The story of one of America's first school shooters, a brilliant loner, and what he has become in the 23 years since. It's also a story of what we. have become.

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN,
Times Senior Correspondent

Illustrations by Times artist
ROSSIE NEWSON

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 11, 2001

"Class dismissed," the woman said.

Needham had been among the first to join the faculty of Cooley, Michigan's newest law school. His appointment was a coup -- he was considered one of the nation's top experts in federal constitutional law. But even the school's founder, a former chief justice of the Michigan Supreme Court, considered Needham "a very odd duck."

A single parent trying to raise three kids, Needham had few social contacts beyond sitting on the law school steps or in a corner of the cafeteria, puffing on his pipe and waiting for students to come visit. Apart from the law, his passions were guns, World War II and Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime.

It would soon become apparent that Needham's oldest son shared his interests.

Within an hour of the shootings, Lansing police Detective Paul Wiegman arrived at Everett High. He found 15-year-old Roger Needham sitting quietly in the principal's office. To Wiegman, he looked like a lost little kid.

The elder Needham showed up, too. He had another lawyer with him and acted blustery and arrogant, the detective thought.

Wiegman wanted to take a statement. The elder Needham wouldn't allow it. But at 6 p.m., four hours after the shootings, both Needhams signed a "consent to search" form allowing police to search the boy's bedroom for the following:

"Nazi literature, Nazi armbands and items of uniform and written evidence of plans, schemes or design relative to the intent to commit homicide and any writing by Roger Eric Needham relative to attitudinal disposition or hostile nature."

It was dark and starting to snow as the little group -- Wiegman, the elder Needham, prosecutors and defense lawyers -- drove up to the Needhams' modest home on Luwanna Street, a dirt road about a mile and a half east of the high school. They started in the basement, in Roger's locked bedroom.

It was full of Nazi paraphernalia. There was a huge Nazi flag on the wall, along with swastikas and excerpts from Mein Kampf and other Hitler writings. There was an elaborate diagram of a Nazi extermination camp, complete with gas chambers.

The detective was stunned by what they found -- stunned, too, by the reaction of Roger's father.

It was obvious the elder Needham had no idea of what his kid was doing or what he had become. It had been a year, the professor said, since he had last been in his son's bedroom.