Her daughter died after falling in with online extremists who idolize school shooters. Now, she's warning other parents.

Thirteen-year-old Audree loved to play Nirvana on guitar, draw anime characters and read the series "Spy School," her mother, Jaimee Seitz said.

"She had her own personality, her own hobbies, her own everything," said Seitz, who lives in Kentucky. "Audree was one of a kind."

A week after her 13th birthday, Audree died by suicide. "I never believed ever my child would take her life," said Seitz. "I believed it was an accident."

Days later, a detective called Seitz to tell her that Audree's journal contained drawings of school shooters. On Roblox, Discord and TikTok, she had been interacting with children and adults in the online True Crime Community, or TCC, who glorify mass shooters and encourage violence and self-harm. Seitz said Audree was only 8 years old when she was first exposed to TCC.

"I think she felt a sense of comfort with this group, with being a part of something, and I believe that they pushed her to do it," Seitz said.

Extremism experts classify TCC as a subculture of nihilistic violent extremism, in which participants are not motivated by a particular ideology but instead driven by a generally misanthropic worldview. Some are driven by a desire to achieve notoriety within online communities through violence or self harm, while others target and exploit vulnerable individuals.

The FBI has seen a 300% increase in nihilistic violent extremism cases from September 2024 to September 2025, according to FBI Director Kash Patel. In December, Patel wrote on X that the FBI is pursuing hundreds of nihilistic violent extremism cases, including many from another network called 764. 

"This is one of the most serious issues in America," Patel wrote on X.

The FBI confirmed to CBS News that it had been in touch with Audree's family, but declined to comment further on her case or answer general inquiries about nihilistic violent extremism. 

"It's something that was so mind blowing — that it started at such a young age and that she was groomed into this ideology of worshipping school shooters, " Seitz said. "It's hard to wrap your head around."

What is TCC?

People who identify as being a part of TCC become fascinated with mass killers and develop fan-like behaviors, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works toward solutions to combat extremism.

While the fixation on high-profile killers predates the internet, the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 ushered in a new era of fandom. 

"We've seen this behavior with respect to serial killers and to mass shooters going back well before Columbine, Cody Zoschak, a senior manager at the institute, told CBS News. "What Columbine did was it gave it a distinct aesthetic."

TCC fans substitute aesthetics for ideology, according to researchers — such as dressing in perpetrators' style and taking up their interests, like favorite songs, rather than adopting their particular motivations.

Online, those active in the TCC share violent "gore" videos, create and commission fan art of mass shooters and sometimes interact with people plotting attacks, said David Riedman, an assistant professor at Idaho State University who created a database to track school shootings.

Illustrations, video edits and photo collages romanticizing and sympathizing with perpetrators of the Columbine, Virginia Tech and Sandy Hook school shootings are easy to find in TCC-tagged posts on platforms including Tumblr, TikTok and X. The community is considered niche — CBS News identified posts on these platforms with "likes" ranging in the thousands. 

Riedman said few people in TCC circles will actually go on to commit acts of violence. But a small portion do, with devastating consequences. 

Seven recent shootings in U.S. K-12 schools have been linked to TCC, according to Riedman's data. Eleven people were killed and 53 more were injured in the attacks, which took place over the last two years. Five of the shooters took their own lives as well. 

Just last month, police charged a 17-year-old in Indiana linked to TCC who was allegedly plotting to carry out an attack. A search of her phone revealed a drawing of the Columbine perpetrators and screenshots from a Discord conversation between her and a friend who encouraged her to livestream an attack, an affidavit obtained by CBS News alleged.

When people active in the TCC carry out shootings, they sometimes become new idols within the community and inspire more violence. The 15-year-old girl behind the December 2024 shooting that killed a teacher and a student at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, is one example. 

A month later, a Tennessee teenager she followed on X shot a student in his school and then himself. Posts from an X account believed to be his encouraged her to livestream the Wisconsin attack, CBS News found. In the days after, he posted defending her and calling her a hero. 

In August and September, two more individuals linked to TCC, one in Minnesota and another in Colorado, carried out deadly school shootings before killing themselves. The Colorado perpetrator posted on violent gore sites about previous shootings, the Anti-Defamation League found. YouTube videos posted by the Minnesota perpetrator and reviewed by CBS News showed written references to school shooters — including the name of the Abundant Life perpetrator — on his weapons and a journal.

The perpetrator behind the Abundant Life shooting "wanted that notoriety," Zoschak said. 

"It was about her," he added. While ideologically motivated violence aims to have an effect on society, he said, "nihilistic violence is about fulfilling an inward-focused need."

How children get pulled in 

TCC can hold an appeal for young people who are experiencing bullying or feel like they don't identify with other kids, Riedman said. 

"You start to meet people that will like all of your photos and will share your content and are inviting you to come to their private chats," Riedman said. "Now you have this community that you don't have anywhere else."

Seitz said she believes Audree may have been drawn to the group for its embrace of kids who feel alienated from their classmates.

"It was hard for her to find her spot in seventh grade," she said. 

Seth, 29, was a part of the TCC community and ran a Columbine blog on Tumblr when he was a teenager. He told CBS News he was struggling with mental illness at the time and identified with the perpetrators of school shootings.

"I was very angry, and so it's like, oh, OK, here are these people who are angry," said Seth, who asked that his last name be withheld. "They're doing something about it."

A spokesperson for Tumblr wrote in a statement that the platform "does not allow content that encourages or incites violence or that glorifies acts of violence or the perpetrators."

Seitz wants social media platforms to face accountability. Despite enabling parental controls on Audree's phone, she said, her daughter was steeped in TCC content for years. This fall, she filed suit against Roblox, Discord and TikTok. 

The complaint alleges that the apps prioritize user growth over safety and that they are aware that "the design of their apps makes children easy targets for predatory behavior."

In statements to CBS News, spokespeople from each platform wrote that the companies employ technologies to detect harmful content and remove what violates their policies. A Roblox spokesperson said the platform bans "content or behavior that supports, glorifies, or promotes hate groups, extremist organizations, or their ideologies." A Discord spokesperson said "the actions of extremist groups or extremism behavior have no place on Discord."

After CBS News inquired about several TCC-related hashtags, TikTok removed one of them from the platform. A spokesperson also said accounts that promote or glorify violence are taken down and banned. 

Seitz said she hadn't heard of TCC before Audree's death, and she never heard her daughter talk about school shooters. But TCC references understood by those in the community can fly under the radar of unknowing parents and peers. 

When Seitz searched "True Crime Community" on TikTok after Audree's death, drawings she recognized from her daughter flooded the screen. 

"Everything started to click within not even two minutes," she said.

She realized cartoon illustrations Audree had drawn depicted the Columbine perpetrators. A previous TikTok username of Audree's had referenced one of them. 

There had even been a TCC reference in a T-shirt Audree asked for. The Columbine perpetrators wore T-shirts for a German industrial band. The Wisconsin shooter was pictured in a shirt for the same band, and Audree wanted to wear one too.

After reflecting on the way Audree's phone was positioned when she discovered her after her death, Jaimee also now believes that her daughter was attempting to livestream her suicide — something Zoschak said he has seen before among TCC fans. 

"Whether you think your child is seemingly happy, you never know," Seitz said. "And that's the scary part of it — that's what terrifies me the most."

A new category of extremism 

The misanthropic violence, absent of ideology, exhibited by attackers involved in TCC has been categorized as nihilistic violent extremism — a term that has increasingly appeared in Justice Department announcements of criminal charges across the country.

Some nihilistic violent extremists carry out violence with the goal of hastening the collapse of society — a philosophy known as accelerationism. 

But for most, experts said, their mindset mostly revolves around nihilism — the belief that life and society are meaningless and that moral values are baseless.

In recent months, authorities have taken particular note of the nihilistic violent extremist network 764, with more than 300 investigations into the network ongoing, according to the FBI. 

Similar to TCC, 764 lacks a specific ideology, but members more openly encourage self-harm and violence than those in TCC do. Perpetrators associated with 764 encourage victims to produce videos documenting acts of self-harm or child sexual abuse material. Last month, lawmakers introduced a bill that would make it a federal crime to coerce children into self-harm. 

Nihilistic online communities like TCC and 764 are also often overlapping. 

"They're all aware of each other," Zoschak said. "It's not like these are isolated ecosystems — they interact with each other." 

Matthew Kriner, executive director of the Institute for Countering Digital Extremism, estimates that there are about 10,000 nihilistic violent extremism perpetrators involved in online grooming around the world — and 100,000 victims. He said these extremist networks are constantly growing as members try to recruit more victims, and the law enforcement response is further complicated by the younger age groups involved.

"We do not charge 13-year-old children with adult-level crimes on a regular basis," Kriner said.

Seth, who left TCC after seeking mental health treatment, said it's important for children who feel drawn to the TCC community as an outlet to know that there are other options. 

"I got really into art after I left the community, I got into writing," he said. "That was a dark period of my life, but it doesn't need to define you."