>>>>This evening I have been tearing through the new book "Columbine" by Dave Cullen, interrupted only by brief breaks. 300 pages into it and will finish it after this post. (It helps to know how it turns out, right? .... but not so fast, it isn't actually that kind of book). I am not a catastrophe obsessive, just read two good reviews of this book and decided to break the fiction routine. John Rebus would surely forgive me <g>. With occasional cringe-worthy prose accidents, I think this is a book that deserves reading.
>>>>
>>>
>>>We heard part of an interview with Cullen the other day. (We were driving and eventually got out of range of the station.) (Hour 2 of 4/17/09 for
http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html.)
>>>
>>>What we heard was fascinating.
>>>
>>>>One of the most striking things is how many of the things we thought we knew about Columbine were wrong.
>>>>
>>>>The killers struck out against school bullies: false.
>>>>
>>>>They targeted jocks: false.
>>>>
>>>>Trench coat mafia: false.
>>>>
>>>>That Cassie Bernall was a Christian martyr who was confronted by her killer under a desk in the library, and asked whether she believed in God. She said yes and he shot her dead. False.
>>>>
>>>>A book called "She Said Yes" went straight to the bestseller list after the massacre, and multiple evangelical movements ensued. The preacher who delivered her eulogy went on tour to spread the good news. Just one problem: Cassie never said that, according to multiple eyewitnesses in police records that were suppressed for years. It is a particular black mark on the Rocky Mountain News that they knew this for a long time and sat on it to avoid offending their readers.
>>>>
>>>>The true story has only come to light after years of outright lying by the Jefferson County sheriff's department. They screwed up the entire response, from the moment the first 911 calls came in from frantic students and teachers inside the school, through their reticence to go into the school until 3 hours after the killers had committed suicide, and then more insidiously into the apparent coverup. I suppose they acted as well as they could, from the POV of a non-participant.
>>>>
>>>
>>>From the part of the interview I heard, it wasn't so much a screw-up as misinterpreting what they were seeing. They thought there were many more shooters for reasons that sound pretty credible.
>>>
>>
>>They were getting many reports from inside the building, not all of them credible. One of the most common reasons for believing there were multiple shooters was that the killers walked into the building wearing long black jackets and shed them early in the attack. In the heat of perfect panic it took quite a while to know there were only two. They entered the building at 11:20 and killed themselves a few minutes after noon.
>>
>>Another striking thing that comes from the book is the views inside the heads of the killers. Much of the information was suppressed until recently. From their journals and videos it is clear they planned this over a yePolice reports, long actively suppressed or lied about by the sheriff's department, were not available. The two local newspapers, the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News, whiffed badly despite pouring reporters onto the scene. They did such an exploitative when job job parents formed a human shield to keep them away when school resumed in the fall of 1999.
>>
>>Eric Harris was good with the girls. He knew when to smile, when to pretend sincerity, how to hide his true feelings in F2F appearances. Again and again he put his plans right out there in plain sight. Brooks's mom reported him repeatedly to the police, mainly due to the posts on his web site discussing mass distruction.
>>
>>Another of the revelations was that Eric's plans were much grander than 13 dead. The initial attack was explicitly planned to blow up the cafeteria at 11:17, at the peak of attendance. They had even tracked attendance by the minute. 500 of the 2000 students would have been killed instantly if the bombs had gone off. When they didn't, the killers went to plan B.
>>
>>Eric was godlike, deciding who to kill and who to spare. Dylan shot only a few rounds. They wound up dead next to each other in the library.
>>
>>The book makes a good case that Eric Harris was a psychopath, the definition being someone who doesn't live by the same rules or brain waves most of us do. There is normal behavior, there is insanity, and then there is psychopathy. It is characterized by anomie, for lack of a better word. His intention to commit mass murder was on the record by his sophomore year in high school. He had a web site that stated his intentions in detail. It was taken as typical teenage angst by most adults. He was reported to the police multiple times by the mom of the third guy who had drifted away. Threatening fellow students, setting off test bombs, all written off.
>
>Have you seen these?
>
>
http://acolumbinesite.com/>
http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/No, I had not seen them. The second was written by the author of the book and is essentially a synopsis of it. In particular he makes a case that Eric Harris was a psychotic. He was not nuts, at least not in the usual way. He had very high intelligence and was able to keep himself in check in pursuit of a goal. He was an expert liar, able to fool even the mental health counselors he was made to see after a botched van break-in. (Typically enough, it was Eric's idea but he succeeded in putting most of the blame on Dylan). Including his dad, a military guy who thought he was running a tight ship at home. He was the proverbial bad seed.
The author speculates that Eric would be disappointed to be remembered as just another school shooter loser. His plans were much more grandiose than that. He didn't just snap. It was planned in detail for two years. If his bombs had gone off in the cafeteria as planned he would have killed hundreds, not 13.
Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary.
