N.J. Teens Accused of Plotting Killings

OAKLYN, N.J. - An alleged plot by three teenagers to kill their enemies and then target other victims at random unraveled when they tried to carjack a motorist and were arrested, authorities said.

"We could have had a disaster here in Oaklyn," Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi said Sunday night after police said they uncovered the trio's cache of guns, knives and swords in this small town near Philadelphia.

Matthew Lovett, 18, was arrested along with two boys, ages 15 and 14, whose names were not released. They were charged with weapons offenses and attempted carjacking. An additional charge of attempted murder was expected to be filed against the trio, authorities said.

Lovett, who is accused of pointing a gun at the police officer who arrested him, also was charged with aggravated assault, Sarubbi said.

Authorities seized two rifles, a shotgun, two handguns, two swords, several knives and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. Additional weapons were found at Lovett's home. Sarubbi said the weapons belonged to Lovett's father and were legal.

A phone message left Sunday night with his father, Ron Lovett, was not returned. In an interview with CNN on Monday, he described his son as a good youngster who became "kind of withdrawn" after his mother died nine years ago.

Lovett, who described himself as a gun collector and target shooter, said his son was never interested in guns. "I don't think he'd know how to use one," he said.

Later in the morning, a family spokesman, Tom Crymes, read a letter from Ron Lovett offering his apology "for what my son has done" and expressing the hope his son would receive counseling.

Sarubbi said the attacks had been planned over the course of several months. The suspects intended to target people at random once they had attacked specific victims, police said.

Sarubbi said three people believed to be intended victims were notified Sunday of the alleged plot. The prosecutor declined to identify them, but police indicated they were students.

Mathew Rich, 34, who reported the carjacking attempt, said he was leaving for work when he saw the three teens, dressed in trench coats and standing in front of Oaklyn Public School.

One crossed the street in front of him, opened his coat to reveal a handgun, then signaled for his friends. Rich said he drove around them, then notified police.

When Rich returned to the area after driving to the police station, he saw the weapons being confiscated.

3 teens accused of plotting a massacre

Oaklyn authorities say case, replete with cache of weapons, stirs echoes of Columbine
Tuesday, July 08, 2003

BY DAVID KINNEY AND JOE DONOHUE Star-Ledger Staff

At Collingswood High School, Matthew Lovett stood out, but not in a way that won him friends.

With his limp, his odd manner of speech and the all-black costume he wore in homage to the dark high-tech thriller "The Matrix," the June graduate was constantly teased and tormented. So was his younger brother, who had a disfiguring cleft palate.

Still, until around 4 a.m. Sunday, when he was arrested with two younger teens on charges of plotting a mass killing spree, Lovett seemed to turn the other cheek to the world.

"He just took it," said Paul Phillips, a fellow student.

Yesterday the 18-year-old Oaklyn resident was in jail on $1 million bail, charged with conspiracy to commit murder, carjacking and unlawful possession of weapons. The younger boys, 14 and 15, were remanded to the Camden County Juvenile Facility, and Camden County Prosecutor Vincent Sarubbi said he would seek to try them as adults.

Police said they recovered two rifles, a shotgun, two handguns, two swords, knives, and 2,000 rounds of ammunition. The firearms legally belonged to Lovett's father, Ronald, who was not home at the time.

Their plan, according to authorities, was to carjack somebody, track down and kill three students they disliked, then rampage through town on a capricious killing spree.

Police also said they seized three computer hard drives from Lovett's home. He and his accomplices had dubbed themselves "Warriors of Freedom," which is also the name of an Internet-based combat game.

Classmates knew that Lovett and his friends liked to act out combat scenes. Jeff Kasten, 15, said he saw Lovett and his friends "hit stuff, punch telephone poles and practice karate on each other."

Yet no matter how "different" Lovett seemed, few considered him dangerous.

Oaklyn, a working-class town of 4,200 residents across the river from Philadelphia, hasn't seen a murder in four years. Authorities said the boys' alleged plan recalled the 1999 Columbine rampage, when 15 people died.

"It's shocking," said Christopher Brown, 17-year-old who graduated with Lovett three weeks ago. "I knew he was different, but I never thought he'd go so far."

Others thought they saw something coming.

"I kind of knew something was going to happen," said Brian Davidson, 16. "He took so much from everybody."

"They're scary," said 13-year-old Beth Cruz. "Pale white. We were always like, 'They're going to kill someone.'"

In the last hours before dawn Sunday, authorities say, Lovett and his friends armed themselves with a shotgun and swords, strapped rifles onto their backs, jammed handguns into their waistbands, loaded ammunition into bags and took up positions along the main street in Oaklyn.

They waited for a victim to carjack, and soon found one in Mathew Rich, a 33-year-old who was leaving his wife's house on his way to work at Philadelphia Airport.

One of the teens stepped into the street and pulled aside his jacket to display a gun, but Rich sped through their roadblock and made his way to the Oaklyn police station. The youths, meanwhile, did not open fire.

Moments later, Officer Charles Antrilli arrived on the scene, police said. Lovett pointed his gun at him, but Antrilli shouted for the teens to freeze. After a brief, tense moment of hesitation, they put down their guns and surrendered, authorities said.

The trio was arrested only steps from Lovett's apartment, on one of Oaklyn's main streets.

Yesterday acquaintances of the boys talked about Lovett's fascination with the two "Matrix" movies, in which humans fight computers armed with artificial intelligence.

They said he sometimes referred to himself as The Mystic, The One or Neo, in homage to Keanu Reeves' character in the "Matrix" films, high-tech thrillers where the world is merely a facade for a darker, grimmer reality in which a computer hacker leads humanity in a revolt against the machines that have taken over.

WPVI-TV in Philadelphia reported that, in a letter he wrote his father Sunday, Lovett declared: "I thought you would like to know that I am a warrior, I am fighting for mankind's freedom. Freedom from this society."

"You best be grateful, my original plan was to kill you all ... but I decided that'd be too messy," he wrote in the letter.

He signed it, "the ONE, the NOW, the ANTI-CHRIST, etc. etc. etc."

Ron Lovett, Matthew's father, told CNN yesterday that although his son became withdrawn after his mother died nine years ago, he was no troublemaker.

An uncle, Ed Crymes, said the boys also had to endure the death of an older half-sister, who was run down by a car a year after their mother's death.

He said he could not believe that Lovett, who had no job, would carry out the alleged plan.

"If he was determined to do that sort of thing, he would have shot at the officer," he said. "All it was, was a call for help."

The father said his son had never been in trouble.

"I've tried my best to raise him," Lovett said. "He's never been in trouble with the law. I had no complaints all throughout high school about his behavior. And he's never been interested in guns, never fired one, never loaded one, doesn't know how to drive a car."

Later, he released a statement apologizing "for what my son Matthew has done," and asked "everyone to say a prayer for Matthew. I hope he can get the counseling he needs."

Ron Lovett, who works at an appliance shop across the street from his home, is a gun collector and target shooter. According to the Camden County Prosecutor's Office, the son gathered up the guns while his father was away.

His father said he kept his guns locked away and hidden, and that his son never showed an interest in them. "He's never fired a gun," he said. "And I don't think he would know what ammunition to put in what chamber."

Sarubbi, the prosecutor, said Matthew Lovett was the plot's "mastermind." He began planning for the shoot-out in January and had considered doing it earlier this year, he said. But Sarubbi declined comment about a motive.

John Weaver, 49, a father who remembers being teased for wearing glasses in school 30 years ago, drove back and forth past the scene of the would-be massacre yesterday.

Then he stopped, and said the news "haunted" him.

"This is a situation of bullies vs. geeks," Weaver said. "I feel sorry for this kid. I am not condoning what he did at all. But maybe it's the only way he could get his point across. It's the only way he could get attention to what's bothering him."

Staff writer Mary Jo Patterson and Star-Ledger wire services contributed to this report.

___________________

Loner who silently endured the heckling

Classmates knew Lovett to be quiet, and his yearbook inscription was 'I had a good time'

Tuesday, July 08, 2003

BY DAVID KINNEY AND JOE DONOHUE
Star-Ledger Staff

In a photograph one of his classmates showed around town yesterday, Matthew Lovett sits alone and silent, against a column inside a gymnasium at Rowan University.

It's one day after their graduation from Collingswood High School, and his classmates are celebrating the end of school with dancing and swimming and good-natured fighting with giant inflatable boxing gloves.

Lovett sat against the column most of the night, three weeks ago. "The whole time, alone," recalled Paul Phillips, a classmate.

Classmates say that wasn't out of the ordinary for the 18-year-old Lovett. He would leave school as soon as the bell rang and go home to play video games or log on to the Internet.

"I never saw him outside," said Phillips.

Phillips lives three doors down from the Lovetts, who rent an apartment in a two-story building on Clinton Avenue in Oaklyn, a suburban town nine miles from Philadelphia.

Clinton Avenue is one of Oaklyn's main drags, with the firehouse on one end, the high school on the other, a vending machine factory and a few shops in between.

Fourth of July banners still hung from the lamp posts yesterday but the Fourth was a light-year away. The talk was all about Lovett.

How he walked with a limp, had a way of using big, collegiate words and loved "The Matrix."

Like the characters in that movie, he sometimes slicked his hair back and wore all black, students recalled.

In a letter he left for his father to read, Lovett declared himself as "the ONE," a reference to the lead played by Keanu Reeves in the dark science fiction thriller.

Students also remembered yesterday how Lovett and his friends were seen practicing karate moves like the "Matrix" heroes.

All of that left him open to more torment than most teen-gers have to endure. "He got 'picked' a lot," said 18-year-old classmate Facundo Pavcovich.

He suffered it quietly, Phillips said: "He never got up and shoved anybody and said, 'One day, you're going to get it.' I probably got into more trouble than him. He played it so, 'Well, it doesn't bother me. I don't even care."

Steve Stens, a 16-year-old junior at Collingswood High, saw another side of Lovett, who liked to draw and write poetry.

Stens took art classes with Lovett, and said Lovett had tried his hand at the stylized animation drawing known as anime. "He was really good at art. And he was nice as anything," Stens said.

Stens said that while Lovett never appeared to get mad about the teasing, he believed Lovett had pent-up anger. "He was boiling pretty slow," Stens said.

But for his senior yearbook, Lovett wrote, "I had a great time," and quoted from a poem by another teenager. The poem, Lovett said, held "a special, hidden meaning."

It read: "Listen to the Saffron Melodies strummed on the brilliant strings of Sun Rays -- hear the burning, lilac tunes of the sunset as the moon's keys begin to play."

The verse appeared on Teen Ink, a poetry Web site for teen-agers, though that version reads, "Hear the placid, lilac tunes of sunset."

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