Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton

UPDATE, February 8, 2008: "Two Pictures Of Charles Cookie Thornton Emerge"

As we learn more about Charles "Cookie" Thornton, a picture of two completely different people emerges about the man police say killed five people at Kirkwood City Hall Thursday night.

Friends and family going back to the class of 74 describe Thornton as wonderful and outgoing.

Yet, records show, he's been dragged from council meetings in handcuffs, issued thousands of dollars in citations and had more than 100 misdemeanor convictions from the city of Kirkwood.

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UPDATE, February 8, 2008: Shooter’s brother: "He mapped out his strategy for war and executed it."

Standing across the street from the site of the killings, Gerald Thornton told reporters that his brother, Charles “Cookie” Thornton, had become “a country of himself” and was forced to “go to war” after the judicial system denied his claims of mistreatment.

“He didn’t go out shooting random people,” Gerald Thornton said. “He mapped out his strategy for war and executed it.”

Another brother, Arthur Thornton, told The Associated Press that his brother left a suicide note on his bed warning “The truth will come out in the end,” before he went on the deadly shooting spree.

Arthur Thornton, 42, said in an interview at the family’s home that he knew his brother was responsible for the killings when he read the one-line note.

“It looks like my brother is going crazy, but he’s just trying to get people’s attention,” Thornton said, explaining he believed the note reflected his brother’s growing frustration with local leaders.

Gerald Thornton said his brother’s problems with the city stemmed from disagreements over building permits. Charles Thornton owned a construction company, Cook Co., that was frequently cited for performing work without the proper permits.

Charles Thornton was cited for more than 126 violations totaling around $64,000, Gerald Thornton said.

The city’s arguments were wrong, his brother said, but when Thornton challenged them in court, his arguments were overruled. It was those failures to find justice in the courts that led him to act last night.

“I understand why he did it,” he said. “He declared war because of the actions done by the court.”

...“Those people he went after were the people listed in his problems with the city,” Thornton said. “Once he was abused by the people in that hall over there he stood up and tried to rectify it.”

...When asked if he felt for his brother’s victims, Thornton said: “No one wants to see loss of life over issues that should’ve been solved. We have educated people over there and they should’ve been able to see the things they were doing should’ve came to an end sooner.”

Thornton also raised the issue of race, suggesting that African Americans have a more difficult time exerting their rights and that his brother’s race was a factor in his difficulties with the city and in the courts.

This is absolutely sick. It is mind-boggling that Gerald Thornton is championing his brother Cookie's actions, rather than expressing sorrow and condemnation.
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Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton didn't believe in the rule of law.

He took his selfish, "above the law" behavior to deadly heights.

KIRKWOOD, Mo. -- Ten days after losing a federal lawsuit against this St. Louis suburb he insisted harassed him, a gunman stormed a council meeting and opened fire, killing two police officers and three city officials.

The gunman, identified as Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton, critically injured the city's mayor and wounded a reporter Thursday night before law enforcers fatally shot him.

"The only way that I can put into context that you might understand is that my brother went to war tonight with the people, the government that was putting torment and strife into his life," Thornton's brother, Gerald Thornton, told St. Louis' KMOV-TV.

Oh really?

Thornton decided to go to war because the "government," the mayor, police officers, and city officials were tormenting him.

So to deal with all that "strife," he killed five people.

And he ended up dead. That's usually the way these things turn out.

How was the reporter that Charles Thornton shot part of the torturing government?

I don't know how Gerald Thornton can even attempt to supply a rationale for the shootings carried out by his brother.

Tracy Panus, a St. Louis County Police spokeswoman, said the names of the victims would not be released until a news conference Friday morning. But the wounded included Mayor Mike Swoboda, who was in critical condition late Thursday in the intensive-care unit of St. John's Mercy Hospital in Creve Coeur, hospital spokesman Bill McShane said. Another victim, Suburban Journals newspaper reporter Todd Smith, was in satisfactory condition, McShane said.

Panus said the gunman killed one officer outside City Hall, then walked into the council chambers, shot another and continued pulling the trigger. A witness said the gunman yelled "Shoot the mayor!" as he fired shots in the chambers, hitting Swoboda.

Janet McNichols, a reporter covering the meeting for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, told the newspaper the meeting had just started when the shooter rushed in and opened fire with at least one weapon. He started yelling about shooting the mayor while walking around and firing, hitting police Officer Tom Ballman in the head, she said.

The shooter then went after Public Works Director Kenneth Yost, who was sitting in front of Swoboda, and shot Yost in the head, McNichols said.

She also said the shooter fired at City Attorney John Hessel, who tried to fight off the attacker by throwing chairs. The shooter then moved behind the desk where the council sits and fired more shots at council members.

What a terrifying scene!

Thornton was on a mission to assassinate the mayor and anyone else who happened to be nearby.

Thornton was often a contentious presence at council meetings; he had twice been convicted of disorderly conduct for disrupting meetings in May 2006.

Most of his ire was directed at the mayor and Yost, McNichols said.

Thornton was well-known at City Hall, often making outrageous comments at public meetings, according to the weekly Webster-Kirkwood Times.

The newspaper quoted Swoboda as saying in June 2006 that Thornton's contentious remarks over the years created "one of the most embarrassing situations that I have experienced in my many years of public service."

Swoboda's comments came during a council meeting attended by Thornton two weeks after the man was forcibly removed from the chambers. The mayor said at the time that the council considered banning Thornton from future meetings but decided against it.

Thornton said during the meeting he had been issued more than 150 tickets.

When allowed to speak during one meeting, he approached the podium with a posterboard with a picture of a donkey and began making harassing remarks about Swoboda.

In a federal lawsuit stemming from his arrests during two meetings just weeks apart, Thornton, representing himself, insisted that Kirkwood officials violated his constitutional rights to free speech by barring him from speaking at the meetings.

But a judge in St. Louis tossed out the suit Jan. 28, writing that "any restrictions on Thornton's speech were reasonable, viewpoint neutral, and served important governmental interests."

Thornton was clearly disruptive and unreasonable.

Gerald Thornton told KMOV the legal setback may have been his brother's final straw. "He has (spoken) on it as best he could in the courts, and they denied all rights to the access of protection and he took it upon himself to go to war and end the issue," he said.

Thornton wasn't a victim.

Gerald Thornton seems to want to elevate him to martyr status, a free speech warrior. That's shameful.

His brother was disorderly. He infringed on the rights of others. Free speech must be exercised responsibly, something Charles Thornton did not do.

Thornton abused his rights. He wasn't stripped of them unfairly.

This war waged by Charles Thornton was in no way justified. There is no way to rationalize what he did. He was a cold-blooded killer.