Montana roots, ex-classmates shed no light on mystery of why
WHITEFISH, Mont. — Two states, two towns and two emotions: grief and bewilderment.
In Montana, the mother of a quiet young man turned mass murderer is shocked: "It's so unbelievable and overwhelming," a distraught Mary Kay Huff told the Whitefish Free Press. "At this point, I don't know what to think ... we didn't see this coming."
In Seattle, police remained baffled about Kyle Huff's motive, as well. They found nothing in his apartment that indicated he was capable of what Deputy Chief Clark Kimerer called "homicide mayhem" at a news conference Monday. His computer, according to a law-enforcement source close to the investigation, yielded no clues. His identical twin brother, Kane, with whom he shared a Northgate-area apartment, police said, was stunned and baffled by Huff's rage.
Huff's friends don't have any answers, either.
"The piecing together of a person's psyche is a very difficult thing to do," Kimerer said.
Huff, 28, had attended a rave on Capitol Hill that lasted into Saturday morning. He was then invited to attend an after-party at a small, frame house nearby. Around 7 a.m., with about 30 people in the home, Huff left the party, only to return about 10 minutes later — after spray-painting the word "Now" on sidewalks and steps — with a shotgun and handgun. He killed two guests on the steps and front porch of the home, and then forced his way inside and killed three more in the living room. A sixth died at a local hospital and two others were seriously wounded.
Huff shot himself in the mouth when a police officer confronted him outside.
According to survivors, Huff "made no overt indications by speech or manner that he was capable of this kind of violence," Kimerer said.
Assistant Chief Linda Pierce, the chief of detectives, added that Huff "seemed edgy but not unfriendly" to those who remember seeing him at the after-party.
Seattle police said survivors of the Saturday morning massacre on Capitol Hill have told detectives that when Huff burst into the crowded house, he said something to the effect of "there's plenty for everyone."
Kimerer is convinced Huff meant ammunition — more than 300 rounds in all, stuffed in his pockets and draped over his shoulders in bandoliers.
The King County Medical Examiner's Office on Monday officially released the names of Huff's victims: Jeremy Martin, 26; Suzanne Thorne, 15; Jason Travers, 32; Justin Schwartz, 22; Melissa Moore, 14; and Christopher Williamson, 21.
The conditions of the two people wounded were upgraded Monday to satisfactory at Harborview Medical Center. Police have not released their names.
Huff used two weapons — a 12-gauge Winchester Defender shotgun with an extended magazine and a pistol grip, and a .40-caliber Ruger semiautomatic handgun. The medical examiner's autopsies revealed that some of the victims were shot twice — once with each weapon.
Those same guns were taken away from Huff by police in Whitefish six years ago after he was arrested on a felony charge of criminal mischief. They were returned after he pleaded to a reduce misdemeanor charge, said Whitefish Police Chief Bill Dial.
Huff and other, unidentified friends used that shotgun and handgun to vandalize a sculpture of a moose outside a bed and breakfast. The sculpture, according to a police report, was shot more than a dozen times.
Seattle police spokeswoman Debra Brown confirmed the guns found at the scene of the massacre were the same ones taken from Huff by Whitefish police.
Huff pleaded no contest to the misdemeanor charges in Flathead County District Court and was ordered to pay a fine.
Kyle and Kane Huff made a point of being different from other students at Whitefish High School, said Jennelle Cassidy, a former classmate. They both wore combat boots, trench coats and mohawks and listened to heavy metal, making it so difficult to tell them apart that classmates just called them the "gentle giants," she said.
"They were really sweet guys, and very shy," said Cassidy, who attended middle and high school with the Huff brothers. "They had zero — zero — problems in school. People gave them trouble about wearing trench coats and boots and long hair, but they didn't care."
Cassidy said Kyle and Kane Huff returned to Whitefish in 2002 to attend the funeral of Jared Hope, a high-school classmate who killed his parents and himself with an illegally purchased .357-caliber Magnum revolver. The killings startled the town, which rarely has a murder, and nearly 1,000 people attended the service.
Dan Ciaramitaro, 29, graduated from Whitefish High School in 1996 with the Huff brothers. Ciaramitaro said he was best friends with the twins, who were towering, quiet "bookends" to the shorter, more talkative Ciaramitaro.
He had a nickname for them: "I called them the 'Wooks' cause they kind of looked like Chewbacca," the giant furry alien in the "Star Wars" films.
Ciaramitaro, who was in Portland Monday, said he'd been thinking about visiting the "Wooks" in Seattle. Then he heard about the massacre on Capitol Hill and got the news his friend Kyle Huff was the killer. He was stunned.
"I've never known any side of him that would have led to something like this," Ciaramitaro said.
Ciaramitaro last saw Huff in October when he came back for a visit to Montana. While in town, Huff dressed up as a "bum" for Halloween at a local bar. Ciaramitaro saw Huff several times during the few weeks he was there and had no inkling anything was amiss. Huff mentioned he was learning to play the drums and wanted to "jam" with Ciaramitaro's older brother.
"Last time I talked to him there was no girlfriend or anything," Ciaramitaro said. "He's never really had a job that would make you nuts, always just a paycheck-to-paycheck thing. He's never really gone deeper than that."
In Seattle, Huff worked a series of jobs at local pizza parlors, including Domino's, Pagliacci and Pizza Hut.
Jay DiPaola, a Whitefish musician who rents a room from Huff's mother, saw Huff at Halloween as well. He seemed normal when DiPaola rode with him into Whitefish in his black pickup.
"I'm trying to look in my memory for things that could tell you this could happen, but there's just nothing there," he said.
The Church Council of Greater Seattle is sponsoring an interfaith prayer service at 6 p.m. today at the site of the slayings, 2112 E. Republican St. The service will gather local religious and civic leaders for prayer, reflection and remembrance of the victims and the gunman. The service will be the 16th "Service of Hope" offered since the program was started by the Church Council in late 2004.
Public meeting
The shooting and its aftermath will be discussed at 7 p.m. today at the Miller Community Center, 330 19th Ave. E., Seattle. The community meeting had already been scheduled by the Miller Park Neighborhood Association, but Andrew Taylor, association chairman, said, "Obviously we have to talk about this."
DiPaola said Mary Kay Huff, the owner of a successful art gallery, is a peaceful, kind woman who was "trying to make sense of the unfathomable."
On Monday, a sign hung on the door of her gallery, called "Artistic Touch," read, "We will be closed until further notice."
For some who know the family, it seemed strange when Kyle vandalized a prized art sculpture in the summer of 2000 by blasting away at it with a shotgun. The statue was being auctioned off to raise money for charity.
"That really surprised me, and upset me," said Merika Boksich, a former classmate of the Huff twins at Whitefish High School.
It is not clear from court records whether Huff completed the community service initially required. Court records indicate that he performed at least 22 hours of community service with the Salvation Army before the case was finally closed in December 2001.
But classmates and former teachers say Huff did not cause trouble when he attended Whitefish High School. They recall him as a quiet, polite youth who — though not a standout scholar and absent from the football field — did not go unnoticed.
He was too tall, too much part of a twosome with his twin brother and too eccentric in dress to fade into the background.
In the 1996 yearbook, Kyle and Kane posed in blue-jean jackets and T-shirts to claim the title "least spirited" seniors.
Boksich said the twins were not loners but had their own cadre of friends, many of whom shared a passion for music.
And Kyle Huff did have at least one notable achievement in school. Following in the footsteps of his artistic mother, he excelled at a pottery class, crafting a coiled, brightly painted pot that he dubbed "Martian Sunset." A teacher deemed it worthy of entry into a local show.
"He was excited that he had some success," said his former teacher Martin Christiansen. "And I don't think that Kyle had a lot of success in school, which is why I think pottery was pretty important."
Seattle police ask that anyone with information about the shootings call 206-233-2666.
Eventually, he would head out to Seattle.
"A lot of kids who are artistically inclined here go to Seattle," said Ray Boksich, a longtime Whitefish teacher who knew Huff.
Mike Carter: 206-464-3706 or mcarter@seattletimes.com.
Also contributing to this report were Seattle Times staff reporters Jim Brunner, Jonathan Martin and Steve Miletich. Hal Bernton reported from Whitefish, Mont. Mike Potter, publisher of the Whitefish Free Press, interviewed Mary Kay Huff.
Montana weapons incident
When he was about 22, Kyle Huff used a 12-gauge Winchester pump shotgun with a pistol-grip and a .40-caliber semiautomatic Ruger handgun to shoot a sculpture of a moose in Whitefish, Mont. The weapons were confiscated by police when Huff was arrested in July 2000 on charges of criminal mischief. But the weapons were later returned to Huff through his attorney.
Seattle police said Monday the same weapons were used by Huff in Saturday's killing spree on Capitol Hill. This is the original report from the Whitefish Police Department on the July 2000 shooting incident.
Read the report. (PDF)