Columbine

I had the chance to visit with Dave Cullen the author of the New York Times Bestseller Columbine who was visiting campus to speak about his book. He spent ten years investigating the story of the April 20, 1999 school massacre. The book evolved from his experience as a journalist who was on the scene within the first hour of the tragedy. 

The book contains the stories of both the killers (Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold) and several of the victims (Patrick Ireland, Cassie Bernall, Daniel Rohrbough, & Dave Sanders), as it dispells many of the common myths about what really happened that day, why the murders occurred, and communicates lessons on healing and forgiveness.

Cullen is meticulous in his research and his presentation of the evidence about the events that day and leading up to the killings. He describes Eric as a psychopath who was intent on killing as many people as possible in order to prove his own superiority and just for the fun of it while Dylan was depressed and suicidal but over time bought into Eric's vision of human destruction. The boys planned the attack for over a year and their primary weapons were bombs not guns. Fortunately the main bombs did not detonate. Cullen explains that the boys were not outcasts or part of a Trench Coat Mafia and that they did not target particular groups of students; rather their intention was to kill as many people as possible. Their rampage ended with their own suicides.

The stories of the events that day provide a vivid picture of the chaos that was taking place both inside and outside of Columbine High School--the parents desperately searching for their children, the teachers and administrators grasping to understand what was happening and trying to shepherd the students to safety, and the police attempting to contain the danger and apprehend the killers.

I was enthralled as I listened to the book, in part because it is so well written, but more so because I felt compelled to find out the answers to the questions of what happened and why and what can we do to prevent something like this from ever happening again? It was such a senseless tragedy. I walked away with a lot of answers about exactly what happened and some reassurance that there were warning signs in both boys that significant trouble was brewing. Eric had a website that contained a hit list and spewed his hatred towards the whole world. Both boys were in trouble with the law for theft and vandalism. They actually kept journals and created videos that chronicled their plans. But some of the biggest lessons in the book are about forgiveness and healing and the fact that healing happens faster and more completely when the victims forgive the perpetrators. Ultimately, Cullen advises that we shouldn't rush the healing after something of this magnitude happens.

The book was so interesting, I had to include it in Edjurist. If you really want some legal lessons, the tragedy did spawn a lot of legal action. Here are some of the key legal outcomes:

• Mark Manes & Phillip Duran received prison terms for their roles in securing weapons for the boys.
• A $2.53 million settlement was reached between the families of Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold and the families of the victims. $1,568,000 came from the families' homeowner policies. Read the story in the New York Times at http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/20/us/2.53-million-deal-ends-some-columbine-lawsuits.html?pagewanted=1
• Jefferson County Sherriff's Office and Jefferson County School District were able to claim government immunity in the lawsuits against them. However, the lawsuit by the family of teacher Dave Sanders was allowed to continue and was eventually settled. See CBS News at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/11/27/national/main319250.shtml

Comments

[gm davis]

Cullen , who first reported on the story for the online magazine Salon, acknowledges in the book's source notes that thoughts he attributes to Klebold and Harris are conjecture gleaned from the record the pair left behind.

Jeff Kass takes a more straightforward approach in "Columbine: A True Crime Story," working backward from the events of the fateful day.
The Denver Post

Mr. Cullen insists that the killers enjoyed "far more friends than the average adolescent," with Harris in particular being a regular Casanova who "on the ultimate high school scorecard . . . outscored much of the football team." The author's footnotes do not reveal how he knows this; when I asked him about it while preparing this review, Mr. Cullen said he did not necessarily mean to imply that Harris was sexually active. But what else would such words mean?

"Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends," the more sober Mr. Kass writes, and were "probably virgins upon death."
Wall Street Journal