Huntsville-Madison County Public Library discussion

A spiral into psychopathy and depression

A new epilogue to Dave Cullen’s account of the April 1999 massacre at Columbine High School begins, “The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror, one of those touching vignettes will pop up on the TV, encapsulating the brief life of a victim in thirty seconds…” He may have written those words three months ago. Although the Columbine murders occurred almost 20 years ago, the scenario enacted by killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold has been duplicated in repeat performances many times in the subsequent decades. The horror of Columbine is fresh and, unfortunately, does not reside in the past as a relic from a previous era.

Cullen’s method of telling the story was a bit disorienting to me initially but I quickly got used to it. Within the first 50 pages or so the murders occur, with a few prefatory chapters on what was happening in the school at the time, a bit of background on the killers and a bit of background on some of the faculty and administrators of the school. Then he follows with a few more chapters about the immediate aftermath of the murders before doubling back to delve deeper into the lives of Eric and Dylan, their victims and would be victims.

Cullen’s method of circling and re-circling the events enables him to dispel myths that arose almost immediately after the shooting ended. Initial media speculation for motives focused on enmity between the so-called Trench Coat Mafia and jocks. That was an explanation that seemed to make sense. It was also totally false with regard to the Columbine killers. While Eric and Dylan did initially wear trench coats they discarded them shortly after entering the school and their roaming between floors at different stages of the attack led many of the survivors to think initially that there were more than two shooters. The reverberations of gunfire also contributed to assumptions that rifles were being fired from multiple locations. Actually, Eric and Dylan shot at people indiscriminately, firing at some people but not others before moving on.

Cullen also characterizes the incident as more of a failed bombing than a successful shooting. Most of the bombs they set did not go off as planned, particularly the large propane bomb they hauled into the cafeteria. If that had gone off as planned, over 500 people would have been killed immediately and changed the public perception of the event.

Eric was a classic psychopath, unable to feel true empathy for anyone although a master manipulator who could express remorse convincingly, enough to fool his parents, teachers, and therapists. Dylan was a suicidal depressive whose rage at the world dovetailed with Eric’s. Dylan would probably never have acted alone and continually wavered in his determination to go through with the plan almost until the days just before it was enacted. Eric was the mastermind whose raving journal entries about ‘killing mankind’ acquired frightening literalism as they solidified into action. He needed a pliable, willing accomplice in order to carry out the deed.

In this account, it is understandable how misconceptions arose immediately. Students heard the SWAT teams’ gunfire, thinking it was more shots from the killers. In fact, the entire incident from the beginning of the shooting until the killers shot themselves took around 45-50 minutes.

One of the myths that got told repeatedly was of the martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. The story that became repeated and took root in her mother’s book about it was that one of the killers asked Cassie if she believed in God. She said yes and the killer fired. Cassie was huddled under a table praying but had no chance to say anything before she was shot. Another student, Val Schnuur, was shot but was not dead, just praying to God not to take her. Dylan kneeled down and asked if she believed in God. She said, “Yes. I believe in God?”
“Why?” Dylan asked.
“Because I believe. And my parents brought me up that way.”
Dylan reloaded but was distracted and walked off. Val crawled to shelter and survived.

Yet the tale spread about Cassie and it served as consolation to her parents and as a parable to an evangelical audience that chose to accept it as truth rather than investigate the details or listen to Val the survivor.

There was plenty of blame and rage spreading around in the ensuing months and years. Eric’s and Dylan’s parents attempted to seclude themselves and deal with their own grief and guilt while being held responsible by many of the survivors as well as the general public. Eric’s father had thought he was administering tough love by grounding Eric and taking away his computer yet he too was fooled as were the counselors and psychologists. Cullen enables us to see all of the points of view, giving them the benefit of the doubt.

If there is a villain in the tale aside from the killers themselves it is the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. Evidence of Eric’s intent existed in his journals and website and the parents of one of his classmates, Brooks Brown, complained repeatedly to officials for over a year and a half about him. Eric and Dylan were even arrested for breaking into a van and stealing electronic equipment and sentenced to community service and participation in a juvenile diversion program. There was enough evidence acquired before the murders to act on Eric’s threats. A warrant was filed but for some reason never brought to a judge. The ensuing cover-up involving destruction of evidence unfolded through lawsuits against the department for the next five years.

Cullen’s method of spiraling deeper into the motives and circumstances that culminated in the shootings flies in the face of the conventional narrative that follows a predictable linear path from conception to execution to aftermath, enabling him to delve deeper into the lives of the killers, victims, parents, and survivors until finally dramatizing the killers’ last moments. There may never be a satisfactory explanation for why perpetrators of horrific acts commit them but Cullen comes as close to it as any journalistic true-crime account that I have read.