(6 of 7)
Back in Minnesota, Buster Johnson reruns his grandson's childhood in his head--rewinding again and again in search of an answer. "I've been trying to think and think, and I can't come up with anything that makes sense," he says. During Mitchell's visits, he often hung out with Buster at his Spring Valley-area meat-processing plant, displaying no untoward fascination with the instruments at hand. "I felt comfortable with him there," says Buster. "He would trim hamburger, but he was never reckless with knives." He does not believe that his son Scott's long-distance-driving job deprived Drew of fatherly guidance. Says Buster: "He spoke with the kids every week or more." Says Scott's friend Beverly Jacobson, the co-owner and manager of Meadow Mobile Home Park in Grand Meadow, Minn., "Some people thought he was over-generous with the kids because he felt bad that he wasn't around them enough." She says Scott and his fiance Cindy got his boys new bikes, lots of clothes, remote-control cars and other toys last year.
Was the bloodshed sparked by another broken heart? Candace Porter, one of the girls injured in the shooting, was supposedly the object of Mitchell's affection. But she is said to have told him that she did not want a boyfriend. Stephanie Engels, Candace's cousin, says Candace had sought out her teachers, telling them that Mitchell seemed upset and violent. "She was really worried," says Engels. "But I don't think the school took any notice of it." Principal Karen Curtner insists that neither she nor any teachers were informed of such reports. But, says sixth-grader Kara Tate, "he said he was definitely going to shoot Candace because she had broken up with him." Apparently furious that no one was taking his heartache seriously, Mitch at this point allegedly pulled a knife on a classmate. He also issued a more wide-ranging threat. On the day before the shooting, says Mitch's friend Melinda Henson, "he told us that tomorrow you will find out if you live or die."
A local minister has mentioned Satan, but explanations rarely come neatly packaged in one word. "These are cold-blooded, evil children, and I don't care how bad that sounds," says Golden neighbor Brooks, whose daughter Jenna was wounded in the attack. Still, deep in its soul, Jonesboro is Bible country, and the residents choose to see divine providence in all things. Of the potentially fatal bullet that hit her daughter Candace but was deflected by a rib, Kim Porter says, "God held her the right way." Jonesboro has always counted its blessings. Here folks aim to forgive, as improbable and unnatural as it may seem. "The healing cannot begin until we forgive," said Gary Cremeens, a minister at the funeral of Paige Ann Herring, the first of the girls to be buried. He intoned the story of Jesus and Lazarus from the Gospel: "He cried with a loud voice, 'Lazarus, come forth.' And he that was dead came forth, bound hand and foot with graveclothes." A promise of resurrection--and an allusion to the deepest of sorrows. For it was over Lazarus that Jesus wept. In a more modern tribute to the girls, Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On was played over and over at the funerals. It is the theme song of Titanic, a favorite movie of the children's, and their most poignant artifact of love after death.