Winder, Georgia
CNN
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While searching the home of the 14-year-old accused of killing four people at a Georgia high school, authorities this week found documents they believe he wrote relating to previous school shootings, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN.

The source said the writings were discovered in suspect Colt Gray’s bedroom and contained references to the 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida.

Live updates: The latest on the Georgia high school shooting

The discovery, which could shed more light on the motive for the shooting, comes as an increasingly clear account of Gray’s turbulent family life in the years before the fatal attack emerges through a CNN review of court and police records, social media posts and an interview with his grandfather.

Gray’s parents have had a bitter separation and custody battle in recent years. They called the police on each other, the family was evicted from at least one home and Gray’s mother was arrested for scratching her husband’s car and possessing drugs, police records show.

At the same time, Gray’s mother and maternal grandfather accused Gray’s father of verbally abusing his family for years.

“He was just a good kid, but he lived in a hostile environment,” Charles Polhamus said in an interview with CNN about his grandson Gray. “His father beat him, I don’t mean physically, but with screaming and yelling, and he did the same thing to my daughter.”

The grandfather said he never saw any aggression problems in the victim, but the turbulent family life had affected the teenager.

To understand the suspected shooter’s motive, investigators are now examining his family’s previous contacts with the state’s child welfare agency, the director of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday.

Attempts to reach both of the suspect’s parents for comment on Wednesday and Thursday were unsuccessful.

Gray’s parents’ relationship began promisingly. In July 2011, shortly after his birth, his parents bought a small farm in Barrow County, Georgia, outside the college town of Athens. They planned to “start a nonprofit, therapeutic riding school for underprivileged local children,” his mother, Marcee Gray, who worked as an industrial engineer, later wrote in a LinkedIn post.

But those plans were partially thwarted because her husband, Colin Gray, had at least three “major” back surgeries, she wrote. The couple, who had three children, later sold the farm in 2019, land records show.

After moving, the family faced lawsuits from several landlords and was evicted from a home by a county sheriff’s deputy in July 2022 for failing to pay rent, court records show. As part of the eviction, sheriff’s records show, deputies collected three firearms, including an AR-15, and at least one hunting bow and kept them for safekeeping. The weapons were later “returned to the owner,” the documents say.

Later that year, Marcee Gray wrote on social media that she had left her husband.

“Finally separated from my abusive husband after almost 14 years,” she wrote in a LinkedIn comment on a December 2022 post. “Hardest thing I’ve ever done, but we are in good hands.”

“I packed up my things and moved back to my hometown in southern Georgia with my babies,” Gray added in another post in May 2023. “We are all doing well and my kids are doing well.”

That same month, however, law enforcement officials investigated 13-year-old Colt Gray in connection with a school shooting threat. Investigators with the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office questioned Colt and his father about a threat made on the online chat platform Discord to commit a school shooting, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

Colt Gray denied making the threat, an investigative report said. A Discord spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday that the platform deleted an account “believed to be associated with Gray” in May 2023 for violating Discord’s anti-extremism policies.

Colin Gray told investigators he had hunting rifles in the house and that “Colt was allowed to use them under supervision but did not have unrestricted access to them,” the report said. The case was later dismissed because the tip-off could not be substantiated.

In his interview, Colin Gray told investigators that he had separated from his wife, who had taken their two younger children. The suspect’s father said that Colt – the oldest of three siblings – had “some problems” at a middle school in Jackson County, but had since transferred to another school and “things have gotten much better,” one of the investigators wrote.

Gray was only enrolled in the Jackson County School District between February and August 2022, said Edward Hooper, the district’s spokesman. Jackson County is next to Barrow County, where Colt Gray is accused of killing two classmates and two teachers at Apalachee High School.

In October 2023, Barrow County Sheriff’s officials responded to a well-being check on the Gray family after Marcee Gray reported that she had not heard from her husband or children in two weeks. Colin Gray, who was at her residence, said all of her children were with him, a sheriff’s official wrote in a report.

Colin Gray gave the deputy a document from the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services that stated that “a safety plan had been created that allowed him to have the children with him” and that Marcee Gray “was not allowed to see them without supervision,” the deputy wrote.

A spokeswoman for the Georgia Department of Human Services said Thursday she could not comment on the case due to confidentiality laws. However, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said at a news conference Wednesday that the bureau knows the department has had “some prior contact” with the Gray family before, and “we are pursuing that avenue as well to see if that has any connection to today’s incident.”

In November 2023, Colin Gray called police and accused his wife of scratching a truck he drove for his job at a construction company and writing “abuse” and “liar” on it, according to a sheriff’s report.

Two days later, police arrested Marcee Gray at a Walmart in Winder on a warrant from another county. Police found methamphetamine, fentanyl, painkillers and a glass pipe in her car, and she and another man who was in the vehicle were arrested, another sheriff’s report said.

After her arrest, Marcee Gray admitted to scratching her husband’s truck and said she “freaked out” when he wouldn’t allow her to see their children, the report said.

Marcee Gray pleaded guilty the following month to criminal damage, trespassing – domestic violence and using a license plate to conceal her identity and was sentenced to a total of five months probation after spending more than a month in custody. As part of her guilty plea, she was barred from contact with her husband except through a third party for divorce and custody negotiations.

A friend of Marcee Gray, who wishes to remain anonymous for privacy reasons, told CNN that the legal difficulties she faced “were not the Marcee we know,” calling her a “kind, caring and smart woman” who has changed.

“Something went wrong in this relationship,” the friend said.

According to Polhamus, Marcee Gray’s father, she lost custody of her children after failing a drug test, moved back in with her parents in South Georgia and is now entering rehab.

Polhamus said he never thought his grandson would be capable of such a deadly attack.

“I understand that Colt chose to do what he did, and I understand that he has to pay for it,” he said. “But I’m telling you, the environment that he lived in … if you put someone in that situation for 10 or 11 years, guess what’s going to happen? Nothing good.”

CNN’s Isabelle Chapman contributed reporting.