Word: woodham
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...what calls Satan forth? Was it something about the four communities where the kid killers lived--in Springfield as in Pearl, Miss., West Paducah, Ky., and Jonesboro, Ark.? If police are right, together these five boys--Kinkel, Luke Woodham of Pearl, Michael Carneal of West Paducah, and Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden of Jonesboro--murdered 15 people and wounded 44 others. Were they simply bad seeds, genetic and spiritual misfits born without the brain chemistry that produces compassion--and, indeed, without souls...
...other boys also had experience with firearms. Carneal learned to shoot at summer camp and on a shooting trip with his neighbor's dad (from whom he stole the murder weapon). Woodham kept a map on his wall with the bilious slogan "One Nation Under...
Four of the five boys were rumored to have some kind of girl trouble--most seriously Woodham, who was by all accounts "crushed," as a classmate told police, when Christina Menefee broke up with him. (Significantly, her father says Luke's mom was so overbearing she "drove them apart... If they went to get ice cream, she was there.") After the split, Luke testified at trial, "I didn't eat. I didn't sleep. It destroyed me." On D-day, Christina was apparently his primary target; she died of her wounds...
...some of the words on Kip Kinkel's favorite CD, Nevermind, by Nirvana: "Death/ With violence/ Excitement/ Right here/ Died/ Go to hell ... Take a chance/ Dead." It's not completely clear what Kurt Cobain had in mind with these lyrics, but they are lush with nihilism. Luke Woodham listened to goth rocker Marilyn Manson, and Mitchell Johnson to rapper Tupac Shakur. One doesn't have to support censoring any of these artists to see that hurt, isolated kids may not understand any intended symbolism...
There were other cultural loves. Woodham had implicated himself in a role-playing game at the behest of an older boy, Grant Boyette, now 19. "Grant said he knew I had been hurt by Christina, and he said there was a way to get revenge," Luke told a psychologist. "He said Satan was the way." He said Boyette introduced him to Hitler and Nietzsche, beat and burned his pet dog and eventually led him to a Satanic group believed to be called the Kroth (initially named the Fourth Reich). The Kroth played an interactive game called Star Wars--sort...