Geneva woman arrested in shooting plot left social media trail

CHICAGO (WLS) -- The ABC7 I-Team investigated a disturbing trail of death messages from Chicago to Canada: Neo-Nazi postings from the prime suspect in a mass murder plot at a shopping mall in Halifax, a 23-year-old woman from Geneva, Ill.

Anyone who followed Lindsay Souvannarath on social media over the past eight years might not have been surprised by her arrest. Last Wednesday, in a typical post, she wrote "Let's go commit mass homicide." On Friday she traveled from Chicago to Halifax to do just that, according to Canadian authorities who took her into custody at the airport. Now investigators there and here are looking for clues in her blatant postings across social media platforms.

At first glance, her Facebook page, Twitter account, Tumblr and other blogs and chat rooms appear like millions of others.

But just below the surface of Souvannarath's cover pages, are disturbing pictures advocating race hatred, an allegiance to Hitler and Nazi beliefs, bizarre photos of herself and others, and what appears to be a fascination with mass killers and their handiwork, especially the Columbine High School shooters and the tools of murder.

Perhaps the most haunting of all the posts from last week: "It's almost here, the clock is ticking. Saturday the 14th. Valentines Day. It's going down."

"Had they been able to carry out their intentions, the possibility for a large loss of life was definitely there," said Brian Brennan, Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Even when she was a student at Coe College in Iowa, one professor has described her writing as containing sick detail. She frequently wrote of death and dying.

She and several charged with her will appear in court on Tuesday in Canada.

Halifax authorities are still trying to figure out why their town was targeted, and whether the obvious signs that trouble might have been coming and could have been caught any earlier.