Five years before Air Force veteran Devin Kelley burst into a church in Sutherland Springs, Tx., last fall with a legally purchased semiautomatic rifle and gunned down 26 people, he recorded a tearful confession. “I am making this documentary, so everybody knows,” Kelley said in 2012, describing how he pushed and struck his toddler stepson so hard, he fractured the child’s collarbone and caused bleeding on the brain. “This is not the last mistake, and there’s probably plenty to come, unfortunately,” said Kelley, who died after being pursued following the November shooting, the Wall Street Journal reports. The shocking massacre raised questions about how a man with such a publicly known troubled past was able to buy deadly weapons. The transcript of the confession, among court-martial records newly released by the Justice Department, paint an even more frightening portrait of Kelley, showing an incompetent airman who tried to project an image as a God-fearing, aspiring family man even as his ferocious temper and a compulsion toward brutality were apparent to the Air Force.
In 2012, Kelley pleaded guilty at his court martial, received a bad-conduct discharge and spent a year behind bars. Air Force officials have admitted failing to notify the FBI’s firearm-screening database about Kelley’s conviction for domestic violence, which should have automatically banned him from possessing weapons. The lapse allowed him to purchase a Ruger AR-556 rifle that he used during his rampage. The Air Force has been reviewing court martial records going back to 2002 in search of other domestic abuse cases that weren’t properly reported to the FBI. Records show that Kelley’s superiors saw him as a ticking bomb who needed to be locked up to prevent bloodshed. “I am convinced that he is dangerous and likely to harm someone if released,” wrote Maj. Nathan McLeod-Hughes in 2012.