A troubled teenager from Florida, accused of hatching a chilling plan to murder a classmate as part of a bizarre scheme to “resurrect” Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza, has reached out to the judge with a heartfelt plea. She attributes her missteps to the negative influence of the internet, which she claims turned her into a “horrible, horrible person.”
Fifteen-year-old Isabelle Valdez, along with her alleged accomplice, 14-year-old Lois Olivios Lippert, initially appeared nonchalant about their arrest. The pair jocosely envisioned gaining notoriety from their mugshots and even joked about becoming a “lesbian couple in jail.”
This week, however, Valdez adopted a more somber stance, addressing the judge with a three-page handwritten letter. She expressed that her isolation from the digital world since her January arrest has made her genuinely “remorseful.”
“I was exposed to the internet at a very young age, and all that was bad stemmed from it,” Valdez stated in her letter, which was submitted to the Seminole County Court. She further confessed, “The internet made me a horrible, horrible person.”
Valdez also assured the judge that she is now “not the same girl I was those three months ago.” This statement refers to the time when she was accused of conspiring to attack a male classmate in a school bathroom by either stabbing him in the stomach or slitting his throat, after which she planned to leave flowers and smoke a cigarette.
She also insisted she was “not the same girl I was those three months ago,” when she was accused of plotting to ambush a male classmate in the school bathroom to stab him in the stomach or cut his throat — then leave flowers and smoke a cigarette.
“I’ve been thinking about my life and my choices and I please beg and ask of you to please have some sympathy on me for as I want to change and I’m changing as a person,” Valdez wrote in the letter.
Valdez wrote that she became an active member of the twisted True Crime Community online — which glorifies school shootings like Columbine and the Sandy Hook massacre — in 2022-2023.
She felt “seen” in the group, she wrote, “but in reality it was deteriorating me.”
“I got groomed in this community further into believing that violence was good, the people that were my so-called friends only ever wanted me to harm myself or others,” she wrote.
She also described her struggles with being bullied, and claimed she’s been suicidal since the age of 7.
Valdez and Lippert, from Altamonte Springs, were arrested on Jan. 22 after a tipster told police about their sick plans to murder a classmate at Lake Brantley High School, officials said.
Valdez had planned to wait for the boy in a bathroom, stab him in the stomach or cut his throat, leave flowers at the scene and then smoke a cigarette afterward, investigators said.
The victim reminded Valdez of Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza, who murdered 20 children and six adults in 2012 — and she thought killing the boy “would resurrect him from the dead,” according to court documents.
After they were arrested, Valdez and Lippert were caught on camera cracking cringey jokes about the murder plot in the back of a police car.
Valdez told her best friend she wanted to wear makeup to look attractive in her mugshot, but couldn’t find any that morning, according to court documents.
“Valdez then said ‘At least they will see me in the mugshot some way or another,’” — suggesting that they would become famous in the true crime community, according to the report.
They also joked about becoming a “lesbian couple in jail.”
Both teens are charged with attempted first-degree murder.
