School Shooter Pleads Guilty
Seventeen-year-old Kip Kinkel has abandoned an insanity defense and pleaded guilty to murdering his parents and two high school classmates in a shooting rampage last year, reports CBS affiliate KOIN-TV in Portland.
In a courtroom packed with survivors and relatives of the victims, Kinkel slumped in a chair and didn't look up as he read over his plea to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder.
"My mind is clear and I am not sick," said the written plea, which Kinkel initialed "KK."
The plea came just three days before a trial that offered a chance to get inside the mind of a school shooter and offer some explanation to the baffling string of similar sprees across the nation.
Prosecutors charged that Kinkel, then 15, opened fire in the cafeteria of Thurston High School with a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle, killing two students and wounding more than 25 others.
He allegedly murdered his parents before going on the shooting spree at the school.
The plea agreement leaves open the chance Kinkel could get out of prison as early as age 42. It calls for sentences of at least 25 years on each murder charge to be served concurrently.
Prosecutors have recommended 7 1/2 years for each attempted murder count, for the 25 wounded students and a police detective he attacked later with a knife.
"Sounds like there's enough years - he'll probably die in prison," said Tony Case, a student who was shot in the back and leg. "What more could we ask for?"
Because he was 15 at the time, Kinkel never faced the death penalty. His attorneys had hoped to spare him life in prison by proving he was insane, or at least disturbed to the point that he was not fully in control of his actions.
If they had succeeded, Kinkel would have been confined to a mental hospital until he was no longer a danger to society.
Kinkel's rampage began May 20, 1998, after he was expelled from school for having a stolen pistol in his locker. He shot and killed his parents, teachers Bill and Faith Kinkel, then spent the night planting booby trap bombs around their bodies. Police said they found more than 20 explosive devices at the family home.
The next morning, dressed in a long trenchcoat, he walked into the cafeteria just before classes began and calmly pulled a .22-caliber semiautomatic rifle from his coat. Firing from his hip, he squeezed off 50 rounds in just 90 seconds.
Ben Walker, 16, and Mikael Nickolauson, 17, were killed. The shooting ended when several boys tackled Kinkel as he tried to reload.
"Just shoot me. Shoot me now,'' Kinkel said as he was wrestled to the ground.
Later in a jail interview room, Kinkel lunged at a detective with a knife that had been taped to his leg and begged police to kill him. Taped to his chest they found two bullets that he said he had saved for himself.
Kinkel seemed aware of his place in the sad lineup of Paducah, Pearl, Jonsboro and Conyers. After last spring's Littleton, Colo., shooting that left 15 people dead, an anguished Kinkel told a defense psychologist that he blamed himself for what he saw as a copycat crime.