"I didn't realize the highway was this close," said Wayne Buckner, Josh's father and Will's stepfather, when we walked to the spot on the hill where his boys shot at the cars that night. We were surrounded by trees and tall brush as the cars and trucks sped by on I-40 below. Wayne is a tall, gray-haired 56-year-old in a golf-course vest, blue jeans and baseball cap. "I saw this area in the police diagram," he said, making his way tentatively around the brush, "but this is the first time I've come here. My wife doesn't want to know where this spot is."

In his mind's eye, Wayne had pictured the boys standing much farther away from the road, so far that their bullets would not have easily hit the cars. But, as we looked down at the highway, we were close enough to make out the passengers behind the windows. Wayne's eyes welled up. "It's pretty sad," he said.

It was a sunny winter's morning in Newport. The path in the weeds that Will and Josh cut with machetes was still discernible. A deflated inner tube they once used to ride down the nearby creek rested against a tree. Pigeons roosted in a rickety liquor billboard a dozen feet away.

It was the birds that first took the blame after the boys were caught that night. Josh told Wayne that they had been shooting at the pigeons and must have accidentally hit the cars in the process. "He said the birds always fly off this billboard toward the interstate," recalled Wayne. When the birds suddenly abandoned their roost above us, however, not a single one flew toward the road. "I really wanted to believe him," Wayne said, as we made our way back down to the neighborhood of modest homes below.

The Buckners lived in a split-level brick house on the side of a golf course. The golf cart Will and Josh used to ride sat by the garage with a basketball net. In the backyard, the yapping dogs now had free rein in the impressive tree house Wayne had built for the kids. Inside the living room, Wayne's wife Donna, lit a cigarette. A petite and pretty 37-year-old in a powder blue sweater, she had dropped to a painfully thin 85 pounds since the incident. "I just can't get my appetite back," she said. Wayne excused himself to hit the greens. "He plays too much golf," Donna grumbled quietly.

Since the shooting, Wayne and Donna have struggled to survive and make sense of the most senseless of acts. Though their sons were found to be reckless, not murderous, that hadn't made their soul-searching any easier. Ultimately, that search led them to one answer: "Grand Theft Auto III." "Will and Josh wouldn't have done this if they hadn't been playing that game," Donna said, as she showed me family photos. "They aren't serial killers. They're good boys."

Though taken during better times, the shots didn't exactly convey adolescent bliss. In one, Josh and Will sit expressionlessly on either end of a black futon facing a giant television screen. Josh, a small, wiry kid with uneven sandy blond bangs and a spotty complexion, leans against an 8-ball pillow in a yellow Fort Lauderdale Surf Sport T-shirt. The stoic look on Will -- who's wearing baggy tan shorts, a yellow Hawaiian shirt unbuttoned over a black Nike tee, a dog-tag necklace, and a half dozen bracelets on his arm -- reveals, if anything, a desire for his mother to hurry up and shoot already. In a picture taken on a family trip to the beach, Will stands awkwardly in a blue T-shirt and long blue shorts, bony white arms crossed around his chest, next to Josh in a bright red shirt, arms stiffly down, staring forward; Wayne and Donna are clear across the frame. No one's touching. "I don't see how we could ever be a family again after this," Donna said, as she sparked another cigarette. When I asked her how much they felt like a family before the shooting, she exhaled and said, "Somewhat."

Will and Josh had an unstable life from the start. Born to Donna several weeks premature, Will suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of one month, leaving him slightly brain damaged. Though able to function normally, he was slower than average, with an IQ of 91. His dad, a factory worker, had little patience for the boy, says Donna, even less after she divorced him, when Will was 3 years old, for fooling around with her friend. "He never wanted anything to do with him," she recalled. "Will begged him to come over and visit, but he just wrote him off." Years later, when she took Will to see him on his deathbed, he wouldn't acknowledge his son. "Will always thought his father hated him," she said.

Donna's second marriage was equally difficult for Will. When Will got up at night to pee, her husband would berate the boy for waking him. Will began wetting the bed. Donna soon divorced again. Though Will loved the outdoors, he became more shy and reclusive at school. "He was something of a loner," Donna said. But he rarely acted out. The worst thing he ever did was to write the word "Fuck" on the kitchen floor with a felt-tip marker. When Donna met Wayne and his young son Joshua in 2002 while working as a bookkeeper at the club where Wayne golfed, Will was ready for a friend.

And so was Josh. Though outgoing and energetic, Josh had had his share of trauma. He was born to a mother, Sandy, who suffered from congestive heart failure. Often sick, she was unable to provide readily for Josh, retreating to her books and her soap operas while her son fended for himself. She died when he was 11.

As the hospital bigwig and an active officer of the chamber of commerce, his father Wayne kept busy and had little time for Josh, who was literally bouncing off the walls. In the first grade, Josh was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and began a lifetime of medication. The drugs made him sluggish but seemed to help to some degree. Josh was warm with friends and family, giving big and frequent hugs. Popular with the girls, he was the only boy invited to his friend Sara Sample's slumber party. "He was like a little puppy dog," Sara's mother, Mandy Epley, recalled.

Still, Wayne had the impression that Josh was suffering. "After his mother died," Wayne said, "he was on the run all time." Josh never let on how he was feeling, staying up late playing video games or listening to his Eminem CDs. "He keeps it all inside," Wayne said. "Anything bad happens, he laughs it off."

Late one night when Josh was around 11, Wayne heard a strange sound coming from his son's room. He walked down the hall and opened the door. The room was painted bold yellow and plastered with posters of sports cars. There's a Lava Lite near a small desk, a student Bible, an enormous boom box. A big black sign reads Go Away.

Wayne half-expected to find that Josh had pulled the blankets from his bed and was sleeping on the floor, a habit his son had taken to without explanation. Tonight, Josh wasn't there. He was curled up in his closet, crying. He said he wanted his mommy.

Recent Stories