During his senior year of high school, Connor Betts seemed to always have caffeine pills in one hand and an energy drink in another. He was unable to sleep, he told his then-girlfriend Lyndsi Doll, because of dark, animal-like shadows that tormented him at night.

Seven years after they dated, Doll recalls Betts as a serious and reserved kid who wrestled with hallucinations and menacing voices in his head.

While they were in high school, Betts told Doll that he had suffered from psychosis since he was young and feared developing schizophrenia…

But Doll said she always knew that something was “off” about Betts. When she enrolled at Bellbrook High School her sophomore year, she heard stories about a “hit list” that Betts had compiled with names of people he wanted to kill. As she got to know him, her friends grew wary and warned her of Betts’s tumultuous past relationships. They told her he had pushed one ex-girlfriend into a roaring river and had screamed at another while pinning her against a wall.