Columbine: By Dave Cullen
Columbine
The full story of one of America's worst school shootings.
Synopsis
On April 20, 1999, two boys, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris attacked their own school with bombs, molotov cocktails, and guns. They wanted to leave a “lasting impression on the world.” Their bombs failed but the shooting defined a new era of school violence.
Dave Cullen, a journalist, spent ten years piecing together the entirety of this tragedy. He delivers a profile of the teenage killers, surpassing any shallow attempt looking for reason. This is a deep dive into the minds of the two boys, who they were, what they believed and wanted.
There’s a story here: a brutal, apathetic teenager and another suicidal, depressive teenager.
The boys spent months planning, stockpiling guns and ammo, and recording their hatred in journals. They left a trail of red flags and signs of what’s to come, only for them to go unhindered on their way to murder.
Dave Cullen investigates this story with a psychological approach to better understand who these two boys were. This book relies on hundreds of interviews, thousands of pages of police files, FBI psychologists and the boy’s journals and tapes.
Why you should read this book:
Gun violence in America is a public health crisis. School shootings ravage communities on a weekly basis. Since from 1997 to 2022, there were 1453 school shootings. The United States has had 57 times as many school shootings as all other industrialized nations combined.
Columbine was hardly the first school shooting but what happened on April 20, 1999 left a gaping wound that often feels like the true start to the public crisis. And every time something like this happens, we want to know why.
Why is this happening? What’s going on? And what can we do to stop it?
With most school shootings, we rarely get answers. But with Columbine, the two killers purposely left a lot of evidence of their intentions. They recorded in journals, on cassette tapes, on video. They showed us who they were and why they did this.
Key Takeaways:
From the outside, Eric and Dylan were normal teenage boys. They were a little full of themselves. They liked to test authority but they also enjoyed school activities, sports, video games, and movies. They were smart kids and had plenty of friends. Eric was outgoing and intelligent. He wrote poetry and quoted Shakespeare and Nietzsche. Dylan was more withdrawn but still very smart. He loved to watch and analyze the game of baseball. Both boys grew up in stable homes. Columbine was a good school and neither were bullied.
On the inside, Dylan was depressive and suicidal while Eric was a clinical psychopath. At some point these traits started to surface. Their troubled minds took shape. They cut class and got into trouble. Dylan was angry with emotional outbursts. Eric saw the world as a disease. He fantasized about eliminating people from the story. He saw himself as a god and everyone else was beneath him.
Eric fantasized about mass murder and started planning his “judgment day.” Eric was the mastermind while Dylan was the follower. They started making pipe bombs and put their vision on paper. He didn’t have an agenda other than homicidal art. He wanted to maximize the terror.
There were red flags but they slipped through the cracks. Eric had his own website where he posted rants about his hatred for the world. He even expressed his fantasy of mass murder and listed people he wanted to kill. At school, they broke into lockers. Then they were arrested for breaking into a van and stealing electronics. Eric threatened and harassed one of his classmates, Brooks Brown. Brook’s family went to the police but nothing transpired. A pipe bomb was found near Eric’s house but no one made the connection.
One of the traits of being a psychopath is the ability to blend in. While Dylan struggled to weave his way out of trouble, Eric was particularly good at fooling everyone. The families were concerned by their behavior. They worked with a judge to have Eric and Dylan placed them in a Diversion program for their crimes. They each saw psychiatrists, went to counseling, started medication, and did community service. But Eric prided himself on fooling everyone. He put on his best facade, manipulating his parents, his teachers, the judge, all while never wavering from his plans. He took extra precaution with his materials and journals. He did better in school and kept out of trouble to keep his parents off his back.
They got their guns and ammo illegally. Eric and Dylan weren’t old enough to buy guns. But their entire plan depended on guns. Eric complained about it in his writings. He was frustrated by the Brady Bill gun laws that prohibited him from buying the most popular semiautomatic machine guns. And the federal system of instant background checks made it impossible. So he went around the laws by using his friends to buy the guns at local gun shows.
The massacre was meant to be much worse. Eric and Dylan wanted carnage. They were inspired by other violent acts like the Oklahoma bombing. Eric wanted to top everyone’s death tolls. He didn’t want hundreds dead. He wanted thousands. On the day of the massacre, he strategically placed homemade bombs in the common’s area during the busiest lunch periods. The only reason it didn’t go as plan was because his bombs didn’t work.
No one was prepared for the shooting. There were previous school shootings, but nothing like this had ever occurred. The police initially thought it was a terrorist act. Instead of racing through the school, hours went by before anyone acted. Some students bled out from their wounds waiting to be rescued.
After the massacre, rumors and misinformation muddled up the truth. Some students misremembered the events. Multiple stories conflicted with each other. The media, the NRA, the Sheriff’s Department, and even local churches exploited the massacre for their own gain, intentionally and unintentionally. There were false stories and assumptions and conspiracy theories being spread. Everyone was looking for a quick scapegoat to blame. Eric and Dylan intentionally left evidence for the world to find. But it would take over a year before the authorities released any of the evidence.
The Police Department mishandled the investigation. Evidence went “missing.” When news broke out that there were clear red flags that should have prevented this tragedy from happening, the victim’s families were outraged. Lawsuits commenced. It took over a year before some of the evidence was shared to the public. Then more than three years before the rest of the evidence was shared.
Columbine’s tragedy has had lasting effects. A large amount of students suffered from PTSD. A few students suffered life-long disabilities from injuries. Within ten years, there were more than 80 school shootings with some shooters claiming Columbine as inspiration. And police departments have had to rethink how they approach school shootings.
Excerpts from book:
“Eric attacked the symbol of his oppression: the robot factory and the hub of adolescent existence.
For Eric, Columbine was a performance. Homicidal art. He actually referred to his audience in his journal: “the majority of the audience won’t even understand my motives,” he complained. He scripted Columbine as made-for-TV murder, and his chief concern was that we would be too stupid to see the point. Fear was Eric’s ultimate weapon. He wanted to maximize the terror. He didn’t want kids to fear isolated events like sporting events or dance; he wanted them to fear their daily lives. It worked. Parents across the country were afraid to send their kids to school.”
“Kids felt as if their identities had been stolen. “Columbine” was the name of a tragedy now. Their school was a symbol of mass murder.”
Patrick Ireland was shot in the head and fell out of the library window into the arms of the police. At his graduation, he limped to the podium to give the valedictory address.
“The shooting made the country aware of the unexpected level of hate and rage that had been hidden in high schools.” But he was convinced the world was inherently good at heart. He had spent the year thinking about what had gotten him across the library floor. At first he assumed hope- not quite; it was trust. “When I fell out the window, I knew somebody would catch me. That’s what I need to tell you: that I knew the loving world was there all the time.”
About the author
Dave Cullen is an American journalist and nonfiction writer. He’s a New York Time’s bestseller. Dave has been a frequent analyst about school shootings on Today, NBC Nightly News, PBS Newshour, Nightline, Morning Edition, CBS This Morning, CBS Sunday Morning, CBSN, Anderson Cooper 360, Rachel Maddow, All In With Chris Hayes, Katie, Talk of the Nation, Hannity, and numerous documentaries including CNN, NatGeo, Showtime and The Nineties.
