Yuku free message boards

I also found an intersting article on Yahoo regarding the NIU campus...

Campus divided over site of shootings By NGUYEN HUY VU, Associated Press Writer
Sat Apr 5, 3:10 PM ET

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Yellow police tape and wooden barricades no longer block the entrance to Northern Illinois University's Cole Hall, but it remains empty nearly two months after a gunman killed five students and himself there.

With the painful memories still fresh at the university in DeKalb, students and faculty avoid the brick building.

But as the campus of 25,000 students continues to grapple with Steven Kazmierczak's Valentine's Day killings that also left 18 wounded, it is also struggling to decide on the fate of Cole Hall and how to memorialize the slain students.

University President John Peters initially wanted to tear down Cole and build a memorial in its place. Some students wanted the building razed, arguing that they should not have to face tragedy on a daily basis.

"Even if they did renovate it, and the classroom was different, I couldn't sit there and ... know that six people lay there dying on that ground and be able to concentrate," Kristen Highland said.

"It wouldn't be fair for me to have to go into that building again," the 22-year-old visual communication major said.

Others argue razing the site amounts to burying the past, along with the memory of the dead. They want to honor them by continuing to use the building, either for classrooms or for some new purpose. They often envision a memorial inside.

Amanda Banks said she understands students and faculty are "emotionally torn" by what happened inside, but she believes razing Cole Hall would be like giving into the gunman.

"I think it's perpetuating the problem to tear it down, and I think it's a waste of resources," the 23-year-old math education major said. She said she would favor turning it into an office or multipurpose building.

There is no easy answer for what to do with sites of horrible violence.

Columbine High School's library was destroyed and rebuilt. The Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pa., bulldozed the schoolhouse where five girls were killed.

Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 students a year ago this month before killing himself, converted its shooting site into a peace center. Officials there remember how difficult it was to navigate their way past last year's killings.

Virginia Tech provost Mark McNamee headed a campus task force that reviewed proposals for how to use the space.

Ideas ranged from restoring classes as usual to turning the building into a memorial or razing it.

The victims' families eventually approved of the peace center plans, which involved altering the space so it no longer resembled classrooms, officials said.

McNamee urged NIU officials to listen carefully to the NIU community and accept that there is "no perfect solution to these very difficult decisions."

"Every building is different, every situation is different," he said, "and I think as long as the process is good and they're comfortable with it, they'll do the right thing."

At NIU, about 65 miles west of Chicago, grief has been overtaken by new stress over out-of-whack class schedules and upcoming finals. But, anxiety remains, said the Rev. Marty Marks, a campus minister.

Over the last few weeks, school officials have collected opinions on Cole's fate. More than 800 e-mail responses have poured in. An online petition with more than 1,300 signatures asks the administration to include more student input.

Peters has stepped back from his plan to demolish Cole and build a new structure elsewhere on campus for $40 million. Critics say the school or the state are in no financial shape to replace a perfectly good building.

On Thursday, Peters however made clear that he never again wants Cole to be used for a major classroom.

Victims' families haven't spoken publicly about preferences for the building's future. Peters said it's not at the forefront of their minds less than two months after the shootings.

While Peters said most students who were in Cole Hall during the shooting never want to return, he also said it's too early to tell if any one course of action is favored overall.

"I'm not going to prejudge that," he said. "I'm going to let the process work and I've got a real open mind on that."

The hope is to have a proposal in to the NIU Board of Trustees by May so any work can be begin by the summer.

Public health major Megan Plote, 22, wants to keep Cole Hall, but with some kind of memorial inside. However, she understands the impulse to demolish it - and acknowledges it might be a while before she'd want to attend classes there.

"I'm sure no one, obviously, wants to relive that, and that's what they'll do if they go back in there," she said. "I think my first instinct would be, 'Take it away.' But at the same time, is any good going to come from that?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080405/ap_on_re_us/niu_shootings_cole_hall

Jeff

I read it and while I thought it was intresting, I agree with you that don't think I would take everything that it states at face value since, to my knowledge, a lot of what it states hasn't been confirmed..."Campus Police Chief Donald Grady declined through an NIU spokesman to confirm or deny the story's details and said the department did not leak the files. Grady said the investigation into the shooting is ongoing and it could be some time before a report is issued." (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/chicago/chi-niu_shooterjul10,0,6892056.story )

I also searched for it on Google and Google news and there was only few mentions of it(one would have thought that there would have been more, especially considering this story has been up for a couple of weeks)

Jeff

Remember the Esquire article on Steven Kazmierczak( http://www.esquire.com/fe...n-kazmierczak-0808?kw=ist )?

Well, it seems that CNN is going to air a braodcast tonight about what happened an NIU at 11 P.M. EDT and, not surprisingly, it contradicts the "official story" from Grady that there were "no red flags"(can we say "cover-up"?)...

DEKALB, Illinois (CNN) -- A former student who killed five people at Northern Illinois University last Valentine's Day had been drummed out of the Army for hiding his psychiatric history and expressed admiration for famous murderers, CNN has learned.

Steven Kazmierczak was known as "strange Steve" to roommates, studied the Virginia Tech and Columbine massacres and idolized the sadistic killer in the "Saw" horror films, according to documents from the year-long investigation into the NIU killings.

The still-unreleased police file on the shootings, which also left 18 students wounded, shows that 27-year-old Kazmierczak had been hospitalized several times as a teenager for psychiatric issues and had a history of suicide attempts. Kazmierczak shot and killed himself at the end of his shooting rampage.

Police told CNN that they received no information that would have tipped them off to his rampage.

But David Vann, who has written a book about what led to the shootings, said his research shows that Kazmierczak carefully planned the shootings and that there was a lifetime of red flags that indicated he was capable of such an act.

"The degree of self-destruction and antisocial behavior at the end, of really scary behaviors, was just phenomenal," Vann said. "And at some point after you look at all of those records, you just have to wonder, what does a mass murderer have to do to get noticed?"

The NIU Police Department has repeatedly refused CNN's requests to release any files related to the investigation, since it is still under way. But CNN was given exclusive access to some of the approximately 1,500 pages of police reports, psychiatric records and family documents by Vann, who said he obtained the files from a law enforcement source.

"It's just amazing that he could coldly plan to kill all of those people. ... Everything was planned out carefully

Kazmierczak, a former NIU student, was going to graduate school at the University of Illinois in Champaign at the time of the killings. During his time at NIU, he wrote a paper called "No Crazies With Guns," in which he used the April 2007 massacre at Virginia Tech to analyze whether mentally ill people should have access to guns.

Kazmierczak was later able to purchase weapons used in the NIU killings because he had not been in a mental facility in the past five years, which would have disqualified him in Illinois from buying a gun.

After the shooting, NIU Police Chief Donald Grady said there were no "red flags" in Kazmierczak's past that would have foreshadowed what happened. He told CNN this week that he stands by that statement.

"Was he obsessed? Was he not obsessed? That information didn't come through to the university police at any time he was here. ... How could it be a red flag if it never came to us?"

He added, "It's the same story. Nothing has changed in that regard. We haven't found anything that would dispel any of that. So it is absolutely the same right now."

Grady said the investigation was ongoing but not a priority because there was no one involved but Kazmierczak.

"We already know he is no longer with us," he said. "We already know what he was wearing and what he used and how he went about doing it. I'm not certain that there's much else there."

Asked about information in the police files indicating that Kazmierczak exhibited odd behavior at NIU, Grady said that was never reported to the police department -- and insisted that there were no outward warning signs.

"There are lots of people on this campus that someone would refer to as strange," he said. "I mean, we have women that walk around with dog collars. I consider that to be strange. I don't know what someone else would consider that to be, but walking around with a dog collar strapped to your neck seems to me to be strange. Is that a sign that we should now be concerned that this person is about to engage in acts of violence? Well, I don't think so."

As far back as childhood, Kazmierczak's mother wrote in a family book that her son was overly sensitive and bullied.

"Sometimes I wish he would be a little tougher, and bop the daylights out of people that pick on him. ... One day he will," she wrote.

In junior high school, Kazmierczak made a bomb out of Drano, according to the documents. He also had a history of attempted suicides and was hospitalized nine times for psychiatric issues before 2001.

He spent three years at Thresholds, a psychiatric center in Chicago, according to psychiatric records in the files. He was kicked out of the program for "non-compliance and deception," the records state, adding that Kazmierczak "has had multiple hospitalizations and ... impulsive behavior and suicidal gestures."

He enlisted in the Army in September 2001 but was discharged the following February for lying on his application about his mental illness, Army records state. After that, he enrolled at NIU, where his freshman suitemates recall him as being obsessed with infamous figures such as Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy.

"He was called 'strange Steve' by everyone in the dorm, and everyone knew that something was wrong with him," Vann said. But he also was a successful graduate student at NIU who tutored other students.

"Steve Kazmierczak was living a double life," Vann said.

After Kazmierczak transferred to the University of Illinois graduate program in social work, he began seeing a therapist. Over the next several months, he was on and off an antidepressant and sleeping medication.

In October 2007, according to the records, he and his former live-in girlfriend, Jessica Baty, saw the horror film "Saw IV." Kazmierczak then dressed up as Jigsaw, the movie's sadistic killer narrator, for Halloween and had a tattoo of the character -- depicted riding a bicycle through a puddle of blood -- on his forearm.

"I think of all the texts he left, movies and books, the 'Saw' movies are very important," said Vann, who wrote an article about Kazmierczak for Esquire magazine in 2008.

In the films, Jigsaw puts his victims through torturous tests to see whether they value life enough to live.

"He's trying to teach his victims the value of their lives through torturing them and making them face possible death, and he has these creepy sayings like 'See what I see, feel what I feel,' and it's almost like it's supposed to be therapy through empathy," Vann said.

By February 2008, records show, Kazmierczak began buying ammunition and guns. In an e-mail to a friend, he joked about a recent shooting at a Chicago Lane Bryant store in which the victims were shot execution-style.

"His e-mails with his friends start mentioning planning world domination and talking about mass murder," Vann said.

Jessica Baty told CNN in an exclusive interview three days after the shootings that Kazmierczak had stopped taking an antidepression medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety three weeks before the shooting.

"He stopped taking it because he said that it felt, made, it made him feel like a zombie and that he just, you know, was lazy and that's why he stopped taking it," Baty said.

Baty, who said she spoke with Kazmierczak on the eve of the shooting, later received gifts in the mail, including an engagement ring.

She declined CNN's requests for another interview.

In the police reports, Baty says she knew that Kazmierczak had sex with women he met on the online classified site Craigslist in the months before the shooting. She also said he once told her, "If anything happens to me, don't tell anyone about me."

She told police that she "did not know what to believe about Steven anymore."

And Grady said he doesn't want to give Kazmierczak any more attention.

"This one individual came in and certainly caused trauma to this institution," he said. "Am I angry about that? Absolutely, I am.

"Do I ever want to see that happen again? No. Not ever, not here, not anywhere else, and I really don't want to glamorize what it is that an individual such as that has done and give him more credit and credibility than he deserves."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/C....investigation/index.html

I'll probably have the transcripts tomorrow.

Jeff

A year later, no final report on NIU shooting

If the police chief of Northern Illinois University had his way, the name of the man who gunned down five students in a lecture hall one year ago Saturday would fade into oblivion.

"Why give the guy the notoriety he sought?" says Chief Donald Grady, the lead investigator charged with issuing a final police report on the Feb. 14, 2008, attack. "That might only encourage someone else with mental issues to try and do the same thing one day."

The report on Steven Kazmierczak's rampage, which ended with his suicide, still could be months or even years away, Grady said. He brushes aside critics who insist the findings are long overdue.

"You want to know who the suspect is? You know that. He's dead," said Grady, his booming voice rising. "You want to know how many guns he had? You know that. You want to know how many victims there were? You know that. What else do you need to know?"

Indeed, it took only hours for authorities to piece together the rampage that lasted mere minutes:

Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former NIU student, stepped from behind a screen on the lecture hall stage, carrying four guns. He fired dozens of shots into the geology class, killing five and wounding 19 others before turning a gun on himself.

Killed were Gayle Dubowski, 20; Catalina Garcia, 20; Julianna Gehant, 32; Ryanne Mace, 19; and Daniel Parmenter, 20.

Some family members hope for clarity from a final report. "I want to know as much as I can about situations," said Joe Dubowski of Carol Stream, whose daughter, Gayle, was shot in the head.

"What was she was doing in her last moments? ... Was she standing up? Was she lying down? Or was she sitting there, as some students were, in shock, not even moving?"

The biggest question _ why Kazmierczak did it _ may be unanswerable.

Officials and friends have said Kazmierczak struggled with mental health troubles, but no motive has been determined and no suicide note was ever found.

Grady said he still has thousands of investigative papers to read, and even holds out hope that a hard drive apparently discarded from Kazmierczak's laptop before the attack might turn up. But with no additional suspects or indication of accomplices, he said, "this case just isn't as high a priority anymore."

The lack of urgency appears in sharp contrast to the response to the 2007 attack at Virginia Tech University that left 33 people dead. Two voluminous reports were released within five months, one by a governor's panel and another by the school.

After the Virginia Tech massacre, though, both police and the school were heavily criticized, with parents and others saying a slow reaction enabled gunman Seung-Hui Cho to claim more victims before killing himself. There was clamor for a quick, full accounting.

No such clamor followed the NIU slayings. NIU instead won praise from a state panel and others for quickly alerting the student body of nearly 25,000. Campus officers burst into the classroom within minutes of the first 911 calls _ only to find Kazmierczak dead, weapons strewn about him.

Grady notes that even the Virginia State Police, which has led the Virginia Tech investigation, has not released all documents or a final report.

VSP spokeswoman Corinne Geller said the agency opened all evidence possible, but witness statements, crime scene photographs and tapes of 911 calls are not included.

"I can tell you, you don't want to hear those tapes," Geller said of the 911 calls. "If you can tell me one good reason why the public needs to hear these students, some in their final moments and begging for their lives, I'd listen."

NIU police also have refused to release 911 tapes.

Jim Thomas, an NIU sociology professor who once taught Kazmierczak and maintained a friendship with him and his girlfriend, contends it's not up to Grady to decide whether a final report is relevant.

He said he understands many survivors and their families aren't pressing Grady, in part because some credit his department's swift action with saving lives.

"I know some of the families think Grady walks on water," Thomas said. "But we're talking about information that should be made public, including to help some people bring closure."

Grady won't discuss investigative details, but said he has tried to help bring closure, including by accompanying survivors and relatives into the red-bricked Cole Hall where the carnage took place.

Maria Ruiz-Santana, 21, said her return brought on flashbacks of Kazmierczak firing from the stage.

"I wanted to go back because I felt that was the way for me to heal completely, emotionally," she said.

Ruiz-Santana remembers lying in the lecture hall aisle after being shot, bleeding and gasping for air as she saw the gunman's feet walk past her _ and she credits Grady with saving her life; he held her hand and talked to her to keep her from going into shock.

"He keeps denying it, but I still believe he is my hero," Ruiz-Santana said.

Mark DeBrauwere's daughter, Lauren, was wounded when a bullet lodged in her chest. Parmenter, one of those killed, was her boyfriend.

But DeBrauwere said neither he nor his daughter need a final report.

"As far as I'm concerned it was closed after day one," he said. "All the answers left when (Kazmierczak) killed himself."

http://www.southernledger...al_report_on_NIU_shooting

""You want to know who the suspect is? You know that. He's dead," said Grady, his booming voice rising. "You want to know how many guns he had? You know that. You want to know how many victims there were? You know that. What else do you need to know?""-Simple..."what did they know and when did they know it?, are there things that you're not telling people? why have you not prepared a report yet?"

Jeff

Well, here's the transcript of that program...

Unraveling the mystery of the Northern Illinois University shootings.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I can't believe that he didn't tell me or give me some indication that something was wrong. I would have helped him. I would have done something for him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: It was one year today that this happened. And we want to know what caused Steven Kazmierczak to snap. Were there any warning signs? Is there anything anyone could have done to prevent this tragedy? Tonight, we revisit the campus where the shootings happened and dig deeper for answers. It is CNN exclusive investigation. We have that for you straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: One year ago today, a former student, Steven Kazmierczak -- well, he killed five students at Northern Illinois University, then he killed himself. At the time, school officials say he was a good student who had gone off his medication and then he just -- he just snapped. But a special investigations unit correspondent Abbie Boudreau learned, there is much, much more to this Valentine's Day rampage than that, isn't there?

ABBIE BOUDREAU, CNN INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think really to understand all of this, you really have to look back to what was reported at the time of the shooting. A lot of our information was coming from the person closest to the killer, Jessica Baty. She told me they shared an apartment together and they were planning a future. Both Baty and university police chief told us there were no obvious warning signs that would make them think Kazmierczak would become a school shooter. That was a year ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOUDREAU (voice-over): In most cases, experts say the warning signs are clear, but sometimes even those closest to a killer say they never saw it coming.

JESSICA BATY, STEVEN KAZMIERCZAK'S GIRLFRIEND: The Steven that I know and love was not the man that walked into that building. He was not the same person.

BOUDREAU: Valentine's Day, 2008, nearly 10 months after Virginia Tech.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was no expression on his face whatsoever. He didn't say a word.

BOUDREAU: Steven Kazmierczak, a 27-year-old former student, entered a crowded lecture hall at Northern Illinois University.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He just came in, pointed the gun, and opened fire.

BOUDREAU: Two minutes later, after killing five students and wounding 18, Kazmierczak shot himself. His former girlfriend, Jessica Baty, says she was as shocked as anyone. That's what she told me days after the shootings in this exclusive interview.

JESSICA BATY, FORMER GIRLFRIEND: He didn't seem that unhappy. No, I would never, never imagined that it would have been Steven who walked out of that stage. I -- I don't know why.

BOUDREAU (voice-over): It appear that Kazmierczak couldn't have been more different from Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech killer. Friends told us he was popular, successful, apparently in a relationship with plans for the future.

BATY: I don't know how he could have had a double life. I was -- I was in his life all the time. I didn't -- I can't believe that he didn't tell me or give me some indication that something was wrong.

BOUDREAU: Kazmierczak did have difficult moments in his past. A stay at a boy's group home, bouts of depression, and early dismissal from the army. As a teenager, he would cut himself.

BATY: You know, he was kind of a troubled kid. And, you know, everybody -- everybody has a past, and everybody goes through hard times and he felt so bad about his.

BOUDREAU: Baty told CNN, her boyfriend had been taking medication for obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety.

BATY: He was on medication and he did stop taking it. And he stopped taking it because he said that it made him feel like a zombie and that he was just, you know, was lazy. That's why he stopped taking it. He didn't behave erratically.

BOUDREAU: It would be rare if there were truly no warning signs according to Harvard's William Pollack.

WILLIAM POLLACK, HARVARD PSYCHOLOGIST: School shootings, at least to date are not impulsive. It isn't like a student goes home and says, I'm coming back in a minute, I'm going to kill someone. Usually, there are warning signs and in retrospect, unfortunately, the warning signs are found if they aren't seen beforehand.

BOUDREAU: Kazmierczak's rampage through NIU left many wishing for answers. He left a note, shocking, and how much it left unsaid.

BATY: It says, "You are the best, Jessica. You've done so much for me, and I truly do love you. You will make an excellent psychologist or social worker someday. Don't forget about me. Love, Steven."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: So, Abbie, of course, that was one year ago, but we have learned a lot more about Steven Kazmierczak In this year, haven't we?

BOUDREAU: So much is now coming out about this person. His obsession with horror movies, his admiration for serial killers. His lengthy history of mental health problems. There's just so much there, so much new information that we certainly didn't know at the time of the shooting and now it's all coming out. LEMON: It's all coming out. And, of course, because of our special investigations unit. And you could say one of the clues to Steven Kazmierczak's state of mind was a popular movie franchise. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think out of all of the text that he loved, movies and books, the "Saw" movies are the most important. Because the sadistic killer narrator in the "Saw" movie is pretending to be a psychologist.

BOUDREAU: Jigsaw.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Jigsaw.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Was he living a double life? Well, were warning -- were the warning signs missed in this case. We are digging deeper and unraveling the mystery of the NIU killings.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So one year ago we were told that Steven Kazmierczak was a good student, and there were no warning signs to suggest he would burst into a Northern Illinois University lecture hall, gun down five students and then kill himself. But as special investigations unit correspondent Abbie Boudreau found out, Kazmierczak's past provides clues to what happened that day.

BOUDREAU: Let's put it simply, this is a story about deception and deception. He was the master of deception, an honor student on the outside. But on the inside, someone with serious mental problems. We've also learn that he was obsessed with men like Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy. He loved horror movies and identified with the main character in the "Saw" films. This is the story of the NIU killer that you haven't seen.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOUDREAU (voice-over): Behind that mask is Steven Kazmierczak. He dressed up as Jigsaw's alter ego for Halloween in 2007. Jigsaw is the sadistic killer from the horror movies "Saw."

UNIDENTIFIED ACTOR, JIGSAW KILLER: Heed my warning, Agent Perez, your next move is critical.

BOUDREAU: Jigsaw tests his victims by teaching them the value of their lives by torturing them and making them face possible death. CNN has learned this would later be a clue that's important to understanding what happened and why he walked into that classroom and opened fire.

DAVID VANN, AUTHOR: It's just amazing that he could that coldly plan to kill all of those people. BOUDREAU (on camera): That was so calculated.

VANN: So calculated. Everything was planned out carefully.

BOUDREAU (voice-over): David Vann is an author and professor. For nine months, he studied the shooting for a book he wrote about the murders. He wanted to find out if there really were no red flags. Like NIU officials told the media right after the shooting.

UNIDENTIFIED POLICE OFFICER: Actually, there were no red flags. He was an outstanding student.

BOUDREAU: Vann says a law enforcement source gave him access to about 1,500 pages of the investigation. And Vann gave CNN exclusive access to those documents.

VANN: The degree of self-destruction and anti-social behavior at the end, of really scary behaviors was just phenomenal. And at some point, after you look at all of those records, you just have to wonder, what does a mass murderer have to do to get noticed?

BOUDREAU: As far back as childhood, Kazmierczak's mother said he was overly sensitive and was bullied. In his baby book, she wrote, "Sometimes I wish he would be a little tougher and bop the daylights out of people that pick on him. One day he will."

As a 14-year-old, Kazmierczak made a Drano Bomb. He also had a history of suicidal attempts, with nine psychiatric hospitalizations prior to 2001. He spent three years at this Illinois facility, but mental health records show he lied about taking his medication and he was kicked out for noncompliance and deception. Under state law, those records would not have been available to the university. His counselors recommended he needed a highly structured environment. So at this point, he enlisted with the army and made it through basic training.

(on camera): How did he get into the army when he had these mental health issues?

VANN: Well, he lied on his application.

BOUDREAU (voice-over): That prompted the army to discharge him. Only a few months later, Kazmierczak enrolled at NIU. Donald Grady, the university's police chief, is overseeing the investigation.

(on camera): One year ago we were reporting that he was, you know, a talented student and he did have somewhat of a social network and there were no red flags. One year later, is that the same story.

CHIEF DONALD GRADY, NIU POLICE: It's the same story. Nothing has changed in that regard. We haven't found anything that would dispel any of that. And so it is absolutely the same right now.

BOUDREAU (voice-over): Though the police investigation has found evidence of odd behavior. One professor remembers him wearing a black trench coat in class, and told her husband she feared he might be one of those Columbine types.

VANN: He was called strange Steve by everyone in the dorm. Everyone knew that something was wrong with him.

BOUDREAU (on camera): At NIU?

VANN: At NIU.

BOUDREAU: Kazmierczak's freshman suite mates reveled he was obsessed with famous murderers like Adolf Hitler and Ted Bundy. And he loved playing online shooting games. But nothing was ever reported to the NIU police, and Grady insist there were no outward warning signs.

GRADY: There are lots of people on this campus that somebody would refer to as strange. I mean, we have women that walk around with dog collars on. I consider that to be strange. Now I don't know if somebody else would consider that to be, but walking around with a dog collar strapped to your neck, that seems to me to be strange. Is that a sign that we should now be concerned that this person is about to engage in acts of violence? I don't think so.

BOUDREAU: Well, what about someone who has a clear obsession for, you know, mass murders and serial killers and always wanting to talk about that?

GRADY: What are we calling an obsession? I mean, I don't know. Was he obsessed? Was he not obsessed? Is that information that came to the university police at any time during the time he was there? And the answer to that question is no. So how could it be a red flag if it never came to us?

BOUDREAU (voice-over): Then came the shooting at Virginia Tech. 32 people died. When a mentally-ill student Seung-Hui Cho chain the door shut and went out a shooting spree.

DAVID VANN, AUTHOR: Steve studied VA Tech and Columbine in lots of details. Especially with one of his friends and, you know, their e-mails online and phone conversations. And he studied methodology like how they did it and success, how they were so successful.

BOUDREAU: CNN obtained a paper Kazmierczak wrote for a class. He titled it "No Crazies with Guns" where he used what happened at Virginia Tech to analyze whether mentally-ill people should have access to guns. Records show Kazmierczak himself was a gun owner and would buy more guns less than two weeks before the shooting. But from the outside, things appeared to be going well.

VANN: Steve Kazmierczak was living a double life.

BOUDREAU: In August 2007, he transferred to the University of Illinois for graduate studies in social work. Mental health records show Kazmierczak once again began seeing a social worker. He said he suffered from anxiety and couldn't sleep. He was interested in getting medication to help with his obsessive compulsive behavior. During the next several months, he was off and on an antidepressant and sleeping medication. Then in October, right before Halloween, Kazmierczak and his former girlfriend, Jessica Baty, who lived with him, went to the movies to watch "Saw IV." Not unusual for him, considering he grew up watching horror movies with his mom.

VANN: I think out of all of the texts that he left, movies and books, the "Saw" movies are the most important because the sadistic killer narrator in the "Saw" movies is pretending to be a psychologist.

BOUDREAU (on camera): Jigsaw.

VANN: Jigsaw.

BOUDREAU (voice over): He dressed up as Jigsaw that Halloween, the character who would test his victims to see if they valued life enough to live. This photo of him in costume, eerily similar to the one of Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter. He even got a tattoo of Jigsaw on his forearm, riding a tricycle through a puddle of blood.

By January 2008, the police investigation shows he became more secretive, having sexual encounters with both a man and several women, some he met on Craigslist. Jessica Baty told police he admitted those encounters to her. She also told police Kazmierczak told her, "If anything ever happens to me, don't tell anyone about me."

VANN: The warning signs were all there. I mean, he had the enduring interest in serial killers and Hitler. He had the lifelong interest in horror movies.

BOUDREAU: He even sent a friend a link to a Virginia Tech shooting game. Chief Grady would not talk to us about the "Saw" movies on camera, but he did acknowledge they were important to understanding why Kazmierczak did what he did. Then came February 2008. Records show Kazmierczak began buying ammunition and guns.

VANN: This e-mail with his friends starts mentioning planning world domination and talking about mass murder.

BOUDREAU: He stayed at this travel lodge near campus. These are the police photos from inside that room. Jessica Baty told CNN that he called her one final time on the eve of his rampage, telling her he loved her.

JESSICA BATY, FORMER GIRLFRIEND: He called me before he was going to go to bed and he said that, you know, he told me not to forget about him and he told me that he would see me tomorrow. And then when we got off the phone, he said goodbye, Jessica. And he never said goodbye, Jessica.

BOUDREAU: The next day, on Valentine's Day, she started receiving gifts in the mail from him -- cash, books for school, a purse, earrings, and an engagement ring. On one package, he used the name Robert Paulson, and his old NIU apartment as the return address. Robert Paulson was a character in the movie "Fight Club." Vann said it appeared Kazmierczak identified with the main character of that movie, who struggled with his sexuality.

On February 14th, Kazmierczak parked his car outside Cole Hall, a building he once had classes in. Police reports show he had a Marilyn Manson song "The Last Day on Earth" on a CD titled "Final CD" in his car.

Then with only a few minutes remaining of class, he walked onto the auditorium stage, pulled out his gun and fired, killing five, injuring 18, and then killing himself. It was all over in a matter of minutes. Chief Grady says he is still investigating this case, though it's no longer considered a high priority since the killer is dead.

CHIEF DONALD GRADY, NIU POLICE: This one individual came in and certainly caused a great deal of trauma to this institution. Am I angry about that? You're absolutely right. Do I ever want to see that happen again? No, not ever. Not here, not anywhere else. And I really don't want to glamorize what it is that an individual such as that has done and give him more credit and more credibility than he deserves.

BOUDREAU: David Vann, who wrote the book "Legend of a Suicide" says there's still much to learn from this shooting. It wasn't until after his article appeared in "Esquire" magazine about the NIU shooting that perhaps he learned the most about Kazmierczak. And maybe just how much the movie character Jigsaw influenced him. He got an e-mail from Jessica Baty.

VANN: She sent me an e-mail afterward, even after she read the story where she reasserted that, you know, "but you didn't get everything in the story." She said, "You know, you don't understand. We were going to move to Vegas. We were going to have babies. We were going to, you know, spend the rest of our lives together."

BOUDREAU: The e-mail then reveals how everything seemed to be a test set for her by Kazmierczak, like the people he met on Craigslist. She wrote, "The people on the Internet was like my final exam. Now I know that NIU was my final test."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOUDREAU: Now, I've recently talked to Jessica Baty over the phone. She told me that she, too, wishes a full police investigation will be released soon and that she feels it's important to both her and the victims to understand what truly happened that day. I asked her to sit down with me for another interview but she said it was just too painful for her and her family to appear once again on camera. I can imagine that.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And it seems painful, too, to the NIU police chief. I mean, he has some very strong feelings about it. You saw it there. But he still doesn't think there were any warning signs, Abbie? BOUDREAU: He doesn't. He doesn't necessarily feel that people can predict when someone is going to snap. And he also said about the experts that -- the people that feel that they can predict these types of warning signs or red flags that he's critical of them, saying, you know, is it really possible that you can predict this kind of behavior? And then, once you predict it, what are you supposed to do about it? And that's, of course, you know, we're going to talk about that.

LEMON: Yes, we're going to talk about that. Yes. Very strong feelings here. You said his ex-girlfriend too emotional about it. Also, you say that the police chief --

BOUDREAU: It causes a lot of pain for her to just go back on camera. That's what she said.

LEMON: And her family, yes...

BOUDREAU: And her friends, not only for her. I'm sure it's really difficult to talk about this kind of stuff but for her family and for her friends.

LEMON: So, Abbie told you what the ex-girlfriend had to say. You heard the police chief in that segment right there. That's what he has to say. But we're going to ask an expert -- if all of this is true, if any of it makes sense. Have the shootings at Virginia Tech and NIU changed the way we deal with seemingly troubled people? We'll dig for some answers for you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: So we have been talking this hour about the NIU massacre and the man behind the murders. One year ago, former student Steven Kazmierczak gunned down five students and then killed himself at Northern Illinois University.

Tonight, we want to know this -- is there really any way to know whether someone is capable of mass murder? Kris Mohandie is a forensic pathologist.

Kris, thank you for joining us today -- joining me here as well as our Abbie Boudreau, who did the special investigation. So, I'm going to start up by asking you this -- is there any way really that you can -- to know whether someone is capable of mass murder?

KRIS MOHANDIE, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: Absolutely. As a forensic psychologist through the years we've learned from studying these cases that there are warning signs in at least two-thirds to three-quarters of them, probably more, because what you've notice is as you've been digging here, more information has been revealed.

In all fairness to the chief, that information didn't get to him or his people, but people around the offender in this case and in the other cases, like Columbine and Virginia Tech were alarmed and didn't know what to do with that information, didn't know what to make of it. BOUDREAU: But it's interesting here because the NIU police chief that I talked to, he said you can't predict this kind of behavior. And he said that experts like yourself and the job that you do, that is just merely a mental exercise. What's your response to that?

MOHANDIE: Well, my response to that comment is that he's wrong, that in fact throughout the country, throughout North America, there are many institutions, universities, schools that are putting together teams of mental health, law enforcement, attorneys and so forth to process information that is brought forward by students, concerned family members in order to look deeper to see if the person is not just talking about it but engaging in attack-related behavior such as weapons seeking and so forth.

So, the threat assessment team approach is a relatively new one over the last few years at university campuses and it does in fact work. Yes, you will get some false positives, where you look at people that are interested in violent movies, talking about violence and so forth.

LEMON: And you know what, Kris, you bring up a good point. One of our viewers writes, and I think you sort of answered this. Ctguy2675 says, "Very dark aspects to the personality of NIU killer. But how can we tell when people like this will snap?"

I'm going to go a little bit further and ask you...

MOHANDIE: OK.

LEMON: How do you -- you know, you heard the chief say, I see girls walking around with dog collars on them, that's not normal. How do you do this without profiling people? Because there are some people who are pretty eccentric, who may be odd, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're a killer.

MOHANDIE: If you're walking around with a dog collar, if you are getting a "Saw" tattoo as he did, that's just one level of behavior. What you're looking for is the person who is talking about violent fantasies, who has an excessive interest in violence across a variety of settings. And then you look at the history, in this case, where there's been suicidality in the past, multiple hospitalizations, for example.

There's just a lot of different areas that you would look at. And certainly, the talking about it and the fantasy life and the obsession with these people who have done such terrible things should get you looking at them real hard to see if you really have somebody you should be concerned about or not, specifically at that point to look and see if there's any weapons seeking or other behaviors and history.

LEMON: Kris Mohandie is a forensic pathologist, and we thank you, both Abbie and I, for joining us tonight.

MOHANDIE: Thank you for having me.

LEMON: We really appreciate it. You know, it is a loss that parents will never recover from, Abbie. And I want you to take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I wake up in the morning thinking about her. Any time that I've got a free moment -- it will pop up.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: Boy, this is -- this one's hard really to listen to. The parents of NIU shooting victim Ryanne Mace speak out about their loss and their thoughts about Steven Kazmierczak. Our special look into the NIU shootings continues.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: One year later and not much has changed for family members of those who were gunned down at Northern Illinois University last Valentine's Day. Five students were killed, nearly 20 wounded. Their lives cut short. And now, many of those close to the victims try to cope exactly one year after their world came crashing down. Our Special Investigations Unit correspondent Abbie Boudreau has their stories.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BOUDREAU (voice over): He says he thought he was giving his daughter good advice.

ERIC MACE, FATHER OF RYANNE MACE: What I want you to do is I'd like you to sit in the front row of every class that you're in.

BOUDREAU: So, 19-year-old Ryanne Mace took her father's advice. Now, he wishes she hadn't.

E. MACE: She was, from what I understand, in the front row of that room and was probably the first one that had shots fired at her. If I would have said, always sit at the back of the room so you can get out of there and get to your next class fast, it might have saved her life. And -- it's not an easy thing to carry.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And someone keeps tying purple ribbons. Purple was her favorite color.

BOUDREAU: This tree was planted in her memory on NIU's campus.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She would have been 20.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: She missed it by a couple of months.

BOUDREAU: Ryanne was one of the five NIU students killed that day.

E. MACE: We don't have a head stone for her. Maybe that's kind of what this is.

BOUDREAU: She was Eric and Mary Kay Mace's only child. MARY KAY MACE, MOTHER OF RYANNE MACE: It's difficult. There's always an ache, a loneliness and a longing. And we're going to miss her every day for the rest of our lives.

E. MACE: I go to bed thinking about her. I wake up in the morning thinking about her. Any time that I've got a free moment -- it will pop up.

BOUDREAU: Her parents say they would like to know more about the police investigation into the shooting, and about Steven Kazmierczak's mental illness and the medication he was taking. They also question why Kazmierczak, who had a lengthy history of mental health problems, going back to his childhood, was legally able to buy guns.

M. MACE: Somewhere along the line, the pertinent information didn't get into the right database and he could waltz out of a store with a legally purchased weapon. And I don't get that.

BOUDREAU: Kazmierczak was able to purchase guns in Illinois because more than five years had passed since he was treated voluntarily at this mental health facility.

E. MACE: The one thing that's kind of ironic about it is that she always did have sort of a fascination with people who had minds like the person who took her life.

BOUDREAU: Ryanne was studying psychology, and her parents created a scholarship foundation for psychology majors in honor of their daughter. They say they hope it encourages others to help fix broken minds, like that of the man who killed Ryanne.

BOUDREAU (on camera): Do you want people to remember that day?

E. MACE: Absolutely. I don't want them to -- I don't want them to forget a single detail about it, because the details aren't going to change just by forgetting about them. I want Ryanne to be remembered. I want Catalina and Gayle and Julianna and Dan to be remembered as well.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Abbie, I remember that hill where those crosses where many of the candle light vigils would be held right there. That was a year ago when we were both on that campus. What's it like there today? I mean, do people still think about it? Is it sort of an eerie feeling?

BOUDREAU: Well, it's hard to figure how everyone feels. But a lot of the people we talked to, some are coping, they're trying to move forward. But other people we talked to are just angry. They want that police investigation, full thing, to come out, to be released so that they can find out exactly what happened. Some are saying, you know, are they hiding something? Why aren't they releasing it?

Because when you think back to Virginia Tech, they had studies, they had, you know, so much research that was coming out, reports that were made available to the public. The whole file is public. In this case, not so much. And with NIU, the police chief, he says that they're still investigating. Of course, he says, no longer a high priority. There's a lot that still needs to come out about this.

LEMON: Still that geology hall, not open to the public.

BOUDREAU: Not open to the public, no.

LEMON: Abbie, great reporting, really. Thank you very much for that...

...LEMON: All right. Here's some of your feedback. Scb4vp says, "Oh, boy, that NIU special took a lot out of me. Quite emotionally draining. Great report by Miss Boudreau."

Here's what Ponet says. "All the signs are there and people choose to be oblivious to them. People have to investigate and take responsibility. Help."

Ctguy2675 says, "These types of shootings are far too common. Perhaps we need to address the gun culture that seems to enable these tragedies."

http://transcripts.cnn.co...RIPTS/0902/14/cnr.05.html

Jeff