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Kipland Kinkel, yearbook
(AP) |
When Kinkel was taken from school after being expelled for having a
loaded pistol, he was terrified of what his father would say.
He'd long felt belittled and ashamed that he couldn't live up to his
popular and athletic older sister, his only sibling and six years his
senior, and this incident would just make things worse. He felt
that he had nowhere to turn and no choice but to end his parents'
lives. From that moment forward, he planned how he would do it,
and then (according to some accounts) how he would make sure that he,
too, would die—but not before getting back at classmates who'd made
him feel worthless. |
Yet there was something else about this kid besides just failing to
be part of the popular crowd. The way he planned and carried out
what he did on May 21, 1998, speaks to something a bit more malignant:
He may have been psychopathic. Child psychologist Jonathan
Kellerman, author of Savage Spawn: Reflections on Violent Children,
includes him in a list of children who have acted out violence with
cold calculation. He recounts how Kinkel slew his parents, spent
the night with their bodies in the home, booby-trapped the house with
bombs, stole the car, and drove twenty minutes to school the next
morning with a semiautomatic rifle and Glock pistol, with the intent
to spray many rounds of bullets into people he knew. This was his
world and he was wantonly destroying it over something as minor as a
school violation. He even had a knife strapped to his leg and
some pepper spray, which he tried using against the arresting police
officer. His crime showed a finely honed and detailed sense of
premeditation, and in fact, over the previous few years, he'd been
slowly arming himself with numerous guns and explosives.
"What turns them on," says Kellerman about children like
Kinkel, "is the kick, the high, the slaking of impulse…the
subjugation of the rest of us." According to him, "Bad
people are really different." They can seem quiet
and shy, but that may in fact be the emotional flatness that signals
psychopathy and that keeps them calm throughout their violent
episodes. A good predictor of dangerousness in children, he
says, is the combination of a certain temperament with a chaotic
environment. Yet Kinkel did not come from a chaotic home---or
could it be that the placid environment his sister Kristin had known
for several years before he was born had changed and was thus chaotic
to him?
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A younger Kipland Kinkel
(AP) |
By early adolescence, he set about making himself into someone that
others regarded as "dangerous." He hung out with kids
who got him involved in petty theft, and when he was caught, he knew
this was yet another disappointment for his parents. He framed
the lyrics from Marilyn Manson's song, "The Reflecting God,"
to the effect that there was no salvation, and then became fascinated
with explosives. His was a disturbed mind, and he embraced
emblems of despair. Unbeknownst to his parents, Bill and Faith,
he collected a small library of books about making bombs, and
classmates viewed him as something of an expert. Thus, he
accomplished a sense of mastery, power, and dangerousness all at once.
He was not about to give it up, and instead he added to it by
collecting guns and hiding his stash from his family. |
In 1999, PBS's "Frontline" produced a thorough
documentary of Kip Kinkel, called "The Killer at Thurston
High." They interviewed friends, school personnel, and even
Kristin Kinkel to try to find an answer as to why he'd want so badly
for others to regard him as dangerous. From all appearances,
he'd been raised by two schoolteachers who were good people, who
wanted to get the most out of life, and who provided a nice home out
in the country. How could they possibly have raised a killer?
While there's no formula for knowing exactly what goes wrong in the
life of a kid, there appear to be several factors that joined in just
the wrong way for Kinkel—factors that were not true for his sister,
who was raised in the same home:
- His parents went to Spain for a year when he was young and put
him into a non-English-speaking school, which placed him at a
severe disadvantage.
- He experienced other failures early, such as an inability to
perform athletically like his sister, and once back in Oregon, an
inability to do well in school.
- He was dyslexic in the midst of a family that was immersed in
academics.
- He was clumsy, while his father was a star tennis player.
- He came to believe that he disappointed his parents, probably
through watching their complete approval of their firstborn.
- He was small and weak, and he looked for ways to empower
himself.
- He had a poorly-managed temper and he participated in some
antisocial activities, such as throwing rocks at cars. He
claimed he'd also blown up cats and a cow.
- His father, too, had a temper, which frightened Kip, and he was
quick to show judgment. He expected a lot from both of his
children.
- Kip set off explosives that he made himself to vent his
feelings.
- As he learned about the power of firearms, he struggled against
his father, who wanted to keep guns out of the home. Then he
changed his mind and allowed Kip to take some gun safety lessons
and bought him some rather high-powered rifles, as well as a
lethal hunting knife.
- Eventually, Kip's parents took him to a therapist—a move his
father was against---and while the therapist felt that Kip should
not have guns, he proudly talked with Kip about his own Glock 9-mm
handguns. Thus, Kip got a dose of ambivalence about guns
from several authority figures.
- Kip was put on Prozac for depression, but when he seemed to be
doing better, he stopped taking it.
- He wrote in his journals about how much he hated himself, how
lonely he was, and how he wished he were bigger.
- He had a crush on a girl, who did not share his intense
feelings, so he identified with a brutal version of Romeo and
Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, which was then in vogue
among teenagers. In this film, violence and suicide are
highly glamorized. Kip also wrote about his "cold,
black heart," and added, "As soon as my hope is gone,
people die." To his mind, love only inspired hate.
Given all these factors, which is most to blame? Did Kip's
parents inadvertently handle things badly? Was Kip born with a
predisposition such that, no matter what they did, he would have
turned out to be violent? Was he influenced by the songs and
films that advocated hopelessness and death? Or was there
something else?
According to Robin Karr-Morse and Meredith S. Wiley in Ghosts in
the Nursery, the roots of violence develop in the first two years
of our lives, starting at conception. "With the exception
of certain rare head injuries," they claim, "no one
biological or sociological factor by itself predisposes a child to
violent behavior. The research underscores that it is the
interaction of multiple factors which may set the stage."
In other words, it's not due to a negative experience, a brain
disorder, genetics, or mistakes in parenting, but it could be the
result of a cumulative effect of a combination of factors, along with
the failure of normal protective systems in the environment.
Among those factors associated with violence, they list
- harmful substances ingested by mothers during pregnancy
- chronic maternal stress during pregnancy
- low birth weight
- early maternal rejection or abuse
- nutritional deficiencies
- low verbal IQ
- ADHD
- lack of consistency among caregivers in early life
- ineffective discipline
- severe neglect
While none are considered causal, in certain combinations and with
certain dispositions, they can provoke anger, lack of anger management
skills, and violence against self or others. If these kids don't
connect early, there can be problems later in life. "Babies
reflect back what they absorb," the authors say, and that notion
has serious implications. If we fail to address the issues of
competent child-rearing and healthy pregnancies, one in twenty babies
born today will end up behind bars, as Kip Kinkel did.
Because he had access to funds and to people selling stolen guns,
he was expelled, but even before that, the negatives were obviously
accumulating. Then the police took him away and called his
father to come get him, a humiliation in itself, and he had to think
once more about what Bill was going to say about this disgrace.
He decided then and there that all hope was gone. He went to his room,
got his semiautomatic rifle, and then returned to the kitchen and shot
his father to death. Then he called a friend and talked for a
while as he waited for his mother to come home. She arrived
around 6, parked in the garage downstairs and began to go up the
steps. Kip came and told her he loved her before he shot her six
times.
He covered the bodies of both of his parents with sheets and as he
waited through the night, he placed homemade bombs around the home,
putting one under his mother's body. He then turned on the
soundtrack to Romeo and Juliet to play continuously, and left a
note, "I have killed my parents. I am a horrible son."
In his journal, he'd written, "My head just doesn't work right.
Goddam these voices in my head."
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Victim, Ben Walker
(AP) |
Then he went to school with his rifle and a pistol, and in less
than a minute shot 48 rounds into his classmates. He put a rifle
to one boy's head and killed him. He'd also fatally wounded
another and hit eight more. Fifteen kids were hurt in the
stampede to escape. Some kids wrestled him to the floor and he
begged, "Just kill me." When taken into custody and
questioned about why he'd done this, he just kept saying through
tears, "I had no other choice…I had to." |
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Kipland Kirkland, mugshot
(AP) |
Though he was 15, Kinkel was certified to be tried as an adult.
He'd initiated an insanity defense, but dropped it and pled guilty to
four counts of first-degree murder and twenty-four counts of attempted
murder. He was sentenced to 112 years in prison without parole.
Things seemed quiet for awhile in schools around the country.
Then nearly one year after Kinkel's rampage, on April 20, 1999, on the
anniversary of Adolph Hitler's birthday in 1889, the school killings
reached their apex with the tragedy that occurred in Columbine High
School in Littleton, Colorado. Two more angry kids acquired guns
and bombs and plotted a day their classmates would never forget.
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