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1 year ago
22
The sister of a teen school shooter who killed their parents before opening fire on their Oregon school has revealed the intense bond she has with her brother since his infamous rampage - calling the convicted killer her 'best friend.'
Kristin Kinkel, sister of Thurston High School shooter Kip Kinkel, shared in a rare interview with The New Yorker that despite his past, she maintains a strong connection with her brother.
The sibling's relationship intensified following the 1998 shooting in which Kip, now 41, murdered their parents before shooting up his school, killing two students when he was 15-years-old.
More than two decades after the school shooting, Kristen said she never needed to forgive her brother because she never reached a moment she was 'mad at him.'
'There's no way his behavior was a choice,' Kristen told the outlet. 'We had just lost our parents. It always felt that way for me—it's kind of like "We lost our parents" instead of "He took them away."'
Kip Kinkel, pictured at his arraignment in 1998, says he has been rehabilitated by intensive mental health treatments behind bars, and has earned a degree and yoga teaching qualification
Kristin Kinkel is seen in 1998, when she was 21, at a memorial service for her parents
Kinkel is seen in June 2007, led into a courthouse in Oregon to try and reduce his sentence
Kip Kinkel is seen with his father, Bill, who he murdered in 1998
Kip, serving a nearly 112-year sentence, called his sister his 'lifeline,' crediting her for his survival, and in turn, Kristen, now 46, calls her brother her best friend.
'If I didn't have her love and support,' Kip said, 'I probably would have ended things a long time ago.'
He expressed gratitude for his sister's support over the years, emphasizing its crucial role in sustaining him since the time of his arrest and said they both hope one day he will win release.
'He just has this insight and wisdom,' Kristen said. 'And he knows me so well. He knows how to comfort me.'
Kristen detailed Kip's life in prison, his struggles with mental illness and the circumstances leading to the tragic 1998 school shooting in the lengthy interview.
After her brother lost multiple appeals, she reached out to the magazine for an interview - despite spending years avoiding the press.
Kip suffered extreme schizophrenia as a child, which went undiagnosed, and led him to believe Disney had planted a chip in his brain
Kristin recalled the tragic day - May 21, 1998 - when she first realized what her brother had done.
'I remember turning on the TV and seeing my house, the house I grew up in, from a helicopter view,' Kristin, who was at college at the time, recalled in the New Yorker interview.
'There was something about that moment when it settled—I really did have to believe it, I can't ignore it, I can't pretend that this didn't happen,' she added.
'This can't be true, there's no way this is true, this is completely impossible.'
Kristen was in shock upon hearing the news. She couldn't believe the brother she grew up - who slept above her bed and had a cat named Tiger Lilly - was capable of the horrific act of violence that left four people dead.
'That's not Kip,' she said. 'There must be something wrong.'
She insisted on finding out what was wrong with her brother and helping him.
One of the first times she saw him, Kristen said her brother was unable to speak.
'He had his head down on the table, and he was crying, and the only thing he could say was 'I'm sorry.'
Kinkel murdered his mom Faith and dad Bill the day after being caught trying to buy a stolen gun. They had taken his own 9mm Glock from him
Kinkel then drove to his school and shot 17 year-old Mikael Nickolauson (left), and 16 year-old Ben Walker (right) dead. He chose his victims at random and injured 22 others in the rampage
Kristin continued to visit Kip regularly in prison. He also continued to speak openly with a psychologist he saw weekly.
Kip was faced with a chance for release two years ago, when Oregon's governor Kate Brown granted clemency to 73 people who had been long sentences as juveniles, making them eligible for parole - but Kip was left off the list.
Kristen provided insight into how Kip felt over the decision to leave him behind bars.
'There were a whole bunch of us on the island, and this big lifeboat came and picked up everybody except for me,' Kristin said in New Yorker interview. 'I keep telling him, 'It's going to make multiple trips—it's not one opportunity. We are going to fight our entire lives to be able to make sure that you are in the place where you need to be.'
Kip's lawyer is set to appeal the decision to the Oregon Court of Appeals, according to court records.
Students attend a vigil in the wake of the deadly shooting in Springfield, Oregon, in May 1998
In 2021, Kip spoke out for the first time, expressing his 'shame' over his crimes 23 years after the massacre shocked America.
Kip said he is full of remorse for killing his dad Bill, mom Faith, as well as schoolmates Mikael Nickolauson and Ben Walker.
He told HuffPost: 'I've never done this. I've never done an interview. Partly because I feel tremendous, tremendous shame and guilt for what I did.
'And there's an element of society that glorifies violence, and I hate the violence that I'm guilty of. I've never wanted to do anything that's going to bring more attention.
'I have responsibility for the harm that I caused when I was 15. But I also have responsibility for the harm that I am causing now as I'm 38 because of what I did at 15.'
Kip also spoke of his fears that he may have inspired the Columbine High School massacre, which saw 12 students and one teacher gunned down in Littleton, Colorado, the year after his killings.
Two Columbine High School students, Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, committed one of the worst massacres in US history that left 12 students and one teacher dead, and 21 wounded on April 20, 1999.
Kip detailed his suffering from schizophrenia and amassing weapons before the horrific murders.
Kinkel said he was 12 when he started hearing voices telling him: 'You need to kill everyone, everyone in the world.'
He recalled looking around but not seeing anyone.
The frightening voices continued as Kinkel started to believe he was hearing them because Disney and the US government had planted a chip in his head.
His paranoia continued to grow, as did his interest in weapons. Kinkel started to think that China would invade the West Coast.
'I became obsessed with obtaining weapons. Not just guns, but knives and explosives,' Kip told HuffPost.
Kip said his parents were not gun enthusiasts so he hitched rides to gun shows from a friend's parents. At the shows, he bought books and magazines filled with paranoid warnings about 'foreign invaders' and the 'government plans to seize guns from Americans.'
He claims that a lot of his interest in amassing weapons was also because of recent news of the deadly Ruby Ridge and Waco standoffs with federal agents.
'The narrative was, "They're gonna take our guns." And my fear, twisted into my illness, was, 'Our own government is going to take away our guns before the Chinese invade, and we're not going to be able to defend ourselves,' Kip said.
Thurston High School is pictured. Kinkel's shooting there was one of the first to hit a US school, and came a year before the Columbine Shooting in Colorado, where 12 students and one teacher were murdered
'I have responsibility for the harm that I caused when I was 15. But I also have responsibility for the harm that I am causing now as I'm 38 because of what I did at 15,' Kip said. Pictured: A victim coming out of the window at Columbine High School
Police stand outside the east entrance of Columbine High shool as bomb squads and SWAT teams secure students on April 20, 1999, in Littleton, Colorado
Kinkel told HuffPost that the voices in his head would come and go. Then when he was in eighth grade, he and a friend got in trouble with the cops for throwing rocks off a freeway overpass.
His parents found bomb-making materials in his room and started taking him to a psychologist, with whom he had nine therapy sessions in 1997.
However, Kinkel tried to hide the symptoms of his mental illness and doctors diagnosed him with depression. He took Prozac for three months until the prescription ran out.
Kinkel said the voices in his head told him to shoot his father so he picked up the rifle and walked downstairs where he found his dad sitting.
'Kill him, shoot him. You have no choice,' he claimed the voices said.
He then shot his dad in the back of the head and dragged his body to the bathroom where he covered it with a sheet, then waited for his mom to get home.
Kinkel met his mom in the garage and told her he loved her before shooting her twice in the back of the head, three times in the face and once in the heart before then covering her body with a sheet.
'Get guns and bullets. You have no other choice. Kill everybody. Go to school and kill everybody. Look at what you've already done,' the voices told Kinkel, he said.
He took his mom's SUV to the school the next morning with three guns concealed under a trench coat, as well as a hunting knife and two bullets he taped to his chest to make sure he would have enough rounds to then kill himself.
'Shoot these boys,' the voices in his head said when he got to the school.
Kinkel said he headed to the cafeteria and shot his classmates.
Both boys killed were chosen by Kinkel at random.
Asked if he thinks he will ever be free, Kinkel said: 'I think that there's a few different ways to answer that.
'I've learned through a lot of years of therapy and self work that I really need to be careful with expectations. So I don't want to have false hope. But hope is always really important.
'So, of course, there's always a sense of hope that maybe I can leave an environment such as this that is miserable and designed to torment and inflict, basically, pain onto my body and soul. With that being said, I don't know what that would look like.
'So, I don't allow myself to spend too much time thinking about that because I think that can actually bring more suffering.'
English (US)