Student’s Home Yields Cache of Weapons

Police searching the isolated home of a teenage boy accused of gunning down more than a dozen students said Friday that they have uncovered an “extraordinary” cache of sophisticated bombs, artillery casings and a grenade secreted in a crawl space under the garage.

The search produced three large explosive devices, complete with timing devices, electrical circuits and about a pound of explosive charge, along with two pipe bombs, smaller explosive devices and literature on making bombs, said Lane County Sheriff Jan Clements.

The sheriff called the bombs “very sophisticated,” both in their construction and size. “What is somewhat remarkable, when you take it and hook it up with a 15-year-old, I don’t think ‘remarkable’ is an overstatement.

“It absolutely is unbelievable to those of us who seem to think rationally and understand what society is all about and how it operates.”

Kipland P. Kinkel, wearing what appeared to be a bullet-proof vest, made his first appearance Friday afternoon before Lane County Circuit Judge Jack Mattison, where he was charged with four counts of aggravated murder. He will be tried as an adult but cannot, under Oregon law, face the death penalty.

The death toll from Thursday’s shooting spree rose to four after 16-year-old Ben Walker, in critical condition with a severe head wound, was removed from life support systems. Also dead were Mikael Nickolauson, a 17-year-old high school senior, and the suspect’s parents, William Kinkel, 60, and his wife, Faith, 57.

Three other Thurston High School students remain in critical condition, and three more are listed as serious.

Forensic investigators were unable to make a positive identification of the bodies of the Kinkel couple until Friday afternoon, because of the extraordinarily precarious nature of the search. Fearful that a booby trap could go off at any moment, police left the bodies unexamined while painstakingly probing the house for more bombs.

At one point, a state bomb squad removed a 1-by-2-foot section from the side of the house to take out components of the explosive devices found inside.

Friends of the Kinkels, a well-liked couple who taught Spanish at Springfield schools, said the parents had become increasingly worried in recent months over their son’s preoccupation with guns.

While students at Thurston High School shrugged off Kinkel’s constant comments about torturing animals, killing people and blowing up a pep assembly as jokes, his father began seeking advice several months ago from friends about what to do.

“He was trying to analyze the situation and how best to handle it. He felt that the boy had a more-than-average interest in guns, and he tried to defuse that,” recalled Rod Ruhoff, a friend of William Kinkel’s who occasionally went to University of Oregon basketball games with Kinkel and his son.

Kinkel’s wife, Ruhoff said, was adamantly opposed to having any guns in the house, but Kinkel concluded it was better to try a positive approach.

“The boy was going to get a gun some way or another. [Kip] knew from reading all those magazines what he wanted. He told Kip he would buy the gun, he would keep possession of the gun, they would go out and target-shoot together, and he would enroll in a gun safety class,” Ruhoff said.

The plan fell apart, he said, when Kinkel learned his son was secretly taking the gun on his own out into the woods. He took the gun away from him, and classmates say the boy was furious.

“I think the only reason Bill got involved with having a gun at all was to try and channel this interest and handle it in a positive way,” said Ruhoff, his voice breaking into sobs. “The thought’s gone through my mind several times, that’s what killed him. I woke up this morning and I thought, the one good thing out of all of this is they [the Kinkels] aren’t going to have to deal with all this. Because it would have killed them.”

After his son was suspended on Wednesday for having taken a stolen gun to school, William Kinkel phoned the Oregon National Guard, inquiring about admitting him to the Guard’s boot-camp-like Youth Challenge Program. He seemed “at the end of his rope,” a Guard official said.

“This father was looking at just trying to get his kid mainstreamed back into school,” said Capt. Dan McCabe. “We take those kids who are on the razor’s edge, ready to fall on the dark side. He was concerned because his son had been expelled, and he wanted to make sure he had some kind of future. Of course, he doesn’t anymore.”

The Kinkels, friends said, were avid skiers, rafters and sports fans who often took their children on hiking and camping trips.

Faith Kinkel, one of the most popular teachers at Springfield High School, made frequent trips to Venezuela, organizing a program for needy children there.

William Kinkel, a tennis enthusiast, constantly tried to interest Kip and his sister, Kristin, a college student in Hawaii, in playing tennis. But they would take it up only to drop it again, family friends said.

Kip, school friends said, listened to the heavy metal music of Marilyn Manson. On his Internet service account, obtained by the Oregonian newspaper, Kip described his hobbies as “role-playing games, heavy metal music, violent cartoons/TV, sugared cereal, throwing rocks at cars and EC Comics.”

As his occupation, he wrote: “Student, surfing the Web for info on how to build bombs.”

Sheriff’s officials said they found a variety of information on bomb building in Kip’s bedroom, gleaned from the Internet and other sources. They also found 155-millimeter howitzer canisters, a hand grenade, pipe bombs, fireworks and “several chemicals that could have been combined to make explosive devices,” Clements said.

The bombs were secreted in a 2-foot-high crawl space connected to the basement and the garage, said police, who were attempting to neutralize the devices before removing them. They did not appear to be set to go off, the sheriff said.

Springfield Police Chief Bill DeForrest said that through nearly 200 interviews with witnesses to Thursday’s shooting, officers are trying to find out why no officials had been told about Kip’s repeated threats of violence.

“One of the questions our investigators have been asking students who have told us they had concerns about Kinkel is, ‘Did you tell anybody?’ The answer is ‘No, they didn’t tell anybody.’ ” Most students said they assumed Kinkel was joking.

The day before the shooting, Kip told several students he was “embarrassed” at having been taken into custody for having a weapon at school. He and another student were charged with possession of a firearm on campus and handed over to police, who released them to their parents.

Classmate Gerry Shay, 14, said Kinkel was worried about “what his parents’ friends would think. . . . He said he didn’t want his parents to hate him.”

“He was embarrassed that they arrested him in the classroom, right in front of his classmates, and he said he was going to come back and do something stupid,” added David Willis, who was on the junior varsity football team with Kip. “People thought he was joking. He was obsessed with stink bombs all year, he kept setting stink bombs off in people’s lockers, and people thought he was going to do something like that.”

Police confirmed that the parents of the other boy taken into custody Wednesday in connection with the stolen firearm asked that their son be held in detention over the weekend, “as a lesson,” but authorities refused.

DeForrest defended the decision to release the boys, saying the law does not allow authorities to hold a youth unless there is probable cause to believe he will hurt someone.

“Kip was asked, ‘Why do you want the gun?’ ” the police chief said. “What do you intend to do with the gun? He said, ‘I just like guns. . . . I have absolutely no intention of using it.’ There was no probable cause to believe there was any immediate danger to Kip or others.”

Jamon Kent, the school superintendent, said officials had no way of knowing Kip’s threats were different than any other schoolboy bluster. “If we detained every kid who says they’re going to kill someone on our campus today, we’d have a very large group of kids,” he said.