Father of 15-year-old who killed 2 at Wisconsin religious school faces
felony charges
[May 09, 2025]
By SCOTT BAUER and TODD RICHMOND
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin prosecutors have charged the father of a
teenage girl who killed a teacher and fellow student in a school
shooting last year with allowing her access to the semiautomatic pistols
she used in the attack.
The criminal complaint against 42-year-old Jeffrey Rupnow of Madison
details how his daughter, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow, struggled with her
parents' divorce, showing her anger in a written piece entitled “War
Against Humanity.” Her father tried to bond with her through guns, the
complaint said, even as she meticulously planned the attack, including
building a cardboard model of the school and scheduling the shooting to
end with her suicide.
Prosecutors filed the complaint Wednesday but didn't unseal it until
after Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested Thursday and taken to the Dane County
Jail. He faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to
a person under 18 causing death and contributing to the delinquency of a
child. All of the charges are felonies.
He was scheduled to make his initial court appearance Friday. Online
court records did not list an attorney for him. Acting Madison Police
Chief John Patterson said he was cooperative throughout the
investigation. No one returned voicemails left at possible telephone
listings for him and his ex-wife, Melissa Rupnow.
Attack left 2 dead, 6 injured
Natalie Rupnow entered Abundant Life Christian School, a religious
school in Madison that offers prekindergarten through high school
classes, on Dec. 16 and opened fire in a study hall. She killed teacher
Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old student Rubi Bergara and injured six
others before she killed herself.
According to the complaint, investigators recovered 20 shell casings
from the study hall where she opened fire.
They also recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun that Jeffrey Rupnow had
purchased for her from the room and a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from
a bag the girl was carrying, the complaint says. Jeffrey Rupnow had
given that gun to her as a Christmas present in 2023, the complaint
says.
Also in the bag were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a
50-round box of 9 mm ammunition. She wore a black T-shirt emblazoned
with a bull's-eye during the attack.
Natalie Rupnow had been struggling with parents' divorce
Jeffrey Rupnow told investigators that his daughter lived with him but
had been struggling with his divorce from her mother in 2022, saying she
hated her life and wanted to kill herself. He said she used to cut
herself to the point where he had to lock up all the knives in his
house.
She had been in therapy to learn how to be more social until the spring
before the attack, he told investigators. Her mother, Melissa Rupnow,
told detectives that the therapist told her that Natalie was suffering
post-traumatic stress disorder stemming from the divorce. One of
Natalie's friends told investigators that Jeffrey Rupnow was “frequently
verbally aggressive” with Natalie and that she had told him that her
father was a “drinker,” according to the complaint.
Jeffery Rupnow told investigators that took Natalie shooting with him on
a friend's land about two years before the Abundant Life attack. She
enjoyed it, and he came to see guns as a way to connect with her. But he
was shocked at how her interest in firearms “snow balled,” he told
investigators.
He kept Natalie's pistols in a gun safe, telling her that if she ever
need them the access code was his Social Security number entered
backward. About 10 days before the school attack, he texted a friend and
said that Natalie would shoot him if he left “the fun safe open right
now," according to the complaint.
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Police tape remained after a shooting Monday at Abundant Life
Christian School on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024 in Madison, Wis. (AP
photo/Mark Vancleave, File)
The day before the school attack he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe
so Natalie could clean it. But he got distracted and wasn't sure if he
put the weapon back in the safe or locked it, according to the
complaint.
‘War Against Humanity’
A search of Natalie's room netted a six-page document the girl had
written entitled “War Against Humanity.” She started the piece by
describing humanity as “filth” and saying she hated people who don't
care and “smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can
like my own father.”
She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not
in her life and how she obtained her weapons “by lies and manipulation,
and my fathers stupidity.”
Investigators also discovered maps of the school and a cardboard model
of the building, along with a handwritten schedule that detailed how she
would being the attack at 11:30 a.m. and wipe out the first and second
floors of the school by 11:55 a.m. She planned to end the attack by
12:10 p.m. with a notation “ready 4 Death.”
She had been communicating online with people around the world about her
fascination with school shootings and weapons, Acting Madison Police
Chief John Patterson said Thursday.
Father calls teaching her gun safety ‘biggest mistake’
Jeffery Rupnow sent a message to a detective two weeks after the school
shooting saying that his biggest mistake was teaching Natalie how to
handle guns safely and urging police to warn people to change their gun
safe combinations every two to three months, the complaint said.
“Kids are smart and they will figure it out,” he wrote. “Just like
someone trying to hack your bank account. I just want to protect other
families from going through what I'm going through."
According to the complaint, after learning that Natalie was the shooter
while talking to a police officer, Melissa Rupnow began breathing very
quickly through her nose and yelled something, to the effect of, “I'm
going to kill him, I'm going to kill him," apparently referring to her
ex-husband.
Charges are latest in string of cases against parents in school
shootings
Jeffrey Rupnow is the latest parent of a school shooter to face charges
associated with an attack.
Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who
killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary
manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held
responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people
at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges
including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting
his son possess a weapon.
In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade
shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors
related to how his son obtained a gun license.
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