Suspect's parents only saw 'quirks' before slaying
Michael Hernandez exhibited puzzling behavior months before allegedly slashing a friend to death in a middle school restroom.
By Associated Press
Published May 30, 2004
PALMETTO BAY - It wasn't anything big that prompted Manny and Kathy Hernandez to discuss taking their son Michael to see a psychologist. Just a bunch of little things.
When his after-dinner bike ride was done, the eighth-grader would open and close the garage door a certain number of times. It was the same in the kitchen, where he would open the side-by-side freezer and refrigerator doors simultaneously, looking left and right over and over again.
Michael wanted the same school lunch every day: bologna and cheese on a Publix egg roll with Hellmann's mayonnaise - NOT Miracle Whip. He would stare at the grandfather clock in the living room every day at the same time, for the same amount of time.
Things had gotten so bad by December that Manny Hernandez called his insurance company for a list of doctors. The couple decided not to make an appointment until after the stress of midterm exams was over in late January.
They waited too long.
Feb. 3, the day after his 14th birthday, Michael allegedly stabbed his best friend to death in a school restroom. A secret journal kept by Michael, 43 pages of which have been released by prosecutors, indicate murder was the first act in achieving his goal - to become a serial killer.
Authorities say Michael slashed 14-year-old Jaime Gough at least 40 times in a second-floor restroom at Southwood Middle School, a magnet school tucked among luxurious homes in this affluent Miami suburb.
Despite his "little quirks," Michael's parents said they saw nothing to suggest their son was keeping secrets from them or descending into darkness.
In the months leading up the slaying, Michael wasn't making much eye contact or talking with his parents as much. He became increasingly obsessed with body building and watching horror movies. A videotape of the Stephen King miniseries Storm of the Century - about a killer who continues his string of murders telepathically from jail - remains where he left it on his bedside TV.
But he wasn't getting into fights at school, taking drugs or drinking, and he still kissed his mom goodnight.
"The changes that we saw in Michael we thought were age appropriate," Kathy Hernandez told the Associated Press in a recent interview at the family's home. These were "things that we thought were normal teenager types of things."
The Hernandezes focus on photos of Michael as a baby and toddler and his youth baseball portraits. His parents say he was always a meticulous child, his bedroom sparsely decorated. He made his bed each morning, arranged his shirts by color and lined up his socks precisely.
But they say his behavior began getting more troubling last summer before he entered the eighth grade. When Manny Hernandez, a consignment store owner, told friends about his son's "little quirks," they responded that there were a lot worse things Michael could be doing.
The normally talkative, inquisitive, outgoing boy stopped having friends over to the house. After years of youth baseball, Michael broke his father's heart by refusing to watch TV with him as the Florida Marlins marched toward their World Series victory last fall. The boy stopped shooting hoops in the driveway, cut out his 11 a.m. Sunday lunches at Popeye's and quit the car washing business he had once promoted with fliers.
Then there was the sudden fascination with body building.
Michael's exercise regimen was a rigid one. He made lists of routines, then checked them off when completed. He was taking whey protein derived from milk to bulk up. After months of begging, Michael persuaded his parents during Christmas break to buy him a 2-pound can of the muscle-boosting supplement creatine, a favorite of major league sluggers.
The couple now worry about that decision. Creatine use has not been studied in children or beyond recommended doses. Based on the missing amount, the 115-pound boy may have gone through about a pound of the supplement in little more than a month - three to four times the recommended daily amount for an adult nearly twice Michael's weight, by some health experts' reckoning.
Most disturbing were the repetitive routines. Instead of growing out of them, his father said it was "like he was adding more."
Every afternoon Michael sat on the family room love seat with the same snack: yogurt, followed by sugar-free Jell-O. He started writing lists for exercise routines and violent movies and video games. He took his after-dinner bike rides with headphones on at the same time every day, rain or shine.
The Hernandezes have a grown niece who was diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Recognizing the symptoms in Michael, Manny Hernandez approached his son about possibly seeing a psychologist.
"He didn't like that too much," he told prosecutors. He remembers Michael saying, "They won't know anything if I won't tell them. What is there to tell?"
According to the journal confiscated after the slaying, there was a lot he could have told a doctor.
The journal contained a hit list that included Jaime and a 13-year-old classmate from his days at a neighborhood Baptist academy. According to the journal, Michael had an eight-point plan to lure the two into the handicapped stall at the far end of the bathroom before classes to show them something. They didn't know it was a switchblade-like gravity knife that was never to leave the house.
Also on the list of those to die was Michael's older sister Christina, 19, who was away at college.
Since the killing, the Hernandezes have been replaying the last few months, searching for signs that they might have missed. Kathy Hernandez, an occupational therapist, recalls the three scratches she noticed on Michael's upper arm in January.
He blamed the injury on a school fence. She worried he was cutting himself and warned him, "I better never see that again."
They didn't know about Michael allegedly jabbing a screwdriver at students during a school football game last November. The incident wasn't reported until after Jaime's death.
Other things came to light after Michael's arrest.
His Internet use seemed normal to his parents. But a classmate said he downloaded photos of severed heads. His journal contained printouts of instructions for making a bomb, detonator and Molotov cocktails.
Michael's parents told the AP that nothing they saw made them think their son would hurt, let alone kill, anyone.
But Rob Klein, the family's civil attorney, said some will want to cast blame on the parents for not doing enough. "It's like a need that people have to turn this into some dark, brooding kid," he said. "He was anything but. He's everything every parent wants in a child."
Today, Michael sits alone in a jail cell. The boy, whose previous worst disciplinary problem was suspension for looking into a girl's locker, now faces a mandatory life prison sentence if convicted as an adult. A trial date has not been set.
Kathy Hernandez used to think the military would agree with Michael because his life had become so regimented. His jailers have complimented her on his conduct.
