Florida woman obsessed with Columbine arrested with pipe bombs, pistols in her bedroom, police say

Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY
Updated

Acting on a tip from her parents, Tampa Bay area authorities said Friday they arrested a 27-year-old woman obsessed with the Columbine and Oklahoma City mass killings and discovered pipe bombs, weapons and bomb making materials in her bedroom.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told reporters that Michelle Louise Kolts, of Wimauma, Florida, was arrested shortly after midnight. She was charged with 24 counts of making a destructive device with the intent to do bodily harm or property damage, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

“If used, these bombs could have caused catastrophic damage to hundreds, if not thousands of people,” Chronister said. “Something tremendous was prevented.”

Deputies were first alerted to Kolts last year after they learned she had ordered a large quantity of disturbing material, including bomb-making manuals, from an online printer.

“She became consumed with the Columbine and Oklahoma killings,” the sheriff said. “She wasn’t diagnosed with any type of mental health diagnosis at the time. She stated, at that time, her intentions were not to harm anyone.”

Michelle Louise Kolts, 27, has been charged with 24 counts of making a destructive device with the intent to do bodily harm or property damage.
Michelle Louise Kolts, 27, has been charged with 24 counts of making a destructive device with the intent to do bodily harm or property damage.

In 1999, two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher in a massacre at Columbine high school in Colorado. The killers died in the melee. In 1995, 168 people were killed and hundreds injured when an ex-Army soldier and security guard detonated explosives in front of a federal building in downtown Oklahoma City. The perpetrator was later arrested, tried and executed for the killings.

The sheriff said Kolts' parents contacted authorities Thursday evening, when Kolts was away, after finding the pipe bombs and other dangerous items in her bedroom.

Deputies discovered two dozen pipe bombs, smokeless pistol powder, fused material, 23 knives, two hatchets, nunchucks, two BB pellet type rifles, six BB pellet type handguns, and dozens of books and DVDs about murder, mass killings, bomb-making and domestic terrorism.