Police trying to sort out sniper’s twisted tale

Scott Sonner

Sunday, Jan. 10, 1999 | 9:02 a.m.

RENO, Nev. - A cold, calculating killer? Or a ploy to plead insanity?

A deeply disturbed individual incapable of feeling other's pain? Or a "goofball" with a wild imagination trying to make the most of his 15 minutes of fame?

Prosecutors are convinced Christopher Lee Merritt, 20, Mankato, Minn., is the sniper who opened fire on Interstate 80 near Reno this past week, hitting one man in the chest and closing the highway for five hours.

But they don't know what to make of the story he is telling news reporters about his plans for a cross-country killing spree.

Merritt - a part-time hog farmer, film buff and would-be poet who describes his work as a cross between Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino and gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson - says he wanted to make some kind of "satirical" statement about America's fixation with violence in books and movies.

He said it strikes him as a double standard to condemn an accused killer like himself, while flocking to theaters to live vicariously through the lives of characters who murder on the big screen.

He said he planned to kill at least 10 people "for my own enjoyment ... my own amusement.

"There's not a whole lot of difference between contemplating an act and actually going through with it," Merritt told The Associated Press in a jailhouse interview.

Is he insane? Is he making it up? Did he really have a plan?

"They are not entirely mutually exclusive," Dr. Ole Thienhaus, chairman of psychology department at University of Nevada-Reno., said about the possibilities.

Thienhaus is prohibited from discussing the psychological examination he gave Merritt this past week. But he said the comments Merritt has made in the media make it difficult to determine whether his story is on the level.

"He could be truly mentally ill," Thienhaus said.

"There are some people who commit crimes when they are under the sway of a hallucination or a delusion. They are so demented they don't know left from right.

"There's also a possibility that a person would never normally become symptomatic, but under certain circumstances snap," he said.

On the other hand, "I wouldn't discount the possibility that a defendant in a situation like this would make up stories for a variety of motives."

Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick said it's not unusual for criminals to exaggerate the circumstances of their crime once they are in the media spotlight.

"They want their 15 minutes of fame," Gammick said.

Merritt, who graduated from high school in Rock Port, Mo., and studied philosophy and astronomy briefly at a college in Minnesota, told an AP reporter he did not believe there was any insanity defense in Nevada. He is wrong about that.

"What is sane?" Merritt said during an interview. "I know where I am. ... I'm able to function in society for the most part, although I do have some social withholdings. I'm not terrifically good in social environments."

Merritt talked in a calm, steady voice, showing little emotion throughout a 45-minutes interview. He was articulate, but struggled at times to explain the point he was trying to make about why it was ironic he was receiving so much media attention after he'd set out to "mock" the attention the American public gives to violence.

He made a number of references to violent movies, including "Pulp Fiction" and "Natural Born Killers."

"Violently harming other people is not very openly popular," Merritt said.

But "if you track down the number of 'Rambo' and 'Conan' movies that get rented out, I'm sure more than plenty of people have interest in things and probably vicariously think out through the characters but don't openly express any inclination to do so. It's sort of a dual standard I guess," he said.

Merritt already apparently has embellished his account of a hog he shot on a feedlot near Nicollet, Minn.

"I had a plan of wiping out the entire operation, but I was afraid I'd be interrupted (by the owner) before I could finish what I was doing," Merritt told AP at the Washoe County Jail.

"Being picked up afterwards wasn't really a fear in my mind. But being interrupted was," he said.

Merritt told investigators in Reno that he used the dead hog's blood to scrawl "Johnny Wheaties" on a wall - an unexplained reference.

But sheriff's deputies in Minnesota said the words actually were written with a marker.

Merritt had a rifle, a shot gun, three knives and 3,000 rounds of ammunition in his pickup when he was stopped on Interstate 15 near Las Vegas Monday night.

He confessed to the sniper shooting, saying he fired between 17 and 22 rounds at motorists Monday on Interstate 80.

"I had a feeling of gratification while I was shooting," Merritt told AP.

He originally told detectives he shot at the cars with the idea of making them crash so he could rob the motorists, prompting Washoe County Sheriff Richard Kirkland to call him a "goofball."

Merritt "intended to approach the crashed cars like a Good Samaritan and steal anything of value," the criminal complaint said.

"He stated that he decided to shoot to kill the drivers because if he shot the tires and caused an accident, the drivers would later be able to identify him."

The more complex story about the killing spree has emerged later in his interviews with reporters.

"If he said he planned to kill, we have got to take that seriously," Washoe County Sheriff's Sgt. Bob Towery said.

"We have to backtrack and make sure he didn't do anything across the country," he said.

Dr. Thienhaus said Merritt's comments could indicate a case of "what psychologists call isolation.

"They can give a very elaborate discussion of the abstract and themselves relative to what happened, at the expense of relating it to either himself or to any emotional pain that may be caused, not to mention physical pain," he said.

"It is a defense mechanism. To some degree all of us do that. We do things we don't like doing and we rationalize them away. To some degree that is a healthy mechanism or we couldn't function in a hostile world.

"But if you take it too far, you lose that inhibition, that threshold that prevents you from doing it at a cost to others. That threshold is empathy."