Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - School massacre foiled: Armed teen caught with ‘hit list’

Episode Date: May 11, 2017

A tip from Canadian police helped North Carolina cops stop a teen just minutes before investigators believe he was about to go on a stabbing rampage at his high school. A big knives and a “hit list��� were found in his backpack. Nancy Grace talks with psychologist Caryn Stark and reporter Joe Marusak about the thwarted massacre in this episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. school in Union County near Charlotte. They're bringing knives, flammable liquid, and a hit list with up to a dozen names on it to school. But investigators say the boy posted in an online chat room about plans to stab several students at his school. They say they were tipped off to the planned attack by authorities in Canada. This is Crime Stories with Nancy Grace. The student whose name has not been released because he's younger than 16, was not a troublemaker. We spoke to him. He was very calm. Authorities say the plot was foiled with minutes to spare. The sheriff said today

he is now getting some counseling help. It's troubling to know that your kids can come to school and not be safe. I remember Columbine. I remember Dylan Klebold. And I remember all of the copycats that followed. I remember the violence in our school systems. When I was a prosecutor for 10 years in inner-city Atlanta,

I would go to public schools to find defendants, felony defendants, witnesses to felonies. It was not a good thing to be walking up and down the halls of a middle school looking for a murder defendant or a rape defendant, but I did it. And I didn't know what could be worse than that until Columbine, the Columbine massacre occurred. I'm Nancy Grace. This is Crime Stories. Joining me in addition to the Duke, Alan Duke, is a very special guest today, a long time sparring buddy and friend, Dr. Karen Stark. Joining me out of New York. As authorities arrest a North Carolina student armed with weapons and a hit list, it's like we never learned.

A North Carolina high school student just arrested in connection with a backpack police find containing dangerous contraband like knives and a hit list. What? This is in Thunder Bay. Police in Thunder Bay alerted the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation after they were flagged to an internet chat room. And this internet chat room contained suspicious material,

says the NCBI, North Carolina Bureau of Investigation. Canadian authorities were the ones that were interviewing a girl in a different investigation. She leads them to this chat room, and it's there. They find posts made by this North Carolina student about stabbing people. Now, before I go any further, I want to go to Karen Stark. by this North Carolina student about stabbing people. Now, before I go any further, I want to go to Karen Stark. Karen, before we get into what's happening in that North Carolina school, it could be any of our schools.

That's right. But stabbing. I want you, as a shrink, as a trial lawyer, I know that there is a psychological difference between someone who stabs their victim and someone that shoots their victim. Also, a difference between a stabbing perp and, let's just say, smothering, like you smother a manual or ligature. A stabbing perp is a whole nother can of worms. Explain it to me. I only know it just because I know it, but you understand it.

What's different about a young boy who is preparing to do mass stabbings at his school. The thing with stabbings, Nancy, is that they are very personal. What you're naming, whether it's suffocation, there's an enjoyment in seeing the person actually suffer. You're close up. You're manually doing it. You're feeling what's happening. You're actually putting, I hate to be so graphic, but putting the knife into the person feeling it go in.

And then you derive satisfaction from the fact that you're able to have this power. Another thing, Karen Stark, a lot of people are squeamish with the sight of blood. They pass out. They can't take it. Stabbing perps have a whole different mentality. What is it? Because I always called it a sweetheart murder. And what I mean by that, you have to get up close and personal to your victim in order to kill them. You feel the knife go into their flesh, into their heart, into their chest. You feel the resistance as it goes through their lungs or their heart or it hits bone. You feel that. You see and get sprayed with the blood when it comes out of their body.

You are integrally, critically part of their death. You're attached to their death. It's not like you're at 30 paces. You're intimate. You're intimate with the person. Yes, it's not like you're at 30 paces and you pull your gun. No. And it's kind of clinical and at a distance.

Uh-uh. It ain't like that, Karen Stark. They call it sweetheart because it is that intimate. And the blood is a part of the whole experience, the excitement, because you're actually getting excited by killing this person, harming this person, even the idea that they would die in front of you and you could watch them.

It's powerful and it's intimate. It's scary. After the North Carolina Bureau of Investigation identified the boy student, it alerted the staff at Forest Hills High School in Marshville and the Union County Sheriff's Office there in North Carolina. A Union County Sheriff deputy assigned as a school resource officer. That means cops in the school. Now that tells me something right there that they got to have a cop in the school, but that cop finds several, well, it's a sheriff, it's not a cop,

finds several knives, a bottle of flammable liquid, fireworks, a dismantled shotgun shell, and interesting, Karen Stark, a hit list inside the book bag of the student. A hit list. What does that mean? That's not a surprise, Nancy, because it's planned. This guy has planned that he's going to get revenge and attack these particular people. And it's not something, despite the fact that they're saying that he was, you know, a good kid and nobody would have ever expected this, if you take a look, he's been planning it. He had leakage, which means he went online and he talked about it.

He's been thinking about how he's going to do it. It's not something that he just woke up one morning and said, you know, I think I'll bring these, you know, knives and flammable liquid to school. And that makes it all the worse. Now, we've said 16. Well, some people have said 16. But the suspect, whose name is being withheld,

they say he's under the age of 16 and facing criminal charges. Now, the teen, the boy, was not on the NCBI radar before this happened. So he's totally going under the radar, and police are totally crediting the discovery to the tip it received from Canadian law enforcement because of this chat room. And this kid, this boy, had been threatening to, quote, stab several kids at school today. And joining Karen, Ellen, and I right now from the Charlotte Observer is a veteran reporter, Joe Marisette.

Now, Joe, you've got to correct me on your last name because as much as I practiced it, I'm sure I'm bungling it. But let me get these two words correct. Thank you for being with us. Joe, could you tell us what you know? What's going on in that school? Well, Nancy, right now the student is under a psychiatric evaluation, counseling, at a facility outside the school. That's the latest we've heard to see what was in his mind and what was happening.

I can tell you that he had never caused problems in that school, according to the sheriff's resource officer who works in that school and found the book bag. You know, I wonder, and again, as I always say, I used to beat myself up, Joe, for years when I prosecuted in inner city Atlanta. I'd look over at the defendant and wonder why. Karen Stark and I have talked about this many times. I just couldn't understand why somebody would do such a thing to cause so much pain. Finally, after about five years of that, Joe, I said, why? Ask why.

I've just got to make sure I have the right person, prove that this happened, and put the bad guy away. That's my job. And I'll leave it up to the Lord to handle the rest and to Karen Stark. Let her figure it out. So I'm just wondering, though, I can't help but wonder if he had been a, quote, good kid all these years. Had he been bullied? Had he been mistreated?

What do we think led up to this? I can't help but ask why. I'm breaking my own rule. Yeah, well, we have to ask why. And the reason we have to ask why is we have to solve the problem eventually as a society? And in this case, there is an inclination to believe that he was bullied. Why would somebody come up with a list of 9 to 12 students, a kid who didn't cause trouble, did not cause trouble at all. So, I mean, the sheriff investigators are interviewing every one of those students on the list to find out what could be and to come up with an answer to your question. Well, I want to talk about that for a second. I'm going to digress and go back to Karen. Joe,

please don't. Please don't leave. I've got a lot more questions many more questions to ask you but Karen you know if it is and I am NOT justifying what this kid did he has committed a crime and this is at the very least deviation of a terroristic threat but when you are bullied and the school does nothing about it and it goes on and on and on. I mean, as adults, we should be able to cope with that and handle it, ignore it, deal with it in our own way. But children, they're shown violent video games. They're shown violent TV shows, movies. And then what do we expect them to do if they don't have the right guidance, and the authorities, the school, never does anything to stop the bullying, at some point,

they explode. That's true, especially at that age, Nancy, the age that we're talking about, teenage, where there's so much pressure to fit in and belong, and just being excluded and isolated can cause resentment and the snide remarks and the kind of bullying that kids can't cope with so in some instances as you know they wind up internalizing it and killing themselves because they can't cope anymore. Or in this case, this is a student who externalized and decided he would take revenge. We don't know whether he would or not. But I need to tell you that they don't just suddenly wake up one day and make a major shift in their behavior and change their whole lives.

It's something that grows. This plan that they have, the idea that they're going to get revenge, it's not just he was a good kid, he didn't cause any trouble. There's something brewing underneath. Back to Joe Marsak from the Charlotte Observer. Again, thank you for being with us. If you don't mind, could you walk me through exactly what your understanding is of what happened? Well, you might not believe it, Nancy, but it started with a law enforcement agency monitoring Internet chat rooms, a law enforcement agency from Canada. North Carolina is a long way from Canada. It started there, and they noticed that there were some threats being made,

and they traced it to a student here in North Carolina, immediately contacted the State Bureau of Investigation, which immediately contacted the Union County Sheriff's Office. The Sheriff's Office has school resources officers in every high school. And so that officer went and gently pulled the kid out of class without making any kind of scene and asked to look at his book bag. They knew that there was a book bag that was being brought to the school on Tuesday and that the kid had made threats.

How about that? And that's how it happened. It's just amazing to me that they catch it the day he brings the weapons to school. Okay, so they pull him out of class, they asked to look at his book bag, and then what happens? The officer actually said that the student was very calm and didn't really react in any kind of agitated or any other kind of way and said, sure. And he said, sure, look at the book bag. And that's when they found a bottle of flammable liquid, at least three knives, and a hit list with nine to 12 students' names on it. Wow. What do you think his actual plan was?

I'm intrigued with the idea that he's brought flammable liquid as well. We can only go with what he threatened on that chat room discussion, and that was that he was going to come in and hurt these kids. I thought he said he was going to stab people. Yes, that's exactly it. That's what he said. I wonder what the flammable liquid was for. What was he going to do with that? Yeah, good question. The investigators have not elaborated on that. So where is he right now and how are they dealing with the other students? Well, right now, that student is receiving what they say is counseling at an outside facility, which we can only assume is a mental

health facility in the Charlotte area. And they have offered all kids at that school to talk this out with, you know, the counselors at the school and whoever else they, you know, people in a position of authority there to talk it out. I don't think that that's enough. What do you mean? Nancy, I feel like they should be having group meetings where the kids can talk together and talk about, you know, this happening in their school and what it means to them because the kids often have PTSD as a result of this kind of a situation, even if it hasn't happened,

the idea that this could actually happen in their own school. So they need to address it on a large get out. School massacres first came to the forefront April 20, 1999, 18 years ago. It was 11.19 in the morning. I remember it like it was yesterday, and Columbine went down. A school shooting that occurred at Columbine High School in Columbine. It's an unincorporated area of Jefferson County in Colorado. It was a highly planned and complex act. It involved a firebomb to divert firefighters, which is what made me curious about this North Carolina kid bringing flammable liquid. Propane tanks converted to bombs and placed in the cafeteria. 99 explosive devices, car bombs, and the perpetrators turned out to be seniors,

Eric Harrison, Dylan Klebold. 12 students and one teacher were murdered, 21 others harmed, three more injured attempting to escape. The pair subsequently committed suicide, and their precise motives always remained unclear. Their personal journals document that they wanted their actions to compete with the OK City bombing and other deadly incidents. It's hard to imagine high school kids and that level of pre-planning. What do you think about it? Our reporter from Charlotte, the Charlotte Observer, joining us. What do you think?

Well, I just think that there are so many incidents that have happened in our country that I don't think they just are copycatting what they've already seen and heard. Who knows what that is in this particular student's instance, but I'm not surprised. They just copycat, unfortunately. Joe, what, if anything, do you know about the North Carolina boy's family? We don't because the sheriff is saying that he is not going to release the boy's name or any other information because he is a minor. He will be charged, though. He wanted to make it perfectly clear that this boy will be charged. I can't believe it's still a secret. Because while the sheriff may be keeping it a secret, a high school is anything but secretive, okay?

They all know exactly what's happened. So it's going to be, if it's not already out, it's going to be out at any minute. It may be as we're speaking. So what do you anticipate is going to happen now, Joe? The sheriff says that he will be charged, and the charge could be, you know, one of the charges could be bringing weapons, you know, of mass destruction onto a school campus, but he will be charged as a minor. He's under the age of 16,

and so that's what's going to happen. That's going to be the next development, but we're hoping to, you know, find out more from parents and the rest of the school community as to what courses of action they're going to take and their reaction. You know, it's scary to me with two children in school how little we know what is it what's in the backpacks what's going on what's going on beneath the surface what has not been addressed and they keep saying he's under 16 what does that mean is he 12 is he 13 is he 15 because there's a big difference in 12 and 15 in my mind do we do you have an idea of how old he really is, Joe? We think he's got to be at least 14. That's what we're thinking. He's in the high school.

He's got to be, and our guess right now is 15, but we don't know. But we will find that out. Weigh in, Alan Duke. I was at Columbine the night after it happened spent two weeks there trying to find out what happened these kids were seniors Harris and Klebold were seniors they'd been in this high school for four years but it was documented that over that four years they'd had these bullying confrontations where these jocks it was like the jock clique had been allegedly bullying them and making homophobic remarks against them. And that had been building up for years and years.

If this is a high school, 9 through 12, this kid was just there for a year or two. But perhaps it would be interesting to know how long did he know those people on the hit list? How long had he been in that community? Had it been building up for years? And there's a good chance that it was. You're right. What do you know about that, Joe? How long has he been in the high school?

We don't know. We just don't know yet. That will come out. We're confident it will soon enough. Oh, yeah. There's another big difference here. This young man had knives, big knives, bowie knives, hunting knives, combat knives. That's what he had.

The little firecrackers he had, that wouldn't really do a lot of damage to anybody. Those had blown up in my hand when I was a kid, got blisters. But he had these knives. He did not have guns. Does that mean he didn't have access to guns, or does it mean that he was just so fascinated with knives? That is a difference from the traditional school attack. Have we had that many attacks like this that were actually carried out? Typically, when we hear about these school attacks, it's guns. Yes, that's true. Yeah. In fact, I've written about them. I mean, we've had cases, I hate to say it, but like this in the past recent years. I mean, this is not the first time I've written a story about

such an incident. It just isn't. But usually it involves finding guns on the campus. Well, Joe, what's the law? What's being done in North Carolina, which pretty much reflects the rest of the country, to guard the other students against this? Well, that's where we have, and this is where it worked so well in this case, is we have certified sheriff's deputies assigned as school resource officers in all of the high schools and other schools, and that's to help nip this in the bud. When they pick up a rumor, when a teacher picks up a rumor, the officer can help stop whatever might be happening or might be about to happen. That's really, that's the safety guard that we have. I've got to hand it over to Canadian authorities and North Carolina Bureau of Investigation because they caught this in the nick of time

and they acted on it and they probably saved who knows how many lives, you know, depending on what he was trying to do. So they get all the credit in my book. Exactly right. Now, I'm hoping to find out more about which authority this started and why they even came across this. Why did they happen to come across this? So what happens now?

When will he be charged and arraigned? What do we know, Joe? Well, he's still in a facility, so we don't know. It depends on, and this happens with adults too, where however long it takes to do an evaluation and all, that's their priority. He's in a secure location. He's under watch. released, you better believe that the sheriff's deputies will be right there to take him to the proper juvenile court to face charges. Oh, I'm sure. Joe, thank you for being with us. And last

word to you, Karen Stark. What are the parents supposed to do with this? These parents needed, I'm hoping, were aware of the fact that there was a change in their child. And what they need to do now is to understand and just accept that he was very troubled. But I also wanted to say, Nancy, that I think it's important for all parents to learn from this. It isn't a terrible thing to prepare your children for the fact that this might happen in their school, just to tell them ahead of time if something like this did happen, what you would need to do. So that's to prepare other students, you know, like going under a desk, locking the door, calling police, but also with your own children. There is a shift and you have to look for it.

This is an age where they struggle with their identity. And peer groups and the pressure is very, very strong. And you have to see, is your child getting to be more withdrawn, secretive, isolated, not a lot of friends, often depressed, and they don't diagnose it. So are they less active? And to really be serious about these signs and investigate, talk up. Don't keep it to yourself. Make sure your child is okay.

To Karen Stark and Joe Marisak, Alan Duke, thank you for being with us. Our eyes on that North Carolina high school. Nancy Grace signing off. Goodbye, friend. This is an iHeart Podcast.