Lindsay Souvannarath
Lindsay Souvannarath
Lindsay Kantha Souvannarath is a resident of Geneva, Illinois. In April 2018 she was sentenced to life in prison for her role in the Halifax Mass Shooting Plot. She and her boyfriend, James Gamble planned to commit a mass shooting at a mall in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada after killing Gamble's parents and losing their virginity together.
Early Life
Photo of Lindsay Souvannarath in lingerie
In high school, Lindsay Souvannarath was known as quiet, clean cut, and weird according to former friends.
She wore yellow high heels and bright lipstick to class at her middle-class high school in suburban Chicago. She joined a role-playing game club that focused on Dungeons and Dragons, liked creative writing and contributed to the year book.
Later Souvannarath became obsessed with Nazism and embraced a "school shooter chic" aesthetic, as described in what appears to be her Tumblr blog featuring a pink swastika.
"When we heard the news that she got arrested at the airport for what she was planning on doing, none of us were surprised," Sabrina Szigeti, a former friend, said in an interview from Aurora, Illinois.
In high school, she said Souvannarath displayed a "creepy" interest in Nazis.
"I met Lindsay in the role playing club in my high school," Szigeti said.
"We played Dungeons and Dragons and that sort of thing."
She said Souvannarath made other students uncomfortable when she insisted on playing a Nazi ghost.
"Most of us would play gentle giants and elves," she said.
"It was really weird."
Szigeti said there were other clues she was troubled, such as comments she made that "stupid people deserved to die."
"She was in my writing club and her writing was so violent and gory and visceral," she said.
However, Szigeti said she was "very quiet in class" and that "none of the teachers could have known" how disturbed she was when she graduated in 2010.
Education
In 2014, Lindsay Souvannarath graduated from Coe College, a liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing.
Criminal History
Lindsay Souvannarath arrives at provincial court in Halifax on March 6, 2015.
Souvannarath uploaded this Nazi emblem sketch to social media in 2013
Lindsay Souvannarath's suicide note
Lindsay Souvannarath arrives at court in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, on 6 March 2015.
Photo of Lindsay Souvannarath's boyfriend and co-conspirator James Gamble
On Friday, April 20, 2018 Lindsay Souvannarath was sentenced to life in prison. She will serve at least 10 years before she is eligible for parole.
Lindsay Souvannarath pleaded guilty in 2017 to conspiracy to commit murder in the Halifax Mass Shooting Plot that would have seen two shooters open fire at the Halifax Shopping Centre food court in 2015.
Lindsay Souvannarath and James Gamble met on Tumblr and for a month before the planned attack, discussed their mutual fascination with the Columbine High School Massacre and Nazis on Facebook. On the day of the attack, the pair planned to first kill his parents then have sex and then attack the mall.
An agreed statement of facts presented to court said Souvannarath saw herself as racially and intellectually superior and "expressed her belief that she is a sex goddess with superior intellect who is entitled to cull the inferior," and that "racial and ethnic realities must be righted through violence."
Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Peter Rosinski told the court she is and will remain a danger to public safety.
The judge said Souvannarath has not expressed remorse for her murderous plot, nor has she renounced her ideological motivations for the conspiracy.