The Tragic Case of Kipland Kinkel: A Deep Dive into the Thurston High School Shooting

In this harrowing episode, we explore the tragic and disturbing case of Kipland Kinkel, the teenager behind the 1998 Thurston High School shooting in Springfield, Oregon. On May 21, 1998, 15-year-old Kipland Kinkel opened fire in his school cafeteria, killing two classmates and wounding 25 others, just a day after murdering his own parents. Join us as we delve into the details of the events leading up to the shooting, the investigation, and the psychological factors that contributed to this devastating act. We discuss the legal proceedings, Kinkel's mental health diagnosis, and the broader implications for school safety and mental health awareness. This episode is a comprehensive examination of a case that remains a stark reminder of the importance of addressing mental health issues and preventing school violence. Tune in to uncover the layers of tragedy, mental illness, and legal drama that define the Kipland Kinkel case.

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References:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Thurston_High_School_shooting
https://murderpedia.org/male.K/k/kinkel-kipland.htm
https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/kipland-kinkel

#truecrimepodcast #murdermystery #truecrime #massacre #ThurstonHigh #CrimeStory #CrimePodcast

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome back to another episode of Bloodstained Backstories. I'm your
host Jason. Today we have a tragic story from Springfield, Oregon. Now,
before we get too far into this episode, I must
warn you that the content you are about to listen
to may be disturbing to some audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Kiplin Philip Kinkel is the second child of William and

(00:24):
Faith Kinkle. His parents were both Spanish teachers, and his mom,
Faith taught Spanish at Springfield High School and his father, William,
taught at Thurston High School and Lane Community College. Now,
William had retired three years before our tragic incident took place,

(00:46):
and his mom Faith was still teaching. Now, in the family,
there is some history of mental illness on both sides
of the family. Faith and William concealed this from psychologists,
and it was only uncovered when investigators who were hired
by Kiplin's lawyers discovered this. If you knew there was

(01:07):
some history of family illness and you're talking to psychologists,
that is not something that I would want to hide.
That is actually the key information because the psychologists then
could take that information even if they don't actually do
anything with it. They are aware of it, and that
does play into some of the sessions that they may have. Then, however,
his parents didn't seem to think so. Now, according to

(01:29):
all of the accounts, his parents were both loving and supportive,
except for the fact that they hid important information from psychologists.
In school, his teachers said that he was immature and
he lacked physical and emotional development, and based on one
of the recommendations of his teachers, his parents had him
repeat the first grade. Now, in Florida, we deal with

(01:51):
retentions a lot, especially in third grade. We have the
mandatory retention for children who do not pass the state exam,
and then as students go on to you ninth grade,
if they have not passed all of the eighth grade requirements,
they technically are retained in eighth grade. And there are
pros and cons to both of these things. Some people
argue that retention is terrible and detrimentals of children, and

(02:14):
some people argue that it's helpful because the child clearly
wasn't ready to move on and would be further behind
if they did move on. So really, retention is kind
of one of those sticky areas that it probably works
for some and is extremely beneficial for some and then
others not so much. And there's a lot of other
factors that go into things too, you know, student motivation

(02:35):
whatnot does play into their grades. Just because someone's failing
something doesn't necessarily always mean it is a true indication
of their ability. If they didn't have the motivation to
do it, so they half ass did it, and that
doesn't really reflect what the child is capable of. Now.
During that year that he repeated first grade, he was

(02:57):
diagnosed with with dyslexia and that came worse and ultimately
he was placed in some special education classes by the
beginning of second grade. Even from a young age, Kiplin
had an interest in firearms and explosive and that continued
to develop as he continued to develop as a young man,
he began making bombs, mostly gasoline based, and debting the

(03:20):
community by Corey red Flag number one. For sure. That's
not a normal childhood thing. Most children are out, you know,
playing video games, not making bombs. William initially wanted to
discourage his son from violence, but later enrolled him in
a gun safety course, buying him a nine millimeter glock
and eventually a twenty two caliber rifle. At the age

(03:40):
of fifteen. I don't know that I would have done
that as a parent, knowing his history. I understand the
gun safety course as perhaps a mean of trying to
teach him how to appropriately use a gun. I guess,
if you know he's gonna do it anyways, maybe teach
him the right way. But I don't know that I
would have bought him two different types of guns either.
I would have maybe used a family gun and taught

(04:03):
him how to use it appropriately, but then not actually
physically given him his own gun, let alone too. They
also passed down to him a twenty two single shot
rifle when he was twelve. So from a young age,
this boy had access to weapons and clearly was not
using his abilities to the most appropriate way. His mother

(04:23):
was not initially happy about these purchases, but a psychologist
gave her the emotional permission to say yes, and then
Kiplin and his father would go target practice shooting near
their home. Now again, had the psychologist known about Kiplin's past,
more than likely he would have not given mom the

(04:45):
emotional permission to say yes. But this is what happens
when you don't be honest with your psychologists, so they
don't necessarily make the best informed decisions when they can't
have all of the information to make that informed decision.
So again, this is where lying to the psychologist or
not being truthful comes to bite them in the ass. Now,

(05:07):
some of his classmates described Kiplin as strange and morbid,
and others described him as psychotic or skezoid. He was
constantly talking about committing acts of violence, telling friends that
he wanted to join the army after he graduated just
so he could find out what it was like to
kill people. Not the reason most people join the army.
Most people do it to serve their country and help people,

(05:31):
not necessarily to kill people. His parents did enroll him
in an anger management course and he was evaluated by
a psychologist. Over the period of six months. He was
diagnosed with depression and began a prescription for prozac. Eight
weeks later, Kiplin and his mother and the psychologist agreed
that he was doing well enough to stop the sessions. Yeah. No,

(05:54):
I mean eight weeks that's not really much time to
show change, especially when you're on medication, and it typically
takes at least two to three weeks for the medication
to fully get in your body. But Yeah, we'll go
with that. And guess what happened after the sessions They
stopped refilling his prescription. Bad idea. This eventually caused Kiplin

(06:14):
to become paranoid and have delusions, believing that the government
was implanting a computer chip in his brain and the
Chinese were going to invade the West Coast. Uh. Yeah.
Side effects of abruptly stopping medication versus weaning him off
of it in slower and slower doses. He described free
voices that were in his head, Voice A, who commanded

(06:34):
him to commit violent acts, Voice B, who repeated insulting
and depressive statements at Kiplin's expense, and Voice C, who
echoed what A and B said. He claimed that he
felt punished by God for being subjective to these voices,
and it was Voice A who instigated later attacks. Kiplin
exhibited signs of paranoid schizophrenia, to the full extent of

(06:58):
which became apparent when he on trial. He had gone
to great length to hide any symptoms because he didn't
want to be labeled as abnormal or quote mentally retarded,
being disliked by girls, or institutionalized, which I understand as
a teenager, you want to fit in and you want
to do well. But if your parents had known these things,
you could have gotten the proper help and we will

(07:19):
not be in this situation that we are going to
talk about. In just a little bit. After the tragic
event happened, examining psychologists heard about the voices in his
head that he had been hearing since he was twelve
years old. Twelve. The voices would constantly be telling him
to consider self harm, and as a means of suppressing
that and not doing it, he would play loud music

(07:40):
on his headphones or go ride his bike. Now, let's
talk about some of the events that led up to
this night that we are going to talk about. On
May twentieth, nineteen ninety eight, Kiplin was suspended after being
found in possession of a loaded stolen handgun on school grounds.
A friend of Kiplin's had stolen the pistol from another

(08:00):
friend and arranged to sell it to Kiplin. The night before.
He put the gun, which was loaded with nine magazine rounds,
in a paperbag and left it in his locker. When
the guns owner discovered the theft, he reported to police
and supplied the names of students whom he believed might
have stolen the firearm. Kiplin was not one of them, though.
When the school became aware of Kiplin's possible involvement and

(08:23):
questioned him, it was reported that he stated, look, I'm
going to be square with you guys. The guns in
my locker. At least he was honest about that. But
Kiplan was suspended pending an expulsionary hearing, and he and
the friend were both arrested. Kiplan was released to police
custody and driven home by his father, when he would
be told that he was going to be sent to
military school if he did not improve his behavior, because

(08:45):
that's going to fix things. When his father electioned him
while driving home from the police station, Kiplin said the
voices in his heads were so loud that he was
unable to hear anything. His father said, now here's where
it is going to get a little gruesome. So again,
this information that you are about to hear may not
be for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised. Later that day,

(09:11):
Kiplan would murder his parents. Shortly before his death, William,
the father confided a friend that he was terrified and
was running out of options to help his son, and
according to Kiplan's tape confession. At about three pm that day,
he retrieved a Rugero semi automatic rifle from his bedroom
and ammunition from his parents' bedroom. He went to the
kitchen and shot his father once in the back of

(09:33):
the head. Then he drugged the body into the bathroom
and covered it with a sheet. His mother did not
arrive home until about six thirty pm, and he met
her in the garage. He told her he loved her,
and he shot her six times, twice in the back
of the head, three times in the face, and once
in the heart. Then he drug her body across the
floor and covered it with a sheet. Kiplin left a

(09:54):
note on the coffee table in the living room, and
he described his motive for as killing his parents as
I've just got two felonies on my records. My parents
can't take that and it would destroy them. The embarrassment
would be too much for them and they couldn't live
with themselves. But as the no continues, he attempted to
describe his mental state, and that's when he mentions the
voices in his head. My head just doesn't work right. Goddamn,

(10:16):
these voices inside my head. I have to kill people.
I don't know why, I have no other choice. Kiplan
goes to bed and gets up for school the next day.
On May twenty first, Kiplan drives his mother's vehicle to
his high school. He wore a trench coat to hide
five weapons that he carried two hunting knives, his rifle,
a glock pistol, and a twenty two ruger pistol. He

(10:38):
was carrying one thousand, one hundred and twenty seven rounds
of ammunition. Kiplan parked two blocks from the high school,
then jogged in the campus and entered a patio area,
and there he fired two shots, fatally wounding sixteen year
old Ben Walker and wounding another. He went to the
cafeteria and fired the remaining forty eight rounds from their rifle,

(11:00):
wounding twenty four students and killing seventeen year old Michael Nicholson.
When Kiplin began to reload, one of the wooden students,
Jacob Riker, tackled him, and he was assisted by several
other students. Kiplan drew a glock from his belt and
fired one last shot before he was disarmed. Injuring Riker again.
He yelled as other students to just kill me and

(11:22):
end this, the students restrained Kiplin until police arrived. A
total of seven students were involved in subduing and disarming Kiplin.
Once in police custody, Kipling retrieved a knife that was
secured on his leg and attacked a police officer, wanting
and begging to be fatally shot by that police officer.
The police officer instead used pepper spray. How he was

(11:45):
able to have a knife on him in police custodies
beyond me. You would have thought they would have searched
him down, and given the fact that he just committed
this horrific crime, he would have had multiple police officers
right there and searched every part of his body to
ensure he was no longer a threat to himself or others.
How this knife was missed is beyond me, but that

(12:07):
seems to be them of this story. A lot of
miss things, a lot of things that were not truthful
that led to other unfortunate, tragic events. Once he was
in jail, Kiplin was placed on suicide watch, and he
attempted to kill himself by starvation, but stopped once his
sister Kristen began visiting him. He did not resume the
attempts after that. In his defense, Kiplin was mentally ill

(12:29):
and that is the argument that he went with. He is.
The psychologist that had previously been seeing him said that
he was in satisfactory mental health and he had seen
him for nine sessions and treated him for major depression.
Both William, his father, and Faith his mom, were terminated
from the therapy session because Kiplin was responding well to
the treatment and showed a cease of symptoms of depression

(12:52):
again nine sessions nine Like what the fuck? That is
not enough? Someone does not give better. Sure in nine sessions,
that's when you just start to break through with the person.
On September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety nine, three days before
the jury selection process was set to begin for his trial,
Kiplin pleaded guilty to the murder and attempted murder forgoing

(13:14):
the possibility of being acquitted for reasons of insanity, and
in November of nineteen ninety nine, Kiplan was sentenced to
more than one hundred and eleven years in prison without
the possibility of parole. After the sentencing, Kiplin apologized to
the court for both the murder of his parents and
the shooting spree that took place at the High School.
In two thousand and three, a permanent memorial was created

(13:36):
and dedicated at the school in memory of the events.
It has a curve wall with a plaque of the
names of the two students killed, and originally it was
going to include the names of Kiplin's parents, but that
was dropped after a hot topic debate, which I can understand.
Even though they were involved in the tragic events, they
weren't actually at the school campus. They weren't murdered at school,

(13:57):
even though his father had previously taught at the school
but had retired three years ago. I can understand not
wanting their names on this plaque. And many of the
students at the time still lived in Springfield, and Thurston's
current dean of students, a friend who had called Kristen
Kinkel to let her know what happened, considers this there
nine to eleven. This shooting brings up so many questions,

(14:20):
so many What would have happened if they had received
the proper treatment for his illnesses, if his family had
been honest and actually disclosed everything to the psychologist, if
the family friend would have done something to help, And
why the hell would you give this child firearms and
access to firearms. So many things with this case that

(14:41):
would have made it better and prevented so much. Please
let us know what your thoughts are about this case
and the events that transpired in the comments below. Don't
forget to check us out on all social media platforms,
and of course, you can listen to our podcast anywhere
you listen to your favorite podcast. Until next time, I'm Jason.
Can we hope to hear you back next week for

(15:03):
another chilling episode of Bloodstained Backstories