Luke Woodham and the Pearl High School Massacre
By: Jenn Baxter
Tags: True Crime, School Shootings, Nonfiction, Mental Health, History

Luke Woodham and the Pearl High School Massacre

Filled with rage for most of his life, Luke exploded in 1997, killing three people — including his own mother — and wounding seven others.

Photo by William Isted on Unsplash

Luke Woodham was born on February 5, 1981. As a toddler, Luke was adorable; a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bundle of energy who had an active imagination and loved to read.

By the time he started kindergarten, however, Luke was somewhat overweight and needed thick eyeglasses to see. Mary Ann Woodham dressed him each day in clothes that looked old-fashioned, and she kept his hair so closely cropped that it made him look as if he had a receding hairline. Looking like a little old man, he was an easy target for bullies at school, and he would endure their insults throughout his entire school career.

Luke’s home life was far from ideal. His parents would often fight, and their screaming matches terrified him. They divorced when he was eight, and Luke’s father made no effort to stay in contact with his children. Luke was convinced that he was to blame for the failure of his parents’ marriage, and he sank into a deep depression. It’s not common for a child so young to experience serious depression like this, but Luke’s mother does not appear to have noticed that there was anything wrong with her youngest son.

Luke and his older brother did not get along with each other, adding to his stress at home. His brother was seven years old when Luke was born, and was hostile toward him from the beginning, physically abusing Luke whenever their parents weren’t looking.

This aggression spilled over into their interactions with other children, and they were seldom invited back for a second playdate. After one particularly aggressive fight with his brother, Luke began screaming that he wished he were dead and that he would rather be in hell. It was a disturbing remark coming from a child who was only nine, but it failed to get any kind of reaction from his family.

Luke Woodham (Photo from 1996 Pearl High School Yearbook)

Mary Ann was described as a somewhat overbearing mother, and Luke’s older brother spent as much time away from the home as possible so that he didn’t have to deal with her.

This meant that Luke was responsible for a majority of the household chores; while he would reluctantly obey Mary Ann when he was a child, as he got older his willingness to help out around the house diminished. He claimed that he felt suffocated by his mother, whom he described as being verbally abusive and constantly micro-managing all aspects of his life. Even after he reached his teenage years, Mary Ann continued to control the food he ate, the clothes he wore, and his hairstyle.

Mary Ann was frustrated with the hand life had dealt her, and whether she intended to or not, she passed much of her misery onto her youngest son. Once, when Luke scraped some unfinished food off his plate into the garbage, she picked the food out of the trash and forced Luke to eat it all.

It was a needlessly harsh way of teaching him not to waste food. When she caught Luke sneaking one of her cigarettes, she forced him to smoke two packs. Eventually, he threw up on the floor.

If she felt that his room was not clean enough, she would throw some of his toys and other belongings into the trash and refuse to let him retrieve them. She dropped him off at school each morning, insisting on kissing him goodbye despite the fact that it made him the subject of ridicule at school.

She would often use Luke as a sounding board, telling him intimate details about her life and asking him for advice on what she should do. Although she claimed to be a strong Christian woman, she often left Luke home alone overnight while she went out on various dates. Unsupervised and feeling unloved, Luke would turn to food for comfort.

School continued to be an unhappy place for Luke. Because he was overweight, other students constantly made fun of him and frequently beat him up. If he tried to stand up for himself, the treatment got worse.

After numerous occasions where his lunch was stolen and crushed by bullies, Luke eventually stopped making eye contact, choosing instead to shuffle through the hallways alone. At home, he would shut himself in his bedroom, where he could temporarily escape by reading or playing guitar.

His older brother had been popular in school, and his mother didn’t understand why Luke couldn’t be more like him. As a child, Luke had been a bright boy who got A’s and B’s in all his classes, but this started to change after he began attending Pearl High School.

Although he still spent a lot of time reading and believed he was more intelligent than most of his classmates, his grades plummeted and he had to repeat his freshman year. It was a huge blow to his ego.

Mary Anne Woodham (Photo from Findagrave.com)

Despite all the time that he spent alone in his room, Luke wasn’t completely without companionship. Lee Ann Dew, a senior at Pearl High School who lived close to Luke, would sometimes drive him to school in the morning and even took him to the prom that spring.

He was never accepted by the popular crowd at school, but he was on friendly terms with a few of his male classmates and would occasionally socialize with them outside of school. But inside, he seethed with rage over the fact that he wasn’t popular.

When Luke was 15, he began dating Christina Menefee. A popular, sweet teenager who was extremely outgoing and had lots of friends, Christina was new to the area and not particularly concerned with Luke’s social status. She did well in school; math and biology were her favorite subjects.

She participated in the Junior Naval ROTC, possibly to follow in her father’s footsteps, he had retired from the Navy in 1989. She always had a soft spot for underdogs, and Luke certainly fit that description.

After she saw Luke sitting alone at lunch, she decided to join him and the two soon began to get together outside of school. Christy’s father, who always made sure to check out anyone she dated, approved of Luke.

Although he was somewhat shy and quiet, he had polite manners, always addressing Bob Menefee as “sir” when he visited Christy’s house. The Menefees had a habit of bestowing nicknames on all of Christy’s friends, and they chose “Luke Skywalker” for Luke.

Despite the fact that her friends, as well as almost everyone else at school, tried to dissuade Christy from hanging out with Luke, she felt sorry for him. She encouraged Luke to grow his hair out, a change from the old-fashioned haircut his mother preferred, and his school picture that year shows a boy who bears little resemblance to the one who would be seen all over television the following year.

Unfortunately for Luke, Christy soon grew tired of certain aspects of the relationship. Whenever Luke would come over to her house to visit her, his mother insisted on coming with him.

Although she found it slightly endearing at first, assuming that it was some kind of Southern custom, she soon tired of Luke’s controlling and unstable nature as well as his overbearing mother. When Luke began getting angry with her if she didn’t call him at a certain time each day, Christy decided she didn’t want to see him anymore.

She told Luke of her decision on October 1, 1996. She tried to let him down easy, telling him that they could remain friends, but Luke was inconsolable. The relationship had only lasted for about a month, and Luke blamed his mother for the breakup.

In his journal, Luke wrote a statement swearing that he would never again allow himself to be hurt by a woman. He signed it in his own blood.

Christy Menefee (Photo from Findagrave.com)

Not long after his breakup with Christy, Luke got a part-time job at Domino’s Pizza. It got him out of the house and away from his mother, and also helped him to make some new friends.

A co-worker, Donnie Brooks, introduced Luke to a group of teenage boys who often got together for role-playing games, and soon Luke was considered one of them. Although the group tended to do fairly well in school and were seen as being quite religious — a necessary trait for anyone living in evangelical Pearl — they dabbled in Satanism and idolized Hitler.

Luke grew especially close to Grant Boyette, the unofficial leader of the group. Grant had come up with the name “the Kroth” for the group, and it consisted of about a half dozen teenage boys. Grant’s parents were the founding members of a local Baptist church, and he had carefully cultivated a persona of a pious, God-fearing Christian.

In reality, he believed in Satanism and witchcraft, and convinced Luke that he could cast spells on people. In December 1996, Grant gave Luke a piece of paper that had a pentagram on it.

He told him to use it — by meditating in a dark room while kneeling down with the paper pressed against his forehead — whenever he needed anything. Luke took the paper, but didn’t think much of it.

The following month, Luke attempted to use the paper as a way of getting revenge against a boy named Danny who often bullied him. Nothing happened to Danny, but one of Danny’s friends was hit by a car and killed, and Luke was convinced he had caused the car to hit him.

This event marked a turning point for Luke. In the past, he had simply seen the occult as a mere curiosity, but he now believed in it wholeheartedly and saw Grant as a god-like figure. He began spending all his time with Grant, but it wasn’t a healthy friendship.

Luke had always been violent, and Grant seemed to bring out the worst in him. Together, the pair tortured and killed Luke’s dog, a small Shih Tzu named Sparkle.

The dog had always been a source of unconditional love for Luke, but this no longer mattered to him. He noted in his journal that the dog’s yelps of pain had seemed almost human, and coldly described everything that was done to her.

Sensing a violent change in Luke and Grant, the other boys in their group stopped associating with them. They were undeterred by the loss of friends; they had bigger things to think about. They were planning a rampage shooting at Pearl High School.

On the night of September 28th, Lucas Thomas stopped by Luke’s house. Lucas was one of the only people besides Grant who was still on friendly terms with Luke. The two boys ordered some pizzas, but the dinner conversation soon took a gruesome turn.

Luke told Lucas in detail about his plan to kill his mother, steal her car, and drive it to school so he could go after Christina Menefee. He planned to use one of his brother’s guns, and he fully expected to be killed in a police shootout.

It was a way for him to essentially commit suicide, but also take others down with him. He wanted people to remember his name. Lucas was unsure if Luke was serious. He was.

On the evening of September 30th, Luke asked his mother if he could borrow her car. Her negative answer was to be expected, considering Luke did not yet have a driver’s license, but it gave him a reason to storm off to his room and shut himself inside for the night.

At some point, he called Lucas and told him that he would definitely be going through with his plan the next morning. It’s unclear if Lucas believed him or not, but he made no effort to dissuade Luke, nor did he bother to warn the police or any of the potential victims about the plan.

Luke Woodham after his arrest (Photo from Alchetron.com)

Luke set his alarm for 5:00am on the morning of October 1st. It was exactly one year after Christy had broken up with him, a grim anniversary he planned to celebrate with bloodshed.

It was still twilight, and he expected that his mother would be sound asleep. He got a butcher knife from the kitchen, and then went back to his room to grab a baseball bat and a pillow.

Once he was armed, he crept down the hallway towards his mother’s room. He was shocked to discover that his mother was awake and coming down the hallway.

He had planned on attacking her while she was asleep and unable to fight back, but had neglected to take into account the fact that she often went jogging early in the morning. Instead he attacked her in the hallway, and was most likely surprised by how hard she tried to fight him off. She broke away from him at one point and managed to make it into her bedroom, but Luke was able to force his way inside.

It was as if a volcano inside of him had finally erupted. He repeatedly stabbed her, then bashed her with the baseball bat as she pleaded for her life. Unmoved, Luke continued the assault, eventually smothering her with the pillow.

His rage finally spent, he calmly cleaned himself off, took the time to write out a five page suicide note/last will and testament, and called Grant to tell him what he had done. While he was on the phone with Grant, he received a call from Lucas asking if he had done what he said he was going to do. Once he had briefed both friends on the events that had taken place that morning, he retrieved a rifle that had belonged to his brother and calmly drove to the school.

When he arrived, he went inside and handed a stack of papers to Justin Sledge, another member of the Kroth. He instructed Justin to give the papers to Grant.

Justin could see that the papers appeared to be Luke’s will, and he immediately surmised what was about to take place. Rather than warn any of the teachers and students who were milling around the commons, Justin gathered some of his friends and headed for the library, knowing they would be safe there.

Luke went out to his mother’s car and retrieved the shotgun, then went back into the school and straight to where Christina was standing, chatting with some friends before classes started. He shot her in the chest at point-blank range.

His rage not satisfied, he fired again, this time hitting Lydia Dew. Lydia was described as the sweetest person, always happy and always hugging people, and certainly not someone anyone believed would be targeted for murder.

She had the misfortune of being in the wrong place at the wrong time that morning, and later not even Luke could explain why he shot her. “I never had anything against Lydia. She was probably the best person in Pearl.”

Ironically, Lydia had also been teased a lot at school for being overweight; she was probably one of the few people in the school that understood the bullying that Luke went through. It was heartbreaking for her older sister, Leah Ann, who had gone to the prom with Luke the previous year and had considered him a friend.

Lydia Dew (Photo from 1996 Pearl High School Yearbook)

Luke continued down the hallway, randomly shooting people. He was described as calm and nonchalant, methodically thumbing new rounds into the side port as the old shells were ejected.

He continued to calmly fire as panic erupted in the hallway. Most students tried to run or hide behind something to stay out of his line of fire. Those students that he hit fell to the floor, unable to fully comprehend what was taking place.

Luke showed no emotion at all. As he surveyed the damage, he noticed Jerry Safley lying in a pool of blood. Jerry had been hit in the leg and foot, and was starting to go into shock.

When Luke saw Jerry, he stopped and apologized to him, telling him that he hadn’t meant to shoot him. He had mistaken Jerry for another student who was on the football team, a student that he hated and wanted to kill.

Luckily, that student had gotten stuck in traffic and hadn’t yet made it to the school. Eventually, the gun ran out of shells and there was a pause in the shooting while Luke attempted to reload.

Taking advantage of the situation, a male student tackled Luke to the ground and attempted to get the gun away from him. Luke was able to get away from the student, but he must have realized that any more attempts at reloading the gun would be futile and he needed to leave.

It was over eleven minutes after it started. Still betraying no emotion, Luke simply turned and exited the school, heading back to his mother’s car. By this time, the principal had heard the gunshots and had already called 911.

As Luke attempted to leave, assistant principal Joel Myrick followed him. Joel was an officer in the Army Reserves, and he knew he had his gun in the glove compartment of his car. Realizing it was the only way he could level the playing field, he grabbed his gun and chased after Luke, yelling for him to stop.

Luke ignored him and tried to take off in his mother’s car, but he wasn’t a skilled driver — he had never driven before that morning — and he almost immediately lost control of the car. He sat there, gripping the steering wheel, as Joel ran up and put his gun to Luke’s neck.

Joel yanked him out of the car and kept him immobilized on the ground until police got there. His only explanation for the bloodshed was that “the world has wronged me.”

When he was taken to the police station, Luke waived his right to an attorney and agreed to talk with the detectives. One of them noticed all the cuts he had on his hands and asked him what they were from.

Still completely calm, Luke matter-of-factly told the detective that he had gotten the cuts while “killing my mom.” It was an answer none of the detectives had expected.

Luke had just shot up a high school and killed his own mother, but it didn’t seem to faze him at all. If anything, he seemed to be proud of what he had done, and even commented to one detective that he was pretty sure his killing spree was going to make him quite famous.

Police were dispatched to the house and confirmed that they had located the body of a woman. Mary Ann hadn’t died easy; she had desperately tried to ward off her deranged son.

An autopsy revealed 11 deep slashes on her arms, most likely inflicted while she was trying to protect herself. She had seven stab wounds on the rest of her body, three of them on her chest.

She had been bludgeoned with a baseball bat and her jaw had been shattered. Despite the horrific injuries she had suffered, the pathologist who performed the autopsy stated that she had remained alive for around 30 minutes or so before bleeding to death.

From the information contained in the note Luke wrote on the morning of the crime, it appears he saw the killings as a way for him to get revenge on a world that had never been kind to him. He complained about how “throughout my life I was ridiculed.

Always beaten, always hated….I have no mercy for humanity, for they created me, they tortured me until I snapped and became what I am today!” He denied that his act was a product of any kind of mental illness.

“I am not insane. I am angry. This world shit on me for the final time. I am not spoiled or lazy, for murder is not weak or slow-witted. Murder is gutsy and daring.” He refused to accept any blame for his actions, claiming that the world — and especially Christina — were responsible his rampage.

“People like me are mistreated every day. I do this to show society “push us and we will push back.” I suffered all my life.” Yet in police interviews, he stated that the entire reason for the massacre was his jealousy over the fact that Christina had broken up with him.

Luke Woodham (Photo from Alchetron.com)

The tiny town of Pearl was still reeling in shock about the murders when police announced that they had arrested five other boys, all members of the Kroth, and charged them with conspiracy to commit murder. It was more than most people in the community could handle.

The entire town was in shock over the allegations of Satanism, and had trouble comprehending how six seemingly normal, suburban teenagers ended up on such a dark path. In the end, Luke was the only person put on trial for the shooting, but those in the community who were hoping to learn why he had shot up the school were disappointed.

The case presented by Luke’s defense team sought to deflect blame away from Luke; they claimed that Grant was the one actually responsible for the shooting. Luke denied culpability for any of his actions.

Although Luke had been adamant in his suicide note that he was not insane, he changed his story during the trial. He claimed that he saw various red-eyed demons, and told police that he was under the control of 100,000 demons conjured by Grant on the morning that he killed his mother.

“They said I was nothing and I would never be anything if I didn’t get to that school and kill those people.” He also stated that he could hear Grant’s voice inside his head while he was killing his mother, but later claimed that he never wanted to hurt his mother and had absolutely no recollection of doing anything to her.

He blamed everything on Grant. “He told me I had to kill my mom. He told me I had to get the gun and the car and go to school and get my revenge on Christy and cause a reign of terror.”

Grant was called to the witness stand, but wisely invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and prevented the defense from being allowed to question him.

Luke was tried twice, once for the murder of his mother and once for the school shooting. In both cases, he entered a plea of not guilty despite the fact that he had confessed his guilt to police.

At each trial, his defense team tried unsuccessfully to paint him as a mentally ill teen easily influenced and manipulated by Grant, but neither jury could be swayed. He was found guilty in both cases, and was sentenced to serve three life sentences plus an additional 140 years.

Charges against the other members of the Kroth were, for the most part, dismissed at the request of the prosecution because they simply didn’t have enough evidence. Grant took a plea deal and would eventually serve six months in jail for his role, and Justin spent four months in a juvenile detention center.

The Pearl High School community struggled to heal after the massacre and questioned if there was anything they could have done differently that would have prevented the shooting from taking place.

There is no doubt that Luke had been bullied in school and had an unstable home life, but there are many other teens in the same situation who do not resort to mass murder. Although Luke tried to place most of the blame on Grant, and it seems clear that Grant egged him on, Luke’s own rage at Christy placed a huge role in his rampage.

His anger was likely capable of sustaining the attack even if Grant hadn’t been in the picture. While Luke and Grant spent a lot of time together outside of school, this was a voluntary choice on Luke’s part.

Grant had graduated from Pearl High School the previous year; if Luke had decided to discontinue the friendship, he could have done so without fear of being bullied by Grant at school. Instead, Luke would often skip class to spend more time with Grant, and the pair got more violent as time went by.

No longer content to simply talk about killing people, they spent a week torturing Luke’s dog before finally killing her. Once he had killed what had been a beloved family pet, it was quite easy for Luke to make the jump to murdering his classmates, many of whom he couldn’t stand.

Like so many other prisoners, once Luke was convicted he became a born again Christian and expressed some remorse for what he had done. He wrote to an evangelist, telling the man he thought that they should work together because he believed that his story could help save others.

In the 18 months following the massacre at Pearl High School, there were four school shootings that made national news. Luke believed that he was responsible for this, claiming that he was the person who had kicked off the school shooting craze.

He may have been giving himself too much credit as there were several notable school shootings in the two years leading up to Luke’s rampage. The cases of Jamie Rouse, Barry Loukaitis, and Evan Ramsey had all received extensive coverage by the national media, though Luke’s case received even more coverage due to the fact that he also killed his mother.

While he may not have influenced the wave of school shooters who came after him, he did influence some of the lawmakers in his home state: in the aftermath of Luke’s massacre, the state of Mississippi made killing anyone on school grounds a capital crime.

Luke remains incarcerated in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. In 2010, he wrote to the Mississippi governor asking for clemency, but his request was denied. Under his current sentence, he will be eligible for parole in 2046 when he is 65-years-old.