Jun. 7—Robert Card’s erratic behavior at the firing range on Oct. 25 was concerning enough that his friend decided to leave. A few hours later, Card carried out the deadliest mass shooting in Maine history.

The revelation is detailed in a trove of more than more than 3,000 pages of documents Maine State Police released Friday afternoon from its investigation into the Lewiston mass shooting that killed 18 people and injured 13 others.

The documents describe much of what was already known about the chaos that followed immediately after the attack, when thousands of law enforcement officers from around New England flocked to Lewiston, sometimes before official orders called them there. But some files include new details, including details of the note Card left behind and pieces of an interview with an unidentified source who told police that Card’s ex-girlfriend was in a bowling league at Just-In-Time Recreation and “could easily have been” at the alley at the time of the attack.

“I just wanted to play cornhole with my hot girlfriend and be left the (expletive) alone,” Card wrote in a note discovered in his home after the shooting.

For months, Card had been convinced that people were insulting him behind his back everywhere he went, even as friends and family members promised him that wasn’t true. Researchers at Boston University now say Card’s paranoia may have been linked to a traumatic brain injury.

The batch of records, by far the largest public release of material on the Lewiston shooting to date, is also striking in what it does not include. Many files that appear to detail specifics of the two-day manhunt following the attack are so heavily redacted that they provide essentially no information. A file labeled “Fire Marshals Office,” but which actually contains hundreds of pages of Army records, includes discharge instructions from Card’s stay at a psychiatric hospital that summer which are almost entirely redacted.

The Portland Press Herald has spent months fighting under state public records laws for access to the documents, which Maine State Police initially said it would only release after the state commission investigating the shooting had completed its work. That commission has held more than a dozen meetings and released an interim report, but a final report is not expected until later this summer.

The release does yet not include all state police investigative documents, according to Paul Cavanaugh, the attorney for Maine State Police.

“There are other FOAA requests related to this response, manhunt, and investigation that are not yet responded to on this webpage. We are still working on collecting, reviewing, and providing those records,” Cavanaugh wrote in an email Friday afternoon. “Some of those requests are for public records we think are appropriate to post here when they are available and some of those requests are for more specific public records that we will respond to directly and not by posting on the webpage.”

‘AN OVERALL SUCCESS’

An after action report conducted by the Maine State Police tactical team reiterated many of the conclusions that police leaders shared with the commission at public hearings in February and May.

“Self-deploying” officers who showed up to Lewiston without receiving specific orders or directions created an organizational challenge and posed safety risks, the report found. It cited one instance when a group of U.S. Marshals breached a home in Durham without waiting for a SWAT team to arrive after police learned of a pair of 911 hangups at that address.

But the report stood by the decision not to launch a K9 track from Card’s abandoned car immediately after police discovered the vehicle at a Lisbon boat launch late Wednesday night. A foot path connects the boat launch to Maine Recycling Corp. a mile away, where Card’s body was later found.

Maine State Police Sgt. Greg Roy has told the commission that a K9 search would have been dangerous and ineffective given the specific time and setting. The report’s explanation for why a search wouldn’t have been useful is largely redacted, but it suggests that police were under equipped for the job.

“The (redacted) that the Maine State Police Tactical Team had at this time were very outdated and none of the current equipment could be used in conjunction with (redacted),” the report reads. It goes on to say that the agency has placed an order for the upgraded gear.

The report, which includes feedback from the Pennsylvania State Police tactical team, says that police should have searched Card’s car and especially his home much faster than they did. It said that while working methodically can help police build a strong court case against a suspect, the situation in Lewiston demanded police seek out clues about Card’s potential whereabouts more quickly, the report. Yet the Pennsylvania team concluded that the two-day search was “pretty quick” given the circumstances, and the report called the operation “an overall success.”

‘LIMITED INFO’

The rest of Friday’s release includes a mix of extremely detailed documents and files so heavily redacted they are incoherent.

One police report that appears to describe the search of Card’s home on Thursday morning references a dog that police accidentally let loose and then had to catch after clearing the home and locating Card’s phone and and an apparent suicide note inside. The handwritten note contained his phone password and instructions on how to find his account passwords.

“Love you,” read the unsigned note. “Enjoy your life.”

An inventory list from the search of Card’s home indicates state police found a several guns and other weapons, a “night vision monocle from gun safe,” a spotting scope, various documents including medical records, and a pill bottle on the nightstand — though what was inside the bottle is redacted.

A memo from the FBI’s Crisis Division Team in Boston suggests that Card’s father provided little information when authorities interviewed him during the manhunt. “Limited info, didn’t want to talk,” the memo states. It also indicates that the FBI considered monitoring him but was “undecided.”

At a commission meeting last month, members of Card’s family criticized police for taking two days to thoroughly search the recycling center where the shooter’s body was eventually found. Card’s brother Ryan had specifically told police that he was likely in the recycling center given the building’s close proximity to his abandoned car and the fact that Card was a former employee and had left on bad terms, according to his brother-in-law James Herling.

Police have said that while they recognize that the Card family actively tried to get Robert help before the shooting and have been fully cooperative since Oct. 25, they needed to treat them skeptically during the manhunt.

Friday’s release could be the first of several major moments in the Lewiston investigation this summer. An internal review of the Army’s handling of Card is expected to be released any day, which will likely be followed soon after by a separate report from the Army Inspector General. The commission has said it plans on releasing its own findings later this summer.

Press Herald Staff Writer Rachel Ohm and Maine Public reporters Steve Mistler and Susan Sharon contributed to this report.

This story is part of an ongoing collaboration with FRONTLINE (PBS) and Maine Public that includes an upcoming documentary. It is supported through FRONTLINE’s Local Journalism Initiative, which is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

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