The first time Jeff Weise tried to commit suicide, in the spring of 2004, he couldn't bring himself to complete the task. He sliced his wrists with a box cutter, but he lived to chronicle the incident on the Web in characteristically dramatic prose. "I had went through a lot of things in my life that had driven me to a darker path than most choose to take," he wrote. "I split the flesh on my wrist with a box opener, painting the floor of my bedroom with blood I shouldn't have spilt."
The second time Weise tried to kill himself, a few months later, he looped a belt around his neck and pulled it taut. A friend found him and called the tribal police on the Indian reservation of Red Lake, Minn., home of the Ojibwa tribe. As the squad car pulled away from his house, Weise leaned toward the officer in the front seat and said, his voice raspy and strained, "I need help."
The third time Weise attempted suicide, the 16-year-old not only pulled it off but also took nine people with him. Last March, in an incident that has been classified as the worst school shooting since Columbine, Weise shot his grandfather and the woman who lived with them, and stole his grandfather's 12-gauge shotgun, Glock .40-caliber semiautomatic handgun, and police cruiser. He then drove to Red Lake High School, where he killed an unarmed security guard, a teacher who summoned God for help, and five students, before turning the gun on himself.