MASSACRE MADE IN USA II

Steve Kazmierczak (27), had gone more than a dozen years without talking to his godfather, Richard Grafer, until about a month ago. In the following weeks they would chat about a lot of things, even maybe going fishing. But as they made plans, he was buying weapons -- part of an arsenal he used Thursday to kill 5 students at NIU (Northern Illinois University).

According to BATF he bought a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a Glock 9mm pistol, a 9mm Sig-Sauer and a Hi-Point .380 pistol from Tony's Guns & Ammo in. He had a valid Illinois firearm owner's identification card. In addition he bought 2 empty Glock ammo magazines and a holster from Eric Thompson, a Green Bay-based Internet gun dealer who also sold a weapon to Seung-Hui Cho, the 23-year-old Virginia Tech senior who killed 32 people at the Blacksburg, Va., university last april.

Kazmierczak was born and raised in Elk Grove Village. He went on to win academic honors at NIU, but about midway through Elk Grove High School he began battling behavioral problems that landed him in special treatment and required to take mood-stabilizing drugs. Around their junior year Kazmierczak began exploring satanism and white-power movements. After graduating in 1998, he get treatment in Thresholds-Mary Hill House in Chicago. He went into the Army in September 2001, but was discharged in February 2002 for an ''unspecified'' reason.

But there are signs why he recently became unhinged. In June 2006 -- a month after he graduated from NIU with a bachelor's degree in sociology-- their mother, Gail, was diagnosed with ALS disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). She died that September at 58. Recently, his girlfriend in Champaign had broken up with him. Kazmierczak had stopped taking his medications and had been behaving erratically. Last fall, he dropped to part-time status at the U. of I. to take a job Sept. 24 as a guard at Rockville Correctional Facility in Indiana, but lasted 2 weeks there, reason unknown.

On Thursday, shortly after 3 p.m., Kazmierczak walked into the lecture hall in DeKalb. He never said a word. He took a deep breath, raised his shotgun and killed Daniel Parmenter, 20, of Elmhurst; Catalina Garcia, 20, of Cicero; Ryanne Mace, 19, of Carpentersville; Julianna Gehant, 32, of the Mendota area, and Gayle Dubowski, 20, of Carol Stream. He wounded 16 others before committing suicide. The shotgun was in a guitar case and the handguns and ammo under his coat. Investigators found 48 bullet casings and 6 shotgun shells on the stage. Kazmierczak's sister posted a note on the door of her Urbana home Friday night, expressing her family's condolences to the families of all of the victims.