"Dear Journal: It's me, Valessa'

The diaries, unsealed after her third-degree murder conviction, reveal that before meeting her boyfriend, she wrote of drugs, sex and escape.

She wrote the first entry on Feb. 27, 1995. At age 11, she was halfway through the sixth grade.

Dear Journal,

Hi! It's me, Valessa. I am waiting for TBCC to start, my mom always drops me off early.

She was talking about the Tampa Bay Children's Choir. There was a boy in the group who seemed to like her.

I've never really talked to him, but during chorus he always looks at me. I think he's just too shy to actually talk to me.

Three years later, on May 11, 1998, she was still writing in her journal. By this point, she had just turned 15 and was finishing her freshman year at Sickles High School. Now she was talking about another boy. This one had just gotten out of jail.

My true one and only love is Adam William Davis, and pretty soon I'll be Valessa Lyn Davis. Since Adam's been out, we've made love 8 times. We're trying to get me pregnant because I want a baby so bad. Just imagine a little version of me running around, scary, isn't it!

She talked about how Adam was drinking too much, stealing, feeling suicidal.

But, all the same, there isn't anyone else on this earth I would rather have a child w/ than Adam, he's a sweetheart and I love him to death.

Valessa Robinson's diaries were released Monday, three days after a jury found her guilty of third-degree murder in the death of her mother, Vicki Robinson, in June 1998.

The journals were sealed after Valessa's arrest. Defense lawyers argued that the volumes contained no evidence relevant to the charges against her, and that they could prove "extremely prejudicial" if made public.

A judge agreed, and sealed them until after the trial.

The defense's reasons for keeping the journals private were obvious Monday. The entries at times refer to drugs, sex and running away, much of it long before Valessa met Adam Davis.

And while the journals contain no hint of the violence to come, they offer a more complex portrayal than the defense's description of Valessa as a vulnerable "little girl" who was taken advantage of by Davis and Jon Whispel, both 19.

According to her journals, Valessa had started taking LSD and having sex months before meeting Davis in October 1997.

Monday, lead defense attorney Dee Ann Athan said the journals did not conflict with what she said at Valessa's trial. She said she never argued that Valessa wasn't having sex or doing drugs before Adam. Some of what Valessa wrote was teenage fantasy, Athan said.

For all the stories in the journals about vandalizing mailboxes, shoplifting and getting "f----- up," there are signs that she was much like any teenage girl. On those pages, Valessa cruises the mall with friends and grows moony with crushes.

In August 1996, she worried a certain boy would find out she liked him.

"I would just die!" she wrote.