Madison school shooter Natalie Rupnow was in therapy for most of her childhood

Natalie Rupnow, the 15-year-old who killed two people and injured six others at Abundant Life Christian School on Monday, had a tumultuous childhood filled with the multiple remarriages and divorces of her parents as well as long bouts of therapy.

Per the Washington Post, which reviewed court records, Rupnow’s parents married around two years after she was born in 2011. Before their first marriage, Rupnow’s mother, Mellissa, had been married and divorced and had a daughter with a different man to whom she never married. The half-sister of Rupnow is now 20. According to the Daily Mail, Rupnow was in therapy for "much of her childhood" along with the divorces. 



Rupnow’s parents divorced in 2014 for the first time. They agreed to joint legal custody of Rupnow, who went by Samantha, but specified that she would primarily live with her mother. In 2017 they remarried but divorced again in 2020. They agreed to shared custody, with Rupnow’s time being divided between the two households.

During this time, Rupnow would spend two days with her father then two days with her mother. She would go back to her father for three days and the schedule would reverse for the following week.

They remarried again shortly after their second split, but got divorced again in May 2021. The judge who granted the divorce noted that the "parties [were] admonished concerning remarriage." In July 2022, they agreed that they would share legal custody of Rupnow, but she would mostly live with her father. Rupnow by this point was enrolled in therapy, which the Post reported "was supposed to help guide decisions about which parent she would spend weekends with."

Rupnow's parents were said to be on cordial terms in the 2022 custody papers. "The parents report a generally positive co-parenting relationship, and will continue to communicate with one another by text messages and phone conversations," the document stated.

Rupnow’s father is Christian and would share photos of Rupnow along with his dogs online. One post showed his daughter wielding a gun at a firing range, which Jeff Rupnow identified as the North Bristol Sportsman’s Club in nearby Sun Prairie. In a comment, Jeff Rupnow wrote that he and his daughter joined the club early in 2024 and "we have been loving all every second of it!" Rupnow is seen sporting a KMFDM shirt, which is a reference to a German band. The lyrics of one of the bands’ songs was posted to the website of one of the Columbine shooters.

Officers went to Mellissa Rupnow’s home on Tuesday morning, with an officer peeking inside a window before leaving. On Monday, police went to Jeff Rupnow’s home, arriving with an armored truck and wearing bulletproof vests and helmets. One neighbor said she heard a pair of booms and stepped outside, but an officer told her to get back inside. The property was surrounded by crime scene tape by the evening, with the door off its hinges in the front yard. On Tuesday afternoon, workers came to install a new door.