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Probable
Cause?
Independent
probe of the Thurston shootings
uncovers disturbing documents.
By Joseph
A. Lieberman
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'I
am so full of rage that I feel I could snap at any moment. I
think about it everyday. Blowing the school up or just taking
the easy way out, and walk into a pep assembly with guns. In
either case, people that are breathing will stop breathing.
That is how I will repay all you mother fuckers for all you
put me through.'
—
Kip Kinkel
writing
in his journal
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The challenge for any post-Columbine writer trying
to make sense of a past school shooting lies in trying to separate
what we know now from what we knew then. It was a more innocent world
just four short years ago when people in our community still believed,
"That couldn't happen here."
But it did, and now we discover that more may have
been known before the event than some have let on. "The Thurston Massacre"
is still a raw wound for many, not only for the horrors that took
place on May 20-21, 1998, but for the knowledge that at more than
a half dozen junctures, the tragedy could have been prevented.
The public who followed the drama are familiar with
the official version of the murder of Kip Kinkel's parents and the
school shooting the following morning. On May 20, Kip purchased a
stolen gun from his friend Korey Ewert and hid it in his locker. The
gun owner alerted the school, questions were asked, and both boys
were arrested pending their expulsion.
Kip's dad, former Thurston High School (THS) instructor
Bill Kinkel, went to the Springfield Police Station to retrieve his
boy. Kip was released to his care around lunchtime. At about 3 pm,
Kip shot his dad in the back of the head, fielded a few phone calls,
and then killed his mom, Faith, a teacher at Springfield High, with
six bullets to the face and heart. The next morning he opened fire
on students at THS, killing two and wounding 25 before being tackled
by fellow students.
In the subsequent investigation, however, some data
was apparently left out of the public eye. And judging by what occurred
in the aftermath of a dozen other school shootings, these details
might have resulted in lawsuits against education officials and police
had they been known at the time. At this point, however, there is
only the court of public opinion left to debate the issues since the
statute of limitations on legal actions has already passed for most
of the victims.
Many people who knew the Kinkel family and knew of
Kip's anger, anti-social behavior and obsession with guns and bombs,
wish today that they had taken action in time to stop the whole debacle
before it began.
A heavy burden is carried by many of the students
to whom Kip confided his intentions before the attack. Within hours
after the shooting, more than a dozen students informed police, parents
or teachers that, "Kinkel told me he was going to do something like
this." Everyone who heard Kip's threats concluded he wasn't serious.
The few adults who got wind of it were no less incredulous, including
police officers and school officials.
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'He
always said that it would be fun to kill someone and do stuff
like that. Yesterday, he told a couple of people he was probably
going to do
something stupid today and get back at the people who had expelled
him.'
—
Student Robbie Johnson as reported in The Cincinnati Post Nov.
11, 1998, "Zero guilt, zero remorse," by Lisa Popyk
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The Raynor Report
There were questions never satisfactorily
answered. Having a gun in school is a class C felony. Why was Kip
released to his father by police on May 20 and not held for 72 hours
as the law provides? On two previous occasions (one regarding a gun,
one a boy with a knife), THS had been locked down because of potential
threats of violence. That was the drill. Why was it not done this
time?
At a press conference on May 22, 1998, a lack of "probable
cause" was cited as the reason Kip had been released earlier. Lane
County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad defined this as "the standard
in the law which means more likely than not, greater than 50 percent,
(that) the officer has probable cause that there is an immediate threat
to the child that he has arrested or to other individuals. And the
officer had, from my reading of the police report and speaking to
the officer, no reason to believe that. ... The argument that, well,
he had a gun at school, so that in and of itself is enough to do that,
is probably not probable cause."
It sounded plausible at the time, but no one made
any mention of a Eugene Police Department Supplemental Report dated
May 21, 1998, written by now retired Det. Rodric Raynor. In the report,
a high ranking staff member of THS who was present during the questioning
on May 20 is quoted as follows: "Ewart (sic) said several times that
Kinkel wanted the gun to kill someone ..." Raynor asked the man, "if
Warthan (sic) was present when Ewart made the statement about Kinkel
wanting to kill the person and he was sure that Warthan was present."
The Raynor report was somehow buried away and few
were aware of it. The misspelled Warthan refers to Springfield Det.
Al Warthen, a tough but gentle middle-aged career cop. Warthen made
the arrest, confiscated the gun and conducted the primary interrogation
at THS after reading both boys their Miranda rights.
There were three THS staff members involved in that
interrogation, although only the individual who spoke with Raynor
was present in the room with Kip and Warthen. A second staff member
talked with Korey in a separate room. That evening he recorded the
day's events, stating in a signed document that when asked by him
why Kip needed a gun, Korey replied, "A few kids were talking smack
about Kip and we were going to get back at them and it ain't over."
He reported this information to the others, but they already knew.
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'I
have no information that would lead us to believe that any specific
students were targeted. ... There was absolutely no immediate,
no probable cause ... to believe there was any immediate danger
to Kip or others.'
—
Former Springfield Chief of Police Bill DeForrest,
May 22, 1998
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A Curious Omission
Kip denied that he wanted the gun to harm
anyone and claimed, as he so often did, that he was "only joking"
when he said that to Korey. This denial was apparently accepted as
proof of lack of intent. Further, Kip did not deny saying he wanted
the gun to kill someone. Even so, there is no mention of Korey's words
in the report filed that day by Warthen. Instead, the report only
details how, not why Korey stole the gun and sold it
to Kip.
Warthen indicated through a colleague last week that
if he had heard anything that significant from Korey, he would have
noted it in his report. He declined further comment.
"On May 20th, 1998, I was conned or led to believe
that it was safe to let Kip Kinkel go home with his father," Warthen
said at the 1999 sentencing hearing.
Chief DeForrest said at the press conference on May
22, 1998 that Kip, "made no specific threats." Technically that is
true because, according to two witnesses, it was Korey who told of
the specific threat.
Last week DeForrest, now acting police chief in Junction
City, confirmed that he only heard of threats after the shooting on
May 21, not on the day of the May 20 arrest. However, he was adamant
in stressing that Warthen "took all the proper steps." He said "To
suggest otherwise is pure speculation." He added that he has not the
slightest doubt that, given the lack of a prior arrest record and
Kip's highly reputable parents, Warthen "had reasonable grounds to
release the boy. He absolutely did the right thing." Kip's 1997 arrest
in Bend for tossing rocks at cars from an overpass had not been reported
to Springfield authorities.
DeForrest also pointed out that the SPD was instrumental
in changing Oregon law to require mandatory detention for any student
caught with a gun at school. In 1998, a single police officer could
make that determination based upon his or her personal judgment. Further,
the law at that time clearly required officers to release children
to their parents or guardians if no probable cause could be established.
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| FORMER
SPRINGFIELD POLICE CHIEF BILL DEFORREST. |
"Kip was asked if he intended to harm himself or others
and Kip answered 'no' to both questions," DeForrest stated. "That
means no probable cause."
Korey was also released even though his parents reportedly
begged the police not to do so "to teach their son a lesson."
After confessions of prior knowledge by students immediately
following the shootings, denials came close on their heels. In an
interview with EPD Sgt. Mark Montes a few hours after the shooting
on May 21, Korey now admitted only that Kip had said, "on several
occasions that it would be cool to shoot people." He added that he
"never took those statements seriously due to Kip's sense of humor."
Korey also told Montes, "that he did not know of any
plan by Kip to go to the school and injure anybody," and that in fact,
"the sale of the gun was because Kip wanted a handgun for protection,
due to the fact that his parents had taken all his guns away from
him." The latter is a story Kip had been circulating.
Finally, Korey specified to Montes that he "was not
aware of any list of friends or associates targeted by Kip."
The blame game was already in high gear.
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'Two
weeks before these shootings he told his friend Brandon Muniz
that he wanted to lock the doors except for one, put a bomb
in the cafeteria, and then pick people off one by one after
the bomb exploded and they tried to escape .... Jesse Thorn
overheard him on May 20 ... (saying) he would lock the two front
doors in the cafeteria, shoot everyone who tried to get out
the back door, run down the hallway to the girls' locker room,
climb up on some vending machines and gain access to the roof
where he would snipe at people.'
—
District Attorney Kent Mortimore, State v. Kipland Philip Kinkel,
state's sentencing recommendation, pp. 945-6
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No Alarms at School
Immediately after Kip and Korey were cuffed
and hauled off to the SPD, the three THS staff members discussed what
they'd heard. One of them carried this report to Principal Larry Bentz.
They concluded that, with the gun confiscated and Kip in custody,
no serious threat remained.
Bentz put in a call to Len Arney, a personal friend
of the Kinkel's and Springfield's assistant superintendent of schools,
who passed on the information to then Superintendent Jamon Kent. A
meeting was called between Bentz, Arney and Kent for the next morning.
At mid-afternoon, however, a message came in from
SPD that Kip had been released to his dad. Had it been any other parents
except the Kinkels, alarm bells might have rung. As it was, Bill and
Faith Kinkel seemed to be in control, never giving the school any
indication of the deeper problems they faced with their son. Kip's
delinquency record in middle school did not pass over to THS, nor
was THS informed that Kip's sessions with his therapist for violent
antisocial behavior had been terminated.
Far more was going on within the Kinkel household
than those who admired these highly respected teachers suspected.
There were undercurrents at play that even Bill and Faith Kinkel seemed
oblivious to. One need only look at Kip's journals and the end results
(see quotes).
There was, however, a larger reason why school officials
were less apprehensive. Bill Kinkel called THS around lunchtime on
May 20 and demanded to know what could be done to save Kip's grades.
"Mr. Kinkel," he was told, "we have a much bigger problem here than
grades. We have a problem with a gun."
In a response that has never been previously released
to the public, Bill Kinkel then lied in an apparent effort to keep
his son's options open, and by doing so sealed his own fate, that
of his wife, and the lives of innocent children. Bill Kinkel dismissed
the school's concerns about weapons, assured them of their family's
safety, and put others in harm's way with the following words: "We
don't have any guns at our home. My only concern is about Kip's grades."
The Kinkel parents' anti-violence, anti-gun stance
was well known in the community. Few had any inkling that Bill had
purchased a semiautomatic rifle and a semiautomatic handgun for his
son within the previous year, nor that he had owned a pistol for several
years and kept two rifles from his own childhood. His denial of guns
in the house was accepted.
Kent, Arney and Bentz all had the authority to initiate
a delayed school opening (as occurred on Jan. 22 this year in response
to a gun threat) if they had felt there was sufficient reason to do
so. Although there may be no direct connection, Kent was forced to
resign early this month, and Arney chose an early retirement.
In their defense, it has been suggested that given
what was known at the time, they made the best determination they
could.
A Distant Problem
More than one member of the Springfield
School Board has pointed out that in early 1998, school shootings
were still perceived as a distant problem, something happening in
other states to children different from our own. Still, the warnings
were out there for classmates, teachers and administrators to take
seriously.
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'Why
don't you just shoot me. I am such a bad mother.'
— Faith Kinkel to her son approximately five weeks before
he shot her. Report of examination by Dr. Lewis, confirmed by
Lane County Sheriff's Office Supplemental Report, interview
with T. McCown, May 21, 1998
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Seven such attacks had taken place in each of the
previous two years, including major incidents at Pearl, Mississippi
and West Paducah, Ky., late in 1997. On Mar. 24, 1998, just two months
before Thurston, Mitch Johnson and Drew Golden shot up their schoolyard
killing five in Jonesboro, Ark. Kip saw the TV coverage in school
and commented to friends that he thought the slaughter was "really
cool." So did 14-year-old Andrew Wurst in Edinboro, Penn. One month
after Jonesboro, on Apr. 24, Wurst shot teachers and students at his
eighth-grade prom.
Communities have certain safeguards in place to protect
the public against such disasters. Until recently those safeguards
have been only aimed at obviously troubled kids with long police records
from high-risk households with a history of abuse. Like a stealth
bomber, Kip flew in under the radar screens, giving Oregon its first
taste of the phenomenon of "average" kids from decent homes who appear
to turn overnight into vicious killers. The fact that both his parents
were teachers in the school system that Kip attacked only served to
make him more invisible.
Ironically, among those killed and wounded at Thurston
High, almost none had any relationship or real knowledge of the shooter.
For many, innocence died that day.
Joseph A. Lieberman is a Eugene free-lance writer
who has been researching the Thurston shootings for the past 19 months
in preparation for a forthcoming book about school shootings. An earlier
story by Lieberman on the fourth anniversary of the shootings can be
found in the May
16, 2002 archives at www.eugeneweekly.com
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