She Was 13. She'd Been Inside This World Since She Was 8.
A week after her birthday, Audree was dead.
Her mother didn't know why – not until a detective called to say Audree's journal was filled with drawings of school shooters. Not until she searched TikTok and recognized her daughter's artwork everywhere. Not until she learned that the online world her artistic, funny, guitar-playing daughter had been living in for five years had a name.
The True Crime Community. The TCC.
The TCC is one of the most dangerous pipelines operating right now – and most parents have never heard of it.
A Fandom Built Around Killers
It's not an organization. There's no leader, no membership card, no political ideology. Researchers call it nihilistic violent extremism – a fandom built around mass killers, driven by hatred of humanity and a hunger for notoriety.
The Columbine shooting gave this world a look and a feel. Members dress like shooters, draw fan art of them, and celebrate them the way other teenagers celebrate musicians. The community has migrated from Tumblr to TikTok, where a hand making an "OK" sign paired with a photo of boots signals TCC membership – and comment sections do the recruiting.
When a new shooting happens, the perpetrator often becomes the next idol. After the December 2024 shooting at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, the 15-year-old shooter became a figure the community celebrated – and three more school shootings in Tennessee, Minnesota, and Colorado followed. Each attack feeds the next.
Since January 2024, researchers have linked TCC to at least 25 attacks or disrupted plots. The FBI reported a 300% increase in this kind of extremism between late 2024 and late 2025. And this week, a school shooting in Argentina was directly tied to TCC by government officials, who said it had nothing to do with bullying – only membership in an international online subculture. This isn't an American problem anymore.
The Signs Are There – Parents Just Don't Know What They're Looking At
There is no recruitment script. No one knocks on your door. Your child doesn't come home saying she joined an extremist group. She asks for a T-shirt. She draws something in her notebook you don't recognize. She uses a username that sounds random.
One mother – Audree's mother – didn't just miss the signs. She helped create them. She made custom T-shirts for her daughter printed with logos tied to the Columbine killers. She had no idea what they meant. "I wanted to vomit," she said when she found out.
These communities target kids who are struggling – isolated, anxious, looking for somewhere to fit in. According to de-radicalization expert Allizandra Herberhold of Parents for Peace, about 95% of TCC participants never harm anyone else – they are far more likely to hurt themselves. This is a self-harm crisis as much as a violence crisis.
One more thing most parents don't know: TCC is roughly half girls, half boys – unusual for any extremist group. Girls often find their way in through online eating disorder communities. Boys typically come in through gore forums. If you think only boys are at risk, you're missing half the picture.
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A Phone Call Can Stop It
In January, an Indiana mother called the sheriff after noticing something wrong with her 17-year-old daughter. Investigators found the girl had recorded a walkthrough video of her school and was planning an attack with people she'd met online. The mother's call stopped it.
Another mother, Heather Dioneff, watched her daughter Lilyanna get pulled into the TCC world. Lilyanna idolized killers, wrote a manifesto, and made a list of people she wanted to hurt at school. She eventually told a therapist. The therapist called for help. Lilyanna was hospitalized before anything happened.
Two different families. Two different paths. Same result – someone paid attention and made the call.
The warning signs are about looks, not words. Watch for fixation on specific shooters, drawings of killers, references to Columbine, or usernames and symbols you don't understand. If something confuses you – a meme, a post, an image – search it before you react.
Monitor private channels, not just public profiles. Discord needs close attention. Experts say don't allow children on Telegram at all – it's full of violent and exploitative content.
Don't wait until you're sure. Parents for Peace runs a confidential helpline for families worried about where a child is headed. Their number is 1-844-49-PEACE. No judgment. No obligation. The Anti-Defamation League has sent TCC research to more than 16,000 schools and offers guidance on what to look for. Lawmakers have also introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime to push children toward self-harm – a step in the right direction.
The Adults Closest to These Kids Don't Know What to Look For
We have systems for identifying jihadist radicalization. We are building them for domestic extremism. We have almost nothing in place for this threat at the school and community level. The most sustainable fix, researchers say, is treating this like a public health problem – reduce what makes young people vulnerable before an attack happens, not just respond after. That means youth mental health investment, school-based threat assessment training, and making sure the counselors, coaches, and pediatricians who see these kids every day know what they're looking at.
That gap is where children are dying.
The mothers in that CNN story aren't asking for sympathy. They're asking for accountability – from platforms, from policymakers, and from a public that keeps acting surprised by attacks that researchers saw coming.
Kids are going to seek out secret worlds. That instinct is human – it's the same one that draws them to spy stories, adventure novels, and tales of people who matter and belong to something bigger than themselves. The question is who finds them first and what world they're handed when they arrive.
Resources:
- Parents for Peace confidential helpline: 1-844-49-PEACE | parents4peace.org
- ADL Center on Extremism: adl.org
- K-12 School Shooting Database: k12ssdb.org
- If you or someone you know is in crisis: call or text 988
