Columbine, Nearly 11 Years Later

I just finished reading Dave Cullen's book COLUMBINE. Cullen is considered the foremost authority on the school massacre, and his book, of course, is far more frightening than anything Stephen King ever penned. I can't say I liked reading the book, but I think it's an important read for anyone who cares about kids and wants to keep them safe.

What struck me as I read the book were the number of myths or misconceptions that rose from the events of April 20, 1999. To begin with, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not the loners which is so often suggested. They had friends, they worked at a pizza parlor, and they had both gone to the prom the Saturday before the attack. Nor were they the victims of constant bullying, though in some of their writings and videos they ranted at the jocks and the preps, who may have made fun of them. In reality, in Eric and Dylan's senior year, they were more likely to be doing the bullying than being the object of it. They played violent videogames and watched violent movies like NATURAL BORN KILLERS, but Dr. Dwayne Fuselier, the FBI behavioral psychologist, who studied both the boys, doesn't name this as a direct cause. Even the famous Trench Coat Mafia that the boys were supposed to belong to is a misconception. The Trench Coat Mafia was a group of boys who hung out in long dark coats at Columbine, but the group had disbanded a year earlier, and Dylan and Eric hadn't been members. The boys did wear black dusters to hide their weapons the day of the attack, and researchers feel that probably that reminded the kids at Columbine of the TCM. One kid mentioned it to another then to another, and pretty soon, the press picked it up and it went on the internet, and became "truth."

Perhaps, the most frightening misconception is that Harris and Klebold were just a couple of school shooters. These two, and particularly Harris, were looking to create a mini-Armageddon. They planned to kill thousands that day with pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails, and bombs they had built using propane canisters. Had the propane bombs gone off in the cafeteria where they were placed, hundreds of students and teachers would have been crushed by rubble. Not only that, but the boys had also tried to turn their cars into bombs and had parked the cars where they figured fire and rescue vehicles would eventually be parked. Thank God, that Eric Harris couldn't make a timer that would detonate and that even when they fired directly into their propane bombs, they didn't explode.

The Columbine community and the world looked for someone or something to blame. The Harris and Klebold parents have taken most of the heat, although according to this book, they had no idea of their sons' plans and had tried to be good parents. Some people blame the school system, but in a school with 2000 kids, it's a challenge. Dylan's creative writing teacher brought a violent story he had written to the attention of the guidance counselors and Dylan's parents. But the counselor and the Klebolds just wrote it off to an active imagination. Some blame must go to the Jefferson County Sheriff's dept. for not foreseeing the attack and for mishandling and ignoring reports about Erik's violent nature months before the massacre.

Blame belongs to the killers themselves. According to Dr. Fuselier, Eric Harris was a psychopath. He hated the world and wanted to destroy as much as he could of it and be remembered for his evil. Dylan Klebold is the poor sap who followed along. Klebold was so depressed, so down on life, felt so unloved by the girl of his dreams, that he looked at the massacre as a way to commit suicide and end his troubled life. Horrifyingly, both boys completely anticipated and accepted dying and figured they'd have "fun" doing it.

On a video made shortly before April 20, Eric Harris assures his parents that they shouldn't feel any responsibility for his evil. He quotes Shakespeare: "Good wombs have borne bad sons." Just typing those words gave me a chill.