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

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A COUPLE DAYS AFTER MY FATHER SHOT HIMSELF on the phone talking to my stepmother, saying “I love you but I’m not going to live without you,” she received flowers from him. A romantic gift from the grave, the same as Jessica will receive. And how can anyone ever make sense of this kind of gift?

One of my former colleagues at FSU, Thomas Joiner, is an expert on suicide, and he maintains that suicide is not a selfish act. “That’s not the way they’re thinking,” he says. They often believe their suicide will help the people they leave behind. My father, for instance, believed his insurance policies would help us, better than miring us in his financial problems with the IRS. We’d be better off in the end. Thomas Joiner’s father committed suicide, too.

After twenty-eight years of suicide bereavement, I’m moving closer to Joiner’s view. At first, suicide seemed like the most selfish act possible, and I felt rage and shame. Now I’m not so sure. But here’s what my father did to my stepmother, here’s how he was a monster.

Eleven months before my father’s suicide, my stepmother lost her parents to a murder-suicide. Her parents had a big house on top of a hill, overlooking an entire valley in Lakeport, Northern California. A valley with pear orchards and hills all around. They had horses. They were well off from a successful pool and spa business. I spent a lot of time at that house, riding all-terrain vehicles and dirt bikes, swimming in the pool, learning to play backgammon, hunting and shooting. My stepmother’s father had a gun collection, pistols and shotguns, in cases. A room with dark wood and velvet. Many of the guns rare.

My stepmother’s mother felt bitter about her husband. He had cheated on her, was thinking of leaving her for another woman. Their years together were not what she had thought they were, her life a kind of lie. I remember her sitting in the kitchen on a stool, her little dog running around clicking its nails on the linoleum. She chain-smoked, had a raspy smoker’s laugh. I was always a little scared of her.

One day she went to the gun collection and picked out a shotgun and a pistol. She shot him at close range with the shotgun, killing him, then killed herself with the pistol.

Killing him had not been the plan, though. She included a letter to him in her suicide notes: “I’m really sorry for your last miserable 15 years. I really didn’t know. I really thought you loved me. . Above all, Rollie, be happy because I’m taking your hell away. I’ve loved you more than you will ever know.”

This was a small town, a small community, and for their five children, the shame was nearly unbearable, but they all stayed. They fought each other bitterly over the will, over the money.

My stepmother had already lost her daughter’s father to a car accident. Then her parents’ murder-suicide. She told my father, right near the end, “Don’t do this to me, Jim.”

But he did it. And he sent her flowers that she’d receive afterward. And to me, those flowers are the greatest cruelty. So although Jessica Baty has lied to me over and over, and should have seen warning signs, and is one of the most psychologically screwed up people I have ever met, buried deep in denial and still not able, really, to acknowledge Steve’s victims, the people he killed and wounded, I will never stop feeling sorry for her. Can you imagine believing a proposal is coming on Valentine’s Day, then finding out instead that he’s a mass murderer?