Paul:  Hey, Small Town Fam. This is Paul Holes. Make sure you subscribe to The Briefing Room with Detectives Dan and Dave. Season 2 is out now. Subscribe now, and thanks.

[Small Towns Dicks theme]

Yeardley:  Due to the historical significance of this case, we are breaking with our usual protocol of keeping locations and identities anonymous, because the who, how and where of the events that occurred on May 21st, 1998 continued to have devastating repercussions in communities across the country even 20 years later, though this crime took place in a small town in Oregon. Within hours, it had made national headlines for the number of victims involved, as well as the sheer boldness of the crime committed by a high school student named Kip Kinkel.

 Kinkel had been suspended from school the day before he shot his parents. The following morning, he drove to his high school in Springfield, Oregon, and opened fire on a packed cafeteria where students often gathered before their classes began. Though Thurston is not the first school shooting in the US, many in law enforcement consider it the unofficial beginning of the past two decades of high-profile shootings in our country. If only for the fact that one year after Thurston, it would be revealed that the Columbine school shooters had used Kip Kinkel’s plan as a blueprint for their own massacre.

 But this episode is not a profile of the killer. As always, our interest lies with the people who investigate these crimes. So, this is the Thurston School Shooting through the eyes of the Springfield police officer who was first on the scene that morning, as well as one of the detectives who arrived minutes later to help process the carnage. And finally, we sit down for a rare interview with one of the students who survived being shot that day. This is Thurston, A High School Shooting.

[music]

Yeardley:  I’m Yeardley.

Zibby:  And I’m Zibby. And we’re fascinated by true crime.

Yeardley:  So, we invited our friends, Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  To sit down with us and share their most interesting cases.

Dan:  I am Dan.

Dave:  And I’m Dave.

Dan:  We’re identical twins.

Dave:  And we’re detectives in Small Town, USA.

Dan:  Dave investigates sex crimes and child abuse.

Dave:  Dan investigates violent crimes. And together, we’ve worked on hundreds of cases including assaults, robberies, murders, burglaries, sex abuse and child abuse.

Dan:  Names, places and certain details including relationships have been altered to protect the privacy of the victims and their families.

Dave:  Though we realize that some of our listeners may be familiar with these cases, we hope you’ll join us in continuing to protect the true identities of those involved out of respect for what they’ve been through. Thank you.

[music]

Yeardley:  Today on Small Town Dicks, we have half of the usual suspects. We have Detective Dan

Dan:  Present.

Yeardley:  [giggles]We don’t have Detective Dave, however, because he is off fighting crime in Small Town, USA. So, we’ll have to do without him. But we do have a very special new guest this afternoon, retired officer Donnie. Welcome.

Donnie:  Thank you for having me.

Zibby:  Thanks for coming.

Yeardley:  So, Donnie, tell us how this case comes to you, because it has really incredible historical significance. But how did you get into it?

Donnie:  So, I was assigned patrol. And that particular day, I was an East side unit. And cleared the station early that morning. I was a pretty active patrol officer, so I had a lot of paperwork. And the rule was I had to get my paperwork done before I got into new activity.

Yeardley:  Why are you doing reports in your car instead of at your desk?

Donnie:  Doing the reports in our vehicle keeps us out in the community. And especially in that instance, if I had to respond from the station to an East call, it’d take me 10 minutes to 15 minutes to get through traffic, at least I’m centrally located on the East side.

Yeardley:  I see.

Donnie:  So, I left the station right after briefing, headed out East, parked at Lively Swim Center, and got my paperwork out, just started in on some reports, and the alert tones came over the radio. The alert tones are a series of beeps to allow us to know that there’s a high priority call. Really strange that early in the morning. Banks weren’t open, we weren’t going to have a robbery. Really unusual time. The information that came across was that there was a shooting at Thurston High School. Back then, mid to late 90s, we hadn’t had any active shooter protocol or training at the schools. This was before all the scenario training, the ALICE training.

Zibby:  What is ALICE training?

Dan:  It’s an acronym for active shooters at schools, and it stands for alert lockdown, inform, counter and then evacuate. So, these are all different steps you can take to ensure your safety.

Zibby:  Okay. Wow. So, you get this alert over the radio that there’s a shooting at the school.

Donnie:  Yeah, I can almost see the school from where I’m at. There is literally just a few streets between us. I remember throwing my notebook and all my paperwork on the floorboard of my passenger side. Responded to the north parking lot at the school. We’re getting additional radio updates from callers in the front office of the school. We’re getting a location that there’s a shooter in the cafeteria, and there’s subjects down in the hallway. At that point, upon arriving, I grabbed the shotgun out of the patrol car. It’s in the locking rack above my head on the roll bar. I grabbed an extra box of shotgun slugs, throw it in my back pocket and start running across the parking lot from the north to the front of the school.

 At this point, radio traffic’s getting pretty hectic. Everybody’s coming. We talked about doing reports in the field. I’m the first one to hit Thurston property. That’s how close I was. But now we have units responding from the station, we have units that are mobile in the city that are now responding. So, at that point, running across the parking lot, just looking for the threat. I’m looking for someone with a gun. I know about where the cafeteria is. As I arrive towards the front of the school, motor officer basically jumps the call. He’s on his way into the station. I don’t think his shifts even started yet. He hears the call on his radio. He arrives, parks his motorcycle and takes off running towards the cafeteria. I’m right behind him.

Yeardley:  I’m so sorry to interrupt, but at this point, do you know anything about the shooter? Do you know how many there are? Do you know where they are?

Donnie:  At this point, no. It’s literally just there’s a shooter in the cafeteria. Additional callers advising shots fired. The information is really, really vague.

Yeardley:  And who’s placing these 911 calls?

Donnie:  So, at that point, my understanding is it’s people from the front office. We’ve had administrators leave the cafeteria, going to the front office and they’re making the calls into dispatch.

Dan:  And we’re talking 1998, where students don’t have cell phones.

Donnie:  Correct. So back then, we don’t have social media or everybody has a cell phone saying where the shooter is, what he’s wearing. So, all ours is thirdhand information from dispatch.

911 Dispatcher:  What is your emergency?

Front Office Executive:  This is Thurston High School. We have a gun on campus that someone’s shooting. There is two students in this– Two in bad shape in the cafeteria.

911 Dispatcher:  Okay. We heard that the suspect may be a Kip Kinkle. So, I just want you to be aware of that. So, if you see this person, you can get down.

Zibby:  So, you’re just running toward this cafeteria armed with a rifle and very little information about what you’re actually running toward.

Donnie:  Correct. Basically, we’re just looking for a threat. We’re looking for someone with a gun. That’s my focus. That was the description I was looking for. I remember going past the front office and just seeing massive activity. Probably five or six people just either running around the counter or running back to office. I see a couple of people on the phone, they’re pointing towards the cafeteria, which is probably 20ft from the office to the front door of the cafeteria.

 So, the motor officer opens the cafeteria door. He opens it far enough to where I don’t even have touch it. I’m already on the shotgun. I’m looking down the sights of the shotgun, looking for the threat. We enter the cafeteria, and there’s a bunch of activity towards the north side or what would be the food service area of the cafeteria. So, we walked down the aisle way between the tables, and I start identifying down students. I see three or four students standing around another subject and it’s starting to become pretty clear that that’s our shooter.

Yeardley:  They’re standing around him?

Donnie:  Yeah. So, my understanding is during the shooting, during a reload, several students jumped up and actually assault the shooter.

Female Reporter:  When Kinkel starts to reload his gun, Jake Ryker and Adam Walburger tackle Kinkle. Several other boys piled on the teen, holding him down until police arrive.

Jake:  I took him down, started throwing, beating, punching him.

Adam:  Looked all of us, actually, and said, “Kill me. Just kill me now.”

Zibby:  Oh, dear.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Donnie:  And that was why he was unarmed when we made entry into the cafeteria. He hadn’t given up. He had been disarmed by several of the students. And vividly, I mean, one of them, [chuckles] once he’s handcuffed, walks up and socks him. So, there’s a lot of emotion, there’s a lot going on. Those guys were heroes. Intervening like that and stopping the reload definitely limited the number of injuries. So, I remember pulling the shotgun up, I identify the threat and he has no weapons on him. The rifle’s down, he doesn’t have the handgun. The motor officer responds to him, puts the handcuffs on him. I come to the front, start to initially pat him down and end up taking loaded magazines and loose rounds, cut a makeshift bandolier that he had, cutting all these items off of him, getting the weapons off.

Zibby:  Did you have a chance to really take him in up close?

Donnie:  Yeah. I just remember looking at him, if there’s ever that description of the blank look, the pure evil, that’s what he was looking at.

Dan:  Thousand-yard stare?

Donnie:  Yeah. All this activity is going on. You’ve got people on the ground bleeding, you’ve got people screaming, you’ve got officers pointing guns. No emotion, no reaction to us, didn’t follow any of our commands, just stood there. I just remember making that middle note that this is a bad, bad man.

Yeardley:  Wow. Was the cafeteria completely full of students?

Donnie:  I think we had probably 40 or 50 in there. A lot of them ran out. And I always remember watching movies and thinking, “Oh, this is so cheesy. This is so fake.” I remember looking around the cafeteria and it went into slow motion. The screams weren’t very loud. They were subdued. I remember just taking a 360 look, and everything was just slow, a little bit of hazy, almost like a dream sequence. It was me just trying to process that this has just happened. We never had training for this. We didn’t have active school shooter training back then.

Dan:  And you’re a three-year cop.

Donnie:  I’m a three-year cop. Yeah, I’m pretty new. I chase bad guys. I get in car chases.

Dan:  A lot of them.

Donnie:  [laughs] Yeah. [Yeardley laughs] That’s what I’m used to. So, trying to process a mass shooting scene, I’d never had one. Never had training for it.

Yeardley:  So, once you had the shooter detained, did everyone in the cafeteria just rush out of there? And did officers then flood the cafeteria? Like, what happens in that situation?

Donnie:  Well, because there was so much radio information coming in, dispatch thought there might be an additional shooter. From looking at the number of bodies that were down, I assumed there had to be more shooters.

Dan:  You got to start clearing the entire campus. And to paint a picture here, it’s a pretty sprawling campus for a high school. It’s very spread out. It’s not a singular building. So, when you come through the front gate, the office is just to your right. There’s a courtyard beyond the office, and then the cafeteria is in the corner of the courtyard to the left. So, you have to cover a lot of ground. There’s no cover. There are hallways going off to the other directions where another shooter, another threat could possibly be lying in ambush. The thing that law enforcement runs into is you’re getting intel, but your intel is, it’s already probably a minute old and a lot of things can happen in a minute.

Donnie:  That’s right. So, you got to get back in the game. I make sure my shotgun’s ready, and I’m going to start clearing buildings. I’m going to go out and look for a secondary shooter. I have no cover. There’s no other cops available to come cover me. So, as I head out the north door on the cafeteria, I find a wounded student out there. I remember grabbing them by their backpack and pulling them back in just to keep all the bodies together, so that when we did have medics there, they could find everyone. He had basically crawled out the doors for protection after being shot.

Zibby:  Shit.

Yeardley:  Oh, man.

Donnie:  I just remember the blood marks on the ground, grabbing the backpack and bringing them from the door, bringing them back into a table and just said them “I got to go. I got to make sure more people aren’t down.” Just remember going out the north door on the shotgun thinking, “Well, if I get hit, at least I can return fire and direct people where they’re at.”

Zibby:  So, you are out in the open, no coverage, rifle ready, and simultaneously processing the possibility that you could be shot at. And the only plus to that would be that then at least law enforcement would know where the other shooter was.

Donnie:  Yeah. So, as the information continues to develop, as we get more of an idea of the scene, as we find a couple of students that are down in the hallway, we’re starting to figure out what happened. We’re starting to realize that this was the only shooter.

[Break 1]

Yeardley:  So, now that you know it’s only one shooter and you have that shooter in custody, is the school considered cleared?

Donnie:  Yes, that’s been completed. We didn’t have a lot of resources. We had our detectives loading people up with the medics. We’re a smaller agency, and we had everybody involved. On day-watch, we had motor officers, detectives, all of our patrol officers. There were guys that were going to court that were called off that were now being utilized. We still had calls for service. It wasn’t like everything just stopped. We started having not only local media, but probably within an hour to two hours, we started having Portland media. I mean, this was now a media frenzy.

Portland media Female Reporter: : Tragic situation at Thurston High School this morning—

Portland media Male Reporter:  A boy, armed, went into the cafeteria 8 o’clock this morning.

Victim’s Mother:  I want to know that my son is okay.

Female Speaker:  Okay. I need you to try to relax. There’s total chaos.

[crosstalk]

Male Speaker:  Confirming the shooter is in custody. Is that correct?

Donnie:  We started getting a lot of Outside Agency Assist, State Police, Sheriff’s office. I know we had medics from all over Lane County just to transport. We have more casualties than we have ambulances for in Lane County.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Donnie:  Then the parents start arriving. They’re upset. They obviously want to know status updates on their kids. We hadn’t done this before. If you analyze a school shooting nowadays, there’s protocol to load them on buses, transport them to another school, get a list of uninjured, get a list of injured, get that information out. Back then, I was getting maybe a name or two over the radio about deceased, those in serious condition at the hospital. And that was just picked up from radio traffic between detectives. I, at one point, probably had 100 to 200 parents wanting to know where their specific child was.

 So, I transitioned from an unreal scene of a mass shooting in the cafeteria to now, here’s one three-year cop at a gate with 200 parents wanting to know where their kid is.

Yeardley:  Right, and who are in a panic.

Donnie:  They are. They’re upset. There’s parents saying, “You can’t stop me.” And I’m like, “You can’t go in there.” “Well, I’m going to go in.” So, because of that, we ended up having to move across the street to a church. And again, now we have to manage large, massive parents, concerned as they should be. But now we have national media on scene. Small town Springfield is now being overrun. I mean, this is CNN News. This is big time. And it’s just trying to manage our limited resources. Probably, three hours or four hours. I was dealing with the logistics of securing the school, keeping people from entering. It was a very long, slow process, reuniting students with parents.

 As the day went on, there were less and less parents there. And they started realizing that if they were still standing there in that church parking lot that their student was probably at the hospital.

Yeardley:  Oh, jeez.

Zibby:  God. When I hear about this type of atrocity, naturally my mind and my heart just gravitates toward the victims, their families, the students. But sitting here listening to you describe it, I’m now also realizing that this is effectively happening to you as well.

Donnie:  Yeah. I did see my dad a few times.

Yeardley:  And your dad was a detective at the same police agency you were at back then?

Donnie:  Yeah. He was busy working, loading people up on stretchers. So, it was one of those things where it would have been nice to go to my dad and say, “Hey, man, this sucks.”

Yeardley:  Right.

Donnie:  But he just looked at me and he’s like, “Ah, keep working. Let’s go.” So, it was one of those things where as a young guy, it was hard to see that, because that’s not what I signed on for.

Zibby:  Right.

Yeardley:  Sure.

Donnie:  The sergeant that was working that shift, I remember him taking all four of us day watch guys out to eat. And he got us a private section in the restaurant, paid for it himself. I remember the five of us just sitting there. We didn’t say a whole lot, didn’t talk about it, but it was just a nice chance to just sit there with those guys that had been in that cafeteria, saw all that stuff, and just decompress a little bit and just try and figure out what had just happened. We all just needed to process it.

Zibby:  Yeah. I think what is so powerful about these interviews is that they shine the light on the human being, all the human beings involved. Like, of course, you guys also have to process and metabolize the emotional impact of a mass shooting. That image of all of you in the back room of a restaurant together is going to stick with me, I think.

Donnie:  That was the end of by far my worst day as a law enforcement officer.

Yeardley:  Were you married at the time? Did you have children?

Donnie:  No kids. I wasn’t married. I was dating. Like I said, I looked for that connection with my dad. I saw him a couple of times. We were busy. We had work to do. But afterwards, I found my mom, and she was horrified about what happened. Couldn’t imagine it. In fact, she was at my younger brother’s elementary school. It was one of those things where there was always a possibility something like that could happen, but you never expect it to.

Yeardley:  So, did you watch all the coverage on the news about it back then, or did you find you wanted to distance yourself from that?

Donnie:  No, I think I finally listened to the radio traffic about 10 years afterwards.

Yeardley:  You listened to a recording of it?

Donnie:  Yeah. There was no reason to before. I mean, I was there. But listening to the radio traffic was like, we did a good job that day. We got in there. We stopped the threat. We saved a lot of kids. The investigation that followed up was excellent. From our response, from our handling of the suspect, the handling of the victims, we were on our game. I mean, we did a really good job with the resources that we had.

Zibby:  It’s so incredibly impressive.

Yeardley:  Kip’s parents, Bill and Faith, were high school Spanish teachers. They were well respected in the community and had high academic expectations for their children. Kristen was the oldest, and she did well in school. But younger brother, Kip, struggled both academically and socially, and Bill and Faith struggled with disciplining him. Things got even worse when Kristen went off to college, since she was, by her own admission, something of a mediator in the family.

 According to Kristen, Kip wasn’t allowed to have toy soldiers or guns or any toys, for that matter, that had overtones of violence while he was growing up, because violence in the Kinkel household was strictly forbidden. But that didn’t stop Kip from harboring a fascination with making bombs. He also hounded his parents to buy him a gun.

 At one point, he got in trouble for ordering bomb making materials from the school’s library computer and having them delivered to the school. When he was caught, Kip explained it away by saying he was simply trying to educate himself, because he wanted to become a police officer when he grew up. Kip’s parents were skeptical of this explanation, and they had a difficult time relating to his interest in weaponry. But Kip continued to ask for a gun. He wouldn’t let up. Bill asked his friend what to do.

Bill’s Friend:  He did come to me, because he knew that I was raised around guns, and he said he was really concerned. He had such an obsession with guns that he thought maybe it was the best thing to go ahead.

Yeardley:  So, for his birthday, Bill gave Kip the rifle that he’d been given as a child. Though Faith and Bill were still uncomfortable with it, they hoped that acquiescing would end the constant fighting between them and their son. They created strict rules around the use of the gun. Kip could only use it under his father’s supervision. At all other times, it would be locked up, and Kip’s parents had the only key. However, Kip’s problems persisted. Not long after his birthday, he and a friend were arrested while on a school field trip for throwing rocks from a freeway overpass onto the speeding cars below. This would be Kip Kinkel’s first felony.

 Bill and Faith were at the end of their rope. They didn’t know how to get their son back on track and keep him there. They tried sending him to a psychologist. They got him involved in football. They even rewarded his good behavior with another gun. This time, a Glock, per Kip’s wishes. And for a while, it seemed to be working. Kip followed the strict rules Bill and Faith had put into place, limiting his use and accessibility to both guns.

 A few days before the shooting, however, Kip purchased a third gun illegally for $110, and he kept it in his locker at school. Police got a tip from anonymous source that Kip Kinkel was hiding a gun on campus. And when they arrived to follow up, they did indeed find a fully loaded weapon in his locker. Kip was immediately arrested and charged with his second felony, receipt of a stolen weapon, on top of being charged with having a loaded firearm in a public building. He was suspended from school and released to his father, who took him straight home. To say Bill and Faith were disappointed and ashamed of their son would be an understatement, and Kip knew it. He felt he’d brought irreparable damage to his family’s reputation, and there was no way he could make things right.

Dan:  So, he goes up into his closet, grabs this 10/22 rifle, walks down behind his dad, and puts a bullet in the back of his head, kills him.

Yeardley:  [gasps] Oh, my God. But how did he get his hands on that rifle? I thought everything was locked up.

Dan:  It’s my understanding that Kip’s father kept all the ammo in the master suite closet, but the rifle was kept in Kip’s closet in his own room. So, he had access to it. He just didn’t always have ammunition for it.

Yeardley:  Oh, shit.

Dan:  He drags his father into a bathroom.

Zibby:  Oh. And was the mom there?

Dan:  She’s on her way home, and Kip knows it.

Zibby:  Wow.

Dan:  She comes home. She comes in through the garage, and Kip is waiting for her. He sees her arrive and goes down to the garage. Mom gets out with some groceries. Kip says, “I love you,” and puts a bullet in her face.

Yeardley:  Oh, no.

Dan:  He ends up shooting her four or five more times, one in the heart, two more in the head, and leaves her lying on the floor. Covers her with a sheet in the garage and goes up. He throws on the soundtrack to Romeo and Juliet. He ended up calling up one of his best friends that night, but did he tell him what he had done?

Donnie:  I’m not sure on that one.

Dan:  He’d had a conversation with one of his best friends on the phone that night.

Yeardley:  Just casually, like, “I mean, there are two bodies in the house.”

Dan:  Yeah. “What are you doing?” “Oh, just hanging out. Listening to music, playing video games.”

Yeardley:  Shit.

Dan:  Over the course of the night, he loads magazines. He’s getting his arsenal ready for what he’s got planned the next day. He’s past the point of no return, “Now, this is it.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my.

Zibby:  God. And do you know if it was only after he killed his parents that he decided to shoot up the school next? Or, if this was a fantasy of his, it had been brewing for a while?

Donnie:  I don’t know if he specifically targeted anyone. We analyze the school shootings over the last 20 years, and we can identify that they’ve been bullied or they had a direct conflict with a specific school administrator or teacher. On this one, I think he just knew the gig was up. He just killed mom and dad, “I’m going to go back to school and hurt as many people as I can.” I think that’s where you see that void of emotion, just that evil nature. And he did. He spent the night getting ready. I know he did some booby traps at the house. Again, all night, his mom and dad are dead in the house, and he’s just home alone, getting ready to go to school to shoot the place up the next day.

Yeardley:  Unbelievable.

Dan:  From what I’ve read about this, he did have a fascination with mass shootings and killing people. So, Kip loads up the car in the morning after spending the night doing whatever, he leaves Romeo and Juliet playing on repeat in the house, like, blaringly loud, which will come into play later. Loads up the car, the Ford Explorer that they have, he doesn’t have a license. He drives it to school, and he parks literally right down the street from Lively Swim Center, where Donnie is writing his reports.

Yeardley:  So, he doesn’t park at the school. He has the wherewithal to park around the corner.

Dan:  He’s been suspended from school. He’s not supposed to be at school. So, if he parks in the parking lot right in the front of the school, administrators are going to see him and go, “What the hell is he doing here?” There’s a cut through that goes from this street to an access road that really accesses all the athletic complexes that they have, so baseball fields, some soccer fields, tennis courts. And so, he cuts through to this little access road and is wearing a trench coat, so he can conceal this rifle that he’s got. And he’s also got a handgun with him and a backpack and pockets full of ammo. Like Donnie said, he’s got extra magazines, he’s got knives on him. He’d actually taped a knife to his chest, and I think two extra rounds also to his chest. Kind of like, “I’m going to keep at least two rounds, just in case.” These are just in case rounds, and I think they were meant for himself.

Yeardley:  Oh, God.

Zibby:  Really?

Yeardley:  This was in May. Wasn’t it odd for him to be wearing a trench coat?

Donnie:  It’s odd now. But back then, we didn’t have 8 to 10 suspects that have done mass shootings wearing trench coats. So, it’s odd based on temperature. But the assumption wouldn’t be that he would have a rifle. This was too new. This hadn’t happened to where we’re so conditioned. We teach that in our concealed carry classes. If somebody walks into a building with a trench coat, we’ve got enough basis of knowledge nowadays that that is a clue, something’s up. You better pay attention. Back then, students probably saw him, didn’t think twice about it. Now they might be alarmed. They may go tell staff. Back then, this was all brand new.

Yeardley:  Sure.

Dan:  So, he walks along this path. He finds there’s a hallway that borders the cafeteria, and he’s able to access that hallway. So, he gets into this hallway, and he can basically sneak right up to the front of the cafeteria and nobody will know he’s there.

Yeardley:  So, you’re saying he wouldn’t have to go by the office, and they could say, “Hey, that student’s not supposed to be at school.”

Dan:  Yeah, completely bypass the office. He goes right to the front. He sees one of his buddies and tells his buddy, probably not in these words, but you’re going to want to leave right now because some stuff’s about to happen. And his buddy takes a step back. Kip looks right to his left and puts a gun to a student’s head and pulls a trigger.

Yeardley:  [gasps]

Zibby:  Oh.

Dan:  And that child drops dead right there. And Kip enters the cafeteria and just unloads, just starts shooting indiscriminately at a crowd of children.

[Break 2]

Yeardley:  And was this with the rifle or was he using the other weaponry he had strapped to himself too?

Donnie:  The rifle itself, that was his primary firearm. I think he had some malfunction issues with the handgun. But he did. He stepped into the cafeteria and was able to just open fire. There were people sitting at the table, standing at the tables, walking in and out of the cafeteria. So, I think you have a variety of basically different ranges, different targets. And he did. He just started mowing down anything that was in the path of the rifle.

Zibby:  How many students were killed and how many were injured?

Dan:  Two students were killed and 25 were injured.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  Oh. And what about the parents? How were they discovered?

Dan:  They hadn’t shown up for work. So, people were worried and they call in a welfare check, and dispatchers start figuring out, “Okay, our shooter is this person. And the parents didn’t show up for work. We got to send people out to the house.” And law enforcement is going to end up at the house, eventually. But this really speeds up the response.

 The house is in the county. They’re not in the city. So, our county sheriff responds to the house to do a welfare check. Upon arrival, the deputies are making their approach to the house. They’re in the driveway. They notice that the front door is slightly a jar, and blaring over the stereo is the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack, Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes, and they’re going up to this house.

 That music’s playing, and I’m sure the creep factor clearing that house was just off the charts. They enter the house and start looking for the parents. They’re making announcements, “Lane County sheriff’s office. If you’re inside, let us know. Announce yourself.” And they’re getting no response. They come to the bathroom downstairs in the main floor of the house, and it’s locked. So, they use, I think it was a paperclip to pick the lock on the bathroom. They’re not even able to open the door, because dad is on the ground inside this little tiny half bathroom. So, they have to push him, and they peek inside, and he’s covered with a sheet, and there’s a lot of blood and they discover that he’s dead.

 They go into the living room of the house. There’s a pile of ammunition. And we’re talking hundreds of rounds in the middle of the floor. Like, Kip had just sat on the floor loading magazines all night. And all the ones that he didn’t have magazines for, like the ammunition, is just sitting there. So, he’d just taken ammo boxes and just emptied them on the floor and was loading magazines. They make their way downstairs, and they notice that there are drag marks in blood in the garage, which lead to mom laying on the floor, also covered by a sheet, a lot of blood.

Yeardley:  Why are there drag marks? I thought he dragged dad, but I thought he just dropped mom where she was standing.

Dan:  He dropped her right at the base of the stairs, and then he pulled her further into the garage. So, he did move her. I don’t think he was trying to conceal her, because she’s really not concealed. There’s a white sheet over her, and it’s covered in blood.

Yeardley and Zibby:  Oh.

Dan:  So, yeah, they end up writing a search warrant for the house. They also encounter booby traps in the house, explosives. Law enforcement had to clear this house to make sure that nobody gets killed or injured while they’re executing this search warrant.

Yeardley:  What were these booby traps made of?

Dan:  Bomb squad guys find two bombs with electronic timing devices. Two pipe bombs hidden in the garage crawl space. They also found two howitzer shell casings, a hand grenade, fireworks, various chemicals that could be used to make explosives and detailed bomb making instructions.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Zibby:  Jeez. And what about Kip’s sister? She was away at the time. So, how did she find out about all of this?

Dan:  She gets a phone call from a friend. And she’s in Hawaii and she gets this phone call.

Kristin:  It’s about 07:00 AM in Hawaii, got a phone call from my friend, and she says, “Have some bad news. There has been a shooting at Thurston.” She’s watching the news, so she’s giving me little bits of information.

Female News Reporter:  Okay, there’s probably half a dozen people. We need help now.

Kristin:  Finally, I said, “Is that why you’re calling me? Is Kip hurt?” She said, “Well, Kip was involved. I don’t know anymore. I’m watching the news right now. I’ll call you back.” Finally, I was speaking to member of the sheriff’s department.

911 Dispatcher:  What is your emergency?

Kristin:  “Is it true?” I said, “Are my parents dead?” And she said, “Yes, they are.”

Yeardley:  What was Kip like once he was taken away? I’m guessing you took him to the police station, yes?

Dan:  Correct. They transport him down to the police station. And remember that knife we mentioned he had taped to his body?

Yeardley:  Yeah.

Dan:  This knife had not been discovered just yet.

Yeardley:  Under his clothes?

Dan:  Under his clothing. So, he gets into the interview room. It’s pretty standard for us to take the handcuffs off at that point, try to make people comfortable, so they’ll speak to us. I don’t think we had a camera.

Donnie:  No, not in that room.

Dan:  Not in those old interview rooms that we had in the old building. So, Kip is waiting while a detective goes and gets a glass of water for him and a snack.

Yeardley:  It seems much too cordial.

Dan:  You still treat people like they’re human. We don’t smack people around with a phone book in the interview room [Yeardley giggles] like you see on TV. You go in, you treat them like a human. And although, you don’t respect what they did, you have to show them a measure of respect. So, this detective comes back to the interview room to bring him his water, and Kip lunges at him with this knife. And the detective pretty quickly disarms him.

Zibby:  Jesus, this kid.

Dan:  Yeah.

Zibby:  Donnie, I’m interested in the aftermath for you. How did this event change you, if it did?

Donnie:  Yeah. So, I continued my law enforcement career. I left the Springfield Police Department, got into the private sector. Since then, we had Columbine and Virginia Tech. I started getting involved in ways to help prevent school shootings. From being on SWAT, we would debrief, we would analyze these shootings. I became certified as an armed private security provider. Actually, took employment with small Christian college here in town as their director of campus safety. Started employing some of the techniques that we had used at Springfield, which changed the game. We were innovative in the way that we responded.

 We had some larger agencies, very well known for training come up, try and instruct us how to handle mass or school shootings. Some of their scenarios or requirements, we didn’t have enough people. They needed five or six officers to do a specific tactic. We had four guys on patrol. We just simply didn’t have the bodies to be able to use their tactics. So, we came up with our own. Our standing protocol for an active or school shooter was one cop is better than any child. So, if you’ve got a response, you go in. You run towards the gunshots, you try and isolate where it’s at and you engage them.

Yeardley:  Even if you’re by yourself.

Donnie:  Even if you’re by yourself. When you break down and you study these shootings, the majority of them are at gun free zones. These are cowards. They don’t want to have interaction with a hard target. They don’t want to get in a gunfight. They want to cause as much damage as they can, and so that’s why they’re selecting these targets.

Yeardley:  Thurston, we know, was one of the mass shootings that the Columbine murderers studied before they did their attack, which was only, what, about a year later?

Donnie:  Yeah, it was about a year after.

Yeardley:  After that happened, did you have Colorado police coming to you to help them connect any of the dots?

Donnie:  I didn’t directly, still being on patrol, I would suspect our detectives. Again, this was new. This was evolving. The detectives that interviewed our shooter, the mindset, being able to understand why he did this, how he developed his plan, that kind of insight would have definitely been valuable to any of these other agencies, either investigating potential shootings or the follow up investigation after one. So, I’m sure over the years, the detectives involved have been contacted, because they hold knowledge that was new at the time.

 You can debrief armed robberies gone bad. You can debrief a pretty straightforward homicide, this person was killed for this reason. That’s what we did in law enforcement. We didn’t debrief mass shooters. They were far and few between. And so, being able to contact an agency who’s interviewed, process, debrief, I think there was a reenactment walkthrough, that information is very valuable if you’re conducting your own, because there are no books. There are no rules. They were basically being created in the late 90s as this was evolving.

Zibby:  As we know, there have been countless school shootings across America. And as you mentioned, a lot of protocol and policy has been developed around what to do when there’s a mass shooting, which I would think is a good thing. But do you see any downsides to the policies that have since been put into place at all?

Donnie:  Yes. We see policy conflicts and issues even with some of the recent shootings, just within the last few months. You had an officer on scene who stayed outside. You have command staff that say there’s different guidelines, there’s rules, there’s policy. I know in that one, breaking it down, a couple of SWAT guys from a neighboring agency jumped the call and they got reprimanded for it. I don’t care. We had everybody come help us. We had detectives, we had people going to court. We had people that were on their days off. Everybody comes help. This is the worst of the worst situation.

Zibby:  Right. I can understand what you’re saying, because how do you create a map for the hypothetical? And I can imagine how, though well-meaning, policy or protocol can end up being insufficient when you’re actually in a live shooter situation. Oh, it’s complicated.

Donnie:  Yeah. Because we know each second is another potential victim. So, yeah, I look back at our response. We did it the first time, and that’s what we’ve continued to instruct our officers now. We go in and we get them, and that’s what the SPD guys sign on for.

[Break 3]

Yeardley:  Now, we’d like to welcome Detective Don to the conversation. He was one of the investigating detectives who were there on the day as well. He also happens to be Officer Donnie’s father. So, we’re going to call him senior, since you’re both Dons. [giggles] it’s so nice to have you back to the show, Sir.

Don:  My pleasure.

Zibby:  So, as a detective, where were you when you were alerted to what was going on at the school?

Don:  We were notified that morning. I think we were still in briefing that there had been a shooting at Thurston High School. So, we all ran to our cars and sped out there, not really knowing the situation as to how in depth it was, but getting information from the police radio on the way out there. It’s probably 12-minute drive from the department. We could tell that it was a very serious event.

 When I got to the scene, we were still performing first aid on shooting victims. They were still being transported to the hospital and loaded on gurneys. I saw so many different reactions. I remember to this day that even though I’m trying to focus on, “Okay, who needs the help the most?” I was still conscious of the fact that there were staff members, older students that would come up and say, “What can I do to help? What can I do to help?” It was hard to direct them, because most of them, you would tell them what to do and they’d come back and ask you again. There were others that were literally walking around like they were sleepwalking. Staff members, they would just wander by, literally, like they were–

Yeardley:  In shock.

Don:  Yeah. And then, of course, there were the folks that got their hands bloody and were right at the scene, working with the wounded right away. I just remember seeing all the aspects of the emotions and the responses people have.

Zibby:  Uh-huh.

Yeardley:  Right.

Zibby:  And two, I’m trying to imagine what it was like for law enforcement and the EMTs who were thrust into this tragic event just so suddenly.

Don:  Well, in this case with Thurston, my understanding is there were two first responder paramedics that never went back to work after the Thurston incident. They couldn’t deal with what they had seen or dealt with that day. I know, for sure, one never went back to work and the other had not gone back to work for many years and may have gone back in a different classification.

 When these folks are trained, they’re trained well. They see a great deal of things on the street with automobile accidents and stuff, but they weren’t prepared for what they saw that day. They never made it back.

Yeardley:  We’ve asked you on multiple occasions, what’s the worst thing that you see or what’s the thing that never leaves your mind? Every single one of you has said, “Whenever kids are involved, and even though these were older kids, they’re still young people who haven’t yet really lived their lives.” I can imagine that seeing a sea of young bodies in the worst possible situation might never leave you.

Don:  No, it doesn’t. But in our profession, you do learn to deal with it. It’s part of the job. But the part that you don’t forget– Like, when you talk to one of the victims or a paramedic or somebody that’s in the field, but maybe not in law enforcement, it’s the sounds and the smells are almost more of a factor than the visual part of it. And that day, I can still remember some of the smells and sounds. The sound in the gymnasium when I was there was like an overpowering roar. You couldn’t make out much of what was being said, but it was just like this roar that blocked everything else out, whether it was just people wailing, crying, too many people talking or yelling and saying different things, mixing in with each other. But it was very difficult to hear.

 And then the smells were horrible. Clearly, people have to understand that in a situation like that, there’s people defecating themselves. There was vomit everywhere. We were slipping, sliding in vomit from the injured people and then people that are scared or stressed will vomit. Urine. You could smell the urine. I can still imagine the odors that were present. And it was all over the cafeteria floor. People were slipping and falling. And not only the blood, which everybody anticipates is going to be there, but urine and vomit.

Yeardley:  Oh, my God, I never thought of that. So, when and how does the investigation part of this case begin?

Don:  The investigation starts right after Donnie gets him in handcuffs. We know who the kid is, we know that the day before he was arrested by one of our detectives for possession of a stolen gun. The decision is made on the fly that that detective will then interview him about this current matter. Even though he’s basically caught with the gun in his hand, there’s hundreds of witnesses, you can never rely on that to build your case for a criminal case. You just simply can’t. No matter how obvious it is, you have to go through every step, get everything done right, present it properly, get an interview, get a confession if you can, get background information, you name it. All the evidence has to be processed as if this thing happened in a vacuum and nobody knows who did what.

Zibby:  With a crime of this scale, does that make things like the investigation of the crime scene itself easier or more difficult?

Don:  It’s so problematic on a large scale like this, because we have shell casings all over the place. We have blood, vomit, urine, bodies, and people helping and people wandering and things are getting kicked around. But that’s just the way it goes. You have to prioritize everything. You have to deal with the wounded and then go to the next step. It’s not like you can walk in and have a pristine crime scene, because that shell casing may have been kicked three times since it came out of the gun. Shell casings, of course, are a good indication of positioning when the gun’s fired, because you can determine type of gun, how far it generally ejects a shell casing. “Okay, so it’s 3ft. So, the shooter was right here when he fired.”

 But that’s all going to change in a dynamic situation like that where people are moving things around. And for good reason, they’re not doing it because they’re not being cautious. There’s no time to be cautious.

Yeardley:  Did you ever find out from the shooter why he did it? What was his motivation?

Don:  The motivation he told us about was, “I got arrested the day before with a gun. And that’s a felony. My parents could never stand the embarrassment of their son having a felony charge on his record. So, I killed them.”

Yeardley:  Oh, my God.

Don:  “I killed them because they couldn’t live with that. And then I went to school and tried kill everybody till someone would kill me. Nothing was planned way in advance. It was all triggered by– My dad had to come pick me up because I got arrested for having a stolen gun at school, and I felt bad and there’s just no turning back from that.”

Don:  When you brought the gun to school yesterday, did you know that was the right thing to do or the wrong thing to do?

Kip:  I knew it was a wrong thing.

Don:  You knew it was the wrong thing to do?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  Okay. But you didn’t have any intent yesterday, or at least that’s what you told me yesterday, of hurting anybody. Is that correct?

Kip:  Right.

Don:  Okay. So, when you got home with your dad, is dad angry with you?

Kip:  Yes [cries].

Don:  Okay. Tell me what happens when you get home.

Kip:  [cries] [unintelligible  I could–

Don:  You were feeling really bad?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  Yeah. So, he was feeling ashamed and embarrassed because you did something wrong. Is that right?

Kip:  Right.

Don:  Okay.

Kip:  I didn’t love to. I love my dad and that’s why–[cries].

Don:  You love him, so that’s why you had to kill him. [Kip cries] Okay. So, what’s he doing in the kitchen when you come in?

Kip:  I don’t know.

Don:  Was his back to you?

Kip:  Yes. [cries]

Don:  Okay. Earlier, you told me you walked up behind him and shot him in the head. Is that right?

Kip:  Basically, yeah.

Don:  Basically?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  Did you stand away from him when you shot?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  How far were you from when you shot him?

Kip:  May be10ft.

Don:  10ft. How many times did you shoot him?

Kip:  One.

Don:  And where did that bullet hit him?

Kip:  Right behind the ear.

Don:  Right behind the ear?

Kip:  Yeah. [cries] Oh, my God.

Don:  It’s all right. So, your dad falls to the kitchen floor?

Kip:  He just laid on the counter.

Don:  He laid on the counter, then what did you do?

Kip:  I didn’t know what to do. So, I dragged him into the bathroom and I put a white sheet over him.

Don:  Okay.

Kip:  Oh, my God. So, fucked up dad. I don’t know why. [cries]

Don:  So, your mom drives in in her car, right?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  What is she driving?

Kip:  Explorer.

Don:  Explorer?

Kip:  Yes.

Don:  And she parks. Where are you at?

Kip:  Waiting for her.

Don:  Okay. Outside or inside?

Kip:  Inside.

Don:  Okay. Is she pulled into the garage?

Kip:  Yes. [cries].

Don:  Okay.

Kip:  Oh, my God.

Don:  Do you have one of these automatic garage doors where she closes the door after she pulls in?

Kip:  Yeah.

Don:  Was the door up or down?

Kip:  Down.

Don:  Okay.

Kip:  [cries] I just want to die.

Don:  I know.

Kip:  Oh, God. [cries].

Don:  So, you told me that your mom gets out of the Explorer and starts up the stairs from the garage or basement, is that right?

Kip:  Yes.

Don:  Do you say anything to her?

Kip:  Yes. I love her. [cries] Goddammit [unintelligible  

Don:  All right. [unintelligible  Get up, get up, get up. Settle down, settle down.

Zibby:  As I understand it, there was a walkthrough of the school with the shooter the day after the event.

Don:  That’s right.

Yeardley:  What’s the purpose of a walkthrough?

Don:  The most important part of it is if you need to present the bad guy’s story to a jury, there’s no better way than to have him tell his own story on videotape. We can do it on audiotape or in an interview room where there may be a camera looking down, but there’s really nothing more impactful than having a video camera out at the scene and the suspect walking you through and saying, “This is where I fired the rounds. This kid was walking here and I shot him.” He walked through the whole thing, and that’s impactful to a jury if they were to see that later.

 The defense attorneys can’t attack too much of that. Generally, how they attack that is, “Well, you deceived him into giving the walkthrough or something to do with his rights were violated,” because there’s not much they can do about the walkthrough when it’s there on video.

Yeardley:  I see. What was his defense? Was he going for an insanity plea?

Dan:  I think that was their initial angle. But ultimately, his defense team drops the insanity defense and he pleads guilty. And that’s part of doing the walkthrough also is you’re going to be able to see with your own eyes this guy’s affect. Is he articulate? He knows what he did, and you can watch this guy on tape and say, “That guy’s not crazy, he’s a coward and he wants to kill people.”

Don:  Exactly.

Zibby:  I’m curious if there are any moments or little details that stick out to you personally from that day, something that we would never even think to ask about.

Don:  Didn’t one of the kids bring you the gun that was used, junior?

Donnie:  Yeah, but I had already identified, at least for me, what the threat was and determined that they were just bringing it to turn it over to show it. It wasn’t in a threatening manner. It’s hard to explain, but that was part of that scene unfolding in those 10 seconds or 15 seconds from coming through the door, identifying everybody. It wasn’t a threat. It was just simply something that was happening in there at the time. We addressed it, had them put it down, and we moved on. It was very interesting how things played out in that cafeteria, and how we were able to identify who was who, and they just weren’t a threat.

Yeardley:  So, a student took the gun and brought it over to you as if to help.

Donnie:  Exactly. And so, even someone bringing me the weapon used, you’re good. You were identified as a nonthreat. But yeah, something as innocent as, “Here officer.” Normally, in a tactical situation, yeah, I would have engaged the subject, put them on the ground, cuffed them. But for whatever was happening at that time, my response was different. They were a good guy. The potential on the street could have been catastrophic, but it just seemed to work out that day.

Zibby:  Amazing how clear you were about that, even under the most stressful and dangerous of circumstances. What about you, senior?

Don:  There’s the little things that come up that you don’t think about. And the lady that worked in the office came up to me later that day, and she was in tears, saying, “Students kept coming in screaming. There’s someone shooting in the cafeteria, and I kept trying to call 911, but I couldn’t get through.” And I’m thinking, she must mean other people were already calling it. And if enough people call 911, it overloads the system. So, I’m just thinking, “Oh, well, that’s not that big a deal.” It turns out she was the first one to call 911. Who knows how many seconds earlier that was? Who knows if that maybe could have saved a life? But it’s a switchboard.

 So, when you pick up the phone and dial 9 to get an outside line, then you dial 911. But she didn’t think that. No one really thought that. She’s picking it up, dialing 9, outside line 11. And it wouldn’t work. And she did that over and over to where she was just a basket case going. I couldn’t get through. It was so frustrating. Finally, we looked into it, and it was, “No, you have to dial 9 for the outside line and then 911.” [Yeardley gasps] She says, “She dialed that so many times.” We don’t know if it would have mattered, but it’s one of those little things that you don’t think of. She’d never had to dial 911 before. I’m sure she lives with that, because once it was explained and we figured out what the problem was, I’m sure she wondered if being a little sooner would have helped. It probably wouldn’t have, but it’s something that came up during that. It’s just a little thing, but it could have made a big difference.

Yeardley:  Right. If you’re that person, you’d probably play over and over and over in your head.

Don:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Damn.

Zibby:  Well, we are so grateful to you for sharing your experiences, gentlemen. As you know, we’re speaking to Melissa next, who was one of the Thurston students in the cafeteria that morning. She’s actually on her way here, and she had expressed a desire to meet the officers who responded to the shooting that day, because she’s never met any of you. And after all this time, she was hoping she might be able to thank you face to face. Would you gentlemen be up for that?

Don and Donnie:  Yeah.

Yeardley:  Great. Then we’ll be back next week with that meeting, and Part 2 of this episode.

[music]

Yeardley:  Small Town Dicks is produced by Zibby Allen and Yeardley Smith, and coproduced by Detectives Dan and Dave.

Zibby:  This episode was edited by Soren Begin, Logan Heftel, Yeardley Smith and Zibby Allen.

Yeardley:  Music for the show was composed by John Forest. Our associate producer is Erin Gaynor, and our books are cooked and cats wrangled by Ben Cornwell.

Zibby:  If you like what you hear and want to stay up to date with the show, head on over to smalltowndicks.com and become our pal on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, @smalltowndicks. We love hearing from our Small Town Fam. So, hit us up.

Yeardley:  Yeah. And also, we have a YouTube channel where you can see trailers for past and forthcoming episodes. And we are part of Stitcher Premium now.

Zibby:  That’s right. If you choose to subscribe, you’ll be supporting our podcast. That way, we can keep going to small towns across the country and bringing you the finest in rare true crime cases, told, as always, by the detectives who investigated them. Thanks for listening, Small Town Fam.

Yeardley:  Nobody’s better than you.

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