Criminology - The Cokeville Bombing

Episode Date: October 23, 2022

On May 16th, 1986, the small town of Cokeville, Wyoming, experienced a bombing at the Cokeville elementary school. That day, husband and wife David and Doris Young entered the school with guns and a homemade bomb. The bomb eventually detonated, and in what many call the Cokeville miracle, not a single student or member of the faculty was killed. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the Cokeville bombing. David Young had once been the sole police officer in the small town of Cokeville. He was fired for misconduct after only six months. And over the years, he developed some very strange ideas and began to associate with some different hate groups. He walked into the school that day, intent on killing everyone inside. The events of that day are incredible and, to many miraculous. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill, too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. is a Latin term that means the body of a crime. It's the proof that a crime has been committed, which is necessary before finding out who committed the crime. And crimes certainly don't all look

alike. Corpus delicti is also a true crime podcast that takes a series approach into various ways crimes are committed. Cruise ship deaths, historical crimes, and women who kill are just a few of the themes we have covered cases on. We even dive deep into the case of a likely innocent man on death row in our home state of Alabama. We have more than 200 episodes, so there's plenty to binge. Join us every week, wherever you get your podcasts, as we dive into a new case within our current series. That's C-O-R-P-U-S-D-E-L-I-C-T-I.

Hope to see you soon. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 229 of the criminology podcast. This is Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. And Morph, what's going on with you?

Not too much. I woke up today. It was a little bit cold and I said, hey, I feel like I'm back in Jersey. But I think it's probably colder up there. So how about you? What's new with you? I think you're forgetting how cold it is in Jersey. That's what I think.

You've been in Florida too long. Yeah, they say your blood chain is when you're down. I think it does. Yeah, because it's been down in the four. here in Ohio. So I guess they can't complain. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Becky Neiman, Zenrin, and Liz Arnheim.

So some great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you so much for taking the time to support the show. It means a lot. And to anyone out there listening that would like to help support the show, you can go to patreon.com slash criminology to sign up. So more for less than a year from CrimeCon.

And I know that sounds like a long time, but anyone who has gone to CrimeCon knows that it fills up pretty quickly. So everyone is starting to make their plans if you're going. And if you want to come hang out with us, there, you should start planning too. It's in Orlando, Florida, September 22nd through the 24th at the World Center Marriott. And if you're going, why not save some money in the process? When you go to crimecon.com to book your trip, use our code criminology. to say 10% under standard badges. And CrimeCon is always a lot of fun,

and we really look forward to seeing you there. All right. So now that we have all of that out of the way, let's jump into this episode. And the case we're talking about is a school bombing. And we know for many people, the thought of children being harmed is too much to process. We hear about it all too often.

In the news, children are innocent. They deserve to be protected. There are future, our legacy. So when we hear stories of anything bad happening to them, it's very tough. Fortunately, and as many people would come to believe miraculously, despite this episode being about a school bombing, no children died. We are talking about the Cokeville School bombing. Cokeville Elementary School in Cokeville, Wyoming is a small school for kindergarten through sixth grade. After children in Cokeville hit seventh grade, they go to Cokeville High School until they graduate.

The town itself is incredibly small. I think one of the smallest we've actually discussed on this podcast. Currently, there are around 503 people living there, down from 535 in 2010, when Cokeville, on the border of Wyoming and Idaho, had the most residents in its recorded history. In 1986, when this incident took place, there were less than 500 people living in the community. The town's population is predominantly made up of members of the LDS faith. May 16th, 1986 was a Friday. The children at Cokeville Elementary and likely the staff as well were ready for the weekend.

Getting through that Friday would mean that everyone could unwind, spend time with their loved ones and make plans. But this Friday would be like no other. In Cokeville's history after David Young and his wife, Doris, arrived at the school. But they were not there on official business. They weren't there to pick up children, and they weren't empty-handed. They brought with them several guns and a homemade bomb. David Young may have had an axe to grind with the town. In 1979, he was Cokeville's sole police officer.

After just six months, though, he was fired by the mayor. Well, officially, he was asked to resign due to misconduct. Mayor John Dayton later told the Washington Post, We don't like to use the word fired around here. Quoting a Salt Lake Tribune article, David was a weirdo who wouldn't follow orders or do his job. His cowboy had long-barreled pistol, kept in a leg holster, earned him the nickname Wyatt Earp.

He met his wife Doris there in Cokeville, where she was waitress and also sang in a bar. They got married, but right after this, they moved to Tucson, Arizona. They were rumored to be affiliated with a few different groups, mostly white supremacist groups. While in Tucson, David became less social and spent more time reading and writing about philosophy. But despite being into philosophy, it didn't mean that David was peaceful. It was becoming clear that he was dangers.

David started to hatch a plan that he called the Biggie. He told two of his longtime friends, Gerald Deppie and Doyle Mendenhall, that he had a plan that would make them rich. They invested money with him, but he didn't give them many details about what he was plotting. Had they known, they may have ran the other way. While still in Arizona, David Young completely destroyed a school bus using a bomb. It was a test for what he had planned in Cokeville. At 1 p.m. on May 16, 1986, 43-year-old David Young and his wife, 47-year-old Doris,

arrived at Cokeville Elementary. David's youngest daughter from a previous marriage and David's friends, Gerald Deppie and Doyle Mendenhall, accompanied them. The group had four rifles. Nine handguns, manifestos, journals, and a gasoline bomb with them. Gerald and Doyle did not enter the school. They were there to discuss the plan, the biggie. But they backed out at the very last second.

When David told them what that plan, the biggie actually entailed. So he had not told them really anything about this. They were only in Cokeville to meet him to talk about. the money they invested when they were informed it was time for action he was going to hold the children inside the school hostage for ransom and then set off the bomb sending them all to what he called a brave new world which they would be reincarnated into gerald and doyle tried to leave when they realized what david was up to but david forced them back into the van at gunpoint and made Doris and his daughter, 19-year-old Princess,

handcuffed them before leaving them in the van. The family then headed into the school. As they entered the school, Princess became very upset. As per the website, Wyo History.org, teacher Janelle Dayton recalled seeing Princess, and she was just hysterical. Princess yelled at David and Doris. I can't believe you're going through with this.

She ran from the school and stole the van they had driven, in with Gerald and Doyle still handcuffed inside of it. She went straight to City Hall to get help. Remember, this was in an error before we really grasped the reality that schools needed security, that children could be targeted in school by sick or evil people intent on doing them harm. So getting into the school wasn't hard for David and doors. In one classroom, the young students were listening to their teacher, read them a book, Goldilocks and the Three Bears.

David went into the school's office and handed them. out pamphlets. Zero equals infinity was the confusing message scrawled on the pamphlets he was handing out, basically warning of a revolution. While David handed out his manifesto and kept the adults in the office engaged, Doris went to each classroom in the school and gathered their hostages. Nine teachers, six staff members, three unlucky citizens who just happened to be there at that time, including a UPS driver and someone who was just applying for a job and 136 children were taken into one first grade classroom interestingly doors didn't use any of the guns they had brought with them that day to do this she just tricked them into following her telling them it was time for an assembly

there was a surprise in the room or that there had been an emergency the children who had been told there was an assembly were divided. Some saw the guns, which had been lined up on the rim of the chalkboard and the homemade bomb, and knew that they were in danger. Others thought they were going to be taught about the weapons. Megan Thompson, who was a student there at the time, later told the LA Times, if we would have been older, it would have been a lot scarier. Another survivor recalls how confusing the situation was, saying, my sister came up saying, we're being held hostage. I said, what does that mean. It was clear that overall the students were frightened or confused. Eventually, the faculty and teachers discovered what was happening and how dangers the situation was, especially when they saw the

giant homemade bomb. So obviously, Morp, this was a very, very scary situation. What I found interesting was some of the comments that students made later in life, you know, essentially saying, we were so young that we really didn't understand what was wrong. going on. If we had been older, it would have been much, much scarier, but at the time, it was just confusing. Yeah, you've got these strangers coming in to school that these children don't know, and now they're being brought all together into this room. Some of them are seeing guns. Some of them see a bomb. Some of them obviously knew that something wasn't right, but other ones just didn't know any better. And maybe that comes down to their age or whatever.

But I think overall that they had to be nervous about what's going on or scared. And I think it's pretty clear from this couple bringing all the guns they brought, the bomb, handing up these weird manifestives that they seemed like people that were really dangerous. And these children were definitely in harm's way and the faculty at the school. And one of the things I want to do is go back to just how easy it was for them to enter the school. you know, I think about going to pick up my daughters when they were in, let's say, middle school. It was like a fortress. And this was, you know, what, five, ten years ago, you had to be buzzed in. They had to see you.

You had to, you know, you had to go through a couple of different doors. And that's just where we've gotten to over time. But I think back to my schools in the 80s, there was none of the, that. Essentially, anybody could just walk right in the front door. Yeah, we've definitely come a long way. When I pick up my kids, you've got to wait in a long line, and then there's a fence. You've got to put the code in. The gate opens up. Then you go inside. They have cameras. They've got to buzz you in. And a lot of schools have school resource officers there. So they even when you get inside, there are police around. So definitely a different error than kids live in today. Yeah, no doubt.

So this bomb was made out of two shopping carts. One held a one gallon milk jug full of gasoline attached to a blasting cap. Underneath the container of gasoline, two cans of tuna had been emptied and replaced with aluminum powder and flour, each attached to a blasting cap. The plan was that when the gasoline bomb exploded, the contents of the tuna can would basically light the air on fire, making a much bigger fireball. Both baskets had shrapnel in them. They were full of chain links and boxes of ammunition and gunpowder. The entire bomb had a switch powered by a 9-volt battery. When a piece of wood from between two metal connectors, between the

closed end of a closed pen was pulled, it would detonate the bomb. The wood was tied to a piece of string that could then be tied to a person's wrist and used as a dead man switch. David had this bomb attached to himself the entire time. He entered the office with it, and he wheeled it into the first grade classroom. The string was tied around his wrist as he gave his demands. He wanted $2 million for each of the 154 hostages, which is $308 million in total. Counting for inflation, that's $834 million today. He also wanted President Reagan to read the man.

manifesto he mailed him and wanted to be able to speak to him. He threatened to detonate the bomb if his demands weren't met. But it later became apparent that he planned to set it off no matter what. It was actually a big part of this plan. David gave each person in the room a copy of this pamphlet. Teachers recall the first graders who had only been reading for a few months trying to read an already nonsensical manifesto. There were tangents about Jesus, Socrates, and Adolf Hitler. There were also of writings about his brave new world that you had to die to visit. Some of the children started to cry. One hostage, Amy Bagasseau Williams, was quoted in an article on LDSliving.com as saying, I began to wonder, what happens if I die today? I don't know where to go. Will I see my family

again? So, more if I do want to go back and talk a little bit about this homemade bomb, and I think it's something that we've seen in a number of cases where you think about a bomb that somebody makes at home, a lot of times they're not that complicated. I look back at some of the early bombs that the Unabomber made. Yeah, he was a smart guy, but they weren't overly complicated. And it doesn't sound like this one was either. And then you have this use of what is termed a dead man's switch. And basically, you know, to me, that means there's, there's a fail safe. There's something tied to one of the individuals involved that if they were to be hurt or shot and fall down, it would detonate the bomb. You know, in true crime all the time, Gibby and I covered a case on

this guy named Anthony Caritzis. And it's a very interesting case, but basically he took a hostage. He had a shotgun taped to the back of this person's head. And he had a dead man switch. So if he were to be shot, just the action of him fallen would pull the trigger and the shotgun would go off. It's a very scary thing to think about. Yeah, I think what's also scary about these homemade bombs is that the people making them probably aren't experts or not trained.

so you never know is one of these bombs going to be a dud or is it going to go off when it's not ready to be detonated and they're not expecting it. So I think it was just a dangerous situation all the way around. The room slowly filled with gasoline fumes, which also upset the children and made them and everyone else in the room sick. Some of the teachers asked David if they could open the windows so they could all get some fresh air, which would hopefully settle the children. and he agreed to let them open a few of the windows. Meanwhile, authorities alerted by David's daughter, princess, as well as parents, news crews, and ambulances gathered near the school at the town hall. There happened to be a meeting of law enforcement agents, including the Lincoln County emergency management coordinator, Kathy Davison. There had been some flooding in town, and they were

meeting at the town hall to discuss this situation, Princess ran into the building just after the meeting as people were heading out. According to WIOHistory.org, she screamed out, I need a sheriff or somebody. My dad went in the school to take it over and a bomb's going to go off and it's going to kill a whole lot of people. The Cokeville deputy and their marshal were both out of town. The nearest sheriff was in Kimmerer, 45 miles away. So there's a couple of things here that, that jump out at me. First of all, just talking about how small and kind of rural this location is, the nearest sheriff is 45 miles away. I mean, I think that tells you something. But I want to talk about princess for a little bit and the courage and fortitude that it took to realize that, you know, that

what was going on was not right to make the decision to get away and to go get help. That's an amazing thing. Yeah, she's basically betraying her dad to go get help knowing he's going to get in trouble when the police get involved. And I wonder if it's just a case of maybe she's heard these rants and stories from him in the past and never took them seriously. And then all of a sudden he's there in the school bringing the bomb. the guns in there and she knew at that point, okay, this has gone beyond some strange fantasy.

He's, he's going through with this. Well, and you make a great point. There are a lot of people who like to rant. And those rants can vary from, you know, just getting things off their chest to some people ranting what would be considered violent type rhetoric. I, and I agree with you. I'm sure she had heard it for years and years and years and years and it just kind of became the norm but this was not the norm right this is actually things are about ready to be put into action

and she makes the decision that well I have to act and it really kind of blows me away to be honest with you and it wasn't just the bomb the authorities had to deal with princess warned that her father may shoot the children of police tried to enter the school he had also brought additional supplies and was prepared for a standoff of up to a month.

Davison and Grant Sorensen, who worked at the Wyoming Emergency Management Office, tried to hold back the worried parents. Kathy Davison, the emergency management coordinator, threatened to arrest one mother who tried to breach their perimeter. Later, privately, Grant Sorensen asked her whether she had a badge or a gun and whether she could really arrest anyone. She replied, no. She was just trying to keep people calm.

She also ordered concerned parents and grandparents to the nearby senior center to make sandwiches and fresh coffee and wait for help. So this woman, Kathy Davison, really had her hands full. If you think about it, I mean, number one, she's got to figure out what's going on inside the school, how best to deal with that. But then you think about all these worried parents who start to show up. And I'm thinking about myself getting the news and rushing down to the school and wanting to do something. She's got to try to, you know, hold all these people off from potentially

setting off a really bad chain of events. Yeah, she definitely had a lot on her plate. And although she was an emergency management coordinator, nothing like this had ever happened in that town before. So it's not like she had any kind of experience. Yeah. And we don't know what type of training she would have had in this area, right? When you think emergency management, I think of weather-related type incidents, natural disasters, and maybe it could expand to other types of things, but really how much training would she have had to deal with a hostage situation?

I can't imagine much, if any. Yeah, I think it just shows how people sort of thrust into leadership bills there on the spot to try and make a difference in trying to help the situation any way they could. After 40 minutes, the Kimmerer, sheriff finally arrived, Davidson and a highway patrolman began going door to door, evacuating the nearby houses, buses were brought in, standing by to transport to children.

Only six ambulances were available, and they were all also on scene. Inside the school, teachers tried to keep all of the children busy. Classes stayed together in groups, and the youngest children played games, sang songs and colored, Older children watched movies, and they prayed together. As David began to get irritated and more erratic, the teachers played a game with the younger children and used a role of masking tape to make a square around David and the bomb. They called it a magic square and told the children not to cross the lines.

It was one student's birthday that day, so they all sang happy birthday. even David and Doris joined in. According to a Washington Post article, David and Doris were all things considered kind of nice to the children. So more, I think most people know I've talked about it before, but my wife is a teacher. She's now teaching second grade. You know, so a lot of these cases involving schools, they really hit home for me. they're even scarier to think that my wife could be involved in a situation like this. But I have a lot of respect for teachers, obviously.

And I'm just thinking about the teachers in this situation. They had to have been scared. But at the same time, they're trying their best to keep the kids calm. They're playing games with them. They're singing. And one of the things that these types of stories really does for me is it, it shows what people are capable of in really scary, traumatic situation. You know, these teachers weren't crying and cowering in the corner.

They were concerned for their students. They were trying to do the best thing for them. Yeah, and I'm sure that they were trying to remain calm so that the kids weren't scared and didn't freak out. And I think they also were pretty ingenious in the way that they, They said, let's make this magic square around David and the bomb. And I think in reality, they were trying to make it like a game to the kids. But what they really wanted to do was get themselves back away from the bomb.

After two and a half hours, David had to use the restroom. He tied the string controlling the detonation mechanism to Doris's wrist and went into the bathroom. The bathroom was connected to the first and second grade classrooms, so very close by. It had been a long day and it was already the afternoon. when the youngs arrived at the school, and the children had been trapped in one small room with a container of gasoline for two and a half hours. It was loud, tense, stuffy, and smelled like gasoline, and must have been hot due to all the bodies in that one small room. There were 155 people in a room meant for 31. Stories differ as to whether the gasoline fumes gave Doris a headache,

causing her to put her hand on her head, or whether it was the children who were being too loud, causing her to wave her hand at them to try and get them to quiet down. Whatever the reason, Doris moved her hand too far and the unthinkable happened. Just after 4 p.m., the bomb went off. As detailed in a desert news article, Doris came across the room like a flaming torch, according to the survivors. Then suddenly, the room was dark, full of smoke, a total instant black, and hotter than anything you've ever felt before.

Katie Walker Payne, a first grader at the time, said later to LDS Living, I looked in the center of the room and all I could see was fire. In that same LDS Living article, second grade teacher Carol Peterson recalled there were flames all over the room and children screaming just pandemonium. Teachers acted quickly, shoving children through windows, and out into the hallway. Parents standing outside could no longer be held back by police as they ran toward the school. Peterson herself caught fire. She said, when I got to the hallway, I felt a tickling sensation on my shoulder and ear. I took a few steps and started feeling heat on my skin.

I realized I was on fire. Other teachers helped put out the fire using their bare hands to stamp it out. Doris Young, despite the devastating burn she suffered, somehow made her way back into the classroom. Her husband David entered the classroom and shot Doris in the head, killing her. He also shot music teacher John Miller in the back as he tried to escape the room. David walked back into the bathroom, closed the door, and shot himself in the head, taking his own life. In the chaos and panic to escape, Doris, already dead, was somehow pushed out the window onto the lawn next to the other people who had made their way out. By some estimates, it took just 45 seconds to clear the entire room of all 154 people. And you want to talk about chaos. I mean, that's the only word

that I can really think of to describe this. The bomb goes off. David shoots Doris. He then shoots himself. You can only imagine the panic that ensued people scrambling, trying to, you know, get out of this classroom to think that 154 people were able to clear the room in just 455 seconds. That's kind of amazing when you think about it. And during this panic and chaos, Doris is somehow pushed out of the window onto the lawn, even though she's already dead. Yeah, I'm trying to think back to when I was in school. It's so long ago now, but the extent of any kind of drills we had were fire drills where an alarm would go off and everyone would stand up and file online and walk out in an organized fashion. I don't think there's any kind of preparation

that these teachers had for what to do in this situation, but somehow they helped all these kids get out and they were able to get up themselves by doing whatever they had, jumping out windows and everything like that. So for that all to happen in 45 seconds, I think it goes back to what you said. The teachers there definitely had things. under control and reacted in such a quick manner that they saved lives here. Well, they were heroic. I mean, there's just no way around it. And I'm sure there were many heroes that day, not just teachers, custodians, other staff

members. But to your point, Morph, there is no drill that you can come up with that can approximate this type of situation. There's just no way to do it. So it had to have been just gut instinct at that point. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency? We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer.

For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020. Blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. First responders and anyone close by that could help rush to aid students and teachers, they feared that they would be counting bodies and not survivors. But when the carnage was over, 75 of the hostages had escaped with no injuries. Seventy-nine had smoke inhalation injuries, second degree burns and some other injuries that were not all that severe. John Miller, who had been shot, was rushed to the hospital.

Hospitals in Wyoming, Idaho, and Utah all received patients from the school. When all of the people in the school were finally accounted for, they were happily surprised that every single one of the hostages had survived. The only two fatalities of this entire thing were David and Doris Young, both as a result of the gunshots that David fired. After the blast, one student, Lori Neat Conger, and her older brother began walking home, unsure of where else to go. She told LDS Living, I'll never forget that reunion when our mother ran towards us and wrapped us in her arms. For the first time, I remember thinking, I'm safe. Emergency Management Coordinator Kathy Davison

recalls trying to catch the children as they jumped from the windows, covered in soot, and some burned. As per WIOHistray.org, she said, a lot of them we didn't catch. They ran all the way home. We had four that ended up really tragically burned, and three of those kids ran all the way home because that's where they were going to get safe.

Apparently, David Young had told them that if they managed to make it out of the school away from him, they would be shot by people waiting outside. Lincoln County Sheriff's Office lead investigator Ron Hartley recalled the LDS living just how amazing it was that no one died as a result of the explosion saying, I met the bomb tack right there at the door. And he said, Hartley, what you have here is a miracle. That bomb should have leveled the wing of the school.

But it looks like the bomb blast went straight up. I don't know why. I can't explain it. You could say it's miraculous or just due to incredible incompetence, but in almost every way, the bomb could fail, it did. Two of the three blasting caps didn't detonate. The milk jug had a tiny leak in the bottom, just big enough for the liquid gas to eventually turn the mixture of aluminum and flour into a paste.

So it couldn't ignite the way that it was supposed to. both wires connecting the tunicans to their blasting caps had been cut. To this day, it's unknown, who did that. Shrapnel had hit the walls, but somehow none of the children. Also, when the classroom windows were opened to let some of the gas fumes out, it allowed for some of the bomb's force to escape out of the open windows. There's no doubt. This could have been much worse if the windows had been closed.

when David Young tested his bomb-making abilities in Arizona, he had used a school bus. The bus had a completely solid metal frame. Unlike the classroom, which had soft ceiling tiles. When the bomb went off, the blast went up and loosened the ceiling tiles. They did not contain the force of the explosion. And to me more, if this is a really big point to talk about, this is the end of, exact reason why pipe bombs are so dangerous. You know, that blast being contained all in metal and then when it escapes, it's very, very powerful. And I'm sure there were some similarities

to using an all metal school bus. Not exactly the same, but the blast inside that room was much different, though. There was no ceiling, per se, to contain it, to hold it in. So some of it escaped through those ceiling tiles. Some of it escaped, you know, through the open windows, luckily. Or this thing would have been much, much worse. The injuries to this at the school weren't all physical, of course. Some students became claustrophobic after the bombing since they had been jammed into such a small room, just 30 by 32 feet during the traumatic event. Others slept with their parents at night and continue to have nightmares for a very long time.

Many staff members continued to work at the school for long after the bombing, but some couldn't bring themselves to go into the bathroom where David took his own life or into the classroom, which some continued to call the bomb room. As per the desert news, Tina Cook, the school's clerk, kept her desk in the school's office. She was the first one to speak to David Young. When he entered the building that day, she had asked him, could I help you? Which is a question she stopped asking after the bombing.

Teacher Janelle Dayton only sat near exits after the incident. She also recalls how her media consumption changed from that very day. After all the children had been taken home or taken away in ambulances, Janelle went home. as detailed on WIOHistory.org, she said, I came in and there was a murder mystery on the TV. I shut that off so fast. And I've never watched one since because I found out bad things do happen. Though she was not a huge true crime or murder mystery fan to begin with.

She says, when you find out that these things do happen, then it's not in the realm of entertainment anymore. And this is an interesting statement made by Janelle. You know, you and I hear from a lot of listeners. We get messages, we get emails, we get voicemails, things like that. I have heard from a lot of people trying to, you know, really decipher what makes true crime so interesting to some people. And some individuals who have gone through very, very traumatic events in their life

continue to listen to true crime stories. And some have explained it to me as it being cathartic in a way to know that other individuals have gone through certain types of events, have made it through, have persevered. You know, they find solace in things like that. It's different for everyone. And I think for most people, they're fortunately not going to be part of a story like this, but I think here in Janelle's case, she didn't have to consume any of this kind of stuff because she was part of a case that happened and it obviously affected her

that taking in that kind of media wasn't something she was going to do. Even celebrations were changed after the bombing, with firework displays being a bit too similar to the gasoline bomb for comfort, with town clerk Nadine Dana telling the Desiret News. that summer after it happened, there were never fireworks. Melanie Chadwick, who was in second grade when the school was taken hostage, added, We realized that if it had gone off like it was supposed to, we wouldn't be here. This town would be a ghost town.

Fifth grade teacher Rocky Moore says that healing was possible. He told the LA Times, time heals all wounds. I wish it never happened, but it did. It's nothing to dwell on. We're back to normal. And to me, it's always interesting to hear, you know, what people tell the news. You know, here's a teacher who says, you know, I'm getting on with it. We're back to normal where you have other teachers and you have students who are saying,

it's never going to be normal again. And again, I think that's different for each individual. Some people are able to move on very, I won't say easily, but they're able to do it. while others have long-lasting effects that may stay with them for the rest of their lives. We all know that when tragic events like a mass school shooting happened, the community where it happens comes together to mourn the victims to support their families. In this instance, the community came together to celebrate that everyone survived, this horrible event.

And some people came away from that tragic day thinking that it was nothing short of a miracle. Many of the survivors don't think luck had anything to do with anything that day. Investigator Richard Haskell told the Desert News, there's no doubt in my mind that there was divine intervention. Investigator Ron Hartley eventually came around to the idea that there was something else at play that day. He told LDS Living, I came home with the intent of factually proving to him that he couldn't have seen angels. He was referring to his six-year-old son. His son had been claiming that his grandmother had been there with him in the classroom that day, but she was living in a different city at the time, so it was impossible.

Looking through their family photo albums together, his young son stopped at one picture and said, That's her, that's my angel. He was talking about Hartley's grandmother, who had been dead for years. He also said that the angels there that day all held hands around the bomb and flew upwards, out the ceiling when it exploded. This made Hartley remember his conversation with the bomb. bomb tech about how the blast had unexplainably gone upwards instead of

outwards. Hartley's son is not the only one who saw angels or deceased relatives that day. Katie Payne told LDS Living that she was coloring before the explosion when a woman dressed in a long white dress

with short dark brown hair told her, Katie, I love you very much. You need to listen to your brother and remember that I will always love you. Moments later, her brother came to her and told her to sit next to the window. As he went to go get their other sister, Rachel, the bomb went off. Eight months after the bombing, Katie's mother opened an old locket.

It had a photo of her mother, Katie's grandmother, who had died when Katie's mom was just 15 years old inside of it. I knew the instant my mom opened the locket that it was her, the woman who had talked to her that day in the classroom. The stories of angelic saviors didn't end there. Jenny Sorenson Johnson, who had been in the first grade during the bombing, remembered who she thought was a helpful teacher. When Jenny's shoe fell off, she tried to turn around and get it. But the teacher silently motioned for her to follow her through the entryway of the bathroom. She told LDS Living, I trusted and followed her out of the burning room. Years later, when Jenny was 12, she was looking through old family photos with her grandma. Jenny pointed out a woman in a photo who she used, believed to be the teacher who had helped her and asked her grandmother what grade she was teaching

that day and why she quit teaching after the bombing but it wasn't a teacher though it was jenny's grandmother's aunt ruth who wasn't even from cokeville she had died years before the bombing even those who didn't see any angels felt that someone or something had helped them Lori Nate Conger, who had been in the fifth grade at the time of the bombing, told LDS Living, I knew exactly what to do and where to go. I couldn't have done that on my own. She was one of the many students who had prayed together that day thinking, David Young can control a lot of things, but he can't keep us from praying.

That's one thing he cannot do. Even students who were not religious felt something that day helped protect them, Amy Begasso Williams was one of the very few students who was not of the LDS faith. When others began to pray, she told her teacher that she didn't know how to pray. The teacher assured her that she didn't need to know how. So she crawled over and folded her arms and bowed her head. She told LDS Living, I remember suddenly feeling like I had a warm blanket wrapped around my shoulders, this incredible amount of comfort and joy.

that I can't explain. I knew in my heart that I would be okay no matter what happened. Lincoln County Emergency Management Coordinator Kathy Davison told WIOHistria.org, as a new coordinator, I had no idea what I was doing, but everything went the way it was supposed to. When volunteers, emergency workers, and media took over the town's only cafe, they turned to Davidson's senior center to eat sandwiches there. They told me they never eat bologna again, she joked.

She was later asked about the 500-hour lunch meet and breadbill, she authorized. But it was clearly something that was worthwhile in an effort to help the team of people working together in the aftermath of that tragic day. Students quickly returned to school. On May 22nd, less than one week after the bombing, brothers, Jeremiah, and Zachariah Moore made the newspaper. In photos, Jeremiah's hands are bandaged due to burns, and there are a few burns on his face, Zachariah drew for him. Other photos in the newspaper showed children in bandages running on

the playground saying the Pledge of Allegiance. The children were allowed to see the room where the explosion happened before it was repaired. Staff wanted them to see that it was just a room and that it didn't hold any power over them. John Miller, the music teacher, let all of the children see his healing bullet wound, a way to help them, see that they too would be okay just like he was. While the community moved on and staff and students tried to get back into the swing of things, the authorities tried to figure out why David Young had decided to do what he did. They looked closely at his background. Before he had served Cokeville as the town marshal, David Young studied at Chadron State College in Nebraska, where he got a criminal justice degree.

He left behind many diaries full of his thoughts about reincarnation and mathematical equations that supposedly proved there was no God. Cookville Elementary was not the only school that he had considered for the biggie. He had looked at schools in other towns in western Wyoming, like Labarge, Afton, and Big Piney, but ultimately settled on Cookville. Young was apparently aware that the children there performed well on tests, and he believed they were highly intelligent. the perfect children for him to rule over in what he called the brave new world. He also knew since he had been the town marshal that there was hardly any law enforcement there and response times would be very slow. It was clear that he was disturbed and that there might not ever be real answers that would

explain why he did what he did. As for the people that came to the school that fateful day with David and Doris Young, David's daughter, Princess, Gerald Dapie, and Doyle Mendenhall. None of them were ever charged in relation to the bombing since they did not participate. The story about what happened in Cokeville was a big one, and there's a lot about the bombing in the media. There's a memorable Unsolved Mysteries episode about the Keys. Judine and Hart Wixom wrote a book called Trial by Terror, based on what their son Cameron told them about that day. A CBS movie based on the book to Save the Children was released in 1994.

In 2015, the book was renamed. It's now called the Cookville Miracle when Angels intervene. A new movie based on the book was released the same year. Multiple survivors participated in the film's creation. Lori Conger played a concerned parent waiting outside anxiously in the crowd. It's been almost 37 years since the bombing, and sadly, news of violence and schools has gotten more frequent, with outcomes being much more tragic than the one in Cokeville. When David Young entered the school that day, he probably thought that people would refer to what

he did as the Cokeville massacre. Instead, what happened there is now called the Cokeville miracle. Some people truly think what happened there is nothing short of a miracle. Others think it was just pure luck or incompetence on David Young's part, whatever the case, the fact remains that not one student or faculty member died in the explosion that day. As per an article at the Spectrum.com, filmmaker Ron Tanner said of the Coteville bombing, there's a lot of bad that happens in the world and a lot of people get hurt. But sometimes good things happen and there are people who are saved. And I think when that happens, we have to tell these stories so people have

hope. Perhaps Lincoln County Emergency Management Coordinator Kathy Davison summed it up best, saying to WIOHistory.org, after Cookville, I would have thought if anything happened anywhere in our county, we could handle it because of the way we work together and the camaraderie we built. The community of Cookville has moved on from the bombing, but residents there have never forgotten it. So Morph, as we wrap up this episode, I kind of want to go back to David Young for a minute. You know, at one point, this guy was essentially the only law enforcement in town, but he was let go. He was described by many people as being strange, but there wasn't a ton of background on him as far as, you know, how strange was he and did people notice? You know, a lot of

times in these stories we talk about should someone have noticed that this person was acting in a way or saying things that would lead one to believe he was about ready to do something very dangerous i don't know if that was the case here and maybe it's because his wife was in on it with him so he didn't have to really go outside of his family to talk about this type of stuff he had his wife to discuss it with, to plan it with. Now, obviously, she would have known, but it sounds like she was all in with him. So she wasn't going to go to the police and turn him in. Yeah. And I personally wonder if he had some kind of control over her. Maybe she was abused, something along those lines where she was afraid not to help him. There's not a lot of information on her. So I don't know for sure.

but it definitely seems clear that she did have some knowledge of it. Now, Princess also, it seems, had knowledge, at least that day, but she realized that, hey, this is not something that should be happening. And I've got to get out of here and go get help. So she really wound up saving a lot of lives by doing what she did. Yeah, I go back to her as being a very heroic figure along with, you know, the teachers and just really everybody there that day. but talking specifically about princess, I want to go back to this notion of, you know, living in a family

with a dad and possibly a mom who are saying a lot of things that are inflammatory, ranting, raving about this or that all the time. You know, what, what does a kid do? Do they think that every time their dad goes off on a rant that they need to run and tell somebody. No, probably not. It wasn't until she realized that, oh, he's really serious this time. He's about ready to take this to a real physical level that she made the decision that I can't let this happen or at the very least I have to go tell someone. And it's clear from his actions and his history that he was had something going on. I don't know if he was meant to

ill, delusional, whatever you want to call it, but he's talking about Jesus and Hitler and reincarnation and making up all these pamphlets. I almost picture like a David Koresh meets the Unabomber scenario with this guy that he's sort of has these delusions, but he's dangerous. He has these skills at least to build a bomb in this instance, and he's going to carry out this plan that seems pretty warped. Yeah, he's, you could almost say he's like an amalgamation of a number of different people. David Koresh does come to mind, Unabomber, maybe a little Jim Jones to some extent. I mean, you could throw in a bunch of different people. The one thing I had trouble figuring out is just how much this really centered around religion. Because he was talking about this brave new world.

but I don't know how much in his mind religion actually played a part. I couldn't figure that out. And you bring up a good point with religion because we know it played a part for the survivors. A lot of them turned to the religion to get through this. And some of them claim that they experienced angelic intervention and these angelic figures that were watching over them to help them get through it. So, you know, whether that happened, it definitely seems like it comforted these people. And they leaned on that religion and their feelings.

And it got them through this situation. The one thing that I will say in closing is that this is a different type of story for us. No one died. But I don't find the story any less scary because of that fact. Because I think about what could have happened to me very easily. you know, 100 plus people inside that room could have been killed. If this bomb had, you know, gone off a different way, if it had reacted differently. It's just a very scary story, number one, due to that aspect.

But then also because you have a person, in this case, two people, him and his wife, who are determined to carry something out. And I always go back to that. You know, when people are determined, regardless of the consequences to others and especially to themselves, that's a scary thought because how do you stop someone like that? If someone's willing to give up their life to accomplish something, that's tough to stop. And that makes it scary. And I think it was a very fortunate situation that the teachers and faculty and

even the town leaders were just as determined to help this have a good outcome. And their efforts paid off because no one was killed. So at the end of the day, it's good to see that their determination won out. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. But that's it for our episode on the Cokeville school bombing. Very scary stuff. As always, if you haven't done so yet, go out and give us a five-star rating. You can leave a review.

Keep telling your friends. word of mouth about the podcast really helps. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans. Some more, if that's it for another episode of Criminology, but we'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode.

So for Mike. And Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care of everyone.