In order to make sense of the bizarre and horrific crime of accused killer, 19-year-old Florida State University student Austin Harrouff, many are now turning to his social media accounts in the wake of the double murder of a Florida couple Monday night. Although his Facebook account has since been deactivated, Harrouff also maintained a seldom updated Twitter account as well as a YouTube channel that he started just five months ago, with a description ominously reading: “I’ve got a psycho side and a normal side. I’ve lost my mind. Help me find it.”
Of the 54 videos Harrouff posted to his YouTube channel (15 just in the last three weeks), most focus on bodybuilding or music, both karaoke-style covers and his own original rap songs under his alter ego “AustiFrosti.” There are some clues into his violent behavior, however. In one video titled “Vlog- Boat Day,” published on July 13, while getting ready for a fishing trip with his father and some friends, Harrouff walks around his house pointing a semi-automatic pistol from the camera’s point-of-view, with the laser scope trained at the wall. It quickly cuts to another clip of him walking around with a knife in a similar fashion. Additionally, some of his songs and musings also drop hints at violent or unstable behavior.
In the most recent video, posted Aug. 11, Harrouff mused about bodybuilding and frequently discussed steroid use, saying he didn’t need the drug: “I used to think that I needed steroids to be a bodybuilder. To be this thing. To be this symbol. To be this lie.”
In a July 11 rap video titled, “You Do You Freestyle,” he sings: “I’d rather cut using a knife and slit my own throat. I’m like Bugs Bunny, I stick my teeth in because it’s funny. I’m like a Looney Tune, I take a lot of shrooms.”
A toxicology report still has yet to turn up evidence of whether or not Harrouff was under the influence of bath salts or flakka at the time of the killings. But between these social media revelations and claims that the teen thought he had superpowers in the week leading up to the tragedy, it seems apparent that there may have been other factors at play.
(Via Tallahassee Democrat)