He Killed Parents, Classmates. His Sister Tells Her Story

In May 1998—roughly a year before Columbine—a 15-year-old named Kip Kinkel fatally shot his parents, then two fellow students at Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. He wounded 25 more students. In the New Yorker, Jennifer Gonnerman examines the shooting, which was all but unheard of at the time, through the lens of Kinkel's sister, Kristin, who has largely avoided the media. "Forgive the shakiness in my voice," says the 46-year-old in her first interview with Gonnerman. The story traces Kristin's shock at first hearing the news, when she was a 21-year-old student at Hawaii Pacific University, and the reckoning with it that continues to this day. One big reason she has made progress on that front might come as a surprise—it's the strong relationship she maintains with her imprisoned brother Kip.

Now 41, Kip Kinkel takes antipsychotic medication—he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and the story recounts the voices he began hearing at age 12 that urged him to kill—and is seen as a model prisoner who has earned his bachelor's degree. Kristin, a single mother of two, has her kids speak with and visit their uncle regularly. At one point, Gonnerman accompanies Kristin on a prison visit, where she learns details about her brother's youth (such as their father buying him a Glock and the semi-automatic rifle he would use at the school, and teaching him how to shoot) that she hadn't known. Without his sister, "I probably wouldn't be here," Kip Kinkel tells Gonnerman. As for Kristin, "I've never reached a moment where I was just mad at him and needed to forgive him," she says. "There's no way his behavior was a choice." Read the full story, which notes that Kip Kinkel has the possibility of being released on parole. (More Longform stories.)