A `Nobody' Driven By His Hatreds -- Furrow Was In State Hospital

Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr. certainly was reclusive - a cipher, almost - and even the FBI has appealed to the public for information about him. But to stereotype him as the quiet loner prone to commit random acts of horrific violence isn't entirely accurate.

Furrow, who spent time in a state mental institution here late last year, wasn't particularly quiet - at least not when it came to his affiliation with hate groups.

He was perfectly willing to brag about being a racist and a Jew-hater, even as he sought help for the violent obsessions that apparently drove him to open fire on children at a Los Angeles day-care center Tuesday morning.

"I am a white separatist," Furrow (pronounced fur-OH) declared in a written statement he made to King County police in October after his arrest for threatening mental-health workers with a knife. He came close to being killed by officers.

Yesterday, after surrendering to the FBI in Las Vegas, Furrow bluntly announced his hope that the attempted slaughter at the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles "would be a wake-up call to America to kill Jews."

And sources familiar with the investigation, who requested anonymity, said Furrow has told FBI agents that he intended to commit additional killings after the day-care shooting.

"It would have been similar to what (Furrow) told King County after his arrest last year," the source said, referring to Furrow's homicidal fantasy of gunning down people in a Lynnwood mall.

But when he wasn't fomenting a race war, or suicidal and violent, Furrow was a nobody.

Classmates barely recall him

His early childhood remains a mystery.

Classmates in high school barely remember him. During the past few years, after a brief common-law marriage to the widow of one of the country's most notorious hate-mongers - a man killed in a shootout with the FBI - Furrow's lifestyle is best described as nomadic.

"We're as interested in talking to anyone who may have even had a conversation with him as you are," said Seattle FBI Special Agent Mike Sanders.

The bureau yesterday set up a hotline - 888-607-1569 - looking for "anyone who knows where he's been or what his plans were."

What is known about Furrow in the months leading to Tuesday's spasm of violence at the California community center is foreboding:

He was a problem drinker who sometimes blacked out. He carried a loaded gun in his truck, along with several knives. He sometimes mutilated himself, at one point cutting his finger to the bone. And, emotionally, he teetered on a razor's edge of violence.

"Sometimes I feel I could just lose it and kill people," the 37-year-old Furrow wrote in a statement after he was arrested Oct. 28 for pulling a knife on workers at Fairfax Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland.

Furrow became violent after trying to check into the hospital because he was fantasizing about going to Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood and killing people. Officers, who almost shot him when he refused to drop the knife, found a loaded 9-mm handgun in his car.

At a bail hearing the next day, his father, Buford Furrow Sr. told the court his son had told him that he had been at Fairfax about 10 days before the knife incident. The father said his son returned to Fairfax to get himself readmitted.

Furrow was sent to the psychiatric ward of Harborview Medical Center in Seattle for an evaluation. Soon thereafter he was admitted to Western State Hospital, where he stayed until he was transferred back to King County Jail on Dec. 11.

A guilty plea to assault

On Dec. 18, his public defender entered a notice that she planned to file an insanity defense for Furrow. But Furrow instead pleaded guilty April 9 to second-degree assault, ultimately receiving a sentence of 5 1/2 months in the King County Jail.

He was released May 21.

What remains unclear, because of patient-confidentiality rules, is whether psychiatrists at Harborview or Western State Hospital diagnosed Furrow as mentally ill, or what kind of treatment he received in jail or after his release.

"He clearly is a disturbed and unpleasant man," said Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, a Maryland psychiatrist who heads a national center trying to get more treatment for the mentally ill.

"(But) there's nothing you've told me that's led me to believe he's frankly psychotic. He's clearly depressed. That by itself won't get you a candy bar."

Fairfax hospital officials declined to talk about Furrow yesterday. But other mental-health professionals said the Fairfax staff was completely reasonable in calling police.

No early indications of violence

There is no evidence that Furrow was violent as a child. If anything, he was a shy, pudgy and bespectacled boy who left little impression on anyone, according to former classmates and teachers. Records show his Social Security number was issued in 1975 in Nevada.

Furrow attended Timberline High School in Lacey, Thurston County, for at least two years in the late 1970s, where Principal Gene Nicholas couldn't pick Furrow's photograph from the yearbooks.

Indeed, the principal said he could not say exactly when Furrow began attending the school.

Walt Berggren, a former Timberline teacher and nonacademic counselor, remembered Furrow only enough to say he was a loner.

"I just remember him sitting all by himself. . . . When I looked at the yearbook now, I couldn't place his face with anyone else. I can't remember if he had any friends at all."

In February 1980, Furrow joined the Army. His stint was brief. According to military records, he was trained to repair UH-1 helicopters and assigned to Fort McClellan in Anniston, Ala.

He went on active duty Aug. 12 and was discharged Oct. 16. He received an honorable discharge due to a knee problem.

But he also failed to achieve the rank promotion routinely granted privates coming out of boot camp.

Furrow attended three community colleges - Centralia College, Lower Columbia College and South Puget Sound Community College - before enrolling at Western Washington University in September 1984.

Majoring in manufacturing technology, Furrow was an average student, never really excelling but doing moderately well in some of his technical courses, department chairwoman Kathleen Kitto said today.

Kitto said neither she nor the other professors there remember anything specific about Furrow, saying "there really wasn't anything remarkable about him." Furrow graduated in December 1986 with a degree in manufacturing technology.

Three years later, Furrow wrote a letter to the program coordinator of the manufacturing engineering department to say he was doing well and might return for another degree. But Furrow did not return, and no one in the department has heard from him since then, she said.

Furrow worked two years for Boeing, resigning in 1990, said Dave Suffia, who declined to say what the job was, except that it was not an engineer's position.

Public records show Furrow living in the early '90s in Rosamond, Calif., a high-desert community of about 20,000 people 80 miles north of Los Angeles.

From 1990 to 1993, he worked as a manufacturing engineer for Northrop Grumman, a defense contractor, said Jim Hart, a company spokesman. A manufacturing engineer generally has an engineering degree and works on ways to make manufacturing techniques more efficient.

While living in Rosamond, Furrow had two encounters with the law, but neither involved criminal activities police attributed to him. In 1992, he witnessed an automobile theft. In 1993, he caught a person stealing motorcycle parts, said Kern County sheriff's Cmdr. Phil Crosby.

The county has no record of Furrow being arrested, booked in jail or "actions on his part that would indicate any propensity for violence," Crosby said. However, hate-group watchdogs think that it was during this period that Furrow linked up with the Aryan Nations, a militant white-supremacist group headquartered in Hayden Lake, Idaho.

"He was almost certainly deeply involved by the early 1990s," said Mike Reynolds at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.

It also was during this time that he struck up a relationship with Debra Mathews, the widow of Robert Jay Mathews, a founder of the neo-Nazi group The Order. Mathews died in a fiery Whidbey Island shootout with FBI agents in 1984.

Floyd Cochran, a reformed neo-Nazi and one-time public-information officer for the Aryan Nations, said he met Furrow at the compound twice: once in 1991 and again around the annual Hitler Youth Rally in spring 1992.

The relationship was casual, but he recalled Furrow once asking about the millions of dollars stolen in bank and armored-car robberies by The Order.

Not long after, Cochran said Furrow began his relationship with Debra Mathews. "My guess? He was gold-digging," he said.

Reynolds at the Southern Poverty Law Center said he first became aware of Furrow in 1994 as a lieutenant in the compound's security force.

"That rank indicates he had been in the group for some time at that point," he said.

Reynolds said Furrow and Debra Mathews were united in a ceremony at the compound March 19, 1995, then lived together in Metaline Falls, Pend Oreille County. But their union crumbled after a little more than a year, and Furrow resumed his wanderings.

According to a source familiar with the investigation, it was after the marriage broke up that Furrow's behavior became more erratic. He moved even more often, crashing at his parents' home in Olympia.

For the past several years, Furrow's parents, Buford Furrow Sr. and Monnie, have expressed anguish over their son's mental condition and his apparent inability to find and hold jobs, the Los Angeles Times has reported.

The elder Furrow often talked about his son with his next-door neighbor of 35 years, Clint Merrill.

"It was hard for him to keep a job. His stress got to him," Merrill said of the younger Furrow, whom he called Neal. "He'd get all worked up and quit. His father said he can't hold a job and couldn't seem to find one."

Between March and October last year Furrow worked at Northwest Gears Inc., an aerospace firm in Everett. Workers there told the Spokesman-Review that he was a mild-mannered and conscientious worker who often ate lunch alone at his desk. The company said he was given a 12-week leave of absence at his own request last October and didn't return.

After Furrow's Oct. 28 arrest and after serving five months for assault, he was released.

On Aug. 7, Furrow paid cash for a red GMC van at the Tacoma Kar Korner used-car lot. That van was found outside the day-care center after Tuesday's shooting.

Information from Seattle Times staff reporters Jacob Fries, Ian Ith, Steve Miletich, David Postman, Arthur Santana and Eric Sorensen, and from The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and Knight-Ridder News Service is included in this report.

Mike Carter's phone-message number is 206-464-3706. His e-mail address is mcarter@seattletimes.com

Kim Barker's phone-message number is 206-464-2255. Her e-mail address is kbarker@seattletimes.com

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Furrow's statement from Oct. 28, 1998

Buford O'Neal Furrow Jr. wrote the following statement to police after his arrest on Oct. 28, 1998, in Kirkland:

I'm a white seperatist (sic). I've been having suicidial (sic) and homicidial (sic) thoughts for some time now. Yesterday I had thoughts that I would kill my ex-wife and some of her friends then maybe I would drive to Canada and rob a bank. I wanted the police to shoot me. I own a 9mm semi-auto matic hand gun (sic) made by Taurus. I always carry it in the glove box of my car. I also have several knives that I keep in the car. Last night I had some drinks and passed out. This morning I woke up, called work and told them that I was going to be gone for a while. I had some more drinks. Then drove to Fairfax (Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland) to check myself in. Sunday I was feeling suicidial (sic) and cut my left index finger to the bone. Then I drove to Providence Hospital in Everett. It took 6 stitches to close the wounds. Today I cut my left forearm 6-7 times. Some times I feel like I could just loose it (sic) and kill people. I also feel like I could kill my self."