Court documents released on Friday revealed a note that read, "I hate you all," was found with the body of 24-year-old Danvers High School math teacher Colleen Ritzer, the Associated Press reported.
Ritzer's body was found on Oct. 22 in woods behind the high school after one of her students, 14-year-old Philip Chism, allegedly killed her by slitting her throat before placing her body inside a recycling bin and leaving the body in the woods behind the school, the AP reported.
Ritzer, who was by all accounts a popular math teacher at the high school, was reported missing after she did not return home that night. Her body was later found naked from the waist down covered partly with leaves with her throat slit and the note, according to the AP.
The 14-year-old soccer star had recently moved to Danvers, Massachusetts from Tennessee at the start of the school year. According to this mother, the family had been through a bad divorce, the AP reported. Chism is being charged with murder, aggravated rape and armed robbery and is being held without bail.
Authorities have not released a motive or autopsy results, but officials said Ritzer's body was sexually positioned and had been molested with a stick, the AP reported.
A student who also stayed after class for extra help the day the murder took place said she heard Ritzer and Chism talking about Tennessee, and Chism became visibly upset and started talking to himself, according to AP news. After Ritzer realized her student did not want to talk about the subject, she moved on to another.
Surveillance videos from inside the school shows Ritzer walking in to the bathroom and Chism wearing a hooded sweater and putting on gloves as he followed her into the bathroom, according to the court documents, the AP reported.
The documents also state a box cutter, gloves, mask and multiple pieces of clothing were found in Chism's book bag the day of the murder, according to the AP. Court documents present a timeline which may indicate a student witness walked into the bathroom while Ritzer and Chism were inside, the AP reported.
The surveillance video shows a female student walking into the bathroom, but quickly walking out. The student, who must remain unknown, said she saw a dark-skinned person changing clothes before walking out.
On the surveillance video, Chism is seen walking out a minute after the female student did wearing a hood over his head. Nine minutes later he walks back into the bathroom with a recycling bin, and then proceeds to drag the recycling bin, now stuffed with Ritzer's body, through the school and out into the woods.
Chism was later picked up by an officer in a neighboring town walking on a highway around 12:30 a.m., according to AP. After looking in his backpack, the officer found Ritzer's credit cards and license and a blood-stained box cutter.
When asked where it came from, Chism replied, "The girl," and also told the officer he took the credit cards and licenses from Ritzer's car, the AP reported.
Chism lived with his mother, aunt and two siblings in a house where authorities took a dell computer, papers, and two USB drives, according to the AP. Chism's mother, Diana, filed for divorce in 2001. She then supervised any time her son and younger daughters had with their father due to "prior physical and emotional abuse as well as alcohol abuse," according to the divorce documents, the AP reported.
Diana released a statement through her son's attorney shortly after the murder expressing how heartbroken she was for the entire Ritzer family, the AP reported.
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