DOCUMENT: K-12, Crime

Teen Charged With Columbine-like Plot

Indiana teen sought 'instant recognition' via Columbine-like attack

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Teen Charged With Columbine-like Plot

JUNE 4--A teenage boy charged with plotting a Columbine-like massacre at his Indiana high school wrote that he wanted to 'break the current shooting record' and could 'kill anyone without feeling sorry because society sucks!!!'

In entries in a spiral notebook seized from his locker in late-April, Russell Frantom, 16, noted that he sought the 'instant recognition' that a school shooting would afford him, and that he and a friend had picked September 11 as the attack date 'because its already iconic.'

Details of Frantom's notebook entries are included in a search warrant affidavit unsealed yesterday. The warrant authorized cops to search the home of an Ohio man with whom Frantom corresponded about the school plot via his MySpace page.

According to the affidavit, a copy of which you'll find here, Frantom and alleged coconspirator Lee Billi, 33, used the code word 'parties' when referring to attacks, and 'party favors' when referring to guns and bombs.

Police began investigating Frantom after he posted an inflammatory April 8 comment on a public MySpace page for Penn High School. Referring to Columbine gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris as 'martyrs,' Frantom wrote that he wished that a school attack would occur. The online discussion thread was prompted by the discovery of a threat written on the wall of a school bathroom warning that 'everyone was going to die' on April 18.

Frantom and Billi are facing conspiracy to commit murder charges. Billi was also hit with child porn charges after investigators discovered illicit images of minors during a search of his computer equipment. (9 pages)