Last Day on Earth: A Portrait of the NIU School Shooter

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MEETING JIM THOMAS improves Steve’s life considerably. The fall of 2003 is much better for him than previous semesters. But he still has trouble sleeping, starting in October. By February 18, 2004, he finally goes in to see a doctor. Careful not to say anything about depression or anxiety, but just constantly thinking of things at bedtime. The doctor recommends he see a psychiatrist, of course, but that’s the last thing Steve wants.

In the summer, he takes a statistics course at Harper College, just on the side, to get ready for a statistics course he’ll be taking at NIU the next spring. He gets through the summer mostly, though, by playing first-person shooters online and reading about mass murderers and serial killers.

In fall 2004 he meets Mark, who has a half-burned Bush/Cheney American flag on his door. Steve is excited. “I could never do that,” he says. He has an anti-Bush sticker, but a half-burned flag?

Mark is someone he can talk to, finally, about all of it — the methodology of Columbine, going through weapons choices, the plan, each step, what they could have done differently. Mark a fast talker, smart as hell, quiet and calm but well-versed in all this stuff. Randy Weaver, the Turner Diaries, Waco, Oklahoma. The federal government. There’s a new angle here. Before it was Bundy, Dahmer, Hitler, and conspiracy was on the side, but the two can be brought together.

Libertarians, that’s what “Greg” says they are. Another new friend. Steve convinces Greg to switch his major to political science. They talk about the individual. Steve’s favorite author is Nietzsche. The superman, above moral code. Only the weak let themselves be ruled by morality. They talk about Firearms Owner ID (FOID) cards. “It’s back to the days of the Hitler regime,” Steve says. “The government is trying to track us.”

Greg grew up in a hunting family, beaten once for using the wrong caliber on a pheasant. Watched his uncle slaughter a pig with a dull axe and had to finish it with a sledgehammer. He has good insight into how Columbine could have been improved. He agrees with Steve, also, on zero tolerance or respect for the NIU administration, for Sallie Mae and everyone else who controls us.

Steve’s academic focus is shifting away from political science, though, toward sociology and criminology, because of Jim Thomas. Steve helps found the NIU chapter of the American Correctional Association on campus and becomes its treasurer and later VP. He gets Mark to join, even though he’s in political science. This is when he tells Thomas, “I’m focusing strictly on academics. I want to make something of myself after the group home.”