Last year about this time, a Tempe man was driving toward University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale with revenge on his mind. Kurt Havelock, then 35, later confessed that he had planned to open fire on Super Bowl crowds as the big event took place in Arizona. He blamed local officials for blocking his dreams of opening his own bar, and told authorities he saw the massacre as a way to get revenge.
Former Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, now the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, was on the Today show on NBC this morning, talking about Super Bowl security. She didn’t mention Havelock’s case or the damage that could have been done. “Right now we have no specific threats about the game,” Napolitano told Matt Lauer. “We just want to make sure everybody’s safe and there’s a great game.”
I reported on Havelock’s case a little last year, and one of the things that was clear from the first day was that authorities had no forewarning of the plot. In fact, the only reason that Havelock didn’t carry out his plans was that he had a last-second attack of conscience and pulled out. He turned himself into a Tempe police station that day.
The FBI was soon called in. Havelock was found guilty that year in federal court to sending threatening letters through the mail because of a number of letters he sent to national media outlets, explaining his plans. The letters would have arrived days after the attack but were intercepted by federal agents before they reached their destinations.
I spoke to Havelock’s father, Frank, after the guilty verdict last year, and he emphasized that his son messed up but was not a bad person. “My son threatened something bad, or he thought of something bad, and that thought is chilling and evil and there’s no getting around that,” he told me at the time. “But he didn’t do it.”
Havelock was later sentenced to a year in federal prison for mailing the letters.