Natalie Rupnow's father arrested for providing weapons used in deadly shooting at Wisconsin Christian school

Daily Mail​

09-05-2025

The father of Wisconsin school shooter Natalie Rupnow was arrested after it was revealed that he used semiautomatic weapons to 'bond' with his daughter.
Jeffrey Rupnow, 42, the father of Abundant Life Christian School shooter Natalie Rupnow, 15, was taken into custody during an early morning traffic stop and was charged with intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death and contributing to the delinquency of a child.
Prosecutors say Rupnow legally bought his daughter a pistol, which he kept in a gun safe - and told Natalie that if she ever needed it, the access code was his Social Security number entered backward.
'Her father knew that she had them, or at least had access to them,' acting Madison Police Chief John Patterson said at a news conference as chilling new details about the December 16 shooting were revealed in the criminal complaint against the father.
It notes that just one day after the deadly shooting, Jeffrey told police how he had retrieved his daughter's handgun from the safe for cleaning two days prior - and was unsure whether he ever returned it to the safe.
That gun and another firearm were then used in the deadly attack, which killed teacher Erin West, 42, and freshman Rubi Vergara, 14, and left six others wounded - one of whom remains hospitalized nearly five months later, according to CBS News.
Jeffrey also allegedly suggested to the officers that Natalie must have retrieved the second weapon from the safe, according to the criminal complaint obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
'When they initially started the interview with the defendant, one of the first things he uttered was that he... began to think about if he had put [her] gun back in the safe yesterday,' it says.
The criminal complaint also sheds new light on Natalie's life before she decided to open fire at the small school and took her own life.
It details how the 15 year old Natalie Rupnow struggled with her parents' divorce in 2022, which she railed against in a written piece entitled War Against Humanity, where she described humanity as 'filth' and said she lived in a 'population of scum.'
She went on to write that 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' and apparently believed that humanity had forced her into a hole.
'Some of you guys deserve to be dead,' Natalie reportedly wrote in the document, after using a racial slur.
The teenager was living with her father following the apparently contentious divorce, and had been undergoing therapy for the post-traumatic stress disorder it caused, according to the criminal complaint.
Jeffrey even seemed to notice his daughter was struggling, as she said she hated her life and wanted to kill herself.
Natalie even reportedly used to cut herself to the point where her father had to lock up all the knives in his house.
But still, he tried to bond with his daughter over their shared interest in firearms.
He allegedly told investigators how he took Natalie shooting with him on a friend's land about two years before the Abundant Life attack.
She enjoyed it, he said, 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.
Authorities say Natalie soon began building a cardboard model of the school and scheduling the shooting to end with her suicide.
She had allegedly planned to begin the attack at 11.30am and wipe out the first and second floors of the school by 11.55am. She planned to end the attack by 12.10pm with a notation 'ready 4 Death.'
The teenager also shared her idolization of previous mass shooters, whom she compared herself to and once even printed out a photo of a Finnish mass shooter whom she noted made his attack two years before she was born.
At times, Natalie called the other shooters 'saints,' and their attacks 'masterpieces,' the Journal Sentinel reports.
She then shared her fascination with school shootings and weapons with others online, and recorded videos of herself handling 'what appears to be a black semiautomatic firearm.'
Another video showed Natalie next to a mutilated rabbit, and in one clip, the teenager could be seen pointing a firearm gesture with her hand at two neighborhood dogs, telling them: 'You're next,' according to the Journal Sentinel.
Natalie wound up opening fire at a study hall at the Abundant Life Christian School shortly before 11am on December 16, before taking her own life.
In the aftermath, investigators recovered 20 shell casings and recovered the 9mm Glock handgun Jeffrey had purchased for her, as well as a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from the bag she was carrying.
Rupnow said he had given that gun to his daughter as a Christmas present in 2023, the complaint says.
Also in the bag were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a 50-round box of 9 mm ammunition.
Two weeks later, the complaint says, Jeffrey sent a message to detectives - saying his biggest mistake was teaching Natalie how to handle guns safely and urging police to warn residents to change their gun safe combinations every two to three months, according to the criminal complaint.
'Kids are smart and they will figure it out,' he allegedly 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.'
Meanwhile, 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.
Jeffrey is now scheduled to make his first court appearance on Friday, but it remains unclear whether he has retained an attorney who could speak on his behalf.