, and he is believed to be in a gold 2002 Ford Taurus with TN plate W0327L.
Lawhorn is described as a white male, 5’5″, weighing 108 lbs.
He has expressed that he is suicidal and should be considered armed and dangerous. If located, please call 911 immediately.
You can see his confession below:
Since so many people keep trying to reach out to me on Facebook, I figure I can just say my piece once here and be done with it. Before I start, I need to emphasize that I take full responsibility for my actions. Nothing anyone has or hasn’t done to me caused this, my decisions and my failures are my own.
Technical Details: This morning, at around 01:30, I shot and killed my mother (Vi Lawhorn) and a close friend of mine (Avery Gaines) with a stolen .22 LR. Avery was staying the night to go with me to Epikos Hixson tonight to play MtG 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.
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.
Once I got her back to our house I went to my room and grabbed the gun. I nervously paced for a few minutes, playing the coming events out in my head, which were vastly different from what actually happened.
I walked up to Avery as he slept and shot him in the head once, he seemed to die instantly. My mom was in her room, disoriented from alcohol, barely registered that anything happened.
I attempted to shoot her in her bed right then, but the gun jammed. She didn’t notice what I just attempted. I left the room and fixed the jam.
When I went back into her room, she was out of bed trying to calm down her dog, Oscar. I rapidly got off 2 shots, but I missed anything vital since there weren’t any lights on in her room.
I saw 1 entry wound in her left arm, I’m not sure where the other one went. She started screaming the worst scream I’ve ever heard.
Movies really don’t do justice to how true terror sounds. The gun jammed up again, so I scrambled to get it fixed. She shouted “You shot me! You’ve killed me! Why?” Once I got the jam fixed, I turned on the light so I wouldn’t miss again.
I shot at her twice more and it was over. I went back into the living room to take the heroin and cash Avery had on him. The whole in his forehead was so small, and not a lot of blood had come out of it. However, thick, dark blood was pouring from his nose and bile came out of his mouth.
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. I reached into his pocket to get out his wallet, grabbed what i wanted, and left the house.
The whole event took probably 3 or 4 minutes. I had hoped both were going to be quick and efficient. I didn’t want my mom to suffer, to die in horror, to die with the knowledge that her son did it (I didn’t hurt our dog or cat, in case anyone was wondering about the animals).
People keep saying that suicide isn’t worth it, that it isn’t too late, that I should turn myself in instead. Well, friends, it is too late. Has been for more than 12 hours now, not to mention I’ve been suicidal since late high school.
And it’s my opinion that I’ve been heading to unavoidable tragedy since I started at MTSU. I’m not saying the university made me do it, but that the chain of events that I initiated by going there led me here, to inevitable suicide.
Let’s think critically for a minute. Ignoring everything about why I hate myself and why I’m suicidal from before midnight this morning, just looking at today’s events, how should I be expected to not kill myself?
Surely any normal person would wish death on themselves after doing what I did, seeing what I saw, and hearing what I heard. And all that’s waiting on me is life in prison, or maybe the death penalty.
If I would get the death penalty, then I should definitely kill myself, otherwise I’m just wasting tax dollars on lengthy legal processes. Even without being executed, just wasting away in prison sounds awful, and also a horrible use of state money. And who would look forward to life in prison?
I’m almost 24, that’s a crazy amount of time behind bars. And it wound be so lonely. I’m sure most of my friends would want to visit me at least once, if for no other reason than to try to understand what I did. But after that first year, I can’t imagine I’d have any weekly visitors. Not even family, or perhaps especially not family.
I’m not trying to say people don’t care about me, I know a lot of you do, it’s just that people in general don’t keep up a habit of going to visit a friend in prison.
Life carries on for everyone else. And the sooner this is all over, then the sooner everyone can move on. If I’m dead by the time you are reading this, you can heal faster than if I’m still around and in court, and in prison.
Don’t give me or my family your thoughts and prayers. No one will be hurt by this more than my brother (Chad Lawhorn). He will probably need a lot of help getting through this, and if you think you are helping him just by talking to the sky, you’re fucking wrong.
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. I’m sorry to him more than anyone. That said, I don’t want or need forgiveness from anyone.
What I did is unforgivable. And prayer is a waste of time, nothing happens after death, but if there is a hell, I’m going to be in the lake of ice at the bottom. Betrayal of family and betrayal of guests are two of the worst sins.
However, as I sit here in Mississippi, writing this on the side of I-59 south after my car broke down, what I look forward to is the nothingness after death. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about murder, wondering what it feels like. But I’ve barely felt anything.