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The Red Lake Shootings · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: School shootings. Yeah, it's a phrase that brings up a
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  lot of emotions, doesn't it. It's tough to even think about,
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  you know, the darkness that finds its way into the
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  every day. And that's exactly what we're going to do today,
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  dive deep into a tragedy that shook the nation back
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  in two thousand and five, the Red Lake shootings. Ten
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  lives lost, including the shooter red Lake Senior High School.
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  At the time, it was the deadliest school shooting in
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  US history. And we're here to do more than just
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  recap what happened. We're going way beyond the headlines to
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  try and understand why, what could possibly lead to something
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  so awful. At the heart of it all is a
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  sixteen year old Jeff Weiss, a student at the school. Right,
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  So who was he? What was going on in his life?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: Well, his story starts with a lot of trouble early on.
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  His parents split before he was even born, and his
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  childhood was really rough. Then, when he was only eight,
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  his dad died by suicide. It was a standoff with
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  the police.
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  Speaker 2: Oh wow.
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  Speaker 1: And as if that wasn't enough, his mom had this
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  terrible accident, severe brain damage. Can you imagine eight years
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  old losing your dad in such a traumatic way and
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  then your mom is essentially gone from your life.
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  Speaker 2: It really makes you think about how that would impact
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  a young kid.
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  Speaker 1: Well, we have to look at those early traumas, especially
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  how his dad died. Studies show that children who lose
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  a parent, especially in such a violent way like that,
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  they're way more likely to have mental health struggles later
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  on depression PTSD, even thoughts of suicide themselves.
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  Speaker 2: And that's what we see happening with Weiss. Right. He
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  ends up living with his grandmother on the Red Lake
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  Indian Reservation, and things start to get really disturbing when
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  you look at what he was doing online. Okay, he
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  used these aliases regret and to deSingel, which is I
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  think that's German for angel of death.
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  Speaker 1: Oh gosh.
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  Speaker 2: And he was posting these violent animations online, like shootings
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  and stuff, and it's eerie, and one of them, the
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  character actually kills himself. Wow. And it gets worse. There's
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  proof he was mixed up with neo Nazi groups online.
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  His posts on these forums were really disturbing, really hateful stuff.
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  It's like he was looking for somewhere to belong you know,
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  and the worst corners of the Internet were it.
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  Speaker 1: So we've got a troubled childhood. He's obsessed with violence online,
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  maybe even embraces these extreme beliefs. But that's not all.
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  Weiss was bullied at school, called a goth kid because
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  of how he looked. On top of all that, who
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  knows what kind of mental health issues he might have
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  had that warm't being treated. That's a lot for anyone
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  to handle, let alone a teenager.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you start to see all these individual risk factors,
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  these threads of trauma, isolation, and his mental state all
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  coming together. Yeah, like a perfect storm brewing in this
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  kid's life.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just heartbreaking because there were signs he was
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  trying to reach out. Weiss tried to kill himself twice
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  before the shooting even happened, even wrote about it online.
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  He was prescribed prozac, but who knows if he was
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  getting the right kind of mental health care. Was the
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  dosage right? You know, we're left with these.
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  Speaker 2: Questions, and this is where we have to be so careful.
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  We're trying to understand what led to this, not make
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  excuses for what Weiss did. For sure, It's about recognizing
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  that everyone who commits an act of violence has a
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  complex story exactly.
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  Speaker 1: And to really understand Red Lake, we need to take
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  a step back, look past Jeff Weiss himself and look
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  at where he came from. So we're talking about the
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  Red Lake Indian Reservation back in two thousand and five.
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  What was life like there? Could that have played a
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  role in all this? Yeah, when you look at the numbers,
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  is pretty stark. Unemployment was around forty percent, which is
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  more than three times the national average. Back then, almost
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  half the families there were living below the poverty line.
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  Poverty was a fact of life. And then there's the
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  history of.
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  Speaker 2: Trauma exactly, generations of being held down, forced to conform treaties,
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  broken left and right. It leaves a mark on a
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  community and that history it can show itself in a
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  lot of ways. Violence, substance abuse, suicide. We saw it
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  with Jeff and sadly, so many others on the reservation.
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  Speaker 1: And get this, Red Lake is a closed reservation. Only
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  Ojibwe members can live there or own land. The idea
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  was to protect their heritage, their independence. All this meant
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  a lot of isolation. The closest time with the grocery
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  store was over thirty miles away. Think about that, that
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  was the reality for people, limited access to just the basics,
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  barely any opportunities to make a better life. It's like
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  being trapped. How's a young person supposed to feel hopeful
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  in that environment.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got to think about what that does to
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  you mentally. You grow up surrounded by poverty, no opportunity,
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  and that weight of history on your shoulders. It can
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  make you feel like there's just no way out, like
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  things will never get better.
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  Speaker 1: And it's just tragic. You know. A year before the shooting,
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  there was this study found that a scary number of
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  high schoolers on the reservation had thought about suicide. It's
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  a really bleak look at the mental health crisis happening
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  at Red Lake.
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  Speaker 2: It really is. And you can't separate these things, the poverty,
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  the historical trauma. It all breeds despair, and that despair
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  can become mental health issues and in the most extreme
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  cases violence.
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  Speaker 1: It's heavy stuff, and we have to remember these issues.
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  They don't excuse the violence, but they help us understand
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  the world it happened in. It'd be like trying to
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  understand a plant without knowing anything about the soil. It's
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  growing in. You can't have one without the other. So
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  you've got this backdrop of despair, this feeling that there's
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  no hope, it seems like. And then March twenty first,
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  two thousand and five arrives. That's the day Jeff Wise
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  takes his grandfather's guns he was a police officer, the
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  very weapons meant to protect the community, and he drives
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  to Red Lake Senior High School. He goes inside and
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  shoots the security guard and a teacher kills them both.
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  Then he goes into a classroom and that's where he
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  murders five students, shoots and injures others. It's hard to
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  even hear the details. These weren't just names on a list.
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  These were real people, with their own stories, their own dreams,
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  and it was all taken away. And in the middle
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  of all that chaos, all that heartbreak, the people of
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  Red Lake they had to find a way to heal.
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  Speaker 2: And that's what we'll talk about next. How does a
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  community that's hurting so badly, how did they even begin
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  to put the pieces back together?
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  Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine, you know, after something so awful,
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  where do you even start to heal? How does a
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  community shattered like that, how do they even begin to
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  pick up the pieces? But that's what's so powerful about
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  what happened at Red Lake right after the shooting. The
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  community came together at the high school gym right and
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  it wasn't just a sad gathering, you know. It was
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  really incredible, like a testament to how strong people can be.
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  They combined traditional Jibwe ceremonies with Catholic practices. It showed
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  the real mix of the reservation. You just picture it.
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  The air thick with sage burned to cleanse and guide
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  the spirits. Drums echoing in the gym, each beat a
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  reminder of their deep spiritual connection to their ancestors, to
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  each other.
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  Speaker 2: It's those traditions, those rituals passed down for generations. This
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  where they found comfort, where they found strengths. It shows
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  how powerful community is when things fall apart. It's not
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  about pretending the pain isn't there. It's about facing it
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  head on together, finding strength and shared traditions in mourning
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  as one.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and those traditions, they were so important to the
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  long process of healing. But like any tragedy this big,
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  there were legal things to deal with and a search
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  for answers something that went beyond the reservation. They reached
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  a million dollar settlement with the families of the victims.
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  It was a small step, but an important one in
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  acknowledging their loss, but the community they also wanted to
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  know why could it have been stopped? And that question
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  it hung over everything, leading investigators down a really complicated path.
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  One name that came up was Louis ju Dane. His
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  dad was the tribal chairman at the time. He'd been
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  sending emails with wispoord happened, and looking back some of
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  those messages they kind of hinted at a plan.
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  Speaker 2: Wow.
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  Speaker 1: They ended up dropping most of the charges against Jordaane,
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  but it's still a haunting thought. Did we miss something?
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  Were there warning signs that we as a society just
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  aren't ready to see it?
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  Speaker 2: That's the hardest part, isn't it. Looking back, it's easy
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  to say we should have seen it coming, But these
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  situations they're never simple. It's a mistake to oversimplify, to
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  say there's one one reason or one mischance that caused
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  all of this.
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  Speaker 1: It's about understanding how complicated it is exactly we.
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  Speaker 2: Need to be having real honest conversations that acknowledge how
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  powerful mental health is, how much violence there is in
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  our world, and yeah, those systemic issues that make despair
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  almost inevitable.
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  Speaker 1: It's about realizing that hurt people, they hurt other people.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's about building a society where those hurting
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  people they can find help, they can find healing before
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  they ever think about hurting someone else.
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  Speaker 1: The Red Lake shootings, all school shootings, they leave this scar,
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  this awful reminder of what can happen when despare festers
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  and nobody notices the warning signs. There's no simple solution,
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  no quick fix. But if we can build communities where
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  people like Jeff Weiss, where they feel seen, heard, supported,
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  where we talk openly about mental health and getting help
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  is easy, maybe, just maybe we can stop these tragedies
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  from ever happening again. And that's what we have to
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  think about as we move forward. How can we, in
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  our own lives and in our communities be more proactive.
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  How can we encourage understanding, empathy, and support, Because sometimes
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  being brave isn't about facing the violence, it's about stopping
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  it before it starts.