Note that may be Huff's is revealed

In a letter purportedly written days before he killed six people at a post-rave house party, Kyle Huff rants against a "world of sex," and says that his life would be "incomplete" if he didn't carry out his plan.

"I can't let them get away with what theyre (sic) doing," according to the letter Huff allegedly wrote to his identical twin brother, Kane. "This is a revolution brother, the most important thing to happen since man began."

Police have not verified that Huff authored the handwritten letter, but it probably is real, said Capt. Tag Gleason, head of the Seattle Police Department's violent-crimes section. "It's unlikely it's a hoax," Gleason said.

The unique, personal tone of the writing makes it more likely that it is genuine. And the fact that the one-page letter was scrawled on the back of a flier from the Town & Country apartments, where the Huffs lived, adds credence to the letter's authenticity, he said. A university professor who is heading a panel examining the Capitol Hill killings said he assumes the letter is authentic.

Police released copies of the letter Tuesday on the same day that the officer who confronted Huff was honored by fellow officers and a Capitol Hill community group.

Still, Gleason said it's possible the letter could be a fake. The note was found several weeks after the massacre, in a trash bin at a North Seattle apartment building about a mile from where the Huffs lived. The letter was found by a police officer who was following up on an unrelated incident.

State crime-lab investigators are analyzing the letter, including the handwriting, and expect to know within two weeks whether it was written by Huff, said Seattle police Sgt. Deanna Nollette.

James Alan Fox, a leading authority on mass killings who is in charge of analyzing the letter's contents, said the handwriting appears to match samples of Huff's.

"I'm going on the assumption that it was written by Kyle," said Fox, a professor at Boston's Northeastern University who is heading up the panel trying to find out what motivated Huff.

In the early morning of March 25, Huff, 28, left a house at 2112 E. Republican St. where he'd been attending a party. He grabbed a shotgun and handgun from his pickup, and shot eight partygoers, six of whom died. He killed himself when police confronted him.

Before the awards ceremony Tuesday night, Officer Steve Leonard, 43, described what he saw that morning during his regular patrol shift. He said he heard a noise that sounded like firecrackers, and as he drove up East Republican Street he found people streaming from the house.

"The kids were stunned, they were in shock ... thousand-yard stares," he said.

When Leonard reached the house, he saw a wounded man on a grass embankment and a tall man pumping a shotgun to load it.

Leonard said Huff shot himself after he yelled for him to drop his weapon. "I saw him before he saw me. To this day I'm thankful for that," Leonard said.

In the letter, which is titled "To Kane From Kyle" and appears to be dated March 23, the writer rails against a "world of sex" — an apparent reference to the rave community — where people say and do things that "are just too disturbing to me to just ignore and try to live my life with." The writer talks about drug use, referring to sexual activity going on "next to us when were really high to make us freak out ... trying to stop are (sic) heart by making it palpitate."

Huff had attended an all-night rave with his victims before going to the house party.

"It's not surprising that he may have had a sense that the victims, in his perception, were evil and dangerous," Fox said, adding "it would not be surprising for a mass murderer like Kyle to target people for his perceptions of what they represent."

Parts of the letter, which is at times disjointed and contains grammatical errors, lay out some of the writer's hopes for the future. "Don't kill yourself moron," it urges the recipient. "As long as your (sic) alive so is part of me ... Maybe someday you'll want to help me kill this hippie (expletive). "

The letter indicates a degree of planning and reflects the common sentiment by many mass killers that they are carrying out justice, Fox said.

"What you get (in the letter) is an expectation that he wouldn't be around much longer, that suicide was on his mind," Fox said.

Fox said the clues in the letter match what he's learned about Huff.

"When you understand a lot more about him, his life prior to that day, it makes some sense," Fox said.

Longtime friends and acquaintances in Montana have said that Huff, who moved to Seattle in 2002 with his brother, was a kind, quiet music lover who never showed major signs of violence.

In Seattle, Huff worked occasional jobs delivering pizza and spent most of his time alone or with his brother. The month before the killings, he apparently posted a comment on a Web site seeking information about raves.

Moments before he entered the party house with his weapons, Huff spray-painted "NOW" on a sidewalk.

The letter ends with "Now Kids Now!!!" before signing off, "Bye Kane, I love you."

Chris Nuckols, whose friend Christopher Williamson, 21, was one of Huff's victims, said Tuesday he doubts the authenticity of the letter and is disturbed by its characterizations of rave-goers.

"Raves are about acceptance, about being together with everyone no matter who they are. Drugs and sex have happened at parties — all kinds of parties — since the dawn of time. No one deserves anything like what happened," he said.

Staff reporter Jennifer Sullivan contributed to this report. Information from Seattle Times staff reporter Steve Miletich and Times archives is also included in this report. Natalie Singer: 206-464-2704 or nsinger@seattletimes.com