by Hartt
But the evidence of bomb expert Richard Haskell would also have to be discounted. And he concluded that the explanation for the discrepancy between the impact of the bomb—had it gone off as David designed it—and the effect the bomb actually had, is not to be found in science. His investigations pointed out fourteen factors that unexpectedly minimized the impact of the blast on the hostages, the first of which is the unexplained fact that the blasting cap connecting wires were cut straight through, despite there being no opportunity for that to have happened during the takeover (See Appendix VI for a complete list of the fourteen factors.)
Haskell issued this statement: “I don’t know how the wires were cut. My only official conclusion is that I can’t begin to explain it.” At one time, he said to television reporters, “The whole thing just appears to be a miracle.” Asked later about his use of the word “miracle,” Haskell not only stood by his statement but also underscored it. “To be more specific,” he said, “labeling it a miracle is the understatement of the century.”
Chapter Seven
Probing for Answers
“David and Doris Young could have each received a minimum of 3,080 years in prison for the kidnapping charges alone.”
—Richard Leonard, Lincoln County attorney
Several days following May 16, 1986, a strange lull seemed to settle upon the community of Cokeville. Many were trying to recover from physical burns and the emotional trauma. Few wanted to talk about it in public. Some of the surviving faculty said they were still trying to put the day’s event into perspective. Unfortunately, some were having a difficult time doing it. But fortunately, they were alive! While the perpetrators died, all hostages had been saved.
In this, yes, their many prayers had been answered. In addition, with the intruders dead, none of the children would have to face their captors in a court of law to testify against the man with the evil, terrible eyes. But understandably, some wanted to just forget about anything and everything to do with David Young. The whole ordeal was too painful.
Yet, for law enforcement officials, their work was just beginning. Reports of the tragedy—or was it a triumph?—had to be assessed and sifted, fact from fiction. The Salt Lake Tribune carried a headline saying “Aftermath of Explosion ‘a Miracle.’ ” Salt Lake City TV station KUTV did such an excellent job of early coverage that their reports were picked up by a London TV network. Stuart Wilson, a resident in London who had lived in Utah, was startled to see news of a town he knew. KUTV had been so timely, in fact, that their arrival on the scene minutes before the bomb went off evoked semi-serious jokes about “being notified by the Youngs in advance.” Part of the legal investigation centered for a time on whether David Young had given someone in the press notification so he could air his political views.
What really happened was that KUTV had a crew in the tri-state area on another assignment. They did not have their portable relay equipment along, but they managed to get footage of children at the moment of their escape, embracing parents in a reunion that was the envy of every other television station. Photos were put on the wire and picked up by numerous newspapers around the nation.
With a variety of news outlets on the scene in the next week, a scramble for an “angle” was more the focus than was accuracy. In describing the initial phase of the takeover, an article in Time magazine had over thirty errors or distortions.
Fortunately, there also was press coverage both sensitive to the feelings of people in the town and accurate to the story itself. Here are a few “sound bite” examples from different media organizations:
Carol Mikita, KSL_TV, Salt Lake City: “It is a story of tragedy and twisted thinking.”
Greg Lefevere, CNN, Atlanta: “A town of miracles? That could be right. A third of the town was being held hostage . . . strong family ties pulled them through.”
Charlene Brown, KUTV, quoting one of the hostage schoolgirls, referring to Doris and David Young: “She was a nice lady, but the guy sounded like he was going to kill everybody.”
Bomb expert Richard Haskell, interviewed on CNN: “The false ceiling absorbed much of the bomb blast. I can’t express how fortunate they are. It’s unreal . . . so fortunate. You look in there and wonder why there aren’t 150 kids lying in there dead.”
One article perceived by the eyewitnesses as particularly error-free was that published in U.S. News and World Report, which came out about two weeks after the incident. The article contained the photograph of a small child peering into the schoolroom that had been the scene of terror several days before. The caption read: “Inch by Inch.” Both article and picture received high acclaim from hostages and eyewitnesses to the incident, who felt it captured not only the facts of the story but the poignancy as well.
One of the first to fully comprehend the significance of David Young’s diaries was the Salt Lake City Deseret Morning News. In a story dated May 31 (thirteen days after the fact, which gave them sufficient time to research the accuracy of their statements) the newspaper said, “Investigators now believe the ‘Biggie’ was much bigger—and more horrible—than at first suspected. Young’s writings indicated he was planning on ‘. . . a place where he could rule as God of a new race, a place that could only be reached through death.’ The ramifications are . . . terrible.”
The best story about the press itself was probably that running in Wyoming’s Star Valley Independent, written by Cokeville correspondent Gwen Petersen. The headline was “Cokeville bombed with news media.” The article ran,
It’s been a new experience for most of the people of Cokeville to be so closely associated with the news media. Television cameras were on the scene shortly after the bombing tragedy occurred and have stayed throughout the week. A satellite truck transmitting live coverage has parked near the elementary school, and anyone walking down the street has been subject to an interview. Residents opened their homes to newsmen, providing telephone service for calls all over the country. Principal Max Excell received calls from San Francisco radio stations and the Sunday Today newspaper from London, and he was interviewed by the UPI wire services out of Washington, and countless others who were on the scene. The incident has received excellent coverage from the media. The people of Cokeville are now looking forward to the time when the news people will leave so they can go on with their lives.
Within fifteen minutes after the bomb exploded in Cokeville, Lincoln County’s Assistant Attorney Richard Leonard was at the schoolhouse to provide legal advice, including questions of proper search warrant and investigative procedure. He would initiate the monumental criminal investigation. The takeover, in Leonard’s own words, “appeared to us to be the most extensive act of terrorism ever attempted in the United States [at that time].”
Leonard was prepared to charge both David and Doris with kidnapping, had they lived. If convicted of that crime alone, each could have received a minimum of twenty years for each of the 154 hostages. That would have added up to 3,080 years apiece. While the plan was David’s, Doris was clearly complicit. She entered the school building on her own volition, without any known coercion from her husband. Add to that the penalty for extortion, and the Youngs would have needed all the years they dreamed of in their Brave New World just to serve out their sentences! Further, had David lived, there would have been the added crime of murder for shooting his wife. (An investigation concluded that David had shot his wife after she caught fire from the explosion.)
The authorities felt that Princess would probably not have been charged, possibly even if she had remained in the school with her father, due to the fact that her life was often threatened.
Along with Leonard, Lincoln County sheriff’s investigators Earl Carroll and Ron Hartley spent days in the schoolroom, talked to hostages, and pored over evidence in the case. All were veterans at their jobs. Leonard had spent more than five years in the attorney’s office, while Carroll had been a police chief in Utah for twelve years before joining Lincoln County. Hartley had also spent year
s with the county as an investigative officer. Together, they launched a thorough probe into everything known about David and Doris Young: their possessions, travels, lifestyle, and particularly their diaries.
When Hartley arrived in Cokeville, he had heard nothing on his car radio of the crisis and assumed a “massive mock drill” was in progress. He was soon told otherwise and taken inside the school building. Later, the forty-one diaries and journals of David and Doris that had been located were turned over to Hartley, who began the complicated process of examining them, both for a basic understanding of the two personalities and for specific references to “the Biggie” of May 16, 1986.
While the takeover was underway (but prior to the explosion), two agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Boise and Denver were hurrying to Cokeville to help negotiate the ransom. To be more accurate, they were hoping to talk the Youngs out of their extortion threats. When the bomb exploded, that wasn’t necessary anymore. But they were still involved because it is a federal crime to kidnap or attempt to kidnap anyone. The agents from the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms were also en route, pulled in by David Young’s weapons violations.
In the matter of weapons, investigators turned up three guns the hostages didn’t know the Youngs had. One of them was a .22 caliber pistol Doris carried in her purse. Another was the .22 caliber pistol David had tucked in the back of his trousers. In all, that made four guns on his person. Still another firearm the hostages didn’t see was the .44 caliber “Bulldog” pistol found in the restroom with Young’s body.
In some news accounts, a .44 Magnum was mentioned as one of the weapons used at the school by Young. If so, he returned it to the hallway. Law officers found it there later alongside an AR-15 semi-automatic, a shotgun, and thirty blasting caps (identified as “bombs” in some media coverage). Some of the confiscated rifles carried scopes, normally used for long-range outdoor shooting. Why did David bring them? Were they an indication he intended to leave with live hostages, and the scopes were for sighting on lawmen he expected to pursue him? Or did he want to take them on his journey into the Brave New World too? There were no answers. The scopes were simply another anomaly turned up by the investigation, as were the additional bomb wires and more guns than the Youngs could have used.
Lawmen found stores of gunpowder and ammunition and expected to find more guns in the Youngs’ Tucson mobile home. They feared booby traps, according to the Pima County Sheriff’s Office, but fortunately found none. Other bomb components and weapons were found in the Montpelier motel where the Youngs stayed before the takeover. In Tucson, they also found a note from Doris to Princess, inviting her to take whatever of Doris’s jewelry she wanted. “To remember me by,” the note concluded.
One of the central issues needing to be resolved for legal determinations—required before the case could be closed—was the question of how David and Doris died. The answer seemed obvious, but it had to be established officially and precisely. Even to confirm what was already assumed, painstaking investigative procedures had to be followed. Members of the ATF force helped in this determination. Wearing their navy blue coats with the large yellow ATF stenciled on the back, they were definitely a part of the scene. The investigation concluded that David had shot his wife after she caught fire from the explosion.
Carroll said that David used the .44 Bulldog to shoot Doris. He fired two slugs, one of which missed her; the other killed her. One of the slugs, presumably the one that missed her entirely, was found in the ceiling tile. The other slug remained in her body. Lawmen concluded that David must have been shooting upward from a low angle in the smoke-filled room.
Some of the investigators were displeased that Doris’s body had been removed from the blood-spotted southwest corner of the room where she apparently died. Moving a body from its crime scene always negatively impacts an investigation—evidence can too easily be shifted, destroyed, or otherwise compromised. The EMTs explained, however, that they thought they were removing an adult hostage who might respond to mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. It was an understandable judgment call made in the midst of physical danger without the luxury of time to ponder all possible consequences.
Just after shooting Miller, but before killing Doris, Young had come face to face with Eva Clark and her children running past the bathroom door, yet he did not shoot them. This remained one of the many unanswered questions of the entire ordeal.
Another mystery is why he chose to return to the bathroom after shooting his wife instead of killing himself right after shooting her. Evidence showed he placed his .44 caliber beneath his chin and pulled the trigger. His body was not found till much later, slumped in a corner near a child-size toilet. Officers say the weapon used was apparently his favorite: a custom-made pistol bearing the serial number DGY-1 (David Gary Young, Number One).
One of the facts to be determined before the body was turned over to relatives was whether Young had indeed committed suicide. According to the angle of the cartridge entry and the powder burns caused by firing at a close range, suspicions were confirmed and the body was removed.
Local teens were recruited to search the school grounds “inch by inch” to mark “anything which appeared to be out of kilter” with what was there before the Youngs arrived. Some of the items could well have been left by kids during recess or lunch hour, or have fallen from pockets of firemen and EMTs running toward the smoldering classroom. Everything was flagged with a pink marker on a wire stick, hundreds piercing the grounds like so many pins in a giant pin cushion.
One of the most frustrating aspects of the investigation was the attempt to determine exactly why David left the classroom for the restroom. His autopsy confirmed that the reason did not have to do with his diabetic condition; he did not have his insulin supplies on his person when he left for the bathroom, and none were found in the room itself. No other signs of diabetic distress were evident, and yet several witnesses noted he was sweating profusely. What, if anything, that had to do with his leaving the room is not known.
All the other hypotheses focused on his state of mind, and there could be no exact determination of that, yet something caused him to become tense and anxious as the afternoon wore on. Apparently, it continued to mount until it became more than he could handle. Though he had hinted that he was prepared to hold everyone hostage for as long as ten days, he buckled under some kind of pressure in less than three hours.
The perplexing question raises an even more fundamental one about the nature of David Young himself. This was a man who was known for his methodical rejection of emotionalism, a man whose life was, if the diaries are to be believed, focused on making practical plans for an eternal existence that would bridge what he saw as the abyss between this life and the next. This would leave him successful and triumphant over the whining of common people who couldn’t understand him and the obstructions of officials who were only standing in his way. He certainly saw himself as a disciplined and superior thinker who left nothing to chance. Yet the evidence shows that his plan to take the Cokeville Elementary School hostage was filled with inconsistencies and seeming errors of judgment.
For instance, he told the children they were not to use the water fountain or the restroom—over a ten-day period of time? Or did he already know that the takeover period would be far shorter than the time span he implied to his victims?
Why did David, with a reputation for being so meticulous, wait so long to obtain the gasoline container? Whether he found his jug at the Cokeville dump or brought one with him from elsewhere, how could he fail to check for a possible leak? And why did he choose such a complicated explosive device, requiring substantial labor to wire together correctly? It was certainly a visible threat to the hostages and helped keep them cowed and obedient; it was also bulky and dangerous to drag around.
Why did he react as he did to Princess’s outburst, letting her leave with his only means of escape? Surely he realized she would be free to contact authorities, alm
ost before he could effectively secure the building.
Why did he meticulously focus his plan around “highly intelligent” children to people his “Brave New World,” but include teachers, for whom he had only disdain, among his hostages? Did he presume to be the one who would “reincarnate” a select few of his own choosing?
Why did he disdain human companionship and normal social interaction for the most part, and yet gather around him—for the perpetration of his one great masterstroke—a set of colleagues that included a cousin, a business investor, and a former coworker, as well as his wife and daughter? The “fun and games” reference made in his diary just prior to the takeover seems almost ludicrously at odds with his much more frequent and well-documented preference for self-isolation.
Finally, why did a man who apparently so carefully oversaw every facet of the hostage takeover, abruptly leave it all to his wife and disappear into the restroom? None of the hostages report his giving Doris any instructions before he changed the trigger string from his wrist to hers. He just did so and left.
Some witnesses observed that just before David turned the bomb over to Doris and headed to the restroom, he was sweating profusely. If his physical illness did not cause him to leave the classroom, what did? There could be no exact determination of his state of mind (only reasonably logical speculation), and hostages became convinced that something specifically caused David to become tense and anxious as the afternoon wore on. They felt this something mount until it became more than David could handle.