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

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STEVE GREW UP WATCHING HORROR MOVIES with his mother. Fleshy, enormous, laid out beside him on the couch. Middle of the day, and all shades are drawn. Dark. She’s protective, doesn’t want Steve to go outside. Won’t let him play much with other children. She’s not mentally right, according to Steve’s godfather, but what can he do? A family feud.

Horror movies and the Bible, those are what animate this living room, those are Steve’s inheritance. A close fit, the plagues, the tortures of Job. God’s sadistic games, teaching his flock to appreciate the value and meaning of their lives. The flesh of no consequence. Late night, his mother can’t sleep. An insomniac with anxiety problems. His father playing out a family history of depression, Steve’s grandfather an alcoholic. So they continue on, still watching.

At school, Steve is an average student. “Steve appears very impulsive and does not want to go back and check his work, therefore there are a lot of errors. At our conference we can discuss ways to help Steve work up to his potential,” writes his third-grade teacher, Ms. Moser. A few years later, Iowa test score fifty-eighth percentile. By now he’s looking for places to hide, tries to find something like the living room, finds it at last in the band practice rooms of Grove Junior High. Plays tenor sax, has a friend, Adam Holzer, skinny and geeky with a nervous smile and round glasses far too large for his face. Long straight hair hanging slack, parted in the middle. Steve no looker himself. Face too skinny at the bottom, almost no mouth or chin, and whenever he focuses on work, he forgets himself. The back of his wrist against his forehead, hand hanging out limply. His mouth open, a piece of food always caught in a gap between his lower front teeth. Other kids call him fag because of the hand. He and Adam get notes to leave class as often as possible, especially gym class, whenever a concert or performance of any kind is on the schedule. One of the rooms is small and has no windows. Here they can talk, eat candy, hide away.

After school, they go home to Steve’s, 758 Penrith, Elk Grove Village, Illinois. A small tract home, one story, three small bedrooms. If it weren’t for the living room extending a few extra feet, the house would be a perfect rectangle, same as a double-wide. His mother is a secretary, his father a letter carrier. They won’t be home for hours.

A bedroom community, four variations on this tract house, and Steve’s butts up against a major road, four lanes. Only a chain-link fence between the small back lawn and the cars.

Steve goes straight for the pellet gun, walks outside to the shed, perfect cover. He pumps the gun, building up air pressure, slides in a small pellet, and closes the bolt.

He can hear his dog breathing, though, up close. A pug with breathing problems. So he picks it up by its hind legs and hurls it, hard, with both hands, against the wall.

Now he can focus. The cars are going fast, and they’re only in view for a couple car lengths. And the pellet is slow. So he has to hold the gun aimed to the right, and the moment a car flashes in from the left, he pulls the trigger. The gun spits, the sound of air released, and then he and Adam hang for a moment in concentration, in hope, waiting for the sound of a pellet hitting metal.

They squeal if they hear it, their joy as compressed as the air in the gun. Wait and watch as drivers try to come back, try to pinpoint them. Not easy to do on a busy, fast-moving street. A few times, drivers circle around through the neighborhood, even figure out the right house. The doorbell or loud knocking, but the door is locked, the lights out. The joy so complete, it’s nearly impossible to keep quiet.

Even better than the pellet gun, though, is Pete Rachowsky. A kid in Steve’s grade who carries the materials for a Drano bomb in his backpack. Plastic bottle, Drano or Works toilet cleaner, aluminum foil. Simple. He teaches more than a dozen kids how to make the bombs. Steve and one of his few friends, Joe Russo, decide to make one. Maybe it’s a way to cement the friendship with Joe. Steve is very protective of his friends, realizes there aren’t many who will have him.

They wait until after dinner on February 5, 1994. A Saturday night, eighth grade. Joe meets him at the corner and they walk to Jewel supermarket, only a couple blocks away. Steve has a two-liter plastic bottle in his backpack. They buy Works toilet cleaner and aluminum foil, worry about getting caught. Steve comes in here all the time with Adam to eat candy out of the bulk bins. He’s used to feeling nervous here. He’s ready to say his mother asked him to buy these things, but the checker doesn’t ask.

They walk along Arlington Heights, the busy street behind Steve’s house. They take a left on Cosman and walk the strip of houses that face the forest preserve. At the corner, they pass the barn and cottage of the preserve and keep going. This is the way to Joe’s house, so they can say they’re just going home. The houses here look across the street at a hundred feet of lawn and then trees. Easy to disappear anywhere along here, and there’s not much traffic.

They find a house that’s dark, no one home, no cars in the driveway. 235 Cosman, a two-story with an indented porch. They sneak up to this porch, tiptoeing, and crouch down. Steve pulls out the bottle, and they stuff aluminum foil into it. A lot of foil, and then Steve worries it’s too much, but they pour in the Works, cap it, and run across the street to hide in the trees.

Nothing happens for a while. They wonder if they made it wrong. They think about running back across to check. Then it blows, an explosion louder than they could have hoped for. Glorious. They run back through the forest, hyped up on adrenaline and joy, laughing.

Five days later, on February 10, Pete’s mother, MaryAnn Rachowsky, finds two-liter bottles, Works toilet cleaner, and aluminum foil in her son’s backpack. She tells the police, they haul Pete in for questioning, and he eventually gives up Steve and Joe.

The detectives call Steve’s parents on the twenty-second, and they agree to bring him in for questioning. “We spoke to Steven’s parents and they related that Steven was very nervous and scared about being at the police station and he realized that what he had done was a mistake,” reads the police report from February 24, 1994. “They advised that they would discipline him and would like us to speak to Steven to scare him in order that he would not make any bombs in the future.”

Steve is remorseful. He tells the police that fifteen students know how to make the bombs. He gives names. He vows he’ll never do something like this again. Does he already hate himself at this point? Are his apologies already over the top, as they will be in later years? The police aren’t psychiatrists and of course can’t see the future. They see only a scared, remorseful kid, a minor offense, no property damage, no injuries. They station-adjust him, close the case, send him home to be disciplined by his parents.