Pope returned to jail, awaits judge’s ruling

Ed Koch and Bill Gang

Monday, Jan. 31, 2000 | 11:28 a.m.

An arraignment on Friday will determine whether Conan Pope, the 15-year-old charged with killing his father, stays in the Clark County Detention Center until a trial or whether he can return to house arrest.

Pope was indicted last Friday with murder in the Jan. 6 shooting death of 62-year-old Frank Pope during the father's tirade over dirty dishes. The indictment from a grand jury, which hears evidence in secret, replaces the need for a public preliminary hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence for a trial.

Conan Pope was returned to jail Friday from house arrest in the home of a friend's family after prosecutors said that he had made threats of going on a shooting rampage like the one that occurred April 20 at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., where 15 people died.

The 17-year-old boyfriend of Pope's sister, Desiree, is expected to testify Friday that Pope talked about "going to school and killing people and stuff like that, like Columbine."

The boyfriend told police Jan. 21 that Pope made his comments in a conversation a week before Frank Pope was killed, according to court documents.

If convicted of first-degree murder with the use of a deadly weapon in his father's death, Pope faces a life prison term with or without the possibility of parole after 40 years. Because Pope is under 16, prosecutors are barred from pursuing the death penalty.

Based on the alleged Columbine remark and a report that Frank Pope told a friend a week before his death that he feared his son was going to shoot him, Chief District Judge Lee Gates issued a warrant for Conan Pope's arrest and ordered he be held on $125,000 bail.

According to court records unsealed last week, a friend of Frank Pope told police that Frank said he was having problems with his son and that he felt his life was in danger.

Conan Pope has said he was defending Desiree when he shot his father with a Winchester .357-caliber lever-action rifle -- a gift given to him by his dad, according to court records.

Deputy Special Public Defender Kristina Wildeveld said outside the courtroom Friday that Frank Pope had a record for sexual molestation in Massachusetts. He also killed one of his children in 1962 in Washington and was investigated on allegations he abused his two teenage children in Las Vegas in 1997.