Details of student's writings revealed
By Peter Mathews
CENTRAL KENTUCKY BUREAU
WINCHESTER - A lot of people think William Poole is being unfairly persecuted for writing zombie fiction.
That's the theory on the Internet, where the George Rogers Clark High School student's story has attracted interest worldwide. But the evidence presented yesterday in Clark District Court was quite different.
Poole, 18, was arrested last month on a charge of terroristic threatening. Authorities said he had made threats against students, teachers and police.
Poole's grandmother found the writings at their Winchester home and was worried enough to call police.
In an interview after his arrest, Poole told WLEX-TV (Channel 18) that he had simply written a fictional story about zombies taking over an unidentified high school.
Sympathizers who saw the news story on the Internet have sent dozens of e-mail messages to police, the county attorney, teachers and others. In e-mail and on Web bulletin boards, they have suggested local authorities are "idiots" and "incestuous hillbillies" who were out to take away Poole's right to free speech.
However, Poole's teachers told police they had not assigned such a story or talked to him about it -- and had they seen it, they would have been obligated to report him to authorities.
And, as it turns out, Poole's writings include no brain-eating dead folks.
What they do contain, Winchester police Detective Steven Caudill testified yesterday, is evidence that he had tried to solicit seven fellow students to join him in a military organization called No Limited Soldiers.
The writings describe a bloody shootout in "Zone 2," the designation given to Clark County.
"All the soldiers of Zone 2 started shooting," Caudill read on the witness stand. "They're dropping every one of them. After five minutes, all the people are lying on the ground dead."
The papers contain two different dates of Poole's death.
Poole has corresponded with someone in Barbourville who claimed to have acquired cash and guns in break-ins, Caudill testified.
No other arrests are pending, he said, but authorities are looking for other potential suspects listed in Poole's papers who are identified only by pseudonyms.
District Judge Brandy O. Brown ordered the documents put under seal because they contain references to juveniles. She sent the case to the grand jury and rejected a request from Poole's attorney to lower his $5,000 cash bond. He is being held in the Clark County jail.
The story has attracted attention from traditional journalists at 60 Minutes and CNN, as well as Web sources such as morons.org and horrorwatch.com.
Authorities had released little information about the nature of the threats, and many people assumed from the WLEX story that Poole had been made a victim.
"I do find it sad that they would stunt the intellectual growth of a young person that way," one Web poster wrote.
Another offered a suggested headline for a parody publication: "Kentucky Police safe from Zombies because of lack of Brains."
Caudill said he had received more than 50 e-mails and perhaps a dozen "nasty phone calls."
But after school shootings such as the one at Columbine High School in Colorado, where 13 people died, authorities must take threats seriously, he said in an interview.
"Do we as a society want the police to stop there -- that he didn't mean it?" he asked. "I'm not going to take that responsibility and have children's and police officers' blood on my hands."
I'd be more worried if someone started saying stuff about the KKK.....
