Two years before Columbine, four years before Santana and Granite Hills, Ramsey pulled a shotgun out of his pants and killed his principal and a classmate at his high school on the Alaskan tundra. Ramsey blamed bullies, lousy parents, a crummy foster care system and teachers who didn' t listen for making him feel shooting people was the way to solve his problems. Now, from his cell in Alaska' s only maximum security prison, he has a message for troubled teen-agers contemplating the unthinkable. It will only get worse. Psychologists urge parents to monitor children for signs of trouble.
Criminologists peddle profiles of the prototypical young killer.
Teaching parents to pay more attention and kids to be kinder to each other can' t be a bad idea. But none of it changes the dark truth of why Ramsey took two lives and risked many more. Ramsey killed because he wanted to. At the time there was two people that I hated, hate as in the way Hitler hated the Jews. On the surface, Bethel, Ramsey' s hometown, and Santee are about as different as two places can be.