Jokela High School

"In the best case, this (attack) would create massive destruction and chaos, or even a revolution," Auvinen wrote in diary entries cited by the police report. "In any case, I want this to be remembered forever. Maybe I'll even have a follower; after all, I am a super-person, almost God."

The statement consists of a video entitled "Pekka", with a metal soundtrack and scrolling text.

"The reason I have not talked to the press and the rest of you is not because I want to wash my hands of it," she says.

"It is because there is no point"

Ms Scheel then launches into her defence of Auvinen.

"First, he was not a Nazi. He hated Nazism."

"Second, he was not a psychopath or a sociopath. He felt love, he felt guilt, he felt fear."

"Third, he was not bullied or picked on, not by you or people in his life."

In the video, Ms Scheel refutes the notion that online messages would cause him to go on a shooting spree, and admits that Auvinen was often the initiator of online arguments.

Ms Scheel also states that Auvinen was not bullied by his classmates, but "had he been, he would have reacted to it instantly".

Police said material seized from the computer of Pekka-Eric Auvinen suggests the 18-year-old communicated online with Dillon Cossey, 14, who was arrested in October for allegedly preparing a possible attack at Plymouth Whitemarsh High School in suburban Philadelphia.

"He recognized the screen name and recalled having contact by email," said J. David Farrell, who represents Cossey, 14, of Plymouth Valley.

Farrell said Cossey was "very distressed" to learn that Pekka-Eric Auvinen, 18, of Tuusula, Finland, had gunned down six students, a nurse and the principal at his high school, located about 30 miles north of Helsinki. Auvinen then killed himself.

Cossey told Farrell that Auvinen "gave no indication he was going to do anything violent," and that Cossey "offered nothing in the way of encouragement" to pursue violence.

The teens shared an interest in a video game called "Hitman," Farrell said, adding that they may have also had a mutual obsession with Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the students responsible for the Columbine massacre.

Farrell said he believed more information about the time and extent of the communication would be available tomorrow.

Police do not believe this to have been a coincidence. The two youths are thought to have made contact over two MySpace groups, “RIP Eric and Dylan” — a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 schoolmates at Columbine — and “Natural Selection”.

Auvinen’s parents are regarded as somewhat bohemian in the small dormitory township of Jokela. His father plays part time in a jazz band and composes his own music; Auvinen’s mother is an activist for the Greens. They are regarded as stalwart members of the community and neighbours describe them as a “normal family”.

A group of ninth graders at the Jokela School in Tuusula were eyewitnesses to the execution-style killing of their school's head teacher Helena Kalmi by gunman Pekka-Eric Auvinen on Wednesday.

Watching from their classroom window, they saw Kalmi first fleeing the attacker, but later she went back. Auvinen forced Kalmi onto her knees and then shot her.

Finally, Auvinen shot himself in the head. Police found him injured in a toilet at 2:53 PM.

But months before the fateful video was posted, one prolific YouTube user known as TheAmazingAtheist called for the police to investigate Auvinen and others who had been posting videos glorifying the Columbine shooters and Timothy McVeigh, saying they were showing warning signs of being more than simply infatutated or interested in violence.

According to the police, the man shot some of his victims almost 20 times.

Chief Inspector Tero Haapala said the gunner had written a suicide note bidding farewell to his family.

"The family brought it to the police," CI Haapala added.

The parents are under police protection after receiving threats.

The police think the man acted alone and that the parents had no knowledge of his intentions.

The killer also tried to start a fire, dousing the floor and walls of the second floor of the school building in a flammable liquid, but failed to ignite it, Haapala said.

The Finnish teenager who killed eight people in a high school shooting was a bullied social outcast but appears to have picked his victims randomly, a senior police official said Thursday.

Police spokesman Goran Wennqvist told reporters the gunman, identified as 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen, left a suicide note, "saying goodbye to his family and a message ... indicating his will against society."

Witnesses described a scene of mayhem in the leafy lakeside community, in which the assailant scoured the school for victims while shouting "Revolution!"

The murderer, named by police as Pekka-Eric Auvinen, then shot himself in the head and died in a hospital Wednesday night. He killed eight people, including his headteacher, after moving from classroom to classroom and spraying them with gunfire at the secondary he attended in Tuusula, a small town north of Helsinki.

"Five boys, two girls and one adult woman were killed," Police Chief Matti Tohkanen told a news conference, later identifying the woman as the principal of the school.