Imagining a crime more horrific than the murder of children praying in church is challenging, making it particularly difficult to comprehend the mindset of an individual capable of such an act.

Robin Westman, a 23-year-old transgender woman, stands accused of opening fire through the stained-glass windows of the Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis during a celebratory back-to-school mass filled with children.

The shooting resulted in the deaths of two children and injuries to 17 others, as panicked young congregants sought refuge in the pews to escape the onslaught.

Before beginning her onslaught, Westman had reportedly used wooden planks to barricade the church’s two side doors shut.

Westman, who was armed with a rifle, shotgun, and handgun—all reportedly acquired legally and recently—died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

School shootings are in danger of losing their shock value in modern America.

While each incident carries its own tragic narrative, common patterns among the perpetrators emerge, such as mental health struggles, easy access to firearms, and a fixation on outdoing previous mass shooters.

These individuals frequently attack schools where they were once educated, hinting at lingering resentment and a desire for vengeance against their former institutions.

Westman’s victims all attended the Annunciation Catholic School where she was herself once a pupil.

And the connection with these school shooters sometimes goes further than having been a pupil at the establishment they target.

Nancy Lanza once worked at Sandy Hook, the Connecticut elementary school where her 20-year-old son, Adam, a former pupil there, shot and killed 26 people in 2012.

So Westman’s mother had previously been an administrative assistant at the school whose church service she devastated on Wednesday morning.

In fact, it should perhaps come as no surprise that Westman admitted she had a particular admiration for the monstrous Lanza – who’d been diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome aged 13 and, according to his father, suffered from undiagnosed schizophrenia.

The similarities between the killers are many and chilling.

Lanza’s mother, whose relationship with her son so degenerated that they were only communicating by email despite sharing the same house, was the first victim that Lanza killed.

Now it appears that Westman may have had a particular animus against his own mother, Mary Grace – or at least the religion in which she raised her family.

Mary Grace is a devout Catholic and past anti-abortion activist who once wore a necklace of crucifixes to protest outside a Minneapolis Planned Parenthood clinic in March 2005.

Within hours of the shooting, FBI director Kash Patel announced they were investigating the killings as an ‘act of domestic terrorism’ and anti-Catholic hate crime.

Like Lanza, who committed one of the worst mass killings in US history, Westman had no previous involvement with the police.

And like Lanza, this was no sudden explosion of random anger and violence but a carefully planned and targeted strike against her former school.

Hours before the shooting Westman shared a series of home-made videos that appeared to include a deeply twisted manifesto.

Police said the manifesto posted on a now deleted YouTube account was timed to be released just before the attack.

It included a photo of Lanza. The Sandy Hook killer’s name – along with those of other mass shooters – was written on a gun clip, or magazine, laid on what appears to be a bed, scattered with guns and ammunition.

‘I have a deep fascination with one man in particular: Adam Lanza,’ Westman wrote in a journal entry on May 23, which was shared in the YouTube video. ‘Sandy Hook was my favorite, I think, exposure of school shootings.’

In the video, Westman showed the camera a handwritten note to her family (which includes five siblings) and friends.

Messages in both English and Russian – including ‘kill Donald Trump’, ‘Where Is Your God?’ and ‘for the children’ – had been scrawled in white on the magazines.

In a 20-minute video, titled ‘So long and thanks for all the fish’ (the title of a sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy written by author Douglas Adams), a person believed to be Westman flips through a handwritten journal written in both English and Cyrillic.

One message was translated from Russian and read: ‘I have had thoughts about mass murder for a long time. I am very conflicted with writing this journal.’ 

The journal also included a floor plan of a church, presumably Westman’s eventual target, which the reader then repeatedly stabs with a knife. 

Westman also explained why she had chosen to attack the Annunciation Catholic School, where her mother worked until she retired in 2021.

‘I am feeling good about annunciation. It seems like a good combo of easy attack form and devastating tragedy, and I want to do more research,’ she wrote.

Another page read: ‘I have concerns about finding a large enough group. I want to avoid any parents, but pre and post school drop off.’

‘Maybe I could attack an event at the on-site church,’ she went on. ‘I think attacking a large group of kids coming in from recess is my best plan … Then from there I can go inside and kill, going for as long as I can.’

Westman’s journal also hinted at her disturbing and confused political views which appeared to have been virulently Left-wing and anti-Semitic.

One page included a trans pride flag sticker with ‘Defend equality’ printed across the bottom and a sticker of an AK-47 assault rifle on top.

In another, she wrote ‘I hate fascism’ but soon added: ‘I also love when kids get shot, I love to see kids get torn apart’.

In another entry, however, she wrote: ‘If I carry out a racially motivated attack, it would be most likely against filthy Zionist jews’.

She called Jewish people ‘penny-sniffing’ and added: ‘FREE PALESTINE!’

Westman said she wanted to carry out a ‘final act’ against ‘a target of political or societal significance…. Targets like [Elon] Musk, Trump or some significant exec.’

Westman applied to change her birth name from Robert to Robin in Dakota County, Minnesota, when she was 17 years old.

According to court documents that name change was granted in January 2020.

The petition stated that Westman: ‘Identifies as a female and wants her name to reflect that identification.’

Westman grew up in Richfield, a suburb about 15 mins drive outside Minneapolis. Her mother, Mary Grace Westman, 67, originally from Lexington, Kentucky, now lives in Naples, Florida.

She joined the Annunciation Catholic School as an administrative assistant in the school’s Business Office having been a secretary at another local Catholic school for seven years. At the time, she had six children (including Robin) and a grandchild.

‘Mary Grace is eager to get to know everyone at Annunciation,’ announced the school magazine. ‘You will find that she usually has treats on her desk!