It was scrawled in frantic blue ink on crumpled notebook paper, the edges frayed like the mind that penned it.

Four pages of unfiltered rage and regret, discovered crumpled in the pocket of 17-year-old Austin Lynch’s jeans after Suffolk County paramedics pried the shotgun from his bloodied fingers. The note, which investigators released excerpts from yesterday, lays bare a terrifying emotional freefall: from puppy love to possessive paranoia, culminating in a cold calculus of bullets that claimed the life of his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Emily Finn, and nearly his own.

What started as a seemingly amicable breakup just two weeks earlier exploded into a botched murder-suicide on November 26, 2025—the eve of Thanksgiving—in a quiet Nesconset cul-de-sac. As the community gathers pink ribbons and ballet slippers for Emily’s memorial, the letter stands as a haunting autopsy of obsession, warning that the line between heartbreak and homicide can blur in the shadows of a teenager’s bedroom.

Emily Finn was the girl who made every room brighter, a recent Sayville High School grad whose pirouettes and infectious laugh had her pegged as the next big thing in dance. At 18, the 5’4″ freshman at SUNY Oneonta was studying early childhood education, dreaming of blending her love for ballet with teaching the next generation of twirlers. With her sun-streaked blonde bob, freckled smile, and a wardrobe of leotards and oversized hoodies, Emily was the heart of her friend group—organizing beach bonfires in West Sayville, baking pumpkin pies for family Thanksgivings, and posting goofy TikToks of her cat, Mr. Whiskers, attempting (and failing) at pliés. “She was our spark,” her best friend, junior ballerina Mia Kensington, tearfully told reporters at a candlelit vigil outside American Ballet Studio in Bayport. “Emily didn’t just dance; she made you believe in magic. College was her fresh start—new dorm, new routines, new everything. She was excited, not escaping.”

But Austin Lynch, her high school sweetheart since freshman year, couldn’t let go. The 17-year-old Nesconset native—one day shy of 18 when the shots rang out—was the quiet type: a B-average student with a passion for video games and shotgun hunting trips with his dad. At 6’1″ with tousled brown hair and a lopsided grin, he’d been Emily’s prom king, the one who surprised her with daisies after every rehearsal and captioned their couple pics “My forever fouetté.” Their split hit like a dropped chandelier: Emily, craving independence in her first semester away, ended it via FaceTime in early November, citing “growing in different directions.” Friends say Austin took it hard—unfollowing her on Instagram, then refollowing; showing up uninvited to her ballet showcase; texting at 3 a.m. with “We need to talk” pleas that went unread.

By Thanksgiving break, Emily decided to tie up loose ends. On November 26, around 10:45 a.m., she drove her beat-up Honda Civic to Austin’s family home on a leafy street in Nesconset, a box of his hoodies and mixtapes in the passenger seat. His parents were out running errands; his younger sister at a friend’s. What should have been a five-minute drop-off turned into eternity. Austin answered the door, eyes red-rimmed, mumbling a “thanks” as he took the box. But instead of goodbye, he slammed the door, produced a legally owned 12-gauge shotgun from the hall closet, and fired twice—once through Emily’s chest, the second grazing her shoulder as she turned to flee. She collapsed on the welcome mat, gasping, her phone slipping from her hand mid-dial to 911.

In the seconds that followed, Austin turned the barrel skyward and pulled the trigger again, blasting a chunk from his jaw and cheekbone. The blast echoed like thunder, jolting his father, who’d just pulled into the driveway with groceries, into a frantic 911 call: “My son’s shot his girlfriend and himself—God, send help!” Paramedics swarmed the scene by 10:52 a.m., pronouncing Emily dead amid the scent of turkey brine from a neighbor’s kitchen. Austin, airlifted to Stony Brook University Hospital, clung to life in critical condition, his face swathed in bandages, until stabilizing two days later. Now, as of December 8, he faces second-degree murder charges, arraignment pending once cleared for transfer to juvenile detention.

The note, found at 11:15 a.m. by responding detectives, was the first crack in the facade of “no prior history.” Suffolk County Homicide Lt. Kevin Beyrer described it as “a window into a mind unraveling in real time—no red flags on paper, but this? It’s a manifesto of madness.” Penned the night before, it starts deceptively tender, like a love letter gone wrong.

Page 1: “Em, you were my world from day one. The way you spin in those tights, like you’re defying gravity just to make me smile. Remember prom? You in that pink dress, me stepping on your toes during our first dance. I’d give anything to go back. You said we’d always be us. What happened to forever?”

By page 2, the tenderness twists into torment. “I see you posting stories from Oneonta—smiling with those theater kids, wearing that scarf I bought you like it means nothing. Space? That’s code for ‘I found someone better.’ I drove by your dorm last weekend. Saw you laughing in the quad. With him? Don’t lie. I know. It’s killing me slower than this silence.”

Page 3 plunges into the abyss, detailing stakeouts and stolen glances: “I’ve sat in my car outside your house 14 nights this month. Your light flicks on at 10:47 p.m. every time. I count the minutes until it’s off, imagining you dreaming of me instead of whatever loser you’re texting now. Last night, I loaded the gun Dad got me for deer season. It’s clean. Quick. If I can’t hold you anymore, no one will. Not him. Not anyone.”

The final page is a fever dream of finality, repeated like a mantra: “We’ll be together in the end. One for you (soft, so you don’t hurt). One for me (loud, so it echoes what you did to my heart). I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough. I’m sorry I wasn’t enough.”

No explicit plan, but the intent screams from every margin scribble—hearts pierced by arrows, her initials tangled in nooses. Detectives found no prior domestic calls, no restraining orders, but friends now whisper of warning signs: Austin’s deleted voicemails (“Come back or else”), Emily’s hesitant “It’s over for good” texts. “He seemed sad, not scary,” one classmate admitted at a Sayville High assembly, where students observed a 10-second silence, one pirouette for every year of her life.

Emily’s family, shattered in their West Sayville split-level, channels grief into guardianship. Her mother, Lisa Finn, a schoolteacher, clutched a bouquet of pink roses at a November 29 presser: “My girl went to return a box, not her life. This wasn’t love; it was a cage.” A GoFundMe for funeral costs and a memorial scholarship at American Ballet Studio has surged past $85,000, with donors noting, “For Emily, who taught us to leap without fear.” Her father, a contractor, added hoarsely: “She was home for turkey and pie, not this. Hold your kids tight—obsession wears a boy-next-door mask.”

As Austin recovers under guard, psychologists weigh in on the pathology: teen breakups as catalysts for catastrophe, where social media amplifies abandonment into apocalypse. Stats sting—one in five teen homicides stem from romantic rejection, per CDC shadows, often in “no-history” homes like this. Suffolk PD’s Beyrer, voice gravelly from back-to-back briefings, urged: “Parents, check the journals, the late-night drives. This letter? It’s every family’s worst what-if.”

In Bayport’s studios, mirrors fog with collective sobs, tutus hung in tribute. Emily Finn, the girl who once quipped, “Life’s too short for bad playlists,” now embodies a cautionary coda: love should lift, not load a chamber. Somewhere in a Nesconset evidence locker, four ink-stained pages whisper the moral—before the spiral tightens, someone must read the signs. For Emily, it was too late. For the rest of Long Island’s young hearts, may it be the wake-up call that saves a spin.