Just a few feet away, Kelly Carneal barely recognized
her little brother. She had never seen him ''look so big.''
For a withdrawn 14-year-old accustomed to living in
fear and cowering from confrontation, it was a dream become reality.
Finally, Michael Carneal (left) was the one in control.
Until now, each rustle in the tree, knock at the door
or shadowy movement in the corner was cause for alarm. And every
youngster's transgression or teen's teasing was an indefensible assault
on his soul.
A siege on Heath High School was to be his chance ''to
be more powerful and better than'' those who made fun of him.
But the surge of omnipotence lasted precious few
moments on Dec. 1, 1997. After a series of ''pops,'' friends and
classmates were screaming, five were wounded and three were dead. The
respect he'd come looking for had turned to horror.
Michael dropped his weapon and crumpled. ''Kill me,
please,'' he said. ''I can't believe I did that.''
Down the hall, Kelly was sobbing. Her sensitive
little brother - who still wanted to be tucked in bed at night, who wept
over the plight of street people and winced at the thought of anyone
being injured - had just opened fire on their friends.
''None of us could believe that Michael had been
involved,'' said family friend, Rick Walters. ''He was just your typical
kid.''
To everyone else, maybe. But not to Michael.
His world - according to a series of interviews
Michael and his family have had with police, counselors and
investigators - wasa place where he didn't fit in and couldn't find a
friend. A place where he had no control.
Over the years, Michael had grown so focused on his
perceived abuse by classmates and teachers, that he'd begun to see spies
in the air vents and assailants in every shadow.
In his mind and in the stories he wrote for class, he
created scenarios where an enemy would attack him or his family and he
would battle them to the death, emerging the victorious hero. In one
essay, the slain villains were the school ''preppies.''
Heath High School Principal Bill Bond said Michael's
writings were filled with ''pent-up frustration'' and hatred.
''He tended to dwell excessively in his world of
fantasy to make up for the control and power he felt he lacked in his
real life,'' said Forensic Psychiatrist Dianne Schetky, who evaluated
Michael for the prosecution following the slayings.
''He began to perceive the world as a dangerous place
where people were out to harm him and his thinking became paranoid. His
paranoid views of the world, in turn, reinforced his need to ...defend
himself.''
Michael told Ms. Schetky that his earliest childhood
memories were of being left out during preschool play periods and of
spending time in first grade with the teacher's toys ''because I didn't
have any friends.''
In second grade, his only friend was another outcast,
Jacob, who was teased because he was poor. And in third and fourth
grade, he developed a friendship with Jessica Brown, who rode the bus
with Michael and whom he would later kill. Although Jessica once stabbed
Michael in the hand with a pencil, Michael said he ''didn't have any
choice except to be nice to her because she was the only person I had to
talk to.''
Each year of his childhood, his strongest memory was
of some incident of torment. Students putting frog parts on his shoulder
during dissection class, someone tossing his prize class project on the
roof, classmates hitting him for no reason and a teacher failing him for
a creative idea to build jails underwater.
''He hoarded these perceived injustices and dwelled
on them rather than letting go of them as many kids would,'' Ms. Schetky
said in her report.
''Most adolescents turn to peers, athletics,
extracurricular activities or academics to help them negotiate the
passage of adolescence, lessen their ties to parents and develop a sense
of self and autonomy.''
But Michael struck out in baseball, at 5-foot-2 was
too small for most other sports and couldn't compete with his straight-A
sister in school. ''He said he'd been trying hard to live up to her, but
that he keeps getting into trouble,'' Ms. Schetky said.
Developing autonomy at home also didn't work as it
was the only place Michael truly felt welcome, loved and secure. ''I
didn't think anybody really cared about me except my sister and parents,''
Michael said.
Kelly described her brother as ''a baby'' at home,
who still liked to be cuddled and put to bed at night. His parents,
seeing that he lacked the self-confidence of his popular sister, gave
him extra attention. His father, John, an attorney, said a special
prayer for his son every night.
Michael also was extremely sensitive by nature and
had an unflinching sense of right and wrong. His parents said that even
as a child, he ''could never deal with inequities.''
He cried when he saw home less people and quit the
Boy Scouts because he ''disliked the authority thing,'' where higher-
ranking scouts had more say in activities. He also dropped out of karate
after accidentally kicking his partner in the face, causing a nosebleed.
His preoccupation with fair play only made the taunts
by classmates more painful.
''Like many teen-agers, he was hypersensitive to his
classmates' statements about him,'' said de fense attorney Charles
Granner. ''He felt inadequate, unworthy, unloved, unrespected and unac
cepted by his peer group.
''At 14 years of age, Michael's peer group was
critical to his self-esteem. Michael felt as if he were a massive
failure, doomed to be different and ...a nobody.''
Always, Michael's response was to shrink back, try
harder, be nicer. His sister said Michael wanted desperately to fit in
and tried joking around and trying to help others. His efforts, howev er,
were interpreted as signs of weakness by his classmates, whose teasing
escalated into name calling and then labeling Michael as ''gay'' and a
''fag.''
Michael told investigators that he often would find
himself sobbing and not knowing why.
He'd unleash his frustrations on a steel drum kept in
the back yard. And in seventh grade, he contemplated suicide because he
''had no friends for two years.'' A year before the slayings, he sliced
his arm with a sewing nee dle when his efforts to befriend a group of
classmates backfired and they, too, began teasing him.
By middle school, he began to see himself as a target
for abuse everywhere. In two psychiatric evaluations, Michael was de
scribed as paranoid.
When he showered, Michael covered the bathroom air
vents with thick towels because ''peo ple might be looking ... people
might climb into the vents through the basement to look.'' When he'd
finish, he would wrap himself in three to four more towels and make a
quick dash for his bedroom. Sometimes, he told investigators, when he
heard a knock on the window, he thought people were trying to get to him
or his family.
Often, he would jump up, grab his pocketknife and go
check on his mother, Ann, to make sure she was all right.
A month before the slayings, his mother found a stash
of kitchen knives under Michael's mattress. Michael said he was
collecting them for protection. ''If someone came in, maybe I could stop
them.''
His imaginary fears also kept Michael from sleeping
in his own room. Frequently, he would slip out to the family room couch
so that he wouldn't be so far away from the rest of the family.
That fall, Michael's grades slumped and he began
rocking while sitting at the dinner table. He also started talking to
classmates about a movie he'd seen a year earlier, ''The Basketball
Diaries,'' which featured an academic outcast taking a gun to school and
slaying his teacher and classmates, to the applause of his friends.
The idea of using a gun to win respect hit a chord
with Michael. He began telling students that he, too, was ''planning
something big.''
He fantasized with classmates about ''pulling guns in
school and seeing everyone run away.'' He and the other boys joked about
being able to take over the library, steal the computers and talk on the
intercom system.
The other boys laughed about it, but Michael took it
seriously. He began taking his father's revolver to school, tucked in
the bottom of his book bag. ''It made him feel safe,'' said Dewey
Cornell, director of the University of Virginia Youth Violence Project,
who also interviewed Michael.
One day, he took a .22-caliber Ruger he'd stolen from
neighbors. He pulled it on two classmates but they were unimpressed,
saying it wasn't very powerful. On December 1, he came with an arsenal:
two shotguns, two rifles, two handguns.
In the days preceding the slayings, Michael warned
some students who had ''been nice'' to him to stay away from an early
morning prayer group that met before the start of classes in the front
hallway.
The prayer group, according to Mrs. Carneal, was a
closed one - one that Michael had never been invited to join.
On Thanksgiving Day, Michael stole the guns he would
use to kill his classmates. He climbed in through a neighbor's window,
taking along a duffle bag he had hidden earlier in the woods. He took
five guns from their display case and boxes of bullets.
After slipping from the house, he climbed the fence,
crossed a field and stole into an old barn to examine his cache. Holding
them up to the light of the late afternoon sun, he said they made him
feel ''powerful.''
Once home, he snuck into his parents' bedroom, took
his dad's double barrel shotgun, then hid all the weapons in a crate in
his bedroom closet.
Two days later, he wrapped the weapons in paper, then
a bed sheet. The .22, he put in his book bag.
Monday morning, he loaded the package into the trunk
of his sister's car, and told her it was ''an English project - props
for a play.''
Once inside the building, he joked with students who
asked him if he had guns in his curious package, then made his way to
the front lobby.
There, he set the rifles down and put in two bright
orange hunting ear plugs. Methodically, he pulled the Ruger from his
book bag and the clips from his pocket, positioned himself just to the
side of the prayer circle, and began squeezing the trigger.
When it was over, Michael said he'd imagined it all
differently. He thought he'd fire one shot, everyone would take off
running and he ''could run around and do stuff and take over the school.''
He also expected to return to school the next day,
and ''everyone would be nice to me then.''
