The author of the Illinois University killings made a midnight call to his girlfriend, Jessica Baty, 28, before the day of the shootings. Steven Kazmierczak, 27, told her “not to forget about him,” Baty said in a CNN interview, but it didn’t sound like he was planning anything.

“He wasn’t erratic. He wasn’t delusional. He was Steve; he was normal,” said Kazmierczak’s girlfriend during the interview. “The person I knew was not the one who went into Cole Hall and did that,” Baty added. “He was anything but a monster. He was probably the nicest, most caring person ever.”

Jessica Baty received two packages following the shootings, both sent by Kazmierczak, containing two textbooks, one about serial killers and Nietzsche’s “The Antichrist”, a new cell phone, $100 in cash and a gun holster and bullets, authorities reported last week.

The two have apparently been in an on-off relationship for the past two years, and rumors have it they had broken up before the shootings, but Baty didn’t confirm that, saying they had recently moved in together. Baty was aware Kazmierczak had bought two guns, but he said they were for home protection.

On the day of the killings, Kzamierczak was on his way to see Baty, but never showed up, and all phone calls were transferred directly into his voicemail. Baty says she was in shock when they said who the shooter was, and simply couldn’t believe Steve had been capable of such terrible things.

Seven people were killed, including the shooter, who shot himself, in the Northern Illinois University incident. The gunman was a graduate of the NIU and was pursuing a master’s degree in sociology. According to his girlfriend, he has never exhibited self-destructive behavior in the recent years, although he had had obsessive-compulsive tendencies in the past.

Image credits: CNN