Heads or Tails: The Story of Randy Stair and the Weis Market Massacre
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Nothing bad is supposed to happen in those small American towns. Take Eaton Township, Pennsylvania. A small community, about 1,400 strong. Just over two and a half hours north of Philadelphia, people move to towns like Eaton to avoid violent crime. In fact, the crime rate is so low that you'd have to look at Greater Wyoming County to get any data. Even then, a jaywalker or some kid smashing a mailbox might be the worst thing that happens all day.

But as the sun rose on June 8th, 2017, Eaton made statewide headlines for a horrific triple murder and suicide at a local supermarket. Police found a bloodbath when they arrived at the Wise Market off Hunter Highway. Inside, a man wielding two shotguns gunned down his coworkers before taking his own life. The call came in around 1:00 AM. Kristen Newell was trembling in fear as she hid from the gunmen in the bushes outside.

She just watched him murder their coworker, 25-year-old Victoria Braung, an assistant manager at the store. As he straddled her body, the gunman looked up at Kristen and the two locked eyes, waiting for the other to make a move. Then, for reasons she couldn't explain, he moved onto the next aisle, sparing her life. She called 911 and the operator told her to leave the store and to hide, but that was easier said than done.

The gunman had blocked the exits and locked the doors. Trying to escape could force him to change his mind. But Kristen wasn't going to die that night. She broke open one of the doors with all her might and ran into the parking lot. Gunshots echoed through the Pennsylvania night while Kristen hid behind some nearby bushes. Police arrived on the scene, but the gunshots never let up. It sounded like a war zone inside the supermarket until it didn't.

The killer stuck the gun in his mouth and blew his brains out, ending his midnight rampage near the deli department. He fired 59 rounds that night, all of which came from one of two pistol grip pump action shotguns. Several of those rounds ended up in Victoria's chest and back,

A dozen more killed 47-year-old US Navy veteran Brian Hayes and 63-year-old Terry Lee Sterling. The gunman fired the rest of the shells haphazardly around the store, basically shooting anything he didn't like. The final round blew out the back of his head. He never even touched the other gun. Our killer was 24-year-old Randy Stare, perhaps better known as Andrew Blaze to a small YouTube following.

His is the story of unchecked mental illness, of a young man suffering from depression, anxiety, and everything else you can think of. All it took were a pair of ears to tell something was wrong, but nobody gave him the time of day. And while what he did in that supermarket was reprehensible, is there a chance someone could have prevented it? The writing was on the wall if only somebody stopped to read it. Part one, "The Rise of Andrew Blaze."

shy and introverted, two words anybody that knew Randy would use to describe him. He lived a seemingly normal American life with his parents, Bob and Laurie-Anne, and his brother, Jeremy. But he chose to be alone in school, preferring the company of his favorite Nickelodeon cartoons. His favorite was Danny Phantom. One of his high school classmates ran their own YouTube channel. Some of his videos hit over 1,000 views as they went viral around the school.

While those aren't great numbers by today's standards, imagine you're a 15-year-old kid with no friends or means of attention. If he could do it, why couldn't Randy? He enjoyed making short home movies with his handheld camcorder and graduated to YouTube in 2008. He launched his channel, Pioneers Productions, where he posted Let's Plays, vlogs, and sketch comedy routines.

He operated under the stage name Andrew Blaze because famous YouTubers rarely go by their birth names. Just ask Lucas Cruikshank, you might know him as Fred. Randy did have some success, monetizing his channel and making collaboration videos with other small-time YouTubers. The success just wasn't the kind you could live off. All the while, Randy worked at the Wise Market on Hunter Highway, a job he hated more than anything.

He worked the night shift, stocking shelves after hours so the store would be ready when it opened in the morning. But maybe things would turn around. Maybe Randy's story would be like the other YouTubers he looked up to. Maybe if he kept his head down, focused on creating content, and never gave up on his dream, he'd ascend to the top of YouTube stardom. Spoiler alert, he didn't. Part 2: Saved by a Ghost

In Randy's own words, 2013 was the worst year of his life. His teacher pulled him out of class at the beginning of the semester to deliver some heartbreaking news. One of his classmates, 18-year-old Matt Murray, was killed in a car accident on his way to school. Randy and Matt met in a studio production class the semester before. They bonded over film and YouTube and became good friends. Then a month went by and Randy hadn't heard from Matt.

He knew there'd been a deadly car accident. He just didn't know Matt was involved. Death became the theme of 2013. Randy lost a family member and his brother's friend, Tom, died in another car accident on his way to school. Randy himself was involved in a crash that totaled his car and his brother totaled his car 10 days later. Depression got the better of him and Randy's YouTube production fell off a cliff for the first half of 2013.

That's when Randy rediscovered a character from his childhood that had always meant the world to him. Ember McClain is a fictional, guitar-playing ghost girl from the Nickelodeon cartoon Danny Phantom. She wears demonic platform boots, tight black pants, and a matching crop top. She keeps her ghostly blue hair in a large ponytail and carries an electric guitar everywhere she goes.

She's the kind of character a 19-year-old loner who's never been on a date might be drawn to. Her backstory also lined up with Randy's struggles. In the show, Ember is an unpopular high school girl with dreams of becoming a rock star. One day, a boy asks her on a date to the movies. Ember couldn't be more excited. She waits all night at the theater, but the boy never shows up. Defeated, Ember heads home and falls asleep.

She is so tired that she doesn't wake up when her house burns down. Ember is driven by revenge. She hates authority and can act childish at times. She's not afraid to speak her mind or take what she wants. Between his dead friends, his dead car, and his ghostly girlfriend, Randy became obsessed with death. In a live stream from 2014, he went on a long tangent about death and dying, saying, "It doesn't matter what you do. You're gonna die.

You'll end up dead one day. Someone right now is going to sleep. They're going to wake up tomorrow and be dead." Randy told his fans in that same livestream that he wouldn't be around much longer. Randy's videos also took a dark turn. He began killing off his stuffed animal characters in violent blood baths. Randy pretends to hang himself in one post dedicated to Ember and spends the rest of the video with a rope around his neck.

The lighting got darker, the mood got darker, and everything about it screamed, "Somebody help me!" But nobody did. Randy was open about his bouts with depression, though there's no indication that he ever got help. Instead, he spiraled deeper into his unhealthy obsessions.

First, it was Ember. Then it was Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the teenagers who stalked the halls of Columbine High School in 1999, killing 13 and injuring 24 others. Part Three: American Idols. Jillian Peterson and James Densley are two criminal justice professors at their respective universities.

Together, they penned an article in The Conversation, a non-profit, independent news website that published academic articles written by experts in their respective fields.

Their piece centered around Harris and Klebold and how they drew the blueprint for school shooters. In the 20 years after Columbine, Peterson and Densley identified six mass shootings defined by the FBI as an event in which four or more victims died by gunfire and 40 active shooter incidents in elementary, middle or high schools.

In nearly half of those 46 incidents, the shooters used Columbine as a model in one way or another. In fact, the day their article was published and three days before the 20th anniversary, Columbine High School went into lockdown after an 18-year-old girl armed with a shotgun made what authorities called a credible threat.

According to the Denver Post, she was infatuated with Columbine and traveled from Miami to Colorado to celebrate the upcoming anniversary. Police found her dead later that day of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Several of the school shooters and their research were fascinated by Harris and Klebold. Nicholas Cruz researched Columbine extensively before killing 14 students and three staff members at the Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Adam Lanza made collages on Tumblr dedicated to the Columbine victims and other school shootings. In a forum about Columbine, Lanza wrote, "I'm still waiting for a mass shooter who eschews 9mm pistols and instead buys an AK-47 pistol, 30, 30 round magazines, and 1,000 hollow points." He slaughtered 20 first grade students and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut.

In 2014, 16-year-old Alex Herbel wrote, "I became a prophet because I spread the word of a God, Eric Harris." He then stabbed and slashed 20 students with a pair of eight-inch kitchen knives at Franklin Regional High School in Murrysville, Pennsylvania. Harris and Klebold's influence even extends beyond US borders.

A German teen named Sebastian Bossa wrote, "Eric Harris is a God," in his journal before attacking a school in 2006. Randy literally wore his obsession with the Columbine Killers like a name tag. On that deadly day in 1999, Eric Harris wore a T-shirt with black text reading "Natural Selection." Randy bought three replicas and wore them constantly. Surprisingly, his parents never caught the reference.

In his journal, Randy wrote of his mom, "How she hasn't questioned me or seen the signs is beyond me." In fact, the first entry in that journal, dated November 23rd, 2016, opens with, "As the late Eric Harris once said, 'I hate the fucking world. What an inspiration!'" Randy talks about how he'd kill to meet Harris and how they'd connect on so many levels.

He'd also kill to gather a mass amount of ammunition and weapons and just destroy anyone who has the misfortune of crossing my path. Randy's journal hearkens back to 2013, the worst year of Randy's life. He writes, "The 2013 curse is a hell of a strong one. I never thought one bad year would linger three years later, but Randy liked the darkness. He liked the sadness. He said it was like sinking into the depths of the dead. It was like a drug.

It's where he wanted to be. He maintained this holier-than-thou mentality, writing, "I'm better than these humans. I'm evolved. I deserve better than this never-ending nightmare of reality." He wrote the word "REALITY" in capital letters and flanked it with quotation marks and aggressive underlines. In the next line, he writes, "I want to get a shotgun and execute every soul in that goddamn supermarket." Seven months later, he got his wish.

Part four, a trail of breadcrumbs. Like planning a distant wedding, Randy already had a date in mind for when he'd execute his master plan, June 7th, 2017. But Randy wasn't about to wait around patiently. He wanted the world to know exactly what he was planning. His obsession with Ember McClain evolved into a full-fledged fan fiction universe called Ember's Ghost Squad, or EGS.

His YouTube and Twitter content revolved around EGS between 2016 and 2017. His first tweet as Ember's Ghost Squad in February 2016 read, "I'm far from where I used to call home and I'm never going back." The next day he wrote, "The #Superbowl, a classic battle with destiny, also a prime area for a terrorist attack."

Randy created several ghost girls to join Ember as part of the ghost squad. They included Rachel Shadows, a ghost girl fueled by violence, and Mackenzie West, an introverted ghost girl whom Randy fell in love with. Around this time, Randy began struggling with gender dysphoria. In his journal, he wrote, "'I'm wearing my girl's clothes with my legs crossed. "'Why am I damned to spend two to three decades "'in this disgusting body?'

Each and every day gets harder and harder. I'm not a man, I'm a woman. Sorry, mom and dad, but I'm not sorry. Randy wanted to fit in among his ghost girls. He began skipping meals and shaving his body hair with a woman's razor. Around Thanksgiving 2016, Randy wrote, "'I'm 134 pounds of plasma,'

I went 20 to 22 hours without eating on Thanksgiving. Stress and depression are at an all-time high. I just want to die. Randy eventually created a ghost girl version of himself. The character was in a romantic relationship with Mackenzie, and Randy often drew the two holding hands. He'd tweet from Mackenzie's account saying, love this girl, referring to himself. In his journal, Randy wrote,

Whenever I close my eyes, Em is there. She's right by my side at all hours of the night and day. Although Rachel and I connect on so many levels, Mackenzie is my girl. Randy had a habit of retweeting and subtweeting as different Ghost Squad members. He'd have entire conversations with himself, going back and forth between the main EGS account and all his ghost girls. Each tweet seemed to drop another hint about his sinister plan.

On April 28th, Mackenzie tweeted, "Everyone is gonna hate me in a few weeks." On May 8th, the EGS account tweeted, "June will be a big month for us. Hang in there. Big things are coming your way." 10 days later, EGS tweeted, "If you think your body is ready for June 7th, then you're gravely mistaken." On April 8th, 2017,

Randy finally got his hands on a Mossberg 500 pump-action shotgun. He named it Mackenzie and called her his baby and his ticket out of here. In his journal, he wrote, "Oh mother, if only you realized you signed my death warrant by taking me to that gun shop. In less than five months, you'll find me on the floor. Imagine, bloodstains." At the time, Randy imagined taking his own life in September 2017.

He also wrote about how easy it'd be to shoot up the grocery store, but he didn't want to die there. He didn't want to feel rushed knowing the cops were on their way. Instead, he wanted to be surrounded by what he loved, his ghost girls, of whom he had posters and pictures covering every inch of his room. But as the days passed, he kept moving that date closer and closer. On April 24th, he flip-flopped between June 7th and June 14th,

eventually settling on the earlier date. The next day, he let a coin flip decide how he'd do it. Part Five: Heads or Tails Throughout his journal and suicide tapes, Randy went back and forth about how he wanted to take his own life. Sitting or standing, in his room or somewhere else, at home or at the supermarket he hated more than anything ever the showman. Randy couldn't just make a decision. Instead,

he'd make a video out of it, a best of five coin flip. Heads, he does it at home. Tails, the supermarket. But there's an interesting little detail about his heads or tails video and corresponding journal entry. Randy clearly says, "I'm going to flip this three times, best of three." He wrote the same thing in his journal. He walks outside, sets up the camera, and then stands in front.

He says best of three one more time before tossing a quarter high into the air and watching where it lands. Tails. He throws it again, this time landing on heads. He says, "Had to be right. Tension's building up. This is crazy to have it come." One final flip should seal his fate, but Randy seems to hesitate when it lands on tails again. Perhaps instead of best of three, he meant first to three, thus implying best of five.

He looks at the camera and says, "If I flip this next coin and it lands on Tails, there's going to be devastation and destruction." He throws it up and it lands on heads, down to the final flip again. Randy sets up, throws the coin one last time, and grabs the camera to film the results. Tails.

Randy flips the camera around, looks into the lens and says, "This means there's going to be a loss of a human life, besides my own, possibly more than one." Randy's journal entry regarding the coin flip listed Brian, Kristen, Victoria, and Floor Guy. Randy's pen name for Terry under the label possible fatalities. Next to Brian's name, he wrote number one target.

Next to Kristen's name, which he spelled horribly wrong, he wrote, "Impossible to miss. Weights like 300 pounds." Next to Victoria, he wrote, "Easy target. We'll just wound if our paths cross. She deserves to suffer." He underlined the word "deserves." Finally, next to Floor Guy, Randy wrote, "Worthless piece of shit who should be burned alive." Under a list of goals in the same entry, Randy wrote,

"Execute at least one, make my mark, scare the world and have fun." He mentions wanting to do something else in aisle one, but the handwriting is hard to make out. Part six, "The Westboro High Massacre." It wasn't like Randy's journal was available to the public. While his ghost girl tweets were certainly macabre, they seemed to point towards an animated film he'd been working on. His self-proclaimed magnum opus called "The Westboro High Massacre"

The plot was pretty simple. Randy and his EGS girls take their guns to Westboro High School and shoot everyone in sight. He had the script and storyboard all planned, but ran into a serious roadblock during production. The voice actors and animators he hired to work on the project didn't feel comfortable with the material, and rightfully so. They backed out, leaving Randy feeling as though he'd been betrayed.

There was no way he'd have the 15-minute movie fully voiced and animated before June 7th. So Randy cut some corners and tried to finish it himself. He stitched together drawings and storyboards between what little animated clips he had. He voiced the characters himself and opened the video with a pointed message for everyone who betrayed him. He wrote, "To all the people who screwed me over on this video and left me hanging, fuck you."

On June 2nd, five days before the Wise Market shooting, Randy decided to go for a drive after sinking four hours into his movie. He began ranting about a girl named Laura, asking where his voiceovers were. From what we can tell, she was supposed to voice Rachel and only did a handful of the lines before backing away from the project. "I sent the script in March," Randy said. "It's June 2nd."

"Where are my voiceovers, Laura? "You better have that voiceover by Monday, "or you're fucking dead." On June 3rd, Randy wrote in his journal, "I'm two seconds away from murdering Laura. "I thought you were cool, but you're just as worthless "as everyone else on this putrid planet." We assume he never got those voiceovers. Part seven, it's our time to rise. Randy believed in what he called a soul contract. It was a pact he made with Ember and his ghost girls

If he offered enough souls, he could cross over into the EGS world when he died. He'd get to live among his girls and finally be with Mackenzie. He longed for his spiritual body, writing, you will never understand the desire to be who you truly are. I need my spiritual body back. In his final journal entry on June 5th, 2017, Randy wrote, 62 more hours. That's the only thing standing in my way.

I can almost feel Mackenzie holding me in her arms. Around 2 a.m. on June 7th, less than 24 hours before he opened fire on Wise Market, Randy tweeted from the Rachel Shadows account, me and Andrew are going to give the world a little insight as to what really lurks around in the shadows. Later that night, around 9.30 p.m., the main EGS account tweeted, it's our time to rise. Randy arrived for work around 11 p.m.,

He carried a black duffel bag filled with his two shotguns and enough ammo for a small army. Kristen, Brian, Victoria, and Terry did their respective jobs while Randy walked around to all the exits to lock and block the doors. Just after midnight, Randy sent out his final three tweets. The first was a YouTube link to the Westboro High Massacre video.

The second was a link to a MediaFire folder containing his journal entries and art from the Westboro High video. The final tweet was another MediaFire folder titled "Suicide Tapes." In the month leading up to his death, Randy recorded hours worth of video diaries for his family, friends, and fans. He didn't spare any details and talked about his battles with depression and gender dysphoria.

He mentioned his desire to be a ghost girl and his obsession with the Columbine Killers. All of Randy's Twitter accounts are still active today, but the media fire links no longer work. Those three tweets marked the beginning of the end. Randy strapped one shotgun around his back, cocked the other, and began stalking the aisles of Lye's Market. Kristen and Victoria were stalking shelves together and listening to music.

Victoria walked to the end of the aisle to grab more labels and came face to face with Randy. He fired once into her chest, but the shot didn't kill her. She turned to run and Randy put one more in the back of her skull. She collapsed face down in the aisle. According to Kristen, she heard a popping sound over her music and turned around. That's when she saw Randy standing over Victoria's body. They locked eyes for a moment before Randy fired several more shells into the back of Victoria's.

But for some reason, Randy decided to spare Kristen, the same girl he called an easy target in his journal. The story differs according to the few people who saw the CCTV footage inside the store. They say Randy stood ominously behind Kristen while she remained oblivious to his presence. He doesn't move for several minutes, holding the shotgun a few inches from her back.

Randy found Brian in the next aisle and shot him five times, striking his arms, chest, and head. Terry heard the gunfire and made a mad dash for the front door. He didn't make it very far, as Randy shot him twice in the back and shoulder. Kristen snapped out of her shocked state and ran to help Victoria, who was still alive by some miracle. She called 911, but knew she had to escape the store if Victoria was to get the help she needed.

That's when she spotted Randy with his back turned and saw it as her window to run. She seized the opportunity to move one of the barricades and open the front door. She ran into the parking lot and hid in the bushes, waiting for the police to arrive. Meanwhile, Randy unloaded on random items around the store. He set his sights on a pile of propane tanks, hoping they'd explode like a video game. They didn't.

Randy's five-year nightmare finally ended when he walked into the deli section and stuck McKenzie in his mouth. Randy pulled the trigger and crossed over to the EGS world, forever in the arms of his one true love. Randy fired 59 total shots, but never touched the second gun. In his suicide tapes, Randy mentions how the second gun was a backup plan in case the first one jammed. In his own words,

"When you do something like this, always have a backup." Amid some backlash, the Wise Market reopened on June 14th, a week after the massacre. Some thought it was inappropriate, while others felt moving or closing the store for good meant Randy would win. In the end, Randy Stare's story remains one about unchecked mental illness. He was clearly suffering

and the only people who listened to him, who'd truly understood him, were Ember, Mackenzie, Rachel, and the rest of the EGS squad. Kristen sat down for an interview with Eyewitness News on June 7th, 2022, the five-year anniversary. Looking back on it, she said, "Most people say you are alive for a purpose, for a reason. You just have to figure it out.