‘Mastermind’ Allegedly Ordered High School Shootings

A 16-year-old boy who opened fire at his high school two weeks ago wasn’t acting as an angry and disgruntled loner, but as a focused “assassin” recruited by a Satan-worshiping friend obsessed with Adolf Hitler and mind-control, prosecutors said Tuesday.

In a preliminary hearing, prosecutors charged that the recent terror at Pearl High School was “masterminded” by 18-year-old Grant Boyette, who they said inspired and directed 16-year-old Luke Woodham to gun down their common foes.

“We cannot move forward until all our enemies are gone,” Boyette said, according to one witness.

Several days after the shooting, which left two students dead and seven wounded, Boyette and five friends were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder. All six were held on $1-million bond per count until late last week, when police began releasing several on much smaller bonds. Woodham, who police say also killed his mother, is being held without bond.

At Tuesday’s hearing, prosecutors revealed that the freed teens are now cooperating with police, fingering Boyette as their ringleader.

“There was a mastermind of this particular group, and Mr. Boyette was it,” prosecutor Jim Kelly said. “He was the one that called the shots.”

According to the prosecution, Boyette called himself the “father” of group members, who in turn called themselves “the Kroth,” a name allegedly taken from satanic writings.

Investigator Greg Eklund, referring to statements taken from alleged group members, said Boyette drew up detailed plans for the assault on Pearl High School, plans that included entering and exiting the school quickly, severing the phone lines, then fleeing.

The teens hoped to drift south to Louisiana, earn some money and slip into Mexico, where they would charter a boat bound for Cuba.

Boyette was also said to be the brains behind a murder plot against Donald Brooks, father of accused conspirator Donald Brooks II. Eklund testified that Boyette and the others wanted to kill the elder Brooks because he caught them using his credit card to acquire computer supplies. The means of assassination was to be poison, smeared on the doorknobs of the Brooks house. When the elder Brooks opened a door, the poison would seep into his skin. The entire plot, Eklund said, was hatched by Boyette.

In his diary, Eklund said, Woodham wrote about preparing himself to commit physical violence by mutilating his pet dog, Sparkle. Boyette allegedly helped. In testimony that horrified courtroom observers, Eklund read a page taken from Woodham’s journal, which described the animal’s mistreatment in minute detail.

“On Saturday last week,” he read, “I made my first kill. The victim was a loved one, my dear dog.”

The diary recorded numerous brutal events, including final moments which Woodham allegedly called “true beauty.”

But lawyers for Boyette argued that the diary was unsigned, impossible to authenticate, and that Boyette’s name never appeared in its descriptions.

When prosecutors offered eyewitness testimony from a neighbor who saw Boyette participate in beating the dog, defense lawyers made much of the fact that the neighbor couldn’t recall precisely what date the beating took place.

“I don’t think he [saw anything],” scoffed Boyette’s lawyer, J. Edward Rainer. “I think this is a man who wants some attention.”

To further rebut the prosecution, Rainer called seven character witnesses, mostly members of Boyette’s church, each of whom testified that Boyette was a quiet boy, sharp, respectful of others.

Boyette--painfully thin, with bony arms, severe cheekbones and sunken eye sockets--watched without emotion as witnesses took the stand and called him a pillar of this working-class community, whose 22,000 residents once thought they knew each other.

Billy Baker, the defendant’s Sunday schoolteacher, said he knew Boyette for years and always found him engaging, sober, courteous.

“What I saw was a kid very smart, very shy, very obedient,” Baker said. “He was more a follower type person than a leader.”

But the prosecution elicited testimony from Baker and every other witness that they had spent very little time actually talking with Boyette, that they’d merely observed him from afar at youth picnics and church socials, and were basing their high opinions on his excellent church attendance.

Rankin County Court Judge Kent McDaniel concluded that “those witnesses, if anything, proved to this court that Grant Boyette lived two completely different lives.”

McDaniel denied bond for Boyette and ruled that there was sufficient evidence to take the case to a grand jury. Woodham and the five other teens face preliminary hearings Oct. 21.

Only by exercising “extreme deception,” McDaniel said, could Boyette have kept those closest to him ignorant of his other self, a self so many other people saw, particularly six teens who may have been preparing to follow Boyette on a bizarre, bloodthirsty commando mission.

“I believe Grant Boyette knew what was going on,” McDaniel said, “and that he did seek by his actions to make this conspiracy succeed.”

Why Boyette and the others hated the high school so, prosecutors didn’t say.

But they depicted Boyette as a boy delving deeply into his own dark side, reading Nietszche and other violent philosophies, and they called one witness who testified that in his sophomore year, Boyette became a student of Adolf Hitler.

“Grant liked Adolf Hitler a whole lot and admired his tactics,” said Rick Brown, a friend of Boyette since their early childhood. “He liked the way he could influence people.”