Tragically, Father Couldn’t Find Where Son Belonged

Charles “Jeff” Williams had agonized for a month about moving to California.

He sought a better life for his young teenage son, Andy, an honors student. Jeff Williams, a 41-year-old single father, saw few opportunities in their hometown of Brunswick, Md., a place with a one-room library and no movie theater.

Williams wanted his son to find a stronger sense of family. Andy didn’t see his mother much after she split up with his dad 11 years ago, just before the boy turned 4. So Jeff Williams was considering moving to Twentynine Palms, where his parents lived and he had attended high school.

In Maryland, he tended animals in a research facility at Ft. Detrick, a local Army base. California might be better for them both.

Andy hoped to stay in Brunswick. “But he didn’t want to say anything to his dad,” said Mary Neidlander, the mother of Andy’s former girlfriend, Kathleen. “He knew that everything his dad did was for him.”

Last Monday about 9:20 a.m., about 15 months after leaving Maryland, Andy Williams, 15, allegedly used his father’s long-barreled .22-caliber revolver to fire more than 30 rounds, killing two classmates and wounding 13 other people at his high school in Santee, Calif.

Three days later, on Thursday, the phone rang at the Neidlander house. Kathleen answered.

“Kathleen, honey, how are you doing?” a man’s voice said. It took Kathleen a minute to realize it was Andy’s dad. Then her mother took the phone.

“We still love you,” she said. “We still love Andy.”

“I don’t know any more than you do,” he told her. “I haven’t even been able to talk to my son.”

She stayed on the line as Jeff Williams sobbed.

Jeff and Andy moved to Twentynine Palms in December 1999, midway through Andy’s eighth-grade school year. They first stayed with Jeff’s parents, Ann Williams and her husband, Charles, a retired Marine. They soon got their own little house on the same street, with two trees in the yard.

Andy enrolled in Twentynine Palms Junior High School. Jeff Williams took a job collecting fees at Joshua Tree National Park. He worked eight hours a day, often on weekends and holidays. It was a three-month temporary position paying a fraction of the wages he’d earned in Maryland.

Andy soon made friends with classmate Brian Burdett. Brian, then 14, suffered from a disabling muscle disorder that made simple movements--walking, sitting, bending over--a slow and arduous task.

Brian was constantly teased. He got pushed into bushes and knocked over and his backpack was stolen, his mother said. He never fought back.

Andy understood. Teasing, said Andy’s half-brother Michael Williams, had always been a part of Andy’s life. “You should see pictures of him when he was a little kid,” said Michael Williams, 20, in Atlanta. “Andy had these big ears that stuck out, and he was real skinny and all the kids would make fun of him.”

Last spring, Andy and Brian hung out frequently at the Burdetts’ home on an isolated dirt road. They would catch lizards, play Nintendo and go swimming.

‘A Special Kid,’ Friend’s Mother Says

“Andy didn’t see any of the imperfections in Brian. He just saw a friend,” said Terry Burdett, 40, an elementary school teacher. “It takes a special kid to be that kind of friend.”

Andy told Kathleen in Brunswick that school in Twentynine Palms was OK. Some kids teased him because of his small size, called him gay and used slurs. But things were manageable, he said. He and Kathleen talked nearly every week on the phone and kept in touch via e-mail.

Andy volunteered for a walkathon, along with his father, to raise money for Baptist missions. He played bass guitar in a church youth group. His father helped coach--and, when needed, served as umpire--at baseball games.

Jeff Williams was a good father, “much better than I ever was, and I had a wife to help me,” said Charles Williams, Andy’s grandfather, a retired major.

“Oh, the attention he gave Andy,” he said. “He would fix the boy’s meals, get him ready for school, take him to school. . . . Andy was his life.”

On Sundays at First Baptist Church, Andy sat next to his grandmother, who worked as a secretary for Pastor Raymond Butcher. His grandparents filled their tract home with pictures of Jesus. They keep 8-by-10 pictures of their four children on top of an upright piano.

At his new school, Andy came off as a quirky individualist who thrived in drama class, carried a monkey Beanie Baby and sometimes donned a Superman costume. Once he wore his underwear over his pants.

“He was a class clown,” said Laura Poblet, 14.

“He was someone you could always talk to,” said classmate Rachel Romberg, 15. “He was sweet. If I had a problem, I could always talk to him.”

Classmate Jenny Whitten said Andy enjoyed school plays. “I think he liked being in front of everybody,” the 14-year-old recalled. “He was a people person.”

During spring vacation, Scott Bryan, 14, a friend from Brunswick, came to visit Andy. He’d hounded his mother for air fare, telling her he’d repay her. Andy and his father met him at the airport.

Scott said Jeff and Andy’s new home felt familiar. It had the same furniture, same pictures of Andy, the same model aircraft that Andy and his father had built together. Scott also recognized the locked gun rack that Jeff Williams called the “no trespassing case.” The boys hiked, hung out and rode Andy’s go-cart.

Andy’s grandmother baked homemade brownies for Scott to take home. Scott told their mutual friends in Brunswick that Andy missed them but that California was cool.

Not long after Scott’s return, Andy phoned Debby Pfeifer, a former neighbor in Brunswick. Could he stay at her house for the summer? His dad had agreed to let him go if an adult would be responsible for him for two months. Debby and her husband, John, who have six children, said yes.

To his Brunswick friends, Andy looked different. His hair was blond at the tips. He was definitely taller. But he was just as thin.

“I gained three pounds,” he bragged, mugging and showing off his slim physique.

Andy reunited with his girlfriend, Kathleen. He and his friends played Sony PlayStation--the racing games were among Andy’s favorites. They skipped stones from the banks of the Potomac or tried to balance along the rocks jutting above the slow-moving river. They made forts out of sheets.

At night, Andy usually went back to the Pfeifers’ and called Kathleen before going to bed. A few nights a week he would cut the conversation short so he could phone his dad with the calling card Jeff had sent with him.

Andy was upset when the summer drew to a close. He didn’t wantto return to California. His father had taken a job as a lab technician at a naval hospital in San Diego. Now Andy would be living in an apartment in Santee, and changing schools once more.

At Kathleen’s house, he dissolved into tears. He didn’t want to go home. Andy flew back a few days before school started.

In Santee, Andy phoned Kathleen, speaking to her as he unpacked boxes in his new room. It was so small there was scarcely any space for more than his bed. He used cardboard boxes as a night stand, draping a tablecloth over them.

As Andy began his freshman year at Santana High School, his list of woes grew. Kids called him Ethiopian, because he was so skinny; albino, because he was so pale; homosexual, because he was so slight and his voice was still high. He was beaten up, he said, because of his new haircut.

He told Kathleen and Scott he had started smoking pot with friends from the skaters park. They were both surprised.

“I felt disappointed in him,” said Scott. “It didn’t seem like that was something he would do.”

Andy told them it was no big deal.

But there was something else. He started saying he wanted to “disappear.” He said things would be better if he could “just hide” or “go away for a while,” she recalled.

Alarmed, Kathleen put her mother on the phone to talk to Andy.

Neidlander was one of several women Andy called “Mom.” She knew what it was like to be made fun of at that age. She had been a fat teenager. At 13, she took a bottle of pills in a suicide attempt. She didn’t tell Andy about that, but she said he wasn’t the only teenager to ever go through a hard time.

“He couldn’t understand why the kids wouldn’t accept him,” she said. “I thought if he just gave it time to adjust, things would get better. But I know that wasn’t the answer he wanted.”

The day before Andy’s 15th birthday, on Feb. 7, there was an accident in Twentynine Palms. His disabled friend Brian Burdett was struck and killed by a school bus.

Grief at Friend’s Death Seen as Possible Factor

Brian’s father, James, believes Andy’s grief may have been a factor in the shootings a month later. Both boys, he said, were misfits, cast as uncool and teased mercilessly.

Andy’s school work was going badly and he failed some classes. He told Scott he’d have to attend summer school. There wouldn’t be another long vacation in Maryland. He seemed sullen. Scott kept asking him to speak up.

Four days before the Santee shooting, Andy’s friends in Brunswick stayed home because of snow. Kathleen signed on to the Internet and was surprised to find Andy already online.

What are you doing up so early? she asked.

Andy said he was getting ready for school. “Maybe I’ll miss my bus,” he wrote. He flashed the message: “I don’t want to go to school.”

He sent it several times.

Then he signed off to run for the bus.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Horrifying Minutes

The shootings began around 9:20 a.m. Monday. In a matter of minutes, the gunman reloaded his .22-caliber revolver at least three times, firing at random. By 9:28 a.m., the suspect was arrested, two students were fatally shot and 13 other people were injured. Here is how the events unfolded:

Gunman fatally shoots Brian Zuckor, 14, in the head and wounds Trevor Edwards, 17, in the neck. Three uninjured students flee restroom.

Security guard Peter Ruiz approaches restroom, sees two students on the floor. One warns him to leave. He walks toward small quad while radioing for help. Gunman shoots him. Ruiz staggers and collapses.

Gunman exits bathroom and shoots randomly in corridor between buildings 200 and 300 and in small quad. While walking past the restroom, Randy Gordon is struck in the back. He makes his way to corridor between buildings 300 and 400, collapses and dies.

Three other security guards, using lunch cart as cover, rush to Ruiz and pull him toward administration building.

Most victims are hit while standing or running along walk-way between library and administration building.

Gunman returns to restroom, then reemerges in small quad and continues shooting.

Several wounded victims make their way or are taken to the nurse’s station or the counselors office.

Gunman returns to restroom. When police enter, he is found kneeling, holding a fully loaded gun above his head and pointed away from anybody. He drops the gun and is arrested.

Note: Locations of bullet marks and shooting victims are approximate.

Researched by BRADY MacDONALD and LYNN MEERSMAN Source: Santee Fire Dept., San Diego Sheriff’s Dept., staff reports

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Times staff writer Jeffrey Gettleman and special correspondent Deborah Sullivan-Brennan contributed to this story.