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

Tony noticed blood dripping down Kevin's forehead and the dried blood matted in his hair. He had refused to let the doctors shave his head or even stitch and bandage the crease the bullet had made in his scalp.

Kevin wasn't crying or angry; he already had tired of people asking about the shootings. As soon as their mother let them, the brothers headed to Burger King. As they left, Mrs. Jones reassured them that Bill would be okay.

Kevin didn't buy it.

"I know Bill is dead," he said.

They had been best friends. Bill Draher, who dreamed of exploring caves and doing research on dolphin intelligence. Kevin Jones, the rough-edged rebel who read everything from Tolstoy to Travis McGee and hoped to become a writer.

Two boys, both smart, neither part of the "in" crowd. More like Needham than they knew.

Classes resumed the day after the shootings. Kevin stayed home, but his mother took him back to Everett the next week.

The school didn't want him.

Despite his high IQ, Kevin had never been a model student. If he didn't like a class, he didn't go. Although he never used drugs, scorned them in fact, rumors quickly got around town that the shootings had been drug-related.

Given all that had happened, school administrators told his mother, Kevin's presence might be distracting to the other students. Maybe it would be better if he looked into some kind of alternative education.

Jessie Jones, fiercely supportive of her sons, would always regret that she didn't push harder that day to get Kevin back into Everett. Instead, they turned around and quietly walked out.

It was the last time Kevin Jones ever went to school.

[Times art by Rossie Newson, using Roger Needham and Bill Draher yearbook photos, Kevin Jones family photo; Lansing police Offense Report; and State Journal article]

For nearly three months, as the harsh Michigan winter softened into spring, Roger Needham waited in the Ingham County Juvenile Home while prosecutors debated what to do.

The state had the legal right to try him as an adult. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

If.

The uncertainty about what might happen in a trial bothered Ingham County prosecutor Peter Houk and his chief assistant, Daniel McLellan. They worried that Needham would be found not guilty by reason of insanity and set free.

It was a frightening prospect, for there was little doubt Needham was a very sick, if brilliant, young man.

Tests conducted after the shooting put his IQ in the genius range. "He is highly intelligent, hostile, intensely angry at everyone," psychiatrist Ames Robey wrote in a report to prosecutors.

Needham had a rare form of mental illness -- there were only a few cases in the entire country -- and was a "true paranoiac," the psychiatrist concluded. Sufferers have strong feelings of superiority yet are convinced other people are constantly plotting against them. The conflicting emotions of superiority and victimization sometimes lead them to kill.

There were other factors to consider.

Daniel McLellan

McLellan had seen the boy's bedroom and, like Detective Wiegman, was aghast at the abundance of Nazi material. He found the entire house, not just Roger's room, an emotionally cold and scary place.

Geez I'd hate to live here, McLellan thought to himself. How could a parent not see how alienated his kid had become?

To McLellan, there was no question: At least some of Needham's problems stemmed from a lack of parental guidance.

Roger had just turned 5 when his parents divorced, shortly before Christmas 1967. The judge found truth to allegations that the elder Needham had been "guilty of extreme and repeated cruelty" toward his wife. She was awarded custody of Roger and his younger sister and brother. Their father was ordered to pay $75 a week in support.

Five years later, under an agreement between the parents, the judge transferred custody of all three children to Needham. Then, as now, it was unusual for a father to have sole custody of minor children.

Needham moved his family to Lansing, where he became the first full-time faculty member at Cooley Law School. Jean Needham resettled in the Pacific Northwest. After her son was charged with murder, she did not return. Instead, her ex-husband related, she said she was communicating with the boy by ESP.

Given all this, the prosecutors agonized over how to proceed. Needham had committed an adult-style crime that warranted severe punishment. Then again, McLellan found it difficult to think of a 15-year-old who had never been in trouble as a hard-core criminal beyond redemption. He was still a kid, who had a difficult adolescence aggravated by a messed-up family life.

If Needham were kept in the juvenile justice system, the state would have custody of him until he turned 19 -- four years to get him treatment.

The prosecutors finally came to a decision: Needham was not so far gone he couldn't be helped. They would treat him as a juvenile, not an adult.

And pray they were right.