Transcript: 28. North Pole Slaying Plot | USA

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We would like to wish our listeners a happy festive season – however or whatever it is you celebrate. Evidence Locker won’t be taking a broadcasting break over the holidays, but today and next week’s episodes will be somewhat shorter than our regular ones. It will be business as usual come the first week of January.

Warning: If you believe in Santa Claus, this episode contains information that could make you question his existence. Listener discretion is advised.  

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North Pole is a small city in central Alaska – about a 20-minute drive from Fairbanks. The town was founded in 1953 by a fur-buyer, Con Miller and his wife Nellie. At first, Con wanted to establish a trading post, but he soon saw potential as the local Santa Claus. At his new fur shop and trading post, a child recognised him as Santa and said: 

“Hello Santa - are you building a new house?”

Con had a brain wave and decided to turn the trading post into a Christmas-themed wonderland, called Santa Claus House. He registered a new town which he aptly named ‘North Pole’ and managed the new Alaskan city as mayor for 19 years. Con and Nellie raised their kids in North Pole, even christening their daughter Merry Christmas Miller.

Santa Claus House soon became a much-loved tourist attraction, a place where it is Christmas all year long. It grew into a large establishment located on St Nicholas Drive. Inside you can buy candles, lights, decorations, Christmas wreaths, T-shirts and other collectables. 

The red and white house has become an icon of the area. There are even reindeer outside, gearing up for their big night of Christmas present deliveries. Out front, a giant 43 feet (or 13 metre) fibreglass Santa greets guests and passers-by.

In winter the place really come into its own. An outdoor playground is carved out of ice with slides and a maze. For anyone, old or young, brave enough to face the freezing outside weather – it truly is a winter wonderland. The crisp and dry sub-zero temperatures makes for a beautiful white landscape – trees are covered with snow, all around you, it looks like a Christmas card.

After Cons Miller’s death in 1996, his children took over the business, running Santa Claus House. When his wife Nellie passed away, one newspaper reported: “Mrs Claus dead at 92.” The Millers were an integral part of this Holiday-loving community, it would be hard to imagine it without them.

North Pole, Alaska is located about 1,700 miles (or 2,700 kilometres) from the actual North Pole, but let’s not get too technical. Alaskan North Pole is America’s answer to Lapland, where you will find a somewhat more authentic version of a Santa Claus Village. But even though the Alaskan North Pole is slightly smaller and perhaps still not quite the real deal, tourists still flock there – and 2,200 people call it home.

The city, which is more like a town, has a resident Santa Claus and it refers to its residents as elves. The streetlights are shaped like red and white candy canes. Streets have names like: Mistletoe Drive and Snowman Lane.

Mayor Doug Isaacson thought it would be a good initiative for all shopkeepers to wear elf costumes all year round. He was very concerned that the town wasn’t quite “Christmassy” enough and felt that they could do more to promote the Christmas spirit. He even visited Leavenworth in central Washington to take notes and see what a typical, Bavarian Christmas village looked like. 

As one would expect, homes in North Pole are adorned in Christmas decorations all year – you never have to take them down! The town’s slogan sums it up: 

“North Pole - Where the spirit of Christmas Lives Year-Round."

In learning about North Pole, you cannot help but to think of Who-ville, the Christmas-loving town in the Dr Seuss book, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A place where residents are filled with Christmas-cheer and everybody pools together to celebrate the most magical day of the year.

In fact, North Pole is much like any other small American town in many ways: on the main strip there is a Subway, a Pizza Hut, a Starbucks and a Safeway. But there is a twist – most places have an element of Christmas to it, with decorations shining and shimmering 365 days a year. Like the Christmas-themed McDonald’s on Santa Claus Lane.

The area is known to be proudly Republican and gun loving. Locals love politics and hunting and there isn’t much crime. In fact, the City Hall doubles up as the police station. There are five schools and many churches, so it’s no surprise that families make up the largest percentage of households.

In 2015, a man named Santa Claus was voted president of the North Pole Chamber of Commerce. Local resident, Thomas Patrick O’Connor had his name legally changed to Santa Claus. He had rosy cheeks and a white beard to go with it too. Mr Claus was a former Anglican Monk who lived all over the country, before settling in North Pole. When he campaigned, he wore a red velvet suit and held a sign that read: "Where the spirit of Christmas lives year-round." 

He was the obvious choice and won the election.

The only place in North Pole that is even busier than Santa Claus House, is North Pole Post Office. With its candy cane frames on the outside, it is a favourite photo spot for all tourists to the city. Thousands of letters addressed to Santa, end up at the North Pole post office. Some letters are only addressed to: Santa, North Pole. So, they make it to this peculiar spot in Alaska. 

But who answers all of it? Spoiler alert: it’s NOT Santa. Every November and December, boxes of letters addressed to Santa are sent to North Pole Middle School. It is included in the 6th Grade curriculum – North Pole’s 11 and 12-year-olds are nominated as Santa’s little helpers. They each get to pick their own “Elf Name” and answer letters on Santa’s behalf. Some days, they are encouraged to dress up as elves, to get into the spirit of things.

All of this is perhaps not as magical as it sounds. Many kids only realise that Santa does not exist when presented with the letters. The reality that all their letters to Santa in preceding years were opened and read by 6th graders from their own town, was very confronting, embarrassing and hurtful to some kids, especially those who had made private personal requests, like asking Santa to make their parents stop fighting, for instance. Instead of the merry elf workshop, it becomes a bit of an emotional pre-teen sweatshop. 

Of the thousands of letters, some allude to domestic violence or incurable disease, sometimes severe poverty. Those topics are a lot to deal with for young children who have only experienced the sparkly, tinsel-topped side of Christmas. To be fair, letters with issues like the aforementioned, are given to the teachers and the children are not required to reply. All other requests get a somewhat standard answer along the lines of:

“Santa won’t forget you. Remember to be good! You’re going to love your present. From all the elves at North Pole, Santa and Merry Christmas.” 

Jon Ronson’s documentary “Death in Santaland” reveals somewhat of an underbelly in North Pole. It is a strange place where adults are adamant to live in a metaphorical snow-globe of make-believe. The children, however, are more sceptical. Because they are made to reply to letters on Santa’s behalf, at some point someone realises: hang on, he does not exist, that is why they are doing it. They become co-conspirators in perpetuating the myth.

In April 2006, peace was shattered in this small city where it always smells of hot chocolate and cookies. A student overheard a conversation at North Pole Middle School, that had serious consequences. The student revealed what he had heard to a parent and the parent went straight to police.

What the student had heard in the hallway of the school where elves answer letters, was that six 7th graders had hatched a plan to kill their classmates. The attack was planned for Monday, April 24th, 2006, but they had to postpone it until the next day. The kid who was supposed to bring weapons – firearms and knives – did not show up to school and they could not proceed with the plan. 

The six boys involved in the plot were all around 13-years of age. Police took them into custody on the same day. Through a series of interviews, they were able to quickly identify a total of 13 boys involved in the planned attack, with varying levels of responsibility. All of them were suspended from school with immediate effect.

During interviews, the kids claimed that they had planned the attack because they felt ‘cool’ kids were picking on them. Some teachers made the hit-list, purely because they weren’t liked. The North Pole Six were suspended, but not under arrest. While police conducted an investigation, they were detained at the Fairbanks Youth Facility.

Remember, some of these kids had just turned 13. They were very young and should be concerned with budding pimples or riding their bikes, not murdering their class-mates. Chances are some of them had never been away from home. Now they had to face the consequences of their decisions.

In the days after the foiled plot, there was a police presence at the school in the aftermath, ensuring safety of students. After the arrests, in the wake of the shock, fellow students were fearful, wondering if their names were on that list or not. The school brought in counsellors to talk to the class-mates, but they all seemed to be okay for the most part. Some parents refused to send their kids back to school and opted to home-school them instead.

As details of the plot unfolded, it was clear that the group of “outsiders” was well organised and prepared, well for a bunch of 13-year-olds. North Pole Middle School was quite big, running from Grade 6 to Grade 8, 500 students attended the school. The would-be attackers had drawn up a “naughty list” of sorts, or rather a hit-list of kids at school that they had wanted to murder in one violent, co-ordinated attack. The gang had sourced weapons and had a plan to cut the school’s electricity and phone lines to give themselves a chance to flee the scene. 

There were about 15 to 20 names on the list. Each member of the gang was assigned specific people to kill – fellow-students, as well as teachers. The list even specified which weapon would be used in each murder. The main event was planned to take place in the cafeteria over lunchtime. 

In an interview with journalist and documentary filmmaker, Jon Ronson, a parent of one of the boys who had planned the attack said:

“They were going to fire some warning shots. There were other kids that were indirectly involved – they'd been told about the plan – they were to get certain other kids out of the cafeteria when the warning shots were fired. My son was to go to the office with a rifle and disable the communications equipment, and then they were going to start shooting the kids from the list."

After the killings, all the boys were going to run to the station and catch a train to Anchorage, where they would set up new lives under assumed names.

There were so many problems with this plan… Yes, they did seem organised and planning the operational side of the attack was eerily thorough, but they did not take into consideration the fact that most teachers carried personal cell phones and would be able to call for help, whether the school’s communication lines were working or not. 

Also, the timing of the whole event wasn’t thought through… The train to Anchorage wasn’t leaving till early evening. They would have had to hang around and wait, drastically increasing the chances of being caught. And even if they did make it to Anchorage – how would they have been able to support themselves financially and live their lives?

The same father who spoke with Jon Ronson said that he had asked his son if he had thought about his sister. Did he warn her about the planned attack? What would have happened if his sister thought he was in trouble and went to save him, but then got shot by one of his friends. It was obvious his son had not thought about this at all. Along with his friends, they honestly thought they would only kill the people on the list. 

In a bizarre twist of fate, a similar conspiracy was foiled in Kansas the week before the North Pole kids were arrested. In Kansas, five teenagers had planned a massacre at their school to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the Columbine High School killings in April 1999. At Columbine, two armed teenagers killed 12 students and one teacher before killing themselves. The 2006 plot in Kansas was foiled when incriminating online messages were intercepted.

Back in North Pole, the community was still reeling in shock that children from their small city could harbour such dark intentions.

Police searched the school with dogs over the following weekend and no hidden weapons were found. The so-called ‘hit-list’ apparently had detailed diagrams and codenames for the intended victims. But the actual list was never found. There was also no evidence of the weapons and it is unclear if they were ever sourced or not.

A teacher who had taught five of the six ring-leaders the year before, wanted to believe the boys would never have gone through with it. When he saw law enforcement officers handcuff the 13-year-olds, he was deeply affected by how very small they seemed, they were only kids. 

Just the previous year they were 12-year-old elves, writing letters to other children all over the world. A couple of months later, they were gearing up to be monsters. Could this be what pushed the group of 13-year-olds to the brink of murder? Did they see a side to life that they did not quite know existed? Did this push them to adapt an attitude of anarchy and mayhem? 

Mayor Isaacson felt that the whole incident could have been avoided if the boys had true Christmas spirit in their hearts. He said:

"Let's just say that if the spirit of Christmas were permeating the entire soul of this community, no child would be feeling that despondent. What is the spirit of Christmas? Isn't it peace on earth and goodwill to all men?"

Jeff Jacobson, a 6th Grade teacher (and previous Mayor of North Pole) spoke openly about the planned attack. 

"To what extent they could have executed the plan is anyone's guess. I think all of us were horrified that anybody would be thinking to kill someone else. This is a wake-up call for all of us that we need to keep the channels of communication open with our kids." 

The kids who plotted the slaying were rumoured to be goths. But it wasn’t so. They didn’t dress in dark clothes or listened to violence-provoking music or were even allowed to play violent video games. They were what anyone would label as ‘normal’ kids. 

And the fact that there were so many of them – 15 in total – makes the theory that they were being picked on seem strange. They clearly all had friends, loyal friends who were all willing to go through with a heinous act of mass-killing. 

In the end, they were suspended for a year and would go to school again in April 2007. Although they could be tried as adults, they were tried as minors. The kid whose dad came forward said that he received two years' probation, he had to write 5,000-word essay on the effects of school shootings across America, he had to do 100 hours of community service and go to therapy to cope with anger. 

As they were tried as minors, the identities of the 13 plotters had not been made public. But North Pole is a small place and no doubt everyone living there knows exactly who they are.

In North Pole, a man who worked as Santa Claus at Santa Claus House was so dedicated to his vocation as the red-suited man, that he changed his name via deed poll to Kriss Kringle. In his hunt to meet the infamous Kris, journalist Jon Ronson came upon something peculiar. In all the time he spent in the town of North Pole, he never once saw Kris. He asked everyone he met if they knew where he was, and everyone would say that they had just seen him or that he was working at Hot Springs, but he wasn’t there either. Ronson came upon conflicting articles in the local library – one said that he had been in a car crash and died. Another said that he had survived the crash but had moved south. In the end Ronson found out that Kris had in fact died. 

Perhaps the place that always sparkles has a way of sugar-coating the truth? Besides, it would be unforgiveable to admit that Kris Kringle, Santa Claus from North Pole was in fact no longer alive? It would also be impossible to imagine that young children who live in a town of perpetual good cheer and joy could muster up a plan to kill. 

If you’d like to read more about this case, have a look at the resources used for this episode in the show notes. 

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