Before the gunshots, before the fire, before the deaths of four people at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Genesee County’s Grand Blanc Township on Sept. 28, Thomas Jacob Sanford was just another boy in the 2004 Goodrich High School yearbook.
In a childhood beach photo Sanford’s parents submitted to the Martians yearbook, the boy beams with a squinty-eyed smile.
“What we wouldn’t give to turn back the hands of time … ” his parents wrote with the picture. “We will miss you so much when you venture out into the world.”
More than twenty years later, police believe 40-year-old Sanford smashed an explosives-laden tan pickup decorated with two U.S. flags into the wall of the church before opening fire on worshippers. Two people were fatally shot. Two more people died in the fire. Eight other people, reported by medical professionals to be between the ages of six and 78, were injured and expected to survive.
Sanford himself was shot and killed after exchanging gunfire with a Department of Natural Resources officer and police officer.
But why?
Officials are still trying to determine a definitive motive. While a social media picture of Sanford and his family near the Mackinac Bridge shows him wearing a camouflage Trump 2020 T-shirt with the apparent phrase, “Make liberals cry again,” there is no confirmed political motive.
Sanford also had deep disdain for the Mormon faith, a religion that he repeatedly referred to as “the Antichrist,” according to Grand Blanc City Council candidate Kris Johns and friend, Peter Tersigni, who suspects untreated mental illness and previous methamphetamine use played a role in the rampage.
But officials have not yet spoken about a motive.
In an attempt to better understand Sanford, MLive dug into his past, including a review of yearbooks, court and police records, property assessments, his marriage certificate, historical media reports and interviews with neighbors, a lifelong friend and former classmates.
FROM HIGH SCHOOL TO MILITARY
Sanford grew up with his parents and an older sister in a tidy home in Atlas Township, southeast of Flint, located a couple of miles from Goodrich High School, according to property records.
Sanford’s parents, Thomas “Tom” L. and Brenda Sanford, purchased the 1940-built, 1,000-square-foot lakeview home from Sanford’s maternal grandparents in 2000.
For decades, Sanford’s father operated Thomas Sanford and Associates, a chimney installation and cleaning business that lists the same address as the home.
Sanford grew up there, said Tersigni, who considered Sanford a “best friend” and like a brother.
Some of Tersigni’s best memories with Sanford, whom he calls “Jake,” occurred at their fishing hole on the shores of Atlas Mill Pond, a small lake at the edge of the family property. There they’d sit as kids with poles waiting for carp to bite.
Days were spent “just being boys,” fishing, camping, exploring and bike riding, Tersigni said. “It lasted for years like this. We spent a lot of time together, laughing and playing around.”
Yearbooks reviewed by MLive depict a playful adolescence.
According to a recap of his high school activities, Sanford joined the band and basketball team during his freshman and sophomore years, played football as a freshman and participated in the school’s prom fashion show fundraiser as a junior and senior, once dressed as Mike Myers’ popular character Austin Powers, donning on stage a frilly, ruffled button-down shirt, vest and black-rimmed glasses.
Tersigni compared his friend, a “class clown,” to Robin Williams: “He was the nicest guy, the most outrageous guy, but deep down inside, he was sad, and no one knew about it.”
As graduation approached, Sanford assumed a slightly more serious persona. He asked to be called “Tom,” rather than by his nickname, “Jake,” and enlisted in the military, Tersigni said.
Following graduation, Sanford joined the U.S. Marines, where he earned honors for shooting skills and served stints in Okinawa, Japan and Fallujah, Iraq, according to a 2007 story published by the Clarkston News.
Tersigni, who enlisted in the U.S. Air Force, remembers visiting Sanford on base or heading out the bars together when they were both stationed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina.
“Those times that I visited him, he seemed still the same type of Jake,” Tersigni said, “maybe a little more serious, but still, you know, having fun.”
A Marines spokesperson told People.com Sanford participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom between August 2007 to March 2008, working as a mechanic and a “vehicle recovery operator.”
Sanford’s father, Tom Sanford, declined to speak with MLive-The Flint Journal.
METH AND MORMONS
After finishing his tour, Tersigni said his friend was restless.
“Like anyone with that small hometown feeling, maybe you kind of want to get out, you want a change of scenery,” Tersigni said.
Sanford received an opportunity to head west to Utah and work for a landscaping and snowplowing business around 2009, but things took a dark turn.
Tersigni said his friend began using methamphetamemes after being introduced to the drug by coworkers.
“That affected him negatively in the sense that he couldn’t control it,” Tersigni said. “He abused it.”
About the same time, Sanford began dating and fell in love with a Mormon woman, but in order to be with her he would have to “fully convert,” Tersigni said. Sanford became hyper-fixated on the strict Mormon religion and felt rejected. At the time he became obsessed with religion in general, regularly asking Tersigni and other friends if they’d been “saved.”
“For whatever reason, once he got back from Utah (around 2011), we would have these conversations and when it would go to Mormons … it was almost like he had a split personality or a schizophrenic mindset,” Tersigni said. “He would change his tone; he would get super serious. He never talked about, ‘We have to take action,’ he just thought they were the Antichrist.
“I thought, man, this guy has a mental issue because of meth and it’s tied to Mormons.”
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BACK HOME
Sanford eventually returned to his family home in Atlas Township. Tersigni said Sanford stopped using drugs, but there was more trouble to come.
Sheriff’s deputies arrested Sanford on Oct. 5, 2011, for felony burglary, according to Michigan State Police records obtained by MLive-The Flint Journal.
However, a criminal history check shows no information about how the case was resolved and Sanford’s name does not appear in Genesee District or Circuit court records for this or any other incident – not even for traffic citations.
MLive-The Flint Journal could not immediately reach Sheriff Chris Swanson for comment.
Sanford began a relationship with Tella Nicole-Ovidale Campbell and the couple had a son together on Sept. 13, 2015, according to a 2015 story that appeared in the Lake Orion Review.
The Lake Orion Review reported that Sanford had taken medical leave from his job at Coca-Cola in Flint to care for his six-week premature newborn son, who suffered from congenital hyperinsulinism, a genetic disorder that causes the pancreas to manufacture dangerous amounts of insulin, often leading to lifelong diabetes.
The son spent months in medical care but was released home to his parents in December 2015, a Facebook page dedicated to the baby’s recovery shows.
“He absolutely loved his son,” Tersigni said. “That’s why all of this is so shocking.”
Sanford was married Campbell on March 13, 2016, in Atlas Township by Thomas L. Sanford, the father of the groom and an ordained minister, a marriage certificate reviewed by MLive-The Flint Journal reveals.
FAMILY LIFE
Sanford and his wife purchased a brick home on East Atherton Road in Burton in November 2016, according to assessment records.
Sanford’s son recovered and began playing on a youth soccer team.
Another parent of a child on that team told MLive-The Flint Journal she took notice of Sanford’s behavior on the sidelines. She described Sanford as tall and stocky with an “unkempt beard.”
“He was a loud father … and it was very distracting,” said the woman, who asked not to be identified because of the national attention and volatile discussion surrounding the shooting. “It felt emotionally abusive what he was saying to his kid,” who was “really sweet.”
The woman said Sanford’s son wore unique attire on the field. Pulled over his shin guards were socks designed to look like his lower legs had bullet holes with dripping blood on them, she said.
The woman became curious about Sanford and after learning his name realized he’d attended high school with her. She graduated two years after Sanford at Goodrich High School and knew his name – he went by “Jake” at the time – but didn’t interact with him in school.
The woman also recalls Sanford drawing attention during an appearance at the Goodrich High School 2024 homecoming parade, at which he danced around the parade route dressed as a “chimney sweep.”
Tersigni said Sanford worked for his father’s chimney business during the last five or six years of his life, “maybe even longer.”
This year’s Goodrich High School homecoming parade occurred on Sept. 26, two days prior to the shooting.
“And then this year, he wasn’t there,” the former schoolmate said. “And we were like, well, where the hell is Jake Sanford?”
THE DAYS LEADING UP TO ATTACK
There are reports of Sanford acting strangely in the days leading up to the mass shooting.
Longtime friend Kara Pattison told a WDIV-TV, Channel 4 News reporter that Sanford was generally “fun-loving family guy” but also “harbored unkind feelings” for certain groups of people.
Pattison shared an encounter that occurred two days prior the attack during which she said Sanford “gunned” his pickup in the direction of her and her daughter as they were crossing the road. He pulled up and rolled down his window laughing, as if it were a joke, she told WDIV.
Sanford’s father issued a public apology during an interview with the Detroit Free Press.
“I feel terrible about all the families that have been hurt and they’re under the same crap that I’m going under, that my wife and I are going under,” he said. “I apologize for that …
“The only thing I can say is that it was my son that did it. As far as why: irrelevant. It happened. We’re dealing with it. It’s been a nightmare.”
Tersigni said he kept in contact with Sanford over the years, although their meetings became more infrequent.
“We had a relationship in the sense that we all were lifelong buddies, and a year could go by and it was like nothing had happened,” he said. “The whole purpose of why some of us are even talking is he wasn’t like this extremist right-wing, white supremacist crazy dude.
“He was literally a normal guy with a mental illness that he did his best to hide — and it got the better of him.”
As of Tuesday morning, investigators are continuing to collect evidence and conduct interviews in an effort to determine exactly what Sanford did and why.
Some of those questions remain unanswered and authorities haven’t revealed the names of victims.
The Grand Blanc Township Police Department has partnered with ELGA Credit Union — a Genesee County-based credit union with 16 branches spread throughout the county, to raise support funds for those impacted by the attack.