Tag: Dylan Klebold

Chaffeur – Dylan and Devon – Pt. 2

Devon thought Tom Klebold was “very fair-minded.”  “Like one time, Dylan came in two hours past curfew and Dylan had promised to be in on curfew – it may have been midnight – and his dad got really angry at him and I think he took away Dylan’s keyboard for two days, to his computer, and Dylan loved that computer.  Just made it totally not possible to use the computer for two days, but it was fair punishment.  I can’t remember his parents ever grounding him.  They just said you have to be in an hour early or something like that cause I think his parents knew how important Dylan’s friends were to him.”

   His senior year Dylan gave Devon rides home at least once a week when her boyfriend (Zack Heckler) couldn’t do it. Devon paid Dylan $5 out of her own pocket but told him the money was from her mom because Dylan wouldn’t want to take her money. On those drives home, they talked about school, teachers and the swamp man toy that hung from his rear view mirror and spurted water out the mouth if you pressed the stomach.

   Six months before Columbine, Dylan and Devon were at a friend’s house watching a movie when kids next door shined a laser light on them.  Dylan, Devon, and their friend snuck up on the kids and flashed a halogen lamp in the window.  “So we were proud of ourselves because we conquered over the little fifth graders,” Devon recounts.  They rounded out the night “spaze dancing,” jumping up and down and listening to KMFDM or Nine Inch Nails. “he’s either really hyper or really kicked back,” Devon adds.  In a photo, Dylan looked stoned as he flashes two thumbs up, but Devon assures that was not the case. “I’m straight-edge [drug-free] and he knew it, so he didn’t do anything around me,” she explains.

   Dylan by that time had long hair that dropped below his ears and streamed out of his baseball cap, about the same way he looked the day of Columbine.  His favorite shirt was dark green with white lettering that read, “AOL: WheRe KewLz HaXORz ArE.”  Translation: “AOL: Where Cool Hackers Are.”  Explanation: It’s a joke because it’s easy to hack on AOL.

   One of Dylan’s favorite gifts to Devon was $10 cash. One time, Devon fell in love with an anteater Beanie Baby.  Dylan hated Beanie Babies but for Christmas 1998, four months before Columbine, he bought her one that was gray, white and black.  “Needless to say, I’ve collected anteaters ever since,” she says.  After Columbine, she toted the Beanie Baby across the country when she spoke on gun control alongside Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed at Columbine. Devon thinks the anteater is good luck because it gives her confidence. “You know, ‘cause, in the line of what I do, the gun control stuff, I get discouraged, because there’s a lot of opposition, there’s a lot of people who aren’t willing to listen. And I’m remembering just why I’m doing it. To keep those guns out of the hands of another kid like Dylan who, I don’t know, feels he has no other way out, or something. Just keep him from having access to that deadly weapon.”

-excerpt: Columbine A True Crime Story – Jeff Kass 

By calling their victims ‘nerds’, a label that seems to have been applied to themselves, the boys[Eric and Dylan] were putting their victims into the roles they had been given by their peers. They were assuming power over them. Ironically, their frightening strength is more likely to be remembered than their feelings of loneliness, isolation and weakness.

www.rickross.com/reference/shootings/shootings22.html (via columbineartist)

Mr. Nice Guy – Dylan and Devon – Pt. 1

Dylan was intimidated by girls. He did the sound board for theater, where he liked being around other “weirdos,” but in general did not know how to interact with other people.  He liked learning, but not school.  He had girl friends, but never a girlfriend. (Tom Klebold says Dylan would go out with a group of friends; what Tom called “group dating.”)

It wasn’t a romantic relationship but in the summer of 1997 Dylan met Devon Adams through friends she had at Blackjack.  Devon, two years younger, would be entering Columbine as a freshman. Eric and Dylan would be juniors.

By the time school started Devon was friendly enough with Eric and Dylan to have breakfast and lunch with them.  Dylan was not a morning person, and would sleep until noon or 1:00 p.m. on the weekends if he could.  For breakfast he would eat donuts and orange juice, or soda pop.  Sitting in the middle of the cafeteria, Eric and Dylan would do class work.  Or at least pretend to.  They could quote every line from the movie Natural Born Killers and Dylan, usually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, preferred to talk. (Eric’s AOL profile listed his favorite movie as the mysterious Lost Highway by David Lynch.)  Devon also says she was marked for speaking with Dylan: A jock would say, “Why are you talking to that faggot? Are you a dyke?”

But the Dylan that remains in Devon’s mind is “Mr. Nice Guy. Mr. I’m just trying to make my way through high school.”  And funny Dylan.  When Devon was confirmed in the Lutheran church, Dylan gave her a yellow greeting card: “Now you can become like a voodoo priestess and have a temple in Africa and cast spells and shrink heads,” he wrote. Dressed in jeans, and a red Chemical Brothers T-shirt with a rainbow, he gave Devon her presents before the party started because a couple girls he didn’t like were going to be there.

At Devon’s sixteenth birthday in July 1998, Dylan wore a gray Chemical Brothers T-shirt and baseball cap with the Boston Red Sox symbol sewn on the front. (Dylan was obsessed with baseball.)  The cover of the pre-printed birthday card Dylan gave her reads, “What are the chances you’re getting a birthday present? Inside, the card says, “Between slim and nun.” A tall slim cowboy is next to a nun.

“Ahh a nice dab of mildly distasteful prewritten, pointless humor to brighten yer day AAAA?!!,” Dylan wrote. And because Devon had totaled her 1973 Pontiac Ventura one week before her birthday Dylan added, “Happy B-Day. Don’t run me over or you’ll lose yer license and ill be pissed he he he.”

Devon recounts, without any irony, how she had a murder mystery party at her house called “Lethal Luau.” Her mom made friend rice, and carmelized onions.  Devon pushed Dylan to wear a Hawaiian shirt; he would otherwise think he’s too cool for that, but wore one out of respect for her. He played a tourist named “Les Baggs,” and had a good time.

-excerpt: Columbine A True Crime Story – Jeff Kass 

Columbine Confessions: Dylan’s Funeral/Cremation

columbineconfessions:

“There is a July 1999 article in a magazine called “The Director” which is a publication for professionals in the mortuary biz. which Sue’s friend talks about having worked with Dylan’s mother for a couple of years prior to helping her arrange her son Dylan’s cremation.

Sue has said herself…

Columbine Confessions: Dylan’s Funeral/Cremation

columbineconfessions:

Chris Morris, speaks about Eric and Dylan, as well as the Trench Coat Mafia: (A friend of Eric and Dylan’s, as well as a co-worker of theirs at Blackjack Pizza)
“We were so far out from the normal circle.. and so diminished upon, that we, in a sense some of us thought death was the way out. It’s kind of a sad way to look at it, but some of them did. Because some of the people I knew felt that death was a way to escape from the world of the harassment and others of us took it as a way to cloak ourselves because it was kind of like a shadow you could hide in because people were afraid of death and people always are and we weren’t. We knew it would eventually come and we were okay with that. And since we took safety in it, it helped us to feel better about ourselves and have people leave us alone more.”

{Left: Chris Morris} {Right: Dylan Klebold}

Irony most awkward

Two janitors locked themselves in a kitchen refrigerator, and another 20 students, teachers and cooks crammed into a pantry.

Nearby, Tim Kastle flushed with fear and dread – fear for his life, but dread because he knew one of the killers. Kastle had swapped pizza and gossip with Klebold for years in their fantasy baseball league (In fact, Kastle had been making trades with Klebold just the night before the massacre). 

Still, Kastle was convinced the killers hadn’t seen him yet. So he ducked into the cafeteria’s faculty lounge.

When he heard the gunfire and explosions move into the cafeteria kitchen – where the killers had stashed a giant propane tank bomb that failed to detonate – Kastle ducked from the faculty lounge into a faculty bathroom.

Bullets whizzed closer. Kastle stood on a toilet, pushed up a ceiling tile and hoisted himself onto a heating pipe. Scooting along the pipe, Kastle accidently kicked another ceiling tile in half. He kept moving.

Suspended out of sight inside the ceiling, Kastle listened.

Footsteps in the bathroom beneath him.

Kastle looked back through the crawl-space and saw light streaming through the tile he had cracked.

Then he saw a head pop through the hole. It was Klebold, wearing his Boston Red Sox cap.

From 20 feet away, Klebold pointed his gun at Kastle.

Seconds passed.

Nothing.

Kastle’s heart pounded.

Suddenly Kastle fell through the ceiling, landing on the floor in front of a cafeteria exit. He fled through the door with a few scrapes, bruises and a belief that Klebold had spared his life.

Others weren’t so lucky.

Through the Eyes of Survivors, Denverpost.com, June 13, 1999