Graphic: on the trail of a killer

The “unremarkable” teenage killer who went on a rampage yesterday in southern Germany with his father’s Beretta had a passion for guns and ready access to a domestic arsenal.

Germany was in shock last night after Tim Kretschmer killed 15 people in a three-hour spree, including nine pupils and three teachers from his old school in the town of Winnenden, near Stuttgart.

To most who knew him, Kretschmer seemed normal, but the 17-year-old from an affluent family, who came back to terrorise the school that he left last year with poor grades, had a dark side that few would have guessed at.

His father, Jörg, who runs a packaging company that employs 20 staff including his wife, Ute, had a collection of 15 firearms. He stored them in a locked cabinet at their large, comfortable, suburban home — all apart from one handgun, which he kept in the bedroom and which his son stole.

Jörg seemed worried about his son’s lack of academic achievement and had taken him on as an apprentice at the factory. He had also introduced him to another adult world — the Leutenbach gun club, where he occasionally brought his son to share the thrill of high-calibre weapons, neighbours told The Times.

Reiner Wehaus, a friend who shared his love of guns, said: “He knew his weapons really well. These were mainly air pistols, which fire pellets. He got himself his own arms cabinet and that covered several square metres of his wall — I reckon about 30 to 40 weapons.

“Every day he went shooting in a forest somewhere behind the house. He was a rather good shot.”

Mr Wehaus described summer air pistol shoot-outs in the woods, with the boys wearing protection from the pellets. “Once or twice a year we would have air gun battles in the summer,” he told the Stuttgarter Nachrichten newspaper. “Every one had protective goggles. He always shot me.”

All of this is still a far cry from explaining the devastation that Kretschmer wreaked on the community where he grew up and the school that he left at 16. What happened to the boy who excelled at table tennis and posed proudly with his trophies in school pictures?

There were theories last night that being rejected by a girlfriend could have sent him over the edge. Investigators were focusing on the fact that almost all the school victims were female, perhaps suggesting a grudge.

One neighbour noted that he had put on a lot of weight lately, another said that he had a collection of horror films. But police said that they remained baffled about a motive.

Palmieri Vincenz, 61, who works in the Bosch factory near by and rents a house from the Kretschmers, has known the family for 19 years. He said that the killer’s father was a “very nice, normal guy”.

Mr Vincenz said that he had known Tim Kretschmer for years and saw him on the street regularly. He described him as a “normal and friendly . . . he did not seem like he had any problems”.

Mr Vincenz was at home yesterday morning when the police arrived, accompanied by a helicopter. He went into the street and saw the teenager’s father go into his house with police. Officers then ordered Mr Vincenz to go back into his own home.

“They said, ‘Shut the windows, stay in the house, don’t move.’ My heart was pounding. There were so many armed police in the place. Tim’s sister was in the same school. I heard that the sister jumped out of the window.”

Jutta Lautenschlager, 49, who works in the small post office at the corner of the Kretschmers’ road, said that she knew the killer’s parents but had not realised until yesterday that they had a son. “They were very friendly. They had a lot of money and a big Mercedes,” she said.

“This is normally a quiet place — people are sad and shocked. They cannot believe what has happened. It is very sad for the parents.”

Ralf Michelfelder, a local police director, said that the killer’s parents were “absolutely shocked”. He added: “They are victims themselves. You must imagine if your son does that it was completely out of imagination.”

Few of the clichés about loners morbidly obsessed with apocalyptic internet chat rooms or violent video games seemed to apply to Kretschmer — although police seized his personal computer yesterday. An online profile purporting to be his gave few clues. “What do I like? Nothing,” it said. “What do I hate? Nothing. Job? I’m afraid I’m still a pupil.”

Fabienne Böhm, 12, said she recently met the killer, who had shown her a note three weeks ago that he then sent to his parents. “He wrote to his parents that he’s suffering and he can’t go on,” she said.

Aki, a 17-year-old friend, said he had been studying this year with Kretschmer at a private business school, and described him as a quiet, reserved person. Aki said the two played poker together and a video game called Counter-Strike that involves killing people to complete missions. “He was good,” Aki said.

“He was quiet but he had friends. He was funny,” said Marcel Rupp, another friend. “He liked table tennis, and he told me he was interested in guns, but I thought in a normal way.”

He did dress all in black, as had Robert Steinhäuser, Germany’s notorious pupil-killer of 2002, a 19-year-old from a middle-class family who killed 16 people with a pistol and shotgun at Gutenberg high school, in Erfurt.

One elderly man, sheltering under an umbrella outside the deserted school as night fell, surveyed the abandoned bikes and police tape. “It is unbelievable,” he said. “He came from here.”

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