St. Louis Park Man's ‘Ingenious Plans for Mass Murder’ Land Him in Jail

A St. Louis Park man contemplating his “ingenious plans for mass murder” has been arrested after writing, in a Sept. 20 letter to his roommate, “Tonight, I’m going to kill someone.”

John Louis Thompson III, 21, threatened the lives of his roommate’s co-workers, friends and family and outlined the multiple violent methods he could use to kill, according to a Hennepin County criminal complaint.

Thompson’s sent his roommate a text message on Sept. 20 saying he planned to kill someone.

His roommate rushed home to their apartment on the 3500 block of Minikahda Court, where he found a letter from Thompson on his bed.

Thompson wrote that he frequently thinks about killing—specifically, by using a sniper rifle to shoot into a crowd, by stabbing people with knives or by detonating a bomb. He also wrote that he had raped a woman.

“Tonight, I’m going to kill someone,” Thompson wrote in the letter. “If I enjoy it, then I guess it’ll be high-time for me to get to work on one of my ingenious plans for mass murder.”

Thompson ended the letter by threatening that, should his roommate report the letter to police, he would select his next “few kills” from his roommate’s “co-workers, friends and maybe family, too.”

Thompson’s roommate called police and notified his family and friends about the threats in the letter.

Police found multiple knives and weapons in Thompson’s bedroom.

He was found shortly afterward in Minneapolis.

The incident unfolded "over such a short period of time that we did not have to go that far in protection" of the roommate's friends and family, St. Louis Park police spokesman Jamie Zwilling wrote in an email.

Thompson is charged with felony terroristic threats and being held in Hennepin County Jail on a $100,000 bond. He appeared in a Hennepin County courtroom Wednesday morning for an omnibus hearing. 

If convicted, he faces up to five years behind bars.

A previous version of this article could be read as saying law enforcement does not know Thompson's whereabouts. 

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