Father of school shooter who killed 2 in Wisconsin religious school faces felony charges
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Jeffery Rupnow told investigators that took Natalie shooting with him on a friend's land about two years before the Abundant Life attack. She enjoyed it, and he came to see guns as a way to connect with her. But he was shocked at how her interest in firearms 'snow balled,' he told investigators.
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He kept Natalie's pistols in a gun safe, telling her that if she ever need them the access code was his Social Security number entered backward. About 10 days before the school attack, he texted a friend and said that Natalie would shoot him if he left 'the fun safe open right now,' according to the complaint.
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The day before the school attack he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe so Natalie could clean it. But he got distracted and wasn't sure if he put the weapon back in the safe or locked it, according to the complaint.
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'War Against Humanity'
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A search of Natalie's room netted a six-page document the girl had written entitled 'War Against Humanity.' She started the piece by describing humanity as 'filth' and saying she hated people who don't care and 'smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father.'
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She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not in her life and how she obtained her weapons 'by lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity.'
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Investigators also discovered maps of the school and a cardboard model of the building, along with a handwritten schedule that detailed how she would being the attack at 11:30 a.m. and wipe out the first and second floors of the school by 11:55 a.m. She planned to end the attack by 12:10 p.m. with a notation 'ready 4 Death.'
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She had been communicating online with people around the world about her fascination with school shootings and weapons, Acting Madison Police Chief John Patterson said Thursday.
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Father calls teaching her gun safety 'biggest mistake'
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Jeffery Rupnow sent a message to a detective two weeks after the school shooting saying that his biggest mistake was teaching Natalie how to handle guns safely and urging police to warn people to change their gun safe combinations every two to three months, the complaint said.
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'Kids are smart and they will figure it out,' he wrote. 'Just like someone trying to hack your bank account. I just want to protect other families from going through what I'm going through.'
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According to the complaint, after learning that Natalie was the shooter while talking to a police officer, Melissa Rupnow began breathing very quickly through her nose and yelled something, to the effect of, 'I'm going to kill him, I'm going to kill him,' apparently referring to her ex-husband.
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Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges associated with an attack.
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Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
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The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.
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In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.
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