Three teenagers who had hoped to get on the national news by taking over their boarding school at gunpoint killed a classmate because they thought he would stand in their way, an investigator says.

Will Futrelle, 16, of Boca Raton, Fla., was found dead Monday in the woods at the 160-acre Mountain Park Baptist Academy, a school in the Ozarks for troubled youngsters. He had been beaten with a club and brick, and his throat had been slashed with a pocket knife.

Anthony Gene Rutherford, 18, of Siloam Springs, Ark., was charged with with murder and jailed without bail. Two 15-year-old boys from California were arrested as juveniles.

Rutherford had been plotting for weeks to take over the school and recruited the 15-year-olds by telling them the incident would make them famous, police said.