Sign up for essential news about El Paso. Delivered to your inbox — completely free.
This is the second of a two-part series on issues defense attorneys might have raised if Patrick Crusius had gone to trial for the 2019 Walmart mass shooting. Previously: Patrick Crusius believed he was fulfilling Trump’s wishes in El Paso attack, his attorney says
Patrick Crusius showed symptoms of mental illness beginning in childhood, culminating in a “psychotic event” that led him to kill 23 people and wound 22 others in a 2019 mass shooting in El Paso, his defense attorney told El Paso Matters.
“We had found out that virtually from birth, there’s been documentation of his mental illness. He had a twin sister [and] it was very clear that he did not develop as quickly as she did, with his ability to speak, with his ability to walk, with his ability to crawl, his ability to communicate,” defense attorney Joe Spencer said in an interview Tuesday, the day District Attorney James Montoya announced he wouldn’t seek the death penalty in the mass killing.
“We also have both of his parents that have a history of mental illness and have been on antipsychotic medication for over 40 years,” Spencer said.
He said defense lawyers raised mental health issues to block attempts to put Crusius to death, not to excuse his violent actions.
“Certainly, the mental health issues he has is not an excuse for his conduct, but it is part of his life that he grew up with and part of his family, who also suffers from mental illness. That is a contributing factor to the horrific carnage that Patrick caused,” Spencer said.
With the death penalty off the table, Crusius is expected to plead guilty April 21 to state charges of capital murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He will be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole.
Crusius also faces 90 consecutive life terms in federal prison after guilty pleas to weapons and hate crime charges.
The guilty plea and sentencing will bring an end to a court process that has moved at a slow pace since Crusius drove 10 hours from his home in the suburban North Texas town of Allen on Aug. 3, 2019, and opened fire outside and inside the Walmart next to Cielo Vista Mall.
The attack — which Crusius said in an online screed was meant to stop “the Hispanic invasion of Texas” — shattered a predominately Latino community with an extended history of low crime rates.
Although the broad outlines of the attack are well known, much of the detail has never been shared with the public because no trial was ever held, and police records remain off-limits to the public and media as long as criminal charges are pending.
Spencer, one of the three primary attorneys representing Crusius in federal and state court, has spoken sparingly about the case outside of courtrooms. He agreed to an interview with El Paso Matters on Tuesday, when 409th District Judge Sam Medrano lifted a gag order he had imposed on lawyers in the case in 2022.
In the interview, he detailed Crusius’ mental health history, his radicalization in the online world of white supremacist extremism, his purchase of a semiautomatic rifle, and his decision to wreak unspeakable terror on El Paso.
Crusius’ mental health history would have played a key role if a jury had been asked to decide whether to sentence him to death. Jurors would have been asked to decide whether his mental health history would be a “mitigating factor” that would lead to his life being spared.
In a news conference Tuesday, Montoya said he believed that prosecutors could have convinced a jury to sentence Crusius to death but added that a single juror could have objected and forced a life sentence. He said the process could take years, and most families of those killed who he spoke to since taking office in January favored a quick resolution to a criminal case that had already dragged on for more than five years.
“I feel confident we would have succeeded in obtaining a death verdict had we gotten to that point. We just don’t know how much longer that would have taken,” Montoya said.
Spencer said the defense was prepared to argue that Crusius’ life should be spared because of his extensive mental health history.
At a federal sentencing in 2023, Spencer and the prosecution said Crusius had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a mental health condition characterized by auditory and visual hallucinations and mood disorders. Most people with schizophrenia are not violent, mental health experts say, but the illness can increase the chance of violence in some people.
Spencer said Crusius had not history of violence prior to the mass shooting.
“We hired several psychiatrists and psychologists. They did evaluations on Patrick to make a determination as to what his current state is. We even hired a forensic psychiatrist who is typically a government witness, because we wanted to have someone that is not defense-oriented or someone that the prosecution might claim was bought and sold by the defense,” he said.
“That is a singular, isolated incident, psychotic event that Patrick had,” Spencer said.
He said there never was a question of Crusius’ guilt in the attack.
“One of the first things he said, besides telling me he’s not a racist, is, ‘Why do I need a lawyer? I’m guilty.’ And he wanted to immediately plead. But I said, ‘Patrick we’ve got to wait. You can’t plead to the death penalty, and you can’t plead guilty at an arraignment.’ That’s what he wanted to do,” Spencer said.
The defense attorney had said repeatedly in court that Crusius would quickly plead guilty if prosecutors would agree not to seek a death sentence. Federal prosecutors agreed to do so in 2023, but former district attorneys Yvonne Rosales and Bill Hicks would not take him up on the offer. Montoya, who took office in January, agreed to do so.
Spencer said he has seen no evidence that anyone else was involved in the attack, which was captured by several security cameras in the Walmart.
Motive for the shooting
Shortly before walking into the Walmart, Crusius posted what he called a “manifesto” on 8Chan, an online chat platform that attracted white supremacists and white nationalists. Spencer said Crusius’ family was skeptical he had the ability to write such a document, but the attorney believes he largely copied the text from other sources.
“This attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas,” the manifesto said.
The tropes Crusius cited in his manifesto — that immigration constituted an invasion, and that large-scale migration was part of a “great replacement” of white people with Latinos and other immigrants — were largely confined in 2019 to dark corners of the internet frequented by white nationalist extremists.
But in the years since, those views have become more mainstream. A 2024 poll by the University of Massachusetts found that 73% of self-identified Republicans believed one of the key tenets of the great replacement theory, that “some elected officials want to increase immigration in order to bring in obedient voters who will vote for them.”
An NPR/IPSOS Poll earlier this year found that 80% of Republican voters believe the United States is experiencing an invasion at the southern border.
Montoya said hatred of Latinos drove Crusius to attack El Paso.
“I think he is filled with hate in his heart. I think that the beliefs that he harbors that motivated him to come here and commit the worst terrorist attacks against Latinos, against Hispanics in the United States, I think that is what makes him dangerous, harboring those beliefs,” the district attorney said.
Spencer said he doesn’t believe Crusius is a racist, but that he was radicalized by online exposure to white nationalist extremism beginning in late 2018 or early 2019. He said evidence gathered by the FBI found that Crusius was involved in extremist online forums such as 4Chan and 8Chan.
“He lived in this little world of his computer, and he got on some of those channels that are what I call the dark web. He didn’t have a friend. He didn’t have a girlfriend. He lived in that computer,” the attorney said.
Spencer said Crusius was a lurker in the chats.
“Although he never engaged with any conversation with them, he did read it. He was there. His whole world was in his computer because he just was socially in it,” he said.
Those conversations, as well as statements by President Trump about immigration, led to the El Paso massacre, Spencer said.
The gun
In June 2019, after five or six months immersed in white nationalist hate sites, Crusius purchased a Romanian-made semiautomatic rifle online and had it delivered to a gun store in his hometown of Allen, according to court records. The weapon was a WASR-10, the civilian version of an AK-47-style rifle used by the Romanian military.
Crusius was 20 at the time, and the legal age for purchasing a rifle in Texas is 18.
Crusius was living with his mother, who became concerned when she learned he had purchased a rifle, Spencer said.
“As soon as it comes to his house and his mother realizes he ordered this AK-47, she calls the Allen Police Department. … And she tells the Allen Police Department, 'My son is mentally ill. My son should not have this rifle. Could you all come and get it?' ” the attorney said.
Lawyers for the Crusius family have said the mother was told by police that it was legal for him to own the weapon. The lawyers also said the mother was concerned about her son owning the weapon because of his age, maturity level and lack of experience handling such a firearm. She did not tell the police her name or her son’s name.
Spencer said the gun was a source of tension in the house, and the mother kicked out the son.
“He goes to his grandfather’s house. His grandfather tells him, ‘I’m going to give you three choices, Patrick. I will buy the rifle from you; you will send the rifle back; or you will turn it over to the police department. But if you’re going to keep the rifle, you are not going to stay here,’” the attorney said.
“Patrick said he was going to keep the rifle, and his father thought it was a good bonding experience, so he moves in with his father, who’s unstable,” Spencer said.
When he turned 21 on July 27, 2019, Crusius wrote a note “and tells his family that he expects that he’s going to die. And that to forgive him for what he’s going to do,” his attorney said.
“Then we know shortly after that, he came down here.”
El Paso is a 650-mile drive from Allen. North Texas, where Crusius lived, featured numerous immigrant communities that he could have targeted. Border communities like Eagle Pass and Laredo were 200 miles closer to his home. So why attack El Paso?
“He thought that if he left Allen, Texas, and he came to El Paso, then his family would never know what he did,” Spencer said. “So that tells you how naive he is and … [the] confusion that he had in his brain as to how he thought he could just drive to El Paso and nobody in Texas would know.”