FBI: Jeff Weise Did Not Act Alone

The Washington Post reports that Jeff Weise had more than Louis Jourdain as an accomplice in the Red Lake, Minnesota shootings.

It appears that four students, including Weise and Jourdain, were directly involved in plotting the murders. Possibly as many as twenty others heard about the plan.

"There may have been as many as four of these kids who were active participants in the plot," said the official, who declined to be identified discussing an ongoing investigation. "The question is, how many other kids had some knowledge of this or had heard about it somehow? We think there were quite a few."

FBI agents plan to perform forensic analysis on 30 to 40 computers seized Friday from the high school computer laboratory, FBI and school officials said. Investigators hope to learn more from the school computers, since much of the alleged discussion and planning among Weise and his friends occurred through e-mails and instant messages, the law enforcement official said....

As the week passed in this isolated community, the FBI's continuing investigation was compounding the residents' ingrained distrust of outside authorities.

"It used to be when you saw someone who's a non-Indian coming on the reservation, there's only one reason -- he's either an FBI agent or a Mormon," said Mike Fairbanks, a 40-year law enforcement veteran and a member of the Red Lake Chippewa.

Some of the distrust was cropping up between tribal members.

"I've been getting strange looks," said Cartera Hart, 16, as she left a grocery store on the reservation. Hart, who was dressed in black and wore a hoop through her lip, said she hangs out with about a dozen students who were friends with Weise and Jourdain, who is the tribal chairman's son. Friend Alyssa Roy, 15, said, "There's going to be more and more people tormenting us and thinking we're involved."

...Some people said they were on edge as FBI agents showed up at residents' houses, and teenagers were being taken to the detention center for hours of questioning.

...Tribal chairman Floyd "Buck" Jourdain Jr. appeared at Friday's school board meeting and defended his son. "I sincerely feel my son is a victim, just like everybody else's," Jourdain said. "He's equally traumatized as anybody. He's been more traumatized, because he was a friend of Jeff Wiese's. The only thing he's being guilty of is being a friend."
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Investigators believe that twenty kids may have been aware of Weise's deadly intentions.

Two questions I have about the Red Lake shootings:

How could so many have known about the plot to kill and remained silent?

Have we become so desensitized to mass murder that a story like this no longer seems to shock us?

Something is terribly amiss when a society barely blinks at the occurrence of such horror.