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For Missouri shooter, everything was ?fan-tas-tic' ? even when falling apart
(St. Louis Post-Dispatch (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) KIRKWOOD, Mo. _ In his hands were a bank ledger, an envelope of money and a photo album.
He knocked on the door of Chuck Runnels' home and flashed that wide, toothy smile that made everyone feel comfortable calling him "Cookie."
It was Feb. 7, three hours before Charles Lee "Cookie" Thornton walked through the doors of City Hall carrying two handguns. Three hours before six people would be dead, Thornton among them.
"I need you to do me a favor," Thornton said.
Runnels said Thornton wanted him to hold on to the money and photos from a civic group they had helped to start. Thornton didn't say why. Runnels never thought to ask. The friends had known each other since kindergarten.
"I automatically assumed he was going to Florida for a couple of weeks," Runnels said. "I wish I would have said, `Cookie, why are you dropping this off?'"
Now a series of "if-onlys" flit through Runnels' mind. Did he miss a sign that something was wrong? Could he have changed anything with a question?
But no one seemed to know the level of anguish behind Thornton's smile. His deception. His delusion. His demons.
Sure, most folks around town knew about the spectacle of Thornton's protests against City Hall. The histrionics at meetings. The lawsuits.
The more than $20,000 Kirkwood had fined him for parking and other code violations? That was the least of his problems.
He had used his parents' two homes like a personal ATM, getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans, then squandering it all. The dump trucks he bought for his demolition and asphalt business had been repossessed. About a year before the killings, the IRS took out two liens against Thornton for more than $200,000.
And yet, Thornton always talked as though fortune was just around the corner. He would tell friends and family that he was doing "FAN-TAS-TIC," stretching out the word as if doing so could somehow make it true.
At least once a week, Thornton stopped by Runnels' house to chat. This time, Runnels offered him dinner. A hamburger, fried up in a skillet. The two sat on Runnels' leather sofa and watched NFL highlights on the same TV that by the end of the night would broadcast Thornton's face and the words "crazed killer."
He hung the sign on his office door: "World Headquarters of Cookco Construction."
In 1999, Cookie Thornton leased a run-down service station on Kirkwood Road. He swept it clean, painted it and talked of the prosperity that would soon be his.
"Everything at the time looked like he was on his way up," said Thornton's former attorney, Michael Gibbons, now a state senator.
In reality, Thornton was almost $500,000 in debt. Between 1992 and 1998, he had failed to file quarterly withholding tax returns 22 times. He owed his ex-wife more than $10,000 in child support for a daughter living in Florida.
Friends and family said Thornton never told them he was getting deeper into debt.
"It's not like he's going to go out on the porch and scream and shout it," Runnels said.
In the mid-1990s, when developers targeted the Meacham Park neighborhood where Thornton grew up, he supported their efforts. He told friends that plans to build a Wal-Mart and other retail spots would generate numerous jobs and business for himself.
Thornton's relatives say he was promised a good portion of the demolition work in exchange for his support. At least, that's what he told them. City leaders say they told Thornton only that minority-owned businesses within Meacham Park would get preference. But Thornton would never put together a formal bid, and he leveraged his business for work he never had.
"He went out and bought a construction truck and put himself into debt," said Rosalind Williams, Kirkwood's former director of community development.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Paul Ward, a former council member, tried to help Thornton put together bids _ a fruitless attempt Thornton just couldn't seem to appreciate.
"He believed that because he lived there he was guaranteed work, and that was that," Ward said.
Thornton did get a few demolition contracts _ between $60,000 and $80,000 worth of work, Ward recalled. About 1995, when one of Thornton's competitors won a majority of the contracts, Thornton sued the developer and his competitor, alleging racism. The case was tossed out.
"He does this and is dismayed that they didn't want to use him anymore?" Ward said.
Thornton tried to get the city to force the developer to rehire him, said John Hessel, Kirkwood's city attorney.
"I said, `Cookie, we can't do that,'" Hessel said. "That was the first time I saw him getting really mad."
Claiming he had been betrayed, Thornton used his dump trucks to block a competitor's access to job sites. When police officers showed up and asked him to move, "he would just blow his air horns," Ward said.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
Cookie Thornton filed for bankruptcy protection in December 1999 and was put on a plan to get out of debt. He would pay $4,425 a month for five years.
Within four months, Thornton stopped making the payments.
Unable to pay the $1,675 monthly rent for his "World Headquarters," he was evicted just six months after he opened shop. He was forced to move his business back to his parents' Meacham Park house. He stored his equipment on a lot across the street, a code violation that would spark his battles with Kirkwood government.
"He came across as a really good businessman," Gibbons said. "He really wasn't. The dream kept slipping away."
Meanwhile, Meacham Park was changing. What was once a cluster of aging homes and pockmarked streets in unincorporated St. Louis County was looking up. In the late 1990s, the city was using public money to invest in the annexed neighborhood, building new houses and renovating old ones. No longer were city leaders willing to turn a blind eye to obvious code violations.
Thornton received a slew of citations, ranging from parking a commercial vehicle in a residential neighborhood to illegal dumping. In 2000, Thornton got nearly 60 tickets. But that didn't deter him. The next year, he got 39.
When the city held court, Thornton often was the only one on the docket. He eventually amassed more than $20,000 in fines.
All along, he rarely discussed his finances, instead focusing his frustration on the city. He started showing up at City Council meetings in 2000, hurling insults at council members. He regularly came with props: bananas, chunks of asphalt, bales of hay and a poster of a donkey.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
The man and his antics, everyone knew about. The man with mounting debts, however, remained under wraps.
"We just did not know that person," said the Rev. John Sykes, Thornton's pastor for 15 years.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
The display sits on a table in the living room. A balloon with the words "I love you" dangles from a photograph of a smiling Cookie Thornton.
Looking at it, Annie Bell Thornton still can't believe her son shot and killed five people. For so long, she had put her faith in her son, one of nine Thornton children.
"He was a child of God," said Annie Bell Thornton, 83.
She can't recall exactly why she gave Cookie power of attorney years ago, except that it was something God had directed her to do. Long after the family's home in Meacham Park had been paid off, Cookie refinanced the house for $72,000 in 2003. A year later, he refinanced his parents' retirement home in St. Petersburg, Fla., for $230,000.
Annie Bell Thornton isn't sure why he refinanced the homes, or what happened to the money.
"The Lord told me it was in his hands," she said. "God hadn't failed me yet."
Cookie needed his brother, Arthur Thornton, to co-sign the refinancing of the St. Petersburg home. Arthur said he tentatively agreed, but his brother never passed along the loan documents and ultimately ended up forging his name.
"It was a bad deal," said Arthur, who rarely spoke to Cookie afterward.
That didn't stop Cookie from refinancing the St. Petersburg home again last year, this time getting a loan for $352,000. Records show the house went into foreclosure in January.
Since Cookie's death, the family found out that the Meacham Park house also is in foreclosure, and, at one point, Cookie's mother and brother, Gerald Thornton, who lives with Annie Bell, were days away from being homeless. They persuaded the lender to delay the sale of the home _ originally scheduled for last month. Plans call for Maureen Thornton, Cookie's second wife, to transfer ownership of the house to her mother-in-law, who will try to set up a payment plan with the bank.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Maureen and Cookie met in Kirkwood and were married in 1995. She moved to Florida four years ago, and he occasionally went there to visit her. She declined to comment for this story.
It is hard to describe the marriage during the past few years, Gerald said, though he knows Cookie rarely saw his wife during this time. It was just another secret he seemed to hold close.
"That part of his life, he didn't talk about," Gerald said.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
In the past few years, many people around town sensed something was troubling Cookie Thornton. Police Chief Jack Plummer occasionally went to lunch and out for sodas with Thornton. He hoped to talk him out of his fixation with the city. Try selling cars, Plummer would suggest. Thornton had the personality for it.
"Every time I saw Cookie, I'd stop to talk to him," Plummer said. "I was constantly trying to look for resolution. My big concern was that the obsessiveness of what he was doing was going to ruin his life."
The city tried to make itself less of a distraction for Thornton. After 2001, he was rarely ticketed. Records show that since 2002, Thornton was ticketed only four times. It had become pointless, Hessel said.
Then, the city offered to erase the fines from all the tickets, so long as Thornton agreed to be less confrontational. Thornton wouldn't hear of it, demanding his day in court. The more time passed, the more intense Thornton became. By 2005, Thornton was picketing Hessel's office.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
"Slaves again, slaves again," read the sign draped around his neck. "Why oh why in Kirkwood are we treated like slaves again."
Hessel said he tried to approach Thornton during one of the protests.
"Cookie, what's this all about?" Hessel said.
"It's a cover-up," Thornton told him. "I got it in my car."
"Let's go and look at it," Hessel said.
The two walked about 10 steps, then Thornton stopped. "I'm not giving you anything," he said.
Hessel put his hand on one of Thornton's protest signs tied to a parking meter, telling Thornton he couldn't use public property to picket. Thornton pushed Hessel off the curb and gave him a menacing look.
"He stood there and said `Touch it again!'" Hessel said.
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
After Thornton was arrested twice in 2006 for disrupting council meetings, Plummer talked with other city officials about having Thornton mentally evaluated. In the end, they decided not to intervene.
"If you didn't know Cookie and saw him standing on the street corner making noises like a donkey, sure, we'd take him in," Plummer said. "We didn't think he'd approached that point."
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
Six days before the shootings, on a Friday afternoon, Sykes opened the door of his home to find Cookie Thornton standing on the front step. A blanket of snow covered the pastor's driveway. Thornton was there to shovel it.
Sykes was Cookie and Maureen's pastor at Grace Community Bible Church in Maryland Heights, until Maureen moved to Florida. Cookie Thornton had sealed and striped the church's parking lot and took care of other projects for the church, often free of charge. Sykes wasn't surprised to see him again, ready to offer another good deed.
"He was a very giving person," Sykes said.
Thornton mentioned that he was looking forward to a jury trial in March, referring to a federal suit seeking $14 million from the city of Kirkwood. It was his only remaining legal challenge that hadn't been dismissed.
"At that point, he was still upbeat," Sykes said.
That Sunday, Thornton arrived at the Kirkwood Church of God in Meacham Park. The church was taking collections for people needing help with utility payments. He handed a check to one of the ushers and left. "It was a small amount," pastor Miguel Brinkley said, "a small token."
(END OPTIONAL TRIM)
On Tuesday, two days before the shootings, Thornton called Joe Cole, a family friend, and told him that Thornton's federal suit had been tossed out. A judge ruled that Kirkwood did not violate his free-speech rights.
"He was talking off the wall," Cole said. "He was sniffling and crying."
Gone was Thornton's last hope of vindication, his last chance to get himself and his family's finances out of trouble. Thornton choked out something about the upcoming City Council meeting.
"I just thought all he was going to do was go up to City Hall and throw chairs," Cole said. "All he said was, `They aren't going to get away with this.'"
On the day he would walk into City Hall for the last time, Thornton was finished crying. He was back to being the man who punctuated his greetings with "Praise the Lord!" Back to being the man who was always beyond the reach of a helping hand.
He sat on Runnels' sofa, the two flipping through photos of the Men's Breakfast Club, a local group that helped kids in the neighborhood. Thornton reminisced about their days at Kirkwood High School.
An hour passed. Thornton stood up and said he had to go.
"He walked out of here with that million-dollar smile," Runnels said.
Among his last words to his friend were "Glory be to God," a farewell he had spoken countless times.
Looking back, it seems a chilling line for a man about to take five lives. But that was Cookie. Everything was always fine, even when it wasn't.
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(c) 2008, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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Copyright ? 2008 St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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