Read more coverage of the Lewiston shootings.
Robert R. Card II’s suicide note, scrawled sometime before he took his own life after committing the worst mass shooting in Maine’s history, was short. In 50 handwritten words apparently meant for a loved one, he listed his phone password and said to enjoy life.
“Don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story,” Card wrote. “I guess I just wanted to play cornhole with my hot girlfriend and be left the (expletive) alone.”
Card’s note was among the more than 3,000 pages of documents Maine State Police compiled into a virtual database and released Friday — at least for a time, before the files were removed. A spokesperson for the Maine Department of Public Safety said the site “experienced technical difficulties,” was taken down; it would return by 5 p.m. Monday, according to the state.
Many of the documents already have been public through press releases, responses to records requests, and presentations during government hearings following the Oct. 25 rampage in which Card killed 18 people at a bar and a bowling alley and wounded more than a dozen others in Lewiston.
A massive two-day manhunt ended when authorities found Card dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The new documents include hundreds upon hundreds of pages of police reports from local departments, state police, and federal authorities.
In raw and chilling detail, some of the reports detail the circumstances police faced when responding to the crime scenes.
One officer described desperate survivors screaming for help as he searched for the shooter.
“They grab at our legs and try to stop us and we can not help them,” wrote Lewiston Officer Keith Caouette. “We have to walk by and continue to search and hope they are alive when we come back around.”
Another police officer’s first instinct was that an act of domestic terrorism had been committed, underscored by the heavy police presence and flashing blue lights. “I truly felt like we were at war,” Auburn Lieutenant Steven Gosselin wrote.
Also included is a quick profile that the FBI Boston’s Crisis Negotiation Team had created in case they entered into a standoff with Card.
The profile mentions “an ex-girlfriend who dumped him, is in a bowling league, and was supposed to be at (the bowling alley) on the night of 10/25/23.” The profile says she broke up with him and was not there at the time of the shooting “but easily could have been.”
It also speaks of an interview with a friend whose name is redacted but who was at the shooting range with Card “just a few hours before the shootings.” The friend “expressed concern for Card’s mental state” before the friend left due to Card’s erratic behavior, according to the brief summary in the FBI report.
The documents also include more than 100 pages of 911 call transcripts.
“There’s a shooter at the bowling alley in Lewiston,” someone says in what appears to be the first call, at around 6:55 p.m. on Oct. 25.
Police reports run through the timeline that followed, a sequence of events that’s been analyzed countless times in the months since. Card, armed with a high-powered rifle, gunned down patrons at the Just-in-Time bowling alley before driving across town to Schemengees, a bar where he’d previously taken part in a cornhole league with a girlfriend. He continued his killing there before fleeing.
One police report from a Cumberland County sheriff’s deputy quotes a survivor of the bar shooting saying he had played cornhole in the league with Card. He said Card was shy, and “in his own little world ... but not in a bad or awkward way.” They’d occasionally drink a beer there after, but just make some small talk.
Police found Card’s Subaru Outback near a boat launch in neighboring Lisbon within hours of the shooting, but they didn’t find his body for two more days.
Card was found dead in a tractor-trailer in a parking lot of the recycling plant where he previously worked. In the hours and days after the shooting, authorities had to wade through myriad faulty tips including a TikTok account in which someone claiming to be Card spoke through an audio filter, the documents show.
Card, a 40-year-old firearms instructor in the Army Reserve, had been exhibiting strange and increasingly delusional behavior since around February 2023. Multiple people in his life raised concerns to authorities that he was growing increasingly paranoid and had access to weapons. At various times, at least 25 police officers were alerted by family members, or Army colleagues, about Card’s erratic behavior and his rantings about shooting people. Still, he was able to keep his guns.
His ex-wife and his son first reported their concerns to police in May 2023. In July, some of his fellow reservists called New York State Police while they were at training at United States Military Academy at West Point. The reservists said he was making concerning statements and accusing them of saying he was a pedophile. After that, police escorted Card to a mental hospital, where he spent a couple of weeks before being released to a friend who took him back to Maine.
On Sept. 16, at the request of reservists, Sagadahoc sheriff’s deputies tried to speak with Card at his home in Bowdoin, Maine. Although they could hear someone moving around inside, no one answered the door. The deputies phoned Card’s commanding officer in the Army Reserve, who told them he felt it was best to leave Card “to himself for a bit,” according to previous reports. So they backed off without directly confronting him or seeking to invoke the state’s “yellow flag” law to take away his guns.
In March, a state commission investigating the shootings found law enforcement had plainly failed in its duty to try to stop Card from doing what he had said loud and clear he might do. Local police failed to take Card into protective custody, the commission said in the report, and delegated the job of securing Card’s weapons to his own family — which the report said “was an abdication of law enforcement’s responsibility.”
Sagadahoc Sheriff Joel Merry has maintained that his deputies acted appropriately given what they knew at the time.
Card’s paranoid behavior continued. One store to which Card made bread deliveries in the months before the shooting told police Card said out of the blue in the weeks before the shootings, “I’m not gay or a pedophile, but just show me where the bread goes,” according to the police report in the trove of documents. A person at the store, according to the documents, said that on Oct. 19, Card appeared to be hearing voices.
He said he knew they were talking about him, the report said, and, “maybe you will be the ones I snap on.”
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report.
Sean Cotter can be reached at sean.cotter@globe.com. Follow him @cotterreporter.