Jacob Davis in the yard of the South Central Corrections Facility in Clifton, TN
(4 of 4)
Though Woodham has since expressed remorse, prison authorities aren't especially interested in his redemption. Woodham receives no schooling or counseling. "We don't make any pretense about trying to rehabilitate someone who is going to spend their natural life in prison," says Robert Johnson, commissioner of Mississippi's Department of Corrections. "What's the use?"
Most of the rest of the boys are working toward high school diplomas. A couple hope to move on to college correspondence courses. Seven of the shooters are offered regular psychological counseling, ranging from daily to weekly sessions. However, some lawyers and relatives have begun to question the treatment and challenge the qualifications of prison psychologists, who increasingly are overburdened and underfunded as overall inmate populations grow.
In Pennsylvania, the mother of Andrew Wurst, who opened fire on his middle-school dance in 1998, killing a teacher, has battled prison officials to upgrade her son's therapy. She has been rebuffed. So Wurst remains totally delusional, according to psychiatrist Robert Sadoff, who examined him. Sadoff wrote that Wurst believes "he is real but everyone else is unreal." That includes the teacher he killed, John Gilette, who in Wurst's mind "was already dead or unreal." Wurst told Sadoff that, excepting himself, everyone has been programmed by the government by means of "time tablets" that control people's thoughts.
There are other kids lost in their own worlds. Trickey, according to a report of the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs, "does not show any remorse for his crime and has little insight into his problems." Father John Kiernan, who used to visit Solomon regularly, says he seemed unaware of the consequences of his rampage. But in 1999, Solomon carved an X across his chest, apparently with a fingernail, and last January he attempted suicide by swallowing 22 pills of the antidepressant Elavil that he had bought from another inmate.
Many years will pass before most of the shooters come up for possible release. Three of them expect never to be paroled. Others will be men of 50 or even 70 before they have that option. But a handful of these boys, sentenced in more lenient states, will be released during the next five to seven years. Trickey's continued detention is reviewed every six months, and he will certainly go free by the time he turns 19. Cordova gets out at age 21. So do Johnson and Golden.
For his part, Solomon is in for 40 years. He's likely to be haunted by nightmares for much of that duration. "I've been having dreams and many flashbacks, and most recently, I have been hearing screams," he wrote after his arrest. "I know that it's just in my mind, [but] it's like I'm really hearing them, as if someone were screaming in my face. Usually when it's time to go to sleep and everything is quiet is when my thoughts get worst, because it's all I can hear." Of a dream, he said, "I see myself standing there, shooting me." In his sleep, he is his own victim. And when he wakes up, he is too.