TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

"I felt flushed all over. I broke out in a rash and felt weak," Beeler said, adding that a student got her help. "Fortunately, I must not have had enough consumption because it can close your esophagus and you can die from both of those substances."

Hydrochloric acid is a highly corrosive liquid that, if concentrated, can cause severe burns on the skin and can be deadly if swallowed or inhaled. It's also a main component in stomach acid, aiding in breaking down and digesting food.

Zinc chloride is a white powder that is considered highly toxic if ingested. It is used in processing textiles and soldering metals.

Some Raleigh residents awoke Thanksgiving Day and found Ku Klux Klan fliers in their front yards.

The fliers, titled "The First Thanksgiving Proclamation," include a reprint of a 330-year-old proclamation setting aside June 29, 1676, as a day of thanksgiving in Charlestown, Mass. At the bottom were the address and phone number for the Klan's national office in Arkansas and a plug for the KKK's online telecast, "This is the Klan."

Nobody at the Klan's national office in Harrison, Ark., responded to a phone message left Thursday.

In the past, Klan leaders have said they encourage people to print fliers off their Web site, wrap them in old newspapers and distribute them in neighborhoods.

WEAVERVILLE — She was a 19-year-old fireball with a love for life and family and a heart with a soft spot for strays — people or animals.

And on Sunday, it was these traits her father shared between tears a day after Karen Elizabeth Herndon was killed in a hit-and-run in Woodfin.

Herndon, a North Buncombe High School graduate, was struck after she had gotten out of the car her mother was driving on Weaverville Highway Saturday morning after an argument with another passenger, her father Charlie Herndon said.

She became the victim of the second hit-and-run in the county in about one week. Last Saturday, a hit-and-run in an Oteen mobile home park left a toddler dead.

Herndon was struck by a vehicle on the 72nd block of the highway about 2:30 a.m., said Charlie Robinson, with the Woodfin Police Department.

She had been living at home in Weaverville while attending Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College after a stint at UNC Charlotte, her father said.

“She was very likeable, very bright,” said Charlie Herndon, who couldn’t help but laugh at himself. “I sound like a father, don’t I?”

But as he began to explain what his daughter was like — gregarious with a very subtle and dry sense of humor — the tears began to come.

“I have a note right here on my desk from her. It says, ‘You’re such a loser,’” he said. “And it’s the most important note I have right now — because that meant that she loved me. We were very close. We had a very open, honest relationship. It worked for us, for our family.”

She is survived by her father; her mother, Gwendolynn; her sister, Lindsey Cheryl Herndon, 21; her foster brother Micah Herndon, 17; and her paternal grandparents, Clifford and Dorothy Perkins Herndon.

“We will miss her every day,” Charlie Herndon said.

Karen Herndon was also a member of the New Bridge Baptist Church, where she joined on her own despite growing up in a nonchurch-going family, her father said.

That was where she spent much of her time — going on mission trips to West Virginia, Oklahoma and Honduras, Charlie Herndon said.

“And if we didn’t put a stop to it, she would have had every stray in the neighborhood in the house — people and animals,” he said. “But she also had a temper, like any teenager.”

And it was an apparent argument that sent the 19-year-old out of the vehicle and onto the road early Saturday morning.

“She had an argument with another person in the car and got out,” her father said. “My wife was panicked and just trying to figure out what to do. There’s very little detail right now.”

Robinson said police are investigating and working to get a description of the vehicle that hit the woman.

Anyone with information should call the Woodfin Police Department at 253-4889.

Investigators knew in April that a teenager now accused of killing his father before opening fire outside Orange High School was fascinated with school shootings, according to a high-school acquaintance who received a video from him saying he was going to kill himself.
Alvaro Castillo sent Anna Rose the video last spring. It came in the mail April 22, two days after Castillo was picked up by Orange County Sheriff's deputies and committed to a local hospital after his parents reported that he was suicidal.

Rose was away at college when the video arrived at her family's home, but her mother, Bonnie, immediately called 911 when her son started watching it that night. A deputy came to get the tape.

Rose's brother played some of the video over the phone to her that night, and she was so scared she didn't return home for a couple of months, she said.

Rose said in an interview Wednesday that she met with Lt. Larry Faucette at the Orange County Sheriff's Office a few days later and Faucette showed her Castillo's journal, which included photographs of her and detailed his admiration for the shooters in the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School near Littleton, Colo.

The day that Castillo was committed, April 20, was the seven-year anniversary of those shootings, in which two high school boys killed 13 people before killing themselves.

Rose said Faucette told her that he had read the journal and that Castillo was "sick" and would be in the hospital for a long time.

But a few days after that, Rose said, Faucette called to say that Castillo had been released.

"I kept saying, 'Please don't let him go, he's not stable no matter what they think,' " Rose said.

Castillo had a high school crush on Rose. In a video mailed to The Chapel Hill News last week, he brandished a gun with her name on it. The video also showed a second gun labeled Arlene.

Someone from the sheriff's office might have approached Castillo, according to a letter that arrived at the Roses' home after the Orange High School shooting. Castillo wrote to Anna Rose that he knew her "parents are scared."

"The sheriff told me you went to the police department so I would not bother you again. I kept my word," he wrote.

In the letter, dated Aug. 27 and postmarked the day of the school shooting, Castillo also said he would "die in three days or so," and that he wouldn't "go after" Rose's little sister, who is enrolled at Orange High School.

Bonnie Rose said she couldn't understand why the system could not do more to protect her daughter and family.

"That's why I sent an e-mail asking people to pray," Bonnie Rose said. "I realized that was the only protection we had, is if God protected us."

HILLSBOROUGH - On a homemade video, Alvaro Castillo confesses to shooting his father four times, then walks into a room and records the sheet-draped corpse.

"Look at me. I'm not even crying. I just killed him, and I feel fine," the Hillsborough teenager says into the camera.

"I'm not afraid anymore," he says in the video's final scene. "I have to die."

The tape, along with a handwritten letter, arrived at the office of The Chapel Hill News on Thursday, the day after Castillo was arrested and charged with a shooting at Orange High School, and told sheriff's deputies he had killed his father.

In the video, Castillo holds the camera close to his face and says he plans to kill himself and his father. Later, the teenager records a body slumped on a sofa. Two bare legs stick out from under a blood-flecked sheet.

Most of the hour-plus video shows Castillo aiming the camera at a small television playing violent movies. They include "Scarface," "Predator," "The Shining," "Natural Born Killers" and a documentary, "Zero Hour: Massacre at Columbine High."

Castillo narrates the violence, sometimes chiming in word-for-word with actors. He repeatedly uses the mute button to silence profanity.

Grisly scenes prompt a throaty laugh.

"Beautiful," Castillo says, during "Scarface's" final bloody scene, when the lead character floats dead in a swimming pool.

On the video, Castillo notes that he first watched these movies when he was 8 to 10 years old. He taped them, he says, to show how violent the world is.

Castillo also says on the video that his father slapped -- but never punched -- his head, back and rear. His father disciplined his mother "like a child," he says.

The letter also claims abuse: "His threats and abuse took their toll on me."

In another scene, Castillo cocks a shotgun and puts the barrel in his mouth, then points it at the camera. The word "Arlene" is written on a scrap of paper taped to the weapon.

Castillo says his suicide would be "the perfect instant killing."

Near the end of the video, Castillo addresses the parents of the students he plans to kill, displaying a shotgun shell and a 9 mm bullet. He encourages parents to shoot themselves and reunite with their children in the afterlife.

"Once again, parents, I'm sorry about this. I'm sorry about the pain you'll go through," Castillo says. "If you want to be with your children, go with them."

Castillo pants in front of the camera, describing his father's killing.

Before turning off the camera, he says, "It's time."

We were selective, however. We decided not to do what Castillo had asked in his letter -- simply make the tape public and allow him, in the letter writer's mind, to join the high school violence pantheon. Instead, we chose the four brief clips that illustrated the progress of the video and complemented the rest of our reporting.

We did not excerpt the graphic sections of the video (where he shows the camera his father's body, for instance) or scenes where he clearly seeks to glamorize his actions.

We will not post the entire video, nor will we give copies to other media. We will work with the AP to make one of the excerpts available to other news outlets.

Investigators say Castillo was obsessed with Columbine. During a search of the Castillo home on Lipps Lane in Hillsborough, deputies found a diary entitled "Mass Murders and School Shootings of the 20th and 21st Centuries," as well as directions to the homes of the Columbine school shooters.

Eyewitness News has learned that the Castillo family knew of this obsession, saying Alvaro Castillo identified with the deep depression of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but never anticipated it could lead to violence.

The suspect's mother, Victoria, and sister, also named Victoria, were present in the courtroom when Castillo was charged. Castillo smiled at them as he was brought in. The women did not comment, but they were visibly shaken during the court appearance.

A neighbor of the Castillo family, Tim Fluet, was also at the courthouse and described the family as friendly and kind. He said that Victoria Castillo had mentioned to him her son's obsession with the Columbine shooting in Littleton, Colorado which occurred on April 20, 1999.

When asked by reporters how long he had been obsessed with the Columbine tragedy, he said, "Since I was ten."

When asked why, he said he didn't know.

Sheriff's deputies said Castillo had a previous run-in with law enforcement. He told a law enforcement officer during a traffic stop on April 20th of this year -- the seven-year anniversary of the Columbine shooting -- that he was suicidal.

He will appear in court again on September 11th for a probable cause hearing.

The Chapel Hill News on Thursday received a package with a videotape and a letter signed with the name of the man charged Wednesday with killing his father in Hillsborough. The murder charge came after police arrested Alvaro Rafael Castillo in connection with a shooting at Orange High School on Wednesday that slightly injured two students.

The letter writer says he knows “almost every detail” of the 1999 shooting at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo. In that well-publicized incident, 13 students were killed and 23 people were injured by two students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who then killed themselves.

“I sent you the tape because I do not want them locked away just [like] the Basement Tapes that Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made,” the letter says. “The police would not release them. This will not happen again. I want the world to see myself.”

The writer later adds: “I also like to read about massacres like the one that occurred in Red Lake, Minnesota by Jeff Weise,” referring to the deaths of 10 people, eight of them at a school, in a shooting rampage in March 2005. “I must remind the world!”

The letter ends with, “I will die. I have wanted to die for years. I’m sorry.”

“I know I am insane. Ever since I was young, I knew there was something wrong with me,” the letter says. The writer calls himself “a depressed and traumatized individual.”

The letter speaks of a father who is verbally abusive to the writer, his sisters and his mother. It speaks of the father hitting members of the family on occasion. “His threats and abuse took their toll on me,” the letter says.

It also says the writer was shown pornography by a friend at 8 years old. “From that day on, I was disgusted with the world,” the letter says.

(Hillsborough, NC-AP) August 31, 2006 - Authorities say the 19-year-old man accused of killing his father and then injuring two students during a shooting at Orange High School in North Carolina sent an e-mail to the Columbine High School principal warning of his attack.

The message was sent Wednesday morning by Alvaro Castillo to Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis. It read: "Dear Principal, In a few hours you will probably hear about a school shooting in North Carolina. I am responsible for it. I remember Columbine. It is time the world remembered it. I am sorry. Goodbye."

The first reports of what happened early Wednesday afternoon at Orange High School summoned a modern nightmare:

A trench-coat-clad teenager with guns and pipe bombs, shots fired, students hurt.

Asked why he had gone to Orange High School on Wednesday, Castillo, a former student, responded, "Columbine. Remember Columbine," AP reported.

About 1 p.m., an armed man "flew" past the parking lot's guard house in a gray minivan and fired about eight shots, said Anne D'Annunzio, an Orange County Schools spokeswoman.

Two students were injured, neither seriously. Senior Tiffaney Utsman's right shoulder was grazed by a bullet. An unidentified male student was hurt by broken glass, D'Annunzio said.

Utsman had been released from a hospital by Wednesday evening, said her mother, Champe Revis. "My feeling about Tiffaney is absolute relief that she really was not hurt at all," Revis said.

Courtney Long, a senior, said she was outside when she saw a man jump from a minivan wearing a black hat, black trench coat, black sunglasses and a white T-shirt. He set off a long line of firecrackers, she said, sending up smoke. She said he fired at car tires, then at a school window, sending a bullet through the glass.

From a patio outside, senior Scott Cook heard an explosion and turned to see a man standing amid smoke in the parking lot.

"He pulled out a gun. ... He fired in the air, then he aimed it toward the school. At that time, I high-tailed it out of there and ran into the building," Cook said.

At the Orange High School parking lot, deputies found ammunition, weapons and homemade pipe bombs in the van. The Durham County Sheriff's Office bomb squad removed the bombs.

Alvaro Rafael Castillo, 19, of Hillsborough has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of his father Rafael Huezo Castillo following Wednesday’s shocking school shooting at Orange High School.

“Sacrifice, it’s all sacrifice.” Castillo said when asked why he murdered his father and shot at Orange High students. “We all have to die for the world is cruel.”

Orange County Sheriff Lindy Pendergrass said the younger Castillo confessed to killing his father after deputies arrested him for firing on his former high school.

After the confession, deputies moved on the information. They forced their way inside of the Castillos’ home on Lipps Lane near the Durham County line. Inside, they found the boy’s father shot to death.

When asked about his father, Castillo said, “He made us suffer all his life. Someone had to put him out of his misery. He abused me and my family. He was abused, too.”

As he was being forced into a police car, Castillo shouted out, “Columbine! Remember Columbine! Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold! Nathan Leopold, it’s his birthday! Sacrifice!” As the car was driving away, Castillo made his hand into the shape of a gun, put two fingers that were simulating a barrel into his mouth and then acted like he was shooting.

It should be noted that August 30, 1971 is actually the day Nathan Leopold died – not his birthday. Leopold and Richard Loeb gained notoriety in 1924 after they murdered a 14-year-old boy. The two University of Chicago students believed they were so smart they could pull off the perfect crime.