Kinkel Sorry For Killing Parents -- `Voices' Told Convicted Murderer To Kill Everyone, Doctor Testifies

EUGENE - Before shooting up the cafeteria at Thurston High School, Kip Kinkel left a note saying he was sorry for killing his parents, but they could never live with the embarrassment after he was caught with a gun at school.

"I love my mom and dad so much," Lane County sheriff's Detective Pamelia McComas read yesterday from the note introduced by the defense in Kinkel's sentencing hearing. "I just got two felonies on my record. It would destroy them. The embarrassment would be too much for them. They couldn't live with themselves."

The note contrasted with the Kip Kinkel his older sister, Kristin, described: a sweet, sensitive and funny child who became withdrawn during middle school, but who still tried to please his parents - both teachers - especially in school, where he had trouble reading and spelling.

But other things that Kinkel wrote - particularly about "voices" in his head - indicate the teen suffered from mental disease, according to Orin Bolstad, a Portland psychologist who has testified for the defense in a variety of cases involving teenage killers, and works with young murderers in Oregon's juvenile prisons.

Bolstad said he could not be certain of the diagnosis because of Kinkel's age, but he showed symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar disease.

Bolstad testified that Kinkel told him he first heard the voices when he was 12 after getting off the school bus and standing in the driveway of his home looking at a bush.

"It said, `You need to kill everyone, everyone in the world,' " Bolstad said. Kinkel told him the voices may have come from the devil, a satellite or a computer chip inserted in his head by the government.

Kinkel also found solace in the lyrics of the rock group Nine Inch Nails, which referred to hearing voices, Bolstad added.

In earlier testimony, it was learned that two CDs from Nine Inch Nails were on the stereo in the Kinkel home following the slayings of his parents and that Kinkel wore a black baseball cap with the letters "NIN" for Nine Inch Nails when he went to Thurston and opened fire.

During her testimony, Kristin Kinkel, 22, choked up and her 17-year-old brother wiped away tears as she read in court a letter she wrote to Judge Jack Mattison, who will decide whether Kip Kinkel spends a minimum of 25 years or the rest of his life in prison.

"What keeps me believing in him and loving him is the fact that he is a good person that came from a good home," she read. "I feel silly writing that, because it seems so contradictory, looking at what actually took place. However, it's the truth, and it keeps me alive."

Kip Kinkel pleaded guilty Sept. 24 to four counts of murder and 26 counts of attempted murder for the May 1998 slayings of his parents and two students at Springfield's Thurston High School, and the wounding of 25 other students and the attempted stabbing of a detective.

In his plea bargain, Kinkel agreed to serve 25 years for the murders. Judge Mattison must decide how Kinkel must serve the 7 1/2 years the prosecution has recommended for each of the 26 attempted-murder counts. If all are added consecutively, the sentence would total 220 years.

In the note he left on the living room coffee table after killing his parents, Kip Kinkel wrote that he couldn't eat or sleep, wished he had been aborted, and didn't deserve such wonderful parents because he destroyed everything he touched.

"My head just doesn't work right," McComas read from the note.

"I have to kill people. I don't know why. I have no other choice. What have I become? I am so sorry."

In contrast to recollections of classmates who had said Kinkel bragged of torturing animals, Kristin Kinkel said her brother loved his cat.

"He nurtured and protected and made sure everything was just perfect for the cat," she said.

Since his arrest last year, Kip Kinkel has earned a high school equivalency diploma and is considering studying law to help others behind bars, she said.

"I believe what he needs is the hope that he has a chance of achieving these goals," Kristin Kinkel read from her letter. "I believe he is aware of the pain that he has caused, and is just as shocked as the rest of us that he was capable of such horror."

As evidence that her brother could be safely released someday, Kristin Kinkel said she had counseled her brother not to listen to the victims of his crimes when they make their statements in court, but he wouldn't consider it.

"I told him to go to a safe place in his memory and not listen to the victims when they talk, because they are angry and going to say things they really don't mean. He stopped me and said, `No, I owe it to them to listen.' "