Answered before here.

Well, of course, we already knew this about Nate selling the video tape that contained the Morning Ritual video footage for $16,000.   And to give a bit of background: Nate made the video for his real dad, Matthew, who lives in Florida to show him what Nate’s morning routine off to school was like along with his friend, Dylan.  Nate gives his reasoning in the article below as to why he decided to sell the rights to his video to ABC News (and allegedly also the National Enquirer for $10,000).  His real father, Matt, was in support of his son doing so which affronted his stepfather, Victor Good, and his real mother, Julie, whom Nate lived with in Littleton, CO.  Then again, Nate was offended by his mother’s reaction to Columbine and her retrospect paranoia of him being friends with the two ‘killers’ so he left home immediately and headed to live with his father in Florida. 

I honestly don’t think the Klebold’s fault Nate for doing what he did with the video/material. Nate was basically exploited by the media in the middle of a desperate, vulnerable situation. Sue and Tom knew Nate well as he spent a lot of time at their house and saw him as a good, close, friend of Dylan’s.  I would imagine they felt utterly sympathetic for eighteen-year-old Nate and the horrible shock and grief struck turmoil he was in the midst of  as a result of their son’s actions. So, Nate’s impulsive decision to sell his video of him and his friend to take care of immediate, dire problems would have been understandable – yes, even in receiving what most people would consider ‘blood money’ just so that he could survive through the fallout of the tragedy and get on with his life making a fresh start in another state and being able to afford college.  We also know based on Sue’s book that Nate had some hand in helping her complete her book, “A Mother’s Reckoning’.  Sue mentions in her book that Nate still pays the Klebold’s a visit to this day when he is in the area. 

Family torn apart in wake of Columbine

Posted: Tuesday, June 29, 1999

By Dn Luzadder, Scripps Howard News Service

LITTLETON, Colo. – Victor Good’s house seems uncommonly quiet as he sits at his desk near a window that looks out on Columbine High School.

Gone are the sounds he describes as those of “normal, awkward teenagers,” which, until recently, included his stepson, Nathan Dykeman, 18, Nathan’s best friend, Dylan Klebold, and Dylan’s friend, Eric Harris.

From a balcony upstairs in the tidy home, Good and his stepson watched through binoculars two months ago as SWAT teams surrounded Columbine. They saw, at that distance, wounded student Patrick Ireland’s desperate plunge out of the school library window.

It is where Good first heard Nathan’s chilling prediction: that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were the boys with the guns who killed 12 students, a teacher and themselves, and wounded about two dozen others.

Now it is where Good and his wife, Julie, Nathan’s mother, mourn a different kind of loss: They haven’t seen Nathan since three days after the shooting.

They haven’t even spoken with him since he packed his bags and left home with his biological father, Matt Dykeman, to move to Florida, Good said.

Nathan walked out on his graduation, on the funeral of his best friend and on the only family he has known for the past six years.  (*note that Nate did not attend Dylan’s funeral only his stepdad and mom attended.)

The images left to the Goods were from Nathan’s national television appearance on ABC’s “Good Morning America” where he talked about his two friends.

And from the story that appeared about him in the supermarket weekly National Enquirer.

Both media organizations, Good said, paid Nathan thousands of dollars for his appearance – something Good and his wife warned Nathan not to take, something Good said, bitterly, has helped disrupt their family.

“His ‘Disney dad’ is responsible for that,” Good said.

Good said Nathan was paid $16,000 by ABC for an innocuous videotape he and Dylan Klebold had made. He also said an ABC producer called their home and offered them money for an appearance, and suggested they might make “$2 (million) or $3 million” from a book deal later on.

Good said they weren’t interested.

He said the media’s luck changed after Nathan left his Colorado home.

Reached at his father’s home in Florida, Nathan tells a different story.

“I was broke. I had to leave my truck in Oklahoma where it broke down,” he said. “Now my college tuition is paid for. I’ve been criticized enough for this. What was it I did wrong? I know at least a dozen people who were offered money from the media.”

Nathan says he wasn’t paid for an interview, but for the videotape that Klebold and he made of a trip to school.

He did enter into an agreement with the National Enquirer, which he now says distorted, mischaracterized and misquoted what he said.

The Goods’ trauma may seem less dramatic than the devastation that descended upon the families whose children died or were wounded by the two high school killers.

But Good said it seems as though they have lost a child.

“April 20 was the longest day of our lives,” Good said. “It’s like it took a month or more to turn the page on the calendar, to try to get on with living.”

“I suspect there will be a lot of families who will face something like this,” said John Kiekbush, chief of investigations for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and lead investigator in the case.

“This is the kind of thing that can happen to people who go though these kinds of traumatic experiences,” he said.

“It’s very hard to understand,” said Good, his voice cracking. “Nathan was so close to his mother; he was kind of a mama’s boy. His mother sat by the phone all day on Mother’s Day. The phone never rang.”

Nathan said the fallout came over the reaction of his stepfather and mother when they learned that his friends Klebold and Harris were the killers. He said it was as if they ceased to trust him, to believe him. They were terrified, he said, that he was somehow involved.

“They tore apart my room,” he said. “They threw away my heavy metal CDs, anything that had a skull on it or something like that. I couldn’t believe the way they treated me.” [Source]

Also see Critics say ABC Opened Its Checkbook for a News Source

No. Journaling is just how some people choose to express themselves since time immemorial.  I know it may be hard to believe in this device cray age of ours. 😉

The computer geek outcasts.