Cokeville: What happened May 16, 1986?

* David Young, 43, and his wife, Doris Young, 47, entered Cokeville Elementary at 1:20 p.m. and held 154 students, teachers and administrators hostage in a classroom. The captors demanded $300 million in ransom to finance a long-planned revolution.

* At 3:40 p.m., Doris Young accidentally detonated a firebomb, injuring nearly 80 children and adults. More than 20 had to be hospitalized with burns.

* Doris Young was seriously injured in that blast. But an autopsy revealed she died from a gunshot to the head. Minutes after the explosion, David Young shot himself to death.

* During the standoff, David Young handed out copies of a rambling memo to hostages with references to Socrates, nuclear war, Christ, Hitler and the "nothingness of knowledge."

Source: Salt Lake Tribune archives

Background on Cokeville siege

* In 1979, David Young was Cokeville's town marshal and was jokingly referred to as Wyatt Earp because he wore long-barreled pistols in gunslinger-type holsters strapped to his leg. The mayor fired Young because ''he was a weirdo who wouldn't follow orders or do his job.''

* Gerald Deppe of Grinnell, Iowa, and Doyle Mendenhall of Preston, Idaho, were found handcuffed in Young's van. They had refused to go along with the plan.

* Young's stepdaughter, Princess Young, was forced to help carry bombs and guns into the school and then told to leave. She ran to City Hall and reported the siege.

* Found at the scene were 39 blasting caps, a canister of gunpowder and a canister of powdered aluminum along with a dozen handguns, assault rifles and shotguns.

* Sheriff's investigator Ron Hartley, who read dozens of Young's diaries, believes he targeted Cokeville because he considered the children to be intelligent and he wanted them to surround him in a reincarnated world that he would dominate.

Source: Salt Lake Tribune archives