SPRINGFIELD, ORE., MAY 22 -- Police found five bombs and the makings of more today at the riverside home of a 15-year-old freshman who allegedly opened fire with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle in his high school cafeteria here Thursday, killing two fellow students and wounding 22 others after murdering his parents.
Lane County Sheriff Jan Clements said that of three "somewhat sophisticated" bombs with timing devices, one had a one-pound charge of an undetermined explosive. Another, larger bomb was hidden in a crawl space, he said, and had to be removed by cutting through a wall of the double A-frame house where the accused killer, Kipland P. "Kip" Kinkel, lived with his father, William P. Kinkel, 59, and his mother, Faith M. Kinkel, 57.
The parents' bodies were found lying in the house shortly after Thursday morning's carnage at Thurston High School. A subdued-looking Kinkel, wearing a black University of Oregon sweat shirt, appeared in court today on charges of aggravated murder in connection with his parents' killings and those of the two students. Because of the danger of booby traps, police explained, the parents' bodies were not removed immediately as bomb squad experts picked through the residence, finding, in addition to the three timed bombs, two pipe bombs, fireworks, two 155mm artillery shell casings and a hand grenade.
The discoveries in the family home on a large, heavily wooded lot along the lower McKenzie River near this central Oregon logging town lent credence to statements by Kinkel's friends and classmates, who said in interviews that the diminutive, freckle-faced adolescent had boasted incessantly about his ability to make bombs and expressed a desire to "get back" at those he felt had wronged him.
Kinkel's teachers had assessed him as a good student, an outwardly happy, "average, everyday kid" who did not need special counseling, according to Springfield School Superintendent Jamon Kent. But Kinkel's friends at Thurston High apparently knew better. The dark side of a disturbed youth desperate for attention and acceptance that emerged from their recollections fit more closely with what police said they found in going through the family home.
Authorities said that in addition to murder charges resulting from the shootings and the charge of bringing a stolen gun to school that led to Kinkel's suspension and warning of expulsion the day before the cafeteria rampage, the teenager is likely to face charges of making illegal explosives. Along with charges in his parents' slayings, authorities held the teenager responsible for the deaths of Mikael Nickolauson, 17, who died when the shooting erupted in the cafeteria about 8 a.m., and Ben Walker, 16, who succumbed early today to wounds suffered in the rampage.
"He was really weird in some ways. He'd kind of wander over to a group and start talking about blowing stuff up," said classmate Dennis Murray, 15, who frequently lifted weights with Kinkel after school. "He told lots of people he had a hit list of people he wanted to get."
Mikell Young, 15, another freshman, said, "Whenever you got in conversations with him, he'd talk about making little pipe bombs out of Picolos {firecrackers} and blowing things up. He said he made one bomb that you could hear for three blocks."
Like most of the freshmen interviewed, Young said he dismissed such talk as nothing more than "weird" fantasizing by a teenager who wanted to add shock value to his conversations in order to attract attention. "He's a freshman, and a lot of freshmen do that kind of thing. We're not the most mature group in the world. But you never think it means anything," Young said.
But at times, classmates and friends said, Kinkel's talk turned even stranger and, in retrospect, ominous.
Jeff Anderson, 15, who was expelled from Thurston two weeks ago for repeated truancy, recalled listening to Kinkel talk -- in what Anderson thought was a "joking sense" -- about walking into the school one day with a gun and "just start shooting people and save the last round for himself."
"He definitely got a weird personality, because he was always talking about guns and shooting people in school. He said he wanted revenge a lot, but we never thought he'd do it," Anderson said.
Nisa Lund, 13, who said she sat next to Kinkel in a mixed 7th- and 8th-grade class at Thurston Middle School last year, said he seemed "obsessed with killing small animals" and used to tell her about killing a cat by putting a firecracker in its mouth, and hanging a squirrel from a tree and shooting it.
"We just thought it was all a big joke, like trying to get attention. No one took it seriously, or even thought about telling any {school official} that he was talking about it constantly," Lund said.
School administrators suggested today that they might not have taken such talk seriously even if they had known about it. But Kent, the school superintendent, cautioned: "If we detained every kid who said they were going to kill someone, we'd have a very large number of people detained. That's a common thing for kids to say."
While acknowledging a need for new policy decisions governing how and when educators trigger intervention procedures when clearly disturbed youths come to their attention, Kent insisted that authorities had taken the "appropriate action" when they suspended Kinkel for having a gun in school the day before the cafeteria shooting spree, began expulsion proceedings and turned him over to his parents.
Deputy District Attorney Doug Harcleroad said it is common for police to release a youth arrested for a Class C felony -- such as having a gun in school -- to his parents if there are no outstanding warrants against him and he is not an immediate threat to himself or others.
Kent also said that because Kinkel was not at the time seeing a counselor, and because he came from a good, stable home, he was not referred for guidance.
But beneath the wholesome appearance of the family, there were at least some signs of behavioral problems in the life of Kip Kinkel. A family friend for 30 years, Tom Jacobson of neighboring Eugene, said that at times during the last several years he would ask William Kinkel about Kip, and "the floodgates would open" with confidences about trouble controlling his son.
"They did everything humanly possible with that boy. . . . As parents, they just kept trying," Jacobson said.
But, according to classmate Mikell Young, Kip Kinkel just kept acting "weirder and weirder." He said that when he asked Kinkel on Wednesday how he was, he replied that he was angry because his parents had taken his guns away. Earlier, he had been grounded by his father for helping other kids wrap toilet paper around the house of an elderly couple near the school, Young said. Then on Wednesday, he was suspended from school.
"Something just broke down," Young theorized. CAPTION: Kipland P. "Kip" Kinkel, 15, is escorted to arraignment by Lane County police in Eugene, Ore. Kinkel allegedly killed his parents and two students.
