Thirteen-year-old Audree loved playing Nirvana on the guitar, drawing anime characters and reading the “Spy School” book series, her mother, Jaimee Seitz, said.
“She had her own personality, her own hobbies, her own everything,” said Seitz, who lives in Kentucky. “Audree was one of a kind.”
A week after her 13th birthday, Audree died by suicide. Seitz said she never believed her daughter would take her own life and initially thought it was an accident.
Days later, a detective told Seitz that Audree’s journal contained drawings of school shooters. Investigators also found that on platforms such as Roblox, Discord and TikTok, Audree had interacted with children and adults in the online True Crime Community, or TCC. The group is known for glorifying mass shooters and encouraging violence and self-harm. Seitz said Audree was just 8 years old when she was first exposed to TCC content.
“I think she felt a sense of comfort with this group, with being a part of something, and I believe that they pushed her to do it,” Seitz said.
Extremism experts describe TCC as a subculture of nihilistic violent extremism. Participants are not driven by a specific ideology but by a misanthropic worldview. Some seek notoriety within online spaces through violence or self-harm, while others target and exploit vulnerable people.
According to FBI Director Kash Patel, the FBI recorded a 300% increase in nihilistic violent extremism cases from September 2024 to September 2025. In December, Patel wrote on X that the FBI is pursuing hundreds of such cases, including many tied to another network known as 764.
“This is one of the most serious issues in America,” Patel wrote.
The FBI confirmed to CBS News that it has been in contact with Audree’s family but declined to comment further on the case or on nihilistic violent extremism more broadly.
“It’s something that was so mind-blowing — that it started at such a young age and that she was groomed into this ideology of worshipping school shooters,” Seitz said. “It’s hard to wrap your head around.”
What is TCC?
People who identify with the True Crime Community often develop a fascination with mass killers and engage in fan-like behavior, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonpartisan nonprofit focused on countering extremism.
While fascination with killers existed long before the internet, experts say the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 marked a turning point.
“We’ve seen this behavior with serial killers and mass shooters well before Columbine,” said Cody Zoschak, a senior manager at the institute. “What Columbine did was give it a distinct aesthetic.”
Researchers say TCC followers often replace ideology with aesthetics, such as dressing like perpetrators or adopting their interests, including favorite music, rather than their motivations.
Online, TCC participants share violent videos, create fan art of mass shooters and sometimes interact with people planning attacks, said David Riedman, an assistant professor at Idaho State University who tracks school shootings.
Images, video edits and photo collages romanticizing perpetrators of the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook shootings are widely available in TCC-tagged posts on platforms such as Tumblr, TikTok and X. While the community remains niche, some posts receive thousands of likes.
Riedman said most people involved in TCC will never commit violence. However, a small number do, with devastating results.
According to Riedman’s data, seven U.S. K-12 school shootings over the past two years have been linked to TCC. Those attacks left 11 people dead and 53 injured. Five of the shooters also took their own lives.
Last month, police charged a 17-year-old in Indiana allegedly linked to TCC who was accused of plotting an attack. An affidavit obtained by CBS News said investigators found drawings of the Columbine perpetrators on her phone, along with screenshots of Discord messages encouraging her to livestream an attack.
When individuals tied to TCC carry out shootings, they can become idols within the community and inspire further violence. One example is the 15-year-old girl responsible for the December 2024 shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, which killed a teacher and a student.
A month later, a Tennessee teenager she followed on X shot a student at his school before killing himself. Posts from an account believed to be his encouraged her to livestream the Wisconsin shooting. He later defended her online and referred to her as a hero.
In August and September, two more people linked to TCC carried out deadly school shootings in Minnesota and Colorado before taking their own lives. Investigators found that the Colorado shooter posted on violent websites about previous attacks, while videos reviewed by CBS News showed the Minnesota shooter referencing school shooters in writings on his weapons and in a journal.
The perpetrator in the Abundant Life shooting “wanted that notoriety,” Zoschak said.
“It was about her,” he said, explaining that unlike ideologically motivated violence, nihilistic violence fulfills an inward-focused need.
How children get pulled in
Riedman said TCC can appeal to young people who feel bullied or isolated.
“You start to meet people who like all of your photos, share your content and invite you into private chats,” he said. “Suddenly, you have a community you don’t have anywhere else.”
Seitz believes Audree may have been drawn to that sense of acceptance.
“It was hard for her to find her spot in seventh grade,” she said.
Seth, now 29, said he was part of the TCC community as a teenager and ran a Columbine-themed blog on Tumblr. He told CBS News he was struggling with mental illness at the time and related to school shooters.
“I was very angry,” he said. “So it was like, here are these people who are angry, and they’re doing something about it.”
A Tumblr spokesperson said the platform does not allow content that encourages or glorifies violence or its perpetrators.
Seitz is now calling for accountability from social media companies. She said that despite enabling parental controls on Audree’s phone, her daughter was immersed in TCC content for years. This fall, Seitz filed a lawsuit against Roblox, Discord and TikTok, alleging the platforms prioritize growth over child safety and knowingly expose children to predatory behavior.
In statements to CBS News, representatives from each platform said they use technology to detect and remove harmful content. Roblox said it bans content that promotes extremist groups or ideologies. Discord said extremist behavior has no place on its platform. TikTok said it removes and bans accounts that promote or glorify violence.
After CBS News asked about several TCC-related hashtags, TikTok removed one of them.
Seitz said she had never heard of TCC before Audree’s death and never heard her daughter talk about school shooters. She later realized that subtle references understood within the community had gone unnoticed.
After Audree’s death, Seitz searched “True Crime Community” on TikTok and immediately recognized drawings her daughter had made.
“Everything started to click within not even two minutes,” she said.
She realized some of Audree’s cartoon drawings depicted the Columbine perpetrators, and a former TikTok username referenced one of them. Even a T-shirt Audree wanted carried a hidden reference. The Columbine shooters wore shirts from a German industrial band, and Audree wanted one as well.
After reflecting on how Audree’s phone was positioned when she found her, Seitz now believes her daughter may have been attempting to livestream her suicide, something experts say has occurred among TCC followers.
“Whether you think your child is seemingly happy, you never know,” Seitz said. “And that’s the scary part of it.”
A new category of extremism
The ideology-free violence linked to TCC has increasingly been classified as nihilistic violent extremism, a term now appearing more frequently in Justice Department announcements.
Some nihilistic extremists aim to accelerate societal collapse, a belief known as accelerationism. For most, however, experts say the mindset centers on nihilism — the belief that life and moral values are meaningless.
Authorities have recently focused on the nihilistic extremist network 764, with more than 300 investigations underway, according to the FBI. Like TCC, the network lacks a clear ideology but more openly encourages self-harm and violence. Members have coerced victims into producing videos of self-harm or child sexual abuse material. Lawmakers introduced legislation last month to make coercing children into self-harm a federal crime.
Experts say communities like TCC and 764 often overlap.
“They’re all aware of each other,” Zoschak said. “They interact with each other.”
Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, estimates that about 10,000 perpetrators worldwide are involved in online grooming tied to nihilistic violent extremism, with roughly 100,000 victims. He said the networks continue to grow, while law enforcement faces challenges because many involved are minors.
“We do not charge 13-year-old children with adult-level crimes on a regular basis,” Kriner said.
Seth, who left the TCC community after seeking mental health treatment, said children drawn to these spaces should know there are alternatives.
“I got really into art after I left. I got into writing,” he said. “That was a dark period of my life, but it doesn’t have to define you.”
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