Phone of man who killed 3 at Indiana mall had Hitler photos, 'extremely graphic' videos of killings

Police said the FBI found nothing on the phone about the mall or plans for last year's mass shooting, but it contained what appeared to be a suicide note Jonathan Douglas Sapirman wrote more than two years before the attack.

Greenwood police said the FBI was able in May to unlock the phone, which Sapirman dropped into a Greenwood Park Mall toilet before he opened fire inside the food court last July 17. Sapirman was fatally shot by an armed shopper shortly after the shooting began in the city just south of Indianapolis.

Police said the FBI recovered more 200 videos and more 3,400 images from the phone, along with notes, call and text logs and internet searches. Many of the videos were of mass shootings and "extremely graphic in nature," including one of a September 2016 attack that killed five people at Cascade Mall in Burlington, Washington.

The FBI also found photos of Adolf Hitler and Nazi propaganda on the cellphone.

The findings come after police said in December that Sapirman was fascinated with Nazi Germany and posted more than 700 comments on social media about mass killers between 2017 and 2022.

Police said "the most notable discovery" on the phone was a photo taken April 9, 2020, of an apparent suicide note Sapirman wrote. It begins with, "My final thoughts on paper" and goes on to say, "I'm a sociopath. I want to hurt people." Police said the note alludes to Sapirman shooting himself with a shotgun.

Police said Sapirman's note "leads us to believe that Sapirman's homicidal and suicidal thoughts had been manifesting for years."

Sapirman's ex-girlfriend told investigators that he told her he didn't expect to make it to age 21 and if he killed himself, he would "take others" with him, police said in December.

Also found on the phone was a note written less than a month before the shootings that was apparently a draft of a text Sapirman intended to send to his brother, according to police. In that June 18, 2022, note he wrote, "I'm gonna shoot myself."

Police previously said data on Sapirman's laptop was destroyed after he placed it in an oven set on a high temperature with a butane tank before the shooting, but the FBI was working to determine the phone's password — a process that could take years.

While the three slain victims were Hispanic, Greenwood police Chief James Ison said in December there was no indication the shooting was racially motivated and authorities had not determined a specific motive for the attack. The shooting killed married couple Pedro Pineda, 56, and Rosa Mirian Rivera de Pineda, 37; and Victor Gomez, 30.

However, Ison previously said Sapirman's ex-girlfriend told investigators he was racist toward African Americans and Hispanics because of "bad experiences that he had with people in those races while he was growing up."

An armed bystander, 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken of Seymour, Indiana — who had been at the mall shopping with his girlfriend — fatally shot Sapirman after police say the gunman fired 24 times within 15 seconds.

Police praised Dicken, who was legally armed, for his quick actions that ended the shooting attack, with Ison calling him "a true hero."