Tag: Dylan Klebold


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January 30, 1998  ~ 19 years ago on this night ~  January 30, 2017

 Dylan was having a okay, ordinary day at school – even doing an Interview for the Rebel News Network in the afternoon (interview clip) – but by 8 pm that evening, his life had changed for ever.   All it takes is one day, one choice, one event that can alter destiny forever like the abrupt switch of a train on a different set of tracks.  It was the day that a bright, clean cut boy with so much future potential had made the wrong choice and had in effect, fallen from grace. The disappointment in his parents eye’s reflecting back at himself upon his arrest at the police station. Before, he could do no wrong..but now?   He felt his life a fuck up and with one major slip up, this was now a nail on the coffin to confirm it.  

The event wounded and mortified him deeply.

From that day forward, he would embark on the beginning of his end as he slowly eroded inside himself in silence.   It was the beginning of his downward spirals decent as a troubled juvenile on a crash course with an infamous destiny set to self destruct.

This is the tale of..

The January Incident 

The next incident during Dylan’s junior year was the most catastrophic of all.
On January 30, a few days after Dylan scratched the locker at school, he and Eric were arrested for breaking into a parked van and stealing electronic equipment.

Dylan had agreed to go with Zack to an activity at his church that night, and the two of them planned to come back to our house for a sleepover afterward. Tom and I were listening to music together in the living room when the phone rang around 8:30 p.m. It was Zack’s dad, audibly upset. Zack had quarreled with his girlfriend and left the event with her. He’d gotten hurt, possibly after stepping out of a moving car, and wasn’t making much sense. It was all very confusing, but Zack’s parents wanted us to know the plan had changed. Dylan wasn’t with Zack; he’d left the church with Eric.

I thanked Zack’s dad for the update and immediately called the Harrises, who were as concerned as we were not to know where the boys were. Both sets of parents promised to get in touch immediately if we heard from the kids. Within minutes, our phone rang again. It was the county sheriff. Dylan and Eric had been arrested for criminal trespass.

Tom and I drove to the local sheriff’s auxiliary office; the Harrises were already there. The offenses included First Degree Criminal Trespass and Theft, both of which were felonies, and Criminal Mischief, a misdemeanor.

My mouth hung open when I heard how serious the charges were. I could not believe that our Dylan, who had never done anything really wrong in his life, could do something so terrible. This was the kind of trouble that might seriously impact his future. Neither of us had ever been arrested, so we called one of our neighbors, a lawyer, for advice. He told us Dylan should “spill it,” tell the complete truth. Before he hung up, he reassured us. “Boys do dumb stuff. He’s a
good kid. He’ll be okay.”

We waited for what felt like an eternity. Mrs. Harris wept. Then a deputy followed the boys through the substation office door. I practically threw up when I saw Dylan paraded past me in handcuffs.

We waited hours to learn whether our children would be sent to a detention facility or allowed to return home. Finally, the officer who arrested them recommended they be considered for a Diversion program, an alternative to jail for first-time juvenile offenders accused of minor crimes. The program would provide supervised counseling and community service, and allow
the boys to avoid criminal charges and placement in a detention facility. The boys were released into our care.

Our drive home was silent, as all three of us contended with our various emotions: fury, humiliation, fear, and bewilderment. We arrived, emotionally and physically exhausted, around four o’clock in the morning. Tom and I needed to discuss how we wanted to respond. There would be consequences, we told Dylan, but we would talk about them after we got some rest. Exhausted as I was, the sun was up before I was able to close my eyes and sleep.

Tom woke before I did. When Dylan got up, they took a long walk. Afterward, Tom told me Dylan had been very, very angry—at the situation, the cops, his school, the unfairness of life. He was so angry that he didn’t seem to accept or acknowledge the wrongness of what he had done.

I was still mad myself, and didn’t want to talk to Dylan until I could be calm. Later in the day, the two of us sat together on the stairs. The master bedroom was on the ground floor, and Dylan’s room was upstairs, so we often sat on the stairs between them to talk. I recounted our conversation verbatim in my journal that night, and have relived it in my mind countless times since his death.

I began, “Dylan. Help me understand this. How could you do something so morally wrong?” He opened his mouth to answer, and I cut him off. I said, “Wait. Wait a minute. First, tell me what happened. Tell me everything, right from the beginning.”

He told me the story of his bizarre evening. After Zack left the church, he and Eric decided to go light some fireworks, so they drove to a parking area not far from our house where recreational cyclists stowed their cars while they biked the scenic canyon road. There, they saw an empty commercial van parked in the darkness. They saw electronic equipment inside. The van was locked. They banged on the window and tried to open it. Dylan rationalized this by
noting the van was deserted. When the window did not open, they broke it with a rock.

I asked Dylan if breaking the window was Eric’s idea. He said, “No. It was both of us. We thought of it together.”

They took the equipment and drove to a secluded spot close by. Minutes later, a deputy drove by and saw the damaged van. He found the two boys in Eric’s car with the equipment a short distance down the road. As soon as the officer approached the car, Dylan confessed.

When I’d heard the whole story, I asked my question again. “You committed a crime against a person. How could you do something so morally wrong?” His answer shocked me. He said, “It was not against a person. It was against a company. That’s why people have insurance.”  My jaw dropped. I cried out, “Dyl! Stealing is a crime against a person! Companies are made up of people!” I tried to appeal to his sense of reason. “If one of our renters decided to steal a light
fixture from one of our apartments, would it be a crime against a rental company, or against us?”

Dylan relented, “Okay, okay. I get the point.” But I didn’t stop. I explained that the owner of the van would have to pay a deductible to the insurance company. “There’s no such thing as a victimless crime, Dylan.” I’d heard a story about a programmer who figured out a way to siphon tiny, nearly untraceable amounts of money from calculations that left an odd penny. “Before long, you’ll know enough to do something similar,” I told him. “Do you think that’s ethical?” He said he knew it was not, and assured me he’d never do anything of the kind.

What he’d done was wrong, and I wanted him to know it. Appealing to his empathy, I asked him how he’d feel if someone stole from him. “Dylan, if you follow no other rules in your life, at least follow the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal.” I paused to consider which of the other commandments might have relevance, and then decided to stop
haranguing him. “Those are rules to live by.”

He said, “I know that.”
We sat in silence for a little while. Then I said, “Dyl, you’re scaring me. How can I be sure you’ll never do such a thing again?” He said he didn’t know, and seemed frightened to learn he could do something so bad on an impulse. He was obviously miserable. I felt no anger at that point, only compassion.

Before we stood, I told him he had broken our trust. We would be watching him more closely, and his activities would be restricted. He complained it wasn’t fair for us to punish him on top of the Diversion program; weren’t the legal consequences enough? But his actions had left us no choice. I also said I thought he should see a professional counselor. He said he absolutely did
not want to do that. When I told him we would seek help if it was in his best interest, he said definitively, “I do not need counseling. I’ll show you I don’t.”

I was grateful Dylan could get on with his life without going to jail. Years after his death, though, I visited a secure treatment program for juvenile offenders, the type of place Dylan would likely have been sent to, and learned that what I had feared so much would almost certainly have been better for Dylan than returning to school, especially if the culture at Columbine High School was as toxic for him as we believe it was.

The administrator told me, “We’re into saving kids, not punishing them.” He described the supports that would have been available to Dylan, such as professionals who specialized in dealing with mood disorders and PTSD, common in kids who have been bullied. The multidisciplinary team would almost certainly have diagnosed his depression, as well as any other brain health disorders he might have been living with. The staff worked closely with the
offender’s parents. There was even a computer training facility there.

We never know what lessons are in store for us, especially when our prayers are answered and events seem to turn out the way we want. At the time, we were grateful he’d qualified for Diversion. But I can’t help wondering if sending Dylan to a juvenile detention facility would have saved his life, and the lives of everyone he took with him.

~ end ~

Living In The Aftermath Of Tragedy

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Over the course of minutes, they would kill twelve students and a teacher and wound twenty-four others before taking their own lives.

For the last sixteen years, Sue Klebold, Dylan’s mother, has lived with the indescribable grief and shame of that day. How could her child, the promising young man she had loved and raised, be responsible for such horror? And how, as his mother, had she not known something was wrong? Were there subtle signs she had missed? What, if anything, could she have done differently?

These are questions that Klebold has grappled with every day since the Columbine tragedy. In A Mother’s Reckoning, she chronicles with unflinching honesty her journey as a mother trying to come to terms with the incomprehensible.

wamc.org  Click Listen for the audio interview

Living In The Aftermath Of Tragedy

How Could You Not Know? The Sue Klebold Story

By Patricia Salber MD, MBA (@docweighsin) -December 14, 2016 

On April 20, 1999, 17 days before his graduation, Dylan Klebold and his friend Eric Harris, killed 13 people, wounded 24 more before shooting themselves to death at Columbine High School. It was one of the worst school shootings American history.

Almost immediately, everyone was asking how could this happen? What was wrong with him? And, what was wrong with his parents? As his mom, Sue Klebold relates at the beginning of her TedMed 2016 talk, everyone was wondering, how could you not know? What kind of a mother were you? These are questions that she has spent almost 17 years trying to figure out.

She told the audience that the tragedy convinced her that she had failed as a parent. He was a completely different person from the one that she thought she knew. She said,

“Aside from his father, I was the one person who knew and loved Dylan the most. If anyone could have known what was happening, it should have been me. But, I didn’t know.”

Sue Klebold has spent the ensuing years combing through her memories to try to figure out where she had failed as a parent. But, she said,

“The truth is there are no clear answers. I can’t give you any solutions…I can only tell you what I have learned.”

By reading through his diaries after the tragedy, she discovered that Dylan had written two years before that he was cutting himself; he wrote that he was in agony and wished he could get a gun to end his life. She did not know this at the time—Dylan was very good at keeping his feelings and actions hidden from his parents. Once she discovered that he had been depressed and suicidal, she tried to learn how suicidal thinking could lead to murder.

Suicide is a brain health problem

She became active in the suicide prevention community and spent a lot of time talking to suicide survivors. Sue came to realize that the problem of suicide is a matter of mental health—brain health as she prefers to call it—because…

“from 75[%] to maybe more than 90% of people who commit suicide have a diagnosable mental illness of some sort.“

But many of them are never assessed or treated. People who have persistent ongoing thoughts of suicide and go on to devise a plan to carry out the act have a brain pathology. Their thinking is impaired. They are unable to make choices in the same way as people who are not so afflicted. She calls it a Stage 4 medical health emergency.

Dylan, she told us, had a perfectionistic, self-reliant personality and that probably played a role in his response to triggering events that had occurred at school. In addition, he had a complicated relationship with his friend, Eric Harris, a boy that she says was disturbed, controlling, and homicidal. Finally, she said, it was easy, way too easy, for him to get guns without her knowledge.

Being Dylan’s mom

According to her 2016 book, A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, it took her a long time to accept that Dylan had been an active participate in planning and carrying out the horrific acts that April day. She initially believed that he must have been duped by Eric or that he went along with it at the last minute. But the evidence that he was a full participant was incontrovertible, including videos he had made with Eric that showed the depth of his rage and intent to kill.

She alternated between grieving for her beloved son—the little boy she cuddled and the young man who was weeks away from attending the college of his choice—and shame and self-loathing for being the mother who raised a mass murderer. She wrote letters to all of the victim’s families even though she knew many hated her and blamed her, in part, for what happened.

The aftermath of Columbine took its toll on her. Two years after it happened, she developed breast cancer. And, four years after, she began having panic attacks that would last for weeks. She said,

“My mind would suddenly lock into this spinning cycle of terror…It felt as if my brain was trying to kill me.”

For the first time, she told us, she found out what it felt like to have a dysfunctional mind.

If love were enough

Everytime someone asks her, “How could you not have known?“, it feels like a punch in the gut. It carries accusation and plays into her feelings of guilt that no matter how much therapy she has had, she will never fully irradicate them. But she said, “here is something I have learned,

if love were enough to stop someone who was suicidal from hurting themselves, Suicides would hardly ever happen. But love is not enough.

No matter how much we believe that we can control everything that our loved ones think and feel, we cannot. And no matter how much we think we are different, that someone we love would never hurt themselves or someone else, can cause us to miss what is hidden in plain sight.”

We must learn, she says, to forgive ourselves for not knowing, for not asking the right questions, or finding the right treatment. When someone we love is in distress, we must listen with our whole being, without judgment and without offering solutions. In the end, however, we must accept the tragic fact that even the most vigilant and responsible amongst us may not be able to help.

“But for love’s sake, we must never stop trying to know the unknowable.”

[Source]

what is the e-c search and how do I find it

The E-C Search tool is a feature I’ve added fairly recently which you can do keyword searches specific to this blog only (not general Tumblr searches).  Type in one or two words that generally describe what you’re hoping to find and the E-C search tool will pull up keywords contained in the content of all previous E-C posts and as well as the tags at the bottom of each post for just about anything you might be trying to find. It’s not 100% accurate but most of the time it’s a pretty efficient search when you’re trying to find something super quick.

Below are the various and sundry ways to locate and utilize the
E-C Search tool.

E-C Search via your computer web browser:

The E-C Search can be located under the description on the left hand side. Also, notice that the FAQ can be found in two places: Above the E-C Search tool and also to the right inside the white menu bar.  

Keep in mind that the FAQ is not completed so if you’re unable to find anything there, use the E-C Search and try a bunch of different keywords to see which past posts will pull up. If you are unable to find what you’re looking for, then feel free to send me a question as a last resort. 🙂  

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E-C Search using an app smart device – iphone, ipad or android app, etc.

I’d advise using the magnifying glass up at the top because the coding that generates the search bar box appears to not show up while using apps.  Android apps were the first to have the magnifying glass for blog-specific searches. However, now, the iphone Tumblr app now also has the blog-specific magnifying glass search tool up at the top. Yay for us iphone users!

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Your phone browser (safari, chrome, etc.)

If you use your browser on your iphone or android, the E-C Search bar shows up and you can type in your keywords in the box.  

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I hope that sums up the E-C Search tool for you!   If you’re having some issues locating the tool, feel free to private message me. 🙂 

TEDMED 2016 – November 30 – Dec 2, 2016
Palm Springs

Invisible Threats

What if we could expose and confront invisible threats to health?

It’s getting easier for us to monitor and keep track of our health data—but what about the influences on our health that we can’t (or won’t) see and measure? Topics considered for this session include suicide, pandemics, trafficking, environmental toxins, and poverty. 

Stay tuned for the upcoming audio: Finding the Silver Lining with Sue Klebold 

“I’m sick of waking up each day with a broken heart, of missing Dylan and wanting to scream loud enough to wake up from the nightmare my life has become. I want to hold Dylan in my arms again, to cuddle him as I did years ago, to hold him in my lap and help him with his shoes or a puzzle. I want to talk to him, and stop him from even considering this horrible act.”  
                            — Journal entry, May 11, 1999, Sue Klebold

Lost My Son, Dylan, In The Murder-Suicide at Columbine 
Carson J. Spencer Foundation blog

Saturday, November 19, 2016 –

Guest Blog by Sue Klebold

“I lost my son, Dylan, in a murder-suicide.  He and his friend
murdered 12 students and a teacher, and injured more than 20 others before
taking their own lives. He was very smart, funny and well-organized.  He
had a great sense of humor and made me laugh.  

He loved trying new foods and new experiences.  I will always
miss him. 

Dylan taught me what it feels like to be completely proud of a
child, and to understand how blind we can be to someone’s inner
suffering.  

I have honored his memory and the memory of those he killed by
writing a book, A Mother’s
Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy, and donating the
proceeds to brain health and suicide prevention organizations.  Because of
Dylan, I try to make things better for others. 

My grieving process was complicated because of the murders
involved.  Years of grief were convoluted by lawsuits, public
condemnation, and personal health problems.  The loving support of friends
and family helped, along with therapy, reading about suicide, journaling,
drawing, exercise, and connecting with other survivors of suicide loss.

I derived meaning by learning about the suicidal mind.  I began to accept
that his judgment was impaired at the time of his death, and this helped me
cope with the reality of his destructive behavior.  

I hope he would be proud that I honor his memory by trying to
improve mental health care for others.  I want him to know that nothing he
did could ever make me love him less than I do. 

Recovery is a process.  At first, we are victimized by what
has happened to us.  We feel devastated, confused, grief stricken, and
helpless.  As time goes by, we slowly move from feeling like a victim to
feeling more like a survivor.  We don’t know how we made it, but we want
to help others who have more recent losses or who are struggling.  We find
that by trying to serve others, we slowly gain strength and balance. 
Eventually, we may become advocates, driven to make a difference in a larger
sphere of influence.  We see that we never have to stop loving or missing
the person we lost, and we remember them with joy, honor, and gratitude.”  [Source]

In Nate Dykeman’s statement it says that he sent Devon Adams a mean email because she was saying things to get Dylan in trouble. Do you have any idea what that was about or is it all speculation?

This is what Nate stated in his 11K account:

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We don’t know for certain why Devon was trying to get Dylan in trouble. However, I have my suspicions that it might be for this reason…

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As Dylan’s friend, Devon may have found out about the two dipping into the computer lab room and helping themselves to school equipment and might have said something to put a stop to their thievery possibly getting Dylan into trouble.  

Dylan brags in Nate Dykeman’s yearbook…

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“I want the tv! hehehe  j/k i’ll get it another time. -draws a door key- (likely to the computer storage room ;)) hehehe”   

It’s more than likely that Nate knew what Dylan (and Eric) were up to having the key.  Seems to fit here in Dylan’s yearbook message to Nate that he was dropping hints and bragging over having carte blanche access to plifer computer equipment and was considering even taking the old TV sitting in storage too.  Perhaps, Nate didn’t like Devon interfering and inadvertently fingering Dylan in the process for items missing out of the computer storage closet.  Devon possibly even was the one that tipped Dylan’s dad off about him helping himself to an old laptop from Columbine. 

Of course it’s interesting too that Sue never mentions in her book anything about Dylan stealing that laptop and her husband making him taking it back.  Perhaps this was between Tom and Dylan and Sue wasn’t even aware of it.  Which I find kind of odd if that’s the case.  You’d think that Tom would notify his wife about their son’s school theft. Since it doesn’t sound like Columbine had any sort of reprimand toward Dylan’s theft, I would say that Tom might’ve privately scolded Dylan for doing this and told him to take it back.  Sue may not have known about it nor the school. Only Nate and Devon knew what happened.

This is my speculation here as there isn’t much else to go on in the evidence.

Sure would just looove to hear both Nate and Devon’s account of these shenanigans.  

    

Teaching Moments:
 Dylan was no stranger to his mothers substantial career  working with the disabled and the lessons she instilled of tolerance, empathy and compassion.


“I’d taught kids to read as a reading specialist, and I’d worked to provide adult students with disabilities the accommodations they needed to succeed in college.”   “.. Over the years of working with people with disabilities, I had observed that profound loss often brought with it a depth of gratitude for life, a sense of joy, and an ability to be in the present that people untouched by tragedy could not always access.”

“Years earlier, I had served on a committee advising the mortuary science program at a local college on creating opportunities in that field for students with disabilities, and had worked closely with the head of the program.”

“In September (’98), after an extended period of political upheaval at the college where I worked, I started a new job, coordinating a small grant to help people with disabilities in the community college system acquire computer skills. I only had to go to the office four days a week, but I took a fairly significant pay cut. The grant was also timelimited, which added a degree of uncertainty. My commute was almost an hour longer than it had been, and I found it a little unsettling to know it would take me so long to get to my kids if they needed me.”

“The biggest stressor in our lives, though, was the rapid and alarming decline in Tom’s health. For years he’d complained of joint pain: stiff knees, a sore neck, sharp shooting pains he described as ice picks in his toes. He experienced periods of unexplained weakness, and a series of crippling migraines like little strokes, which left him temporarily unable to see or to speak. A diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, right about the time Dylan entered high school, explained the chronic pain. RA is degenerative, so Tom was afraid his health would continue to worsen, leaving him disabled and unable to work.”

“As the youngest, Dylan had read the Four Questions at the celebration. I had spent my career as a teacher and an advocate for people with disabilities, and Tom and I were both lifelong proponents of tolerance and inclusion. Neither of us would ever have tolerated any hate speech or anti-Semitic imagery in our home or on Dylan’s clothing.”

“Dylan and Byron weren’t eligible for bus service to Columbine High School, so Tom or I had to drop them off and pick them up. When Dylan began ninth grade, we worked out a plan that honored his growing sense of independence: after school, he would take the city bus a couple of miles to the college where I worked, and stay with me until it was time to go home. I loved having Dylan at my office with me while I worked. I kept a file drawer full of snacks for him, which often went unopened because the women in my department spoiled him with homemade treats. If his homework was done, he’d head to the student lounge to watch television, or to the cafeteria for a milkshake. Occasionally he’d stretch his long legs out under a table in my office to take a nap.”

“When he was a sophomore, he volunteered at the day care on campus. The director was a colleague of mine, and I’d occasionally stop by to watch him work. True to form, Dylan would be out there on the playground, making sure the little kids were lining up neatly to get a turn on the swing.”

“I’m a teacher by constitution. Everything I knew and cared about and valued, I poured into my kids. A trip to the grocery store wasn’t merely a stopover to restock the fridge, but a way to show my boys how to select the freshest apple, an invitation to think about the hardworking farmers who had grown it, and to talk about the ways fruits and vegetables make a growing body healthy and strong. It was a chance for me to introduce the vocabulary words “carmine” and “vermilion.” I showed Dylan how to be gentle putting the fruit into the basket; we let an elderly lady with one or two items slip ahead of us in line; we made eye contact and said a polite “thank you” to the cashier. Nervous about inattentive drivers, I would take his hand when we went to tuck our shopping cart back into its spot so it couldn’t roll out and dent someone else’s car.”

“My approach changed slightly as the boys grew, but the message never did. Driving home from Little League, I tried to counterbalance the sport’s natural message of competition with one of empathy: the kids on the other team are just like you. Dylan came to work with me whenever the opportunity arose, and though I never saw the students I worked with as “teaching moments,” he learned—better than most kids, and through exposure—that people were more than their cerebral palsy or their amputated limb. He saw, too, that even after terrible difficulty, people could create meaningful and productive lives.”

“The only thing I knew for sure was that Dylan had participated in the massacre in spite of the way he had been raised, not because of it.”

Excerpts from “A Mother’s Reckoning” by Sue Klebold

Ascent of the Fallen: My following in their footsteps up the iconic CHS Commons staircase.  

And yes, I’m walking Dylan style up the steps, with one giant foot step up using the middle step.  It was..something else to do this.. to actually be able to replicate his pathway up.. Gave me the chills in the moment.  While upstairs wandering literally all by myself the very first time, my arms were all tingly electric.

I marked the location of where Dylan’s locker was kitty corner to the former library entrance doors.  I did snap a photo of locker 837, however, I am not sure if this is someone else’s locker that was just reassigned Dylan’s locker number. I do know though that his locker was in that vicinity.

 I wandered down the Science hallway and knew immediately the moment I recognized the room Dave Sanders had fought for his life. Unfortunately, I only was able to wander down there once and didn’t take photos or film anything. Ah, well..just experiencing that purely in the moment of my first exploration. 🙂 

p.s. Apologies for the fuzzy captioning. I’m having difficulties figuring out how to make them clearer. 

Anyway, here’s the Fallen angels last ascent and journey to their final destination.

Enjoy..well, sort of. 🙂 

Quirks: The idiosyncrasies of DBK

U.S triple Grenade Pouch 

Otherwise known “No, that is not Dylan’s half-arsed job of tying his boot lace”  Hopefully this post will help dispel the untied boot laces misinformation (though sometimes admittedly cute) that is still working the perpetuated Tumblr rumor circuit 😉 

From a distance in photos and video, some have automatically assumed that Dylan was just a lazy ass  on 4/20 and didn’t bother to lace his combat boot’s all the way up his shin so that the boot appears to be dangling all flappy-loose as he lumbers about. But nope.  While Dyl made not have given a shit about much as he’d be dead within the hour, it was more of a matter of one of a few of his uniform malfunctions than carelessness.  The reality here is that his right shin/ankle in question looks messed up because he has his U.S. army green triple grenade pouch sketchily attached to it

The U.S. Triple Grenade pouch was used from the end of World War II until the 70’s. It is meant to carry six grenades total so is cumbersome no matter how its worn. It just wasn’t very well designed. It appears in all 3 of his gear sketches, with the first two pouches on the top listed as holding extra (“xt”) shotgun shells or bullets (the order is switched in one of them) and the bottom pouch as “poison” in one of the sketches. 

In the basement tape “transcripts”;  Dylan “attaches black suspenders to his pants and also attaches a tan ammo type pouch to his belt or suspenders & a green canvas pouch to his right shin.” 

Given how sloppy the pouch adheres to Dylan’s leg – half peeling away from his right leg – he likely jerry-rigged the pouch with a shoelace or something tied to the wire.  

It’s just another little detail that makes this particular type of pouch and the way he wore it even stranger.  Why Dylan elected to strap it to his boot when it didn’t fit securely to begin with is anyone’s guess.  Based on his sketches, he seems firmly set on it being part of his aesthetic- no matter how impractical it may have been from the get-go when he tried it on for size in the “NBK fashion show” the two had in the Basement Tapes.  Dylan needed a place to store extra ammo and apparently he didn’t come up with any alternative idea for that.   It must have been a bit of an annoyance to him the day he was in action because it looks as though he’s partially dragging it around – half detaching from his leg. He may have even had to stopped at certain points of massacre to check it and fix it more securely so that it wouldn’t fall off completely as he walked or ran.

The Triple Grenade Pouch is specifically drawn on all of his gear sketches so he conceptualized and envisioned this with his fantasy ‘uniform’ atleast a few months prior. In the end, the pouch was more of a nuisance in reality than a useful, practical battle accessory.  In the sketches above, he slightly makes modifications on what goes where in the pockets: the first two pouches was to contain ‘XT’ shorthand for ‘extra’ 9mm bullets or shotgun shells. In one of the sketches, he fantasizes that the 3rd pouch pocket will be for “poison”..which likely was never included.  It’s was simply was that he liked the idea of having various suicide methods at his disposal in case the cops were closing in on them.  He also stuck a bullet in his boot – which of course, was useless without a shell or clip. But it was the idea for him that he was ‘prepared’ for his Death Day. 

You can see Dylan’s actual grenade pouch and other military gear the boys used in the glass display case of the 2004 Columbine Evidence Exhibit. This exhibit was permitted to showcase one time only as part of Jeffco. Sadly, most of this evidence has now been destroyed as far back as 2011, if we can entirely believe Jeffco’s claims..

Caught off guard: who startled who  (Part 2 of 2)

“I was standing at the payphones when I was talking to my mom and my friend Brandi Helling..and my friend Brandi hung up the phone she was on and I saw kids running.  I turned and saw a tall man in a trenchcoat with a gun. My friend went running because a teacher grabbed her. I was still on the phone at this time it  was 11:20 am.  I then dropped the phone ran into the bathroom and hid in a stall and then came out later.  I was still hearing gunshots at this time but my mom was still on the phone screaming my name. I told my mom to come get me as I hung up the phone a bullet or shell hit the phone next to me. I took off running. The gunman came outside (the main entrance) and started shooting and went back into the school.

From what the gunman looked like..I saw him very briefly. He was wearing a trenchcoat with a black cap. The gunman was very tall and skinny. The suspect was laughing as he was shooting. He backed away from where I saw him and he saw me..he backed away and all I could see was his arm.”

Note that in Lauren’s state of fight or flight panic with her visual acuity and perception being distorted, her recall of events given on 4/20 describe Dylan to be ‘tall and skinny’ but then guesses him to be 5′8  (!)   This kind of stuff happens all the time with student accounts in the 11k where their recollection is off. She also claims he was shooting with his right hand with a handgun (his Tec 9).  Of course, we know Dylan to be left handed.  It’s quite possible, that Dylan was actually dicking around trying his hand at shooting his Tec rather sloppily using his non-dominant right hand while holding his double-barreled shot gun pointed at the floor in his left hand. Imagine the bullets just inaccurately zinging through the air randomly ricocheting and denting doors, lockers and the  payphone next to Lauren, fleeing students as well as shattering the main entrance front door’s window into an explosive spray of glass shards – all the while he’s laughing his ass off like it’s his death day party.  Dylan’s day of freedom and wild, reckless abandon. Then Lauren (and Brandi) startled him off to his peripheral left momentarily out of his forward focused shoot-out reverie for a brief moment.  In any event the first time Lauren noticed a part of him coming down the hall, she ran in the bathroom and he did not pursue her.

Part 1: Brandi Helling’s account

What kind of dynamic do you think was in the “three musketeers” group(zack+d&e). Zack and Dylan were obviously much better friends than Eric and Zack and even Eric and Dylan at that time. Do you think Eric ever felt left out or was kind off like the friend third wheel? I wonder what Zack did think of Eric, they did have a fall out in the end and what he thought when his best friend started hanging out with Eric a lot, maybe he was to busy with Devon to really care.

Well, Dylan knew Eric longer though since they’d met in Jr. HS. Zack met Dylan in a class in second semester of Freshman year at Columbine High. Eric would come into that adjoining class to talk to Dylan so Zack also met Eric through Dylan. Dylan really ‘clicked’ with Zack as he came to know him and they spent a lot of time together one on one. As Sue had mentioned in her book, both boys were immersed in a love for technology and the two hit rummage sales near Zack’s house and invented a portable phone out of spare parts (before cellular phones hit the market). You know how it is when you get a new friend that your share so many things in common? You just kinda become immersed in that friendship and you can’t get enough a good thing and want to hang out a whole heck of a lot. I feel that’s how it was for Dylan having found Zack. It’s like after all these many years, he felt like he met his kindred personality who understood who he was the best. So, Dylan was hooked on his new friend and spent a lot of time over Zack’s house going swimming at pool parties, BBQs or going boating and other “zany” (as Sue describes) flux of activities constantly going on over at the Hecklers.

But at the same time, from ‘96 on until October ‘97 the three were what I coined the “Three Musketeers” when they were all hanging out together. I don’t really see it as though any of the three felt left out. The three were a very smart, bored and mischievous bunch of dudes. The trio was like a super power in their alliance together that had the potential to use their intelligence for either great good or bad..or both. lol. Eric’s idea of fun was to sneak out past curfew (yes they had those in Littleton back then) and the three would drive around in the car in Eric’ neighborhood. “Reb” directed which houses they were going to target and throw firecrackers at for whatever reason they’d annoyed him. Eventually, Reb along with his flank of VoDkA and Kibbz escalated the nighttime shenanigans by partaking in other dares and pranks on enemies which became known as their “RMs” or “Rebel Missions”. They’d present rotten eggs at the front door step, super glue locks or TP (toilet paper) wrap trees.

By summer of ‘97, Zack began to work at Blackjack pizza and soon Eric and Dylan followed suit. At this time, Zack then met Devon and eventually his desire to hang out with his two best buds tapered off because he was spending all of his time with his girlfriend. Zack states also that during that summer he’d gone away for two weeks to Pennsylvania and that during the time he was away, Eric and Dylan had taken things to a whole other level of mischief: the two had built their first pipe bomb together. During this time that Zack was head over heels in his new relationship with Devon, Dylan was going through a lot of jealous and mourning for the loss of his best friend. Dylan was in a lot of pain feeling “abandonment” as he wrote in anguish in his journal about it: what a lucky bastard Zack was for having a soul mate – why couldn’t he have the same? So, to fill in the void of his loss, he began to immerse his time even more with Eric and the sort of ‘technologies’ that Eric was more interested in getting up to. Who cares about building a phone from spare parts when you can build weapons of mass destruction?

In October ‘97 of Junior year, the ever clever but bored Three Musketeers put their heads together yet again for some more mischief while at school. They discovered by hacking into the school’s computer system they were able to recover some locker combinations. They tested them out to see if they worked and discovered they did. Dylan then gave the list of combos to Eric (shame, shame!). I believe the two Tech wizards, Dylan and Zack, worked together on the hacking and therefore they got the most days of suspension. After that incident, Zack’s dad put the breaks on him spending time with Eric and Dylan. Things cooled off a bit and Zack and Devon continued to hang out together. Dylan and Zack still hung out together – just not as much as they used to..sometimes he hung out with Zack with Devon. Dylan continued to hang out with Eric on an separate bases from Zack. Eventually over time, by second semester of Junior year, Eric began to shun Zack by giving him the cold shoulder. “The subject stated that this past summer of 1998, Eric Harris didn’t like him for some unknown reason but the subject stated that he was still good friends with Dylan Klebold”. Despite Eric’s falling out with him, Zack continued to call Dylan nightly around 10:30 pm to have their usual discussions about school and the video games they were playing.

The Three Musketeers had come to an end.

Video: Did Investigation Miss Key Moment in Columbine Attack? | Westword

The media is just now responding to our CCTV footage find of the boys planting the bombs in the cafeteria (due to CVA breaking it on YouTube a few weeks ago). Thanks to Alan Prendergast, thorough veteran Westword journalist of all things Columbine for championing our important news to (the rest) of the world. He posts CVAs video, ponders the revised timeline of events and calls into question how/why JeffCo missed this important evidence (Oopsy!)

JCSO spokesman Mark Techmeyer declined to comment on the video. “This is a closed investigation, and we no longer have anything of evidentiary value to evaluate,”

Boo, JeffCo.

Otoh, it’s interesting that the media is keeping it’s tabs on our internet discussions and kind of cool that they’ve slowly gotten around to breaking our big finding. 😉 Though, it’s old news for us.
Video: Did Investigation Miss Key Moment in Columbine Attack? | Westword

Taken from Klebold’s Residence in Dylan’s bedroom:

518 printout of computer hacker  

which specifically is the above document known as mentor.tx t

“Mentor’s Last Words” //The Conscience of a Hacker/

Courtesy of the Jolly Rodger

You can be sure Dylan dug this Hacker’s creed and that it appealed to his gifted intelligence, utter ennui with the system and his smarter than thou arrogance. 😉  Reading that must have inspired him to continue his amateur late-night HaXoR dabblings with AoL to practice and hone his skills as well as his ingenuity snatching school locker combinations in the beginning of his Junior year. 

Dylan’s Hacking Shenanigans

Locker Hacking Incident October ‘97

Robyn  “Dylan got kicked off AoL”

credit: @rainflesh for AoL tee photos