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Had 13 year-old Mitchell Johnson and 11-year-old Andrew Golden gunned down a teacher and four classmates in Jonesboro, Arkansas in 1898, there would somehow have been a Negro angle. You know, a black man dissing their families, while classmates stood by giggling, had put the boys past the point of righteous anger. An overreaction, a tragedy all around, but on a deep level, perfectly understandable. Had the boys run amok in 1938 Germany, somehow Jewish perfidy would have figured as the real cause. But instead, the shootings happened in 1998. So nix readily available guns, nix negligent parents, nix sheer childish bloodymindedness-- the essential underlying factor in the shootings has to be illicit sex.

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Since the Jonesboro story broke, those trying to put a spin on the case have zeroed in on the sexual angle. Or various ones.

Sex first reared its head when it was reported, with an air of now we know this kid's really a bad apple, that the baby-faced 13-year-old killer was also a child molester. He was accused last June in Minnesota of touching a two-year-old girl, the daughter of his biological father's girlfriend. According to a neighbor, Mitchell had said he was only helping the girl pull up her pants after she went to the bathroom. Mitchell's father, appearing on "Larry King Live" on March 31st, said he couldn't comment on the charges. A trial was set for this June, and Mitchell had already had two court appearances by the time of the shootings.

But a week later, Mitchell's father was back on national television-- this time ABC's "20/20"-- declaring that the boy had himself been molested at a daycare center in Minnesota seven years prior. Far from being a savage killer, Mitchell Johnson was himself a child victim who had taken an unfortunate turn on the road to survivorhood.

But no one had ever been prosecuted or charged with the crime, and the boy's mother told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that she knew nothing about the alleged assault.

Days later, the boy's father then backtracked. The sex at the daycare center had never occurred, but another assault had, even though he couldn't reveal the details. "I don't want to be sued," he said.

It's possible that sex did play a role in the Jonesboro killings, but it's probably not the convenient theory being dished up on tabloid TV. In virtually every society in history, except ours today, two children touching each other in the bathroom would have been the occasion for giggles or a scolding-- but not police interrogation and prosecution. Could Mitchell Johnson's encroaching court date and growing awareness that he was being pegged a "sex offender" have had anything to do with his hatred and alienation? Or maybe, as hard as this is to fathom in the late 90s, sex had nothing to do with it.