Tag: Eric Harris

Randy Brown released his book!

Finally. So, glad that Randy was able to accomplish publishing his insiders take on Columbine along with his words-of-wisdom on the reoccurring school shooting problem and how it should be address to truly begin to tackle it head-on. I understand that Randy was really ill there for a while so I was really crossing my fingers that he would find the strength to preserve and finish his book!

Released hot off the (paperback only) press on June14th, the book is entitled:

The Inside Story of Columbine: Lies. Coverups. Ballistics. Lessons.

Go check it out and write a review if you’re up for it. I just bought mine and am truly looking forward to seeing his angle on things as I agree with him that bullying was an instrumental component which laid the foundation for this tragic event.

“Jester” aka Brandon Martine – Part 1 of 2

On 04/29/99, Northglenn Police Department was contacted regarding lead DN1796. Detective Steve Hipp provided a transcript of the interview with Brandon Martine (bd:12/31/81) of Northglenn High School that lives in Westminster, CO. Martine claimed to know Eric Harris from the Internet. The interview details communications between them and the use of computer games involving school simulations. The interview does not indicate any knowledge on Martine’s part that Eric Harris or his friends were planning to commit crimes or possessed weapons or explosives.  

Martine nervously stutters a whole heck of a lot in his awkward q/a conversation with the investigators. The detectives often pressed him and tried to elicit their desired response but Martine never admits to anything out of the ordinary, dangerous or sketchy, in his mostly, online gaming friendship with Eric (well, other than the Duke Nukem school level replication).  There are a few interesting tidbits about Eric and Dylan’s friendship as witnessed from Martine’s casual friendship subjective perspective. His vantage point also indicates that Dylan could be quietly elusive to those he was unfamiliar with.  The excerpt highlights below have been cleaned-up and edited and sometimes paraphrased to make for easier reading.  Part 2 of this interview to follow..

BRANDON MARTINE:  “I talked to him (Eric Harris) about uh, his philosophy class, he was in a philosophy class.  He said he really liked it and was getting along in it and stuff and uh, I told him I was going to do a philosophy class next year and he really, we went off a little bit about our philosophies and they were similar.  He was talking to me about how uh, he liked Aristotle’s stuff and, and how he, he just liked the, the concept of, of talking to each other .”

“Doom II, um, Duke Nukem 3D, uh, Quake and I tried talking about Quake II with him but he said he didn’t get into that ‘cause it was, his computer wasn’t fast enough and stuff.    There was one particular one though, it was a Duke Nukem 3D that uh, I remember, he said he replicated it in his school. He created a level personalized to his school and it was the first time that, that he ever personally like gave me a file to play like that and uh, we played against each other, privately, modem to modem, just me and him on it and uh, we played the level.  I played him on it.”

“He told me that he liked women a lot, uh, he had problems with girls sometimes and stuff and I had problems with them as well and we always talked it through each other. Uh, one night, I came back from a place called Rock Island and uh, I told him I wasn’t feeling very good and we just were talking and he said, you know, he got dumped down by a girl too and uh, and I did as well and, and, I was talking to him and he said that um, he was helping me through it. He was telling me all this stuff like saying, you know, it’s okay, and stuff and um, I tried tell’, saying the same back to him and told him that I wanted to get together with him, you know, to talk things out and work things with him. I wanted him to come down and uh, he said that he couldn’t, all the times that I talked to him, he always said that he couldn’t ’cause he had, he was really busy and stuff because he worked and he went to school and, and we live pretty far apart from each other.”

“We did talk about jocks though and uh, he, I remember us, getting a little bit mad about it but we didn’t um, he said he played baseball one time and, and I told him I played baseball my freshman year and uh, he, he related something to that but he wasn’t, he never told me that he was like really mad at ’em. He had the same opinion as me, like when uh, you like join a team or something, it’s all favoritism, you know, you get on it and they don’t care about uh, if you get to play or not, it’s all about winning and stuff and we talked about that but that was all.”

“Uh, he did wear pants that had a lot of pockets on ’em, never, I’ve never seen him in a trench coat, um, He always, no, he never wore, I never saw him as a Gothic person, he, he wore a hat always though, I remember him always wearing a hat. The other kid though that hung out with him, um, he seemed a little bit Gothic to me, uh, for some reason. He wasn’t very talkative, he, they, they sounded like they were best friends though and um, he just didn’t seem like the, that’s why I don’t know him as well and didn’t like talking to him because I just didn’t feel that he was a comfortable person.”

“Um, on his website it was black and it had like red stripes and stuff on it. It was mostly related to the game Quake, which was a new, and Doom II, he had uh, stuff on there that you can download. Um, he put my name down on the bottom with some other people that we knew that would put like special things to these people, you know, for creating the page and stuff and he had a private page to it in the back room and you had to enter a password on the bottom and it was something like 4tequila something. I can’t remember exactly because I had it written down and, and he took the site down a while ago, and I never got to see, uh, I never went to it as much ’cause it didn’t have anything that really interests me.”

“On the private section he had Mama jokes I guess you would consider ’em, they we-, uh they were just jokes. He had a big long uh, text tiling on there but I  wasn’t interested on reading it a lot of it, he had files you could download. He mentioned something about clan and clans related on the internet are different from like gangs and cliques or whatever.   Clans on the internet are a group of people that play the game are teams, and they play a team versus a team, and he wanted me to, actually, we’re on a clan together and uh, we, we had our friends on it as well and we’d play this game and against other people and uh, he then said that the clan would he said that the clan broke down and it went away and he said that now it was just his personal clan with him and Vodka, which was his friend, uh, that he hung out with. I really can’t remember. I just remember before it was like RB [RC – Rebel Clan] or something like that. “*

*this was after Eric ousted Zack Heckler/Kibbz from their threesome clan, Reb-VoDkA-Kibbz

“His friend Vodka, was this tall guy that I think was the picture of his of uh, gunman.  Eric was the only person that I knew that hung out with, you know – had a real good best friend or something and that would be considered him. Uh, he came to the net parties with us once in a while, he never, he never really talked a lot to us about like him playing. I never saw him (VoDkA) online a lot, he just hung out with him a lot is what I remember. “

“I never really got to talk to him (Eric) about. I never knew his parents, I called his house and his parents would answer the phone but I asked if he was there and they would just get him for me. I remember him talking about his brother, he said he had an older brother but he really didn’t talk about his family life that much.”

The bouquet that I brought to the Memorial in the summer of 2016 could not have been a more perfect selection of flowers: 13 white-ish-delicate pink roses with but 2 that were marked with a slightly greenish tinge. It was the only bouquet like this at the market and with the perfect number of flowers.  So, on this day, I represent all connected and encircled of this tragedy starting and ending with both lost boys who in their own suffering begot the end of thirteen others. Their roses lay on the ground at both entrances and exits of this circle and represent the Fallen.   All are connected in this tragedy, linked of and within this Circle of Tragedy, in which all precious and promising lives have been forevermore lost. All deserve to be remembered.

image

In order of this video….

🌹Eric Harris

🌹Dave Sanders

🌹Daniel Mauser

🌹Kelly Fleming

🌹Isaiah Shoels

🌹Lauren Townsend

🌹Corey Depooter

🌹Steven Curnow

🌹Matthew Kechter

🌹Kyle Velasquez

🌹Rachel Joy Scott

🌹Cassie Bernall

🌹John Tomlin

🌹Daniel Rohrbough

🌹Dylan Klebold

Yoshi Carroll – In Dylan’s Shadow

While videoing the Basement Tapes on March 18, 1999, the boys “then go on to discuss “Yoshi” in a negative fashion”…… 

Nate Dykeman was asked by the authorities if he knew of an individual by the name of Yoshi.  Dykeman explained that Yoshi had to be Yoshi Carroll. Yoshi was a friend of Dykeman’s who came to Littleton from Romania at approximately the same time that Dykeman moved to Colorado in the 8th grade.

Nate describes Yoshi as “a real nice guy who is involved in movies and the drama club.  He is also a real smart math wizard” but offers that he does not know of any association between Yoshi with Dylan and Eric.  He recalled that “Eric and Dylan would not say anything derogatory about Yoshi in front of himself because they both knew that Nate and Yoshi were friends.”  Incidentally, Andrew “Andy” Robinson, who participated heavily in coordinating school plays, who was Rachel Scott’s acting mentor, and who went on to write and direct the 2009 movie ”April Showers” about a look inside a tragedy through the eyes of a survivor, based on the actual events of picking up the pieces in the aftermath of school violence, was Yoshi’s best friend.

 

Yoshi Carroll

mentioned that Zack Heckler, a friend of Eric and Dylan’s, was in his first-period Psychology class at 7:30 a.m. (this would’ve been around the time that Dylan, Eric, and Nate were finishing up early morning bowling class). Yoshi mentioned that (during this time period of spring ‘99)

he works the sound board in the auditorium at the school for the drama department and that Heckler works the lights, so they work in conjunction with each other.     

He mentioned that they had finished work on the latest school play, ‘Smoke in the Room,’ in which Rachel Scott was in the starring role. (See below*)   
Zack Heckler stated to him, “Ya know, up until now I really didn’t like you, but now I think you are okay.”  After which point, he and Heckler get along very well now. He then advised that he did not notice anything strange about Heckler on April 20th but he could not recall if he was in psychology class with him on that date.

Yoshi had second period free (during which time Dylan was in Calculus class and Eric, Advanced Video Productions) and that he probably wandered the school some, went to the Tech Lab to do some work. He also recalled visiting the library for about an hour studying, during his free period.

Yoshi Carroll had known Dylan Klebold since the 8th grade when he’d newly moved to the area. He had been in Algebra class together with Dylan at Ken Caryl Junior High. He never saw much of Klebold in high school though, until their senior year.  Yoshi advised that Klebold was the sound man for the school plays and often worked the soundboard.  He said that Zack Heckler had told him that Dylan was no good at the job (though) but loved it. He believes that Zack Heckler told the teacher that Dylan was not very good as a soundboard man and suggested that Yoshi Carroll to take Klebold’s place.

During the previous school year, Klebold, Heckler and another student whom he believed to be Chris Tabaldo, maintained the school’s web server and web page. Yoshi advised that those three students had given themselves access to the web server and had sent e-mail bombs out to other locations and were hacking into the Jefferson County School District computers and that the three had lost their job administering the computers due to the hacking.  (Note, this actually would have to have been October ’97 when Zack, Dylan, and Eric had gotten busted for the locker hacking incident and not only had their computer admin jobs revoked but were suspended from school for 3-5 days. Yoshi does not appear to know exactly what happened and only that they lost their computer admin duties for hacking.)  At the beginning of the school year, Yoshi’s senior year (’98-99), he went to teacher Mr. Rich Long, who ran the computer programs and asked if you could maintain the system to learn more about computers. He was granted the job by Mr. Long. [Intriguing redacted paragraph…..!?!?!]

Yoshi advised that Zack Heckler has been over his house on numerous occasions since the incident at Columbine High School and that one of his friends, Devon Adams, had been coming to his house often since the incident occurred.  He advised that on one occasion she received a telephone call at his residence and began crying after she hung up the phone. [Intriguing redacted paragraph…..?!?!?!?]

Since the incident had occurred, numerous friends had been socializing at his (Yoshi’s) house each day and helping each other out.  A few noted socializing at his residence were: Zack Heckler, Devon Adams, Andrew Robinson, Eric Veik, Nick Baumgart and Sarah Bay. 

More under the cut

I found it very interesting that Yoshi Carroll paralleled Dylan with a few similar abilities and interests. Like Dylan, Yoshi was a extremely bright at math and Nate described him as ‘a real smart math wizard’. Yoshi my have even been gifted at least in that area.  The two had been in the same math class in 8th grade junior high.  Also, like Dylan, Yoshi was into movies and participated in the drama club as a behind-the-scenes stage technician.  During Yoshi’s senior year of ’98-99, the last months of Dylan’s life, Yoshi mentions he’d cross paths with Dylan the most ever at Columbine since junior high school days. This is likely because they were collaborating on stage tech duties for theater productions.

 At some point, Zack declared to Yoshi that he decided he liked and accepted him. It’s possible too, that Eric and Dylan had previously talked smack about Yoshi behind his back to Zack, who was probably, initially biased against the guy. That is until he realized while working with him in theater that he wasn’t so bad after all. We also get the sense from how Yoshi words everything in his account  that Zack seemed to think Dylan dominated the soundboard, like he felt it was his domain sitting in the chair in the Sound Room and also that from Zack’s pov, Dylan wasn’t ‘all that’ at it as perhaps he thought he was.   Zack, as the long-standing lights production guy, seems to make the arbitrary decision that it’s time to phase Dylan out and to pass on sound production opportunity to his new friend Yoshi.

Zack even went so far as to appeal to a theater teacher, “Mrs C”,  in favor of Yoshi assuming what had been Dylan’s responsibilities for a few years.   I wonder how well that whole political thing went down and whether it soured things for Dylan participating in theater production as he was being given the messge to phase out of it. I suspect that Dylan did not participate in the theater production in his second semester of senior year which would have been January until his death in April ’99. It’s unclear whether he still assisted or not especially as to whether he assisted on the last production that took place weeks before the massacre ‘Smoke in the Room’. (See below)* 

If Dylan (along with Eric) didn’t like Yoshi to begin with, for whatever their reasoning, Yoshi’s eclipsing Dylan in taking over the soundboard role must have made Dylan personally feel resentful of him.  It is unclear if Dylan knew that Zack had, behind-the-scenes, personally had been proactive in phasing him out in favor of Yoshi.  And this begs the question as to why Zack was being two-faced with Dylan. Why would he do such a thing if Dylan was his close friend? Unless, he didn’t really didn’t feel the same way about Dylan as Dylan did about him. But it is certainly puzzling when you consider that Zack made a point ot initiating late night phone calls with Dylan every night as they played computer games over the internet and chatted.   But this wouldn’t be the first time that Zack dissed Dylan behind his back.  The other time he dissed Dylan was in his own Jeffco 11K eyewitness account in which he advised the investigator that “Dylan had wanted to go to college and study computer science, but he (Zack) did not think he was smart enough.” See [here] and [here].

It certainly would be interesting to know exactly how Zack felt about Dylan the last few months leading up to the massacre.  Perhaps even though he stayed in touch with Dylan, Zack had lost faith in his (former best?) friend because of some of the things he’d observed about him and judged him for: such as Dylan inability to focus and maintain decent grades as he himself was doing, or his propensity for drinking, his cutting classes but also for the fact that Dylan was still associating pretty tightly with Eric ( even after Devon had felt threatened and turned off by Eric).  Perhaps the racism and superiority thing rubbed off on Dylan while working theater with Zack as Yoshi was nearby. Of course, after Eric gave Zack the cold shoulder on the heels of the locker hacking incident, Zack had distanced himself from Eric and by extension, Dylan too – so, perhaps more than we know about.   Maybe Zack just thought Dylan was a lazy slacker that he felt seemed overly entitled to lording over the soundboard, and so he’d lost faith in Dylan and his honing his abilities and motivation to excel at anything in life.  It’s difficult to say. One thing is for sure, it certainly would be the holy grail for the opportunity to interview Zack Heckler!  It is just so puzzling how there are two incidents where Zack has thrown Dylan under the bus.  And yet, Dylan, according to his writings, he still saw Zack as his best friend ever who had abandoned him…perhaps, all the while, never knowing Zack had very little faith in him, for whatever reasoning.

What’s worse is that Yoshi also saw a opportunity of moving in on that vacant computer administration role at CHS to learn more about computers.The very same position that teacher Rich Long had taken away from Dylan due to computer hacking with Zack and Chris Tabaldo in his junior year.  Sue had mentioned in her book that Dylan was utterly sad and despondent about losing this job.  Sue had hoped that they would’ve allowed him to keep it while giving him a second chance as he made amends.   

There were very few things that Columbine offered Dylan that he found a spark of enjoyment to do.  Two of those things that he had been participating in had, with time, been usurped by an eager Yoshi Carroll.  Yoshi, the dude that had similar talents to Dylan – hell, they might have been friends if circumstances were different.  But instead, Yoshi eclipsed and surpassed Dylan at computer administration and as the sound man so that by the second semester of senior year, there wasn’t any participatory role left for Dylan to do that sparked any sort of personal interest or passion that he would’ve personally wanted to excel at because he got some sort of enjoyment from it.  The few things he’d dug were transitioned to Yoshi, his replacement.  And incentally, even the screenplays that he, Brooks and Zack were writing and trying to appeal to a local theater to allow them to host, were turned down. It’s as if there was nothing left for him to enjoy and feel accomplished about.  This all dovetails with the time period of January ’99 in which Sue mentions in her book that Dylan seemed very low energy and had seemed, in retrospect, to have spiraled deeper into his depression as she noted he was oversleeping a great deal or she discovered him sitting with that 1000 mile stare.

Given all of that, it is not at all surprising that Dylan and Eric bashed Yoshi on their Basement Tapes rants. Although, it’s rather surprising that Yoshi does not appear to be on either boys’ hit list – least not as unredacted (at least not that I have seen anyway)  I’m sure the two must have said a lot of nasty, derogative, things about the dude. Dylan, in particular, would’ve had adequate reasoning to blow off quite a bit of steam about that opportunistic Yoshi, the foreigner who probably had a fairly substantial Romanian accent. This weird guy they probably felt didn’t deserve to be in their country just kinda moves in on Dylan’s roles at school.  

You can well imagine that he must have had a chip on his shoulder about Yoshi.  He and Eric knew that Nate was friends with him, and Dylan surely must have sensed that tipping point when Zack began to warm up/cozy up to Yoshi too (?)  Eventually, Dylan wasn’t working sound to Zack’s light anymore as a friendship duo.   And after the massacre, Yoshi appeared to have a few key friends of Dylan’s over his house.  

Yoshi and Dylan: these two could have easily had been friends with similar interests and abilities yet instead, Yoshi crept up into Dylan’s shadow, eventually eclipsing his only passions at school and the guy probably had no inkling whatsoever that he was infringing on Dylan. 

—-

*Regarding the Smoke in the Room play that Rachel Scott started in just weeks before the massacre on April 2-3, ‘99, it’s unclear as to whether Dylan participated in the light or sound for it.   According to Sarah Bay in this post here, Dylan assisted with lights, which was usually always Zack’s job as Dylan’s was sound.  However, Yoshi claims that worked sound and Zack his usual lights for this play.  Whether Dylan was even involved with this play at all in some manner is unclear now because of this eyewitness discrepancy. 

CBS Evening News reports the first look at the Basement Tapes release via the transcripts supplied to Time magazine and the controversy surrounding it.

December 13, 1999

“Harris and Klebold talk a lot about their parents.
They apologized to their parents for the hell they said they’d be putting them through but they said they really had no choice on this matter, it was something they had decided to do and would go ahead and carry it out.“

The Time Magazine article.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

“My takeaway is that Harris was very Type A, in your face, very plan-oriented, very structured. Klebold was more
Type B. ‘Just tell me where to go; I’ll show up, I’m good.’ So, to me, their personalities were just very, very different. Was Harris more of the man with the plan? Yeah, but I don’t think Klebold just followed along like a little puppy dog.
He was in. He was all in.“

– Kate Battan, Active Shooter: America Under Fire

Randy Brown on the cancellation of today’s Columbine-related Oprah broadcast

Westword
Michael Roberts 
April 20, 2009 

Kate Battan, Dave Cullen and Dwayne Fuselier on a Columbine-related episode of “Oprah” that will no longer air today. (for the 10 year anniversary)

As pointed out earlier today in a blog about the many media appearances of Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis, Colorado journalist Dave Cullen, author of the widely praised volume Columbine, was scheduled to appear on Oprah today, the tenth anniversary of the massacre at the high school. However, yesterday afternoon, Cullen sent out a note to folks on his e-mail list revealing that the program wouldn’t run due to “a production decision.” This choice was confirmed earlier today on the Oprah website. A note from host Oprah Winfrey reads: “I decided to pull the Columbine show today. After reviewing it, I thought it focused too much on the killers. Today, hold a thought for the Columbine community. This is a hard day for them.”

The Winfrey comment suggests that there’s more to the story – and there is. Randy Brown, father of Brooks Brown, a friend of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who has worked indefatigably over the past ten years to make information about the killings public, says that he was among several members of the Columbine community, including relatives of victims he declines to name, who contacted producers to express concerns about the show, which was heavily promoted in recent days on Channel 4, Oprah’s broadcast home in Denver. Brown and company were especially distressed by the presence as guests of Kate Battan, Jefferson County’s chief Columbine investigator, whom Brown believes was part of an information cover-up, as well as Dwayne Fuselier, an FBI profiler whose son was a Columbine student who made a parody video depicting the destruction of the school two years before the assault.

Brown, who has appeared on Oprah in the past, doesn’t denigrate Winfrey for moving forward with this particular lineup. Instead, he praises her profusely for taking to heart complaints from families. “I think it’s an incredible sign of Oprah’s humanity and understanding that she would listen to these people and do something about it – not air the show out of respect for them,” he says. “That’s a really good thing.”

A spokesperson for Oprah doesn’t make the same cause-and-effect connection between the complaints and the change in the content of today’s show, which now features a segment about a mother released from prison. The spokesperson says family members voiced objections prior to the taping, and the decision not to air the Columbine program was Winfrey’s alone.

Whatever the case, Brown is clearly no fan of Cullen’s book. He posted a one-star review of the tome on the Amazon.com website in which he states, “This book is not the true story of Columbine.”

“The biggest problem I have with Cullen’s book is his conclusion that Eric is a psychopath,” Brown adds. “Whether that’s true or not, Dylan wasn’t a psychopath – and these children had motivation for what they did. As misguided and ridiculous as their response was, they had a motivation: bullying at the school, and the atmosphere there. You can’t bully and humiliate people without them having a response to it. Now, in this case, that response was ridiculous and violent and wrong. But to just say they’re psychopaths is so easy. People don’t have to think anymore. They don’t have to worry. They can say, ‘There’s nothing I can do about it.’ But that’s not true. You can do something. You can stop bullying and harrassment in schools and in the workplace.”

That Cullen would be joined on Oprah by Battan, who some Columbine families despise, and Fuselier, a man with what Brown considers to be a major conflict of interest on the Columbine story, only raised more red flags, Brown says. And he has just as many negative remarks to offer about DeAngelis, who appeared on the taping of the show last Wednesday via Skype. “He’s making his attempt to rewrite his place in the Columbine tragedy,” Brown argues. “And he’s very good at it.”

Such thoughts were shared in e-mails sent to the Oprah production office, Brown notes, “and a senior producer responded to – well, it’s an understatement to say ‘misgivings.’ More like anger at having Battan and Fuselier and Cullen on that show. And the people at Oprah listened to them and responded accordingly out of respect for the families.”

The eleventh-hour plug-pulling is a huge blow to Cullen, who declined to comment for this item. After all, author appearances on Oprah have provided larger book-sale boosts than any other promotion or forum in recent years. But Brown isn’t shedding any tears on the author’s behalf. Instead, he lauds Winfrey. “Television shows are big productions, and there’s a lot of work that goes into that show,” he says. “It had to be a difficult decision for Oprah. And I certainly think she made the right one.”

[Source]

Author Jeff Kass on how his Columbine theories differ from Dave Cullen’s

Westword
By Michael Roberts 
May 7, 2009

Local author Dave Cullen’s book Columbine has received an enormous amount of media attention – far more than another recently published tome, Columbine: A True Crime Story. And Jeff Kass, the ex-Rocky Mountain News reporter who penned the latter, has definitely noticed the discrepancy. He’s not surprised that the national press gravitated toward Cullen’s offering, which was issued by Twelve Books, a growing publishing powerhouse. (In contrast, Kass’ effort comes courtesy of Ghost Road Press, a modest, Denver-based outfit.) But he’s more bothered by inattention from local outlets. For instance, although Colorado Public Radio aired an enormous number of Columbine-related reports around April 20, the tenth anniversary of the attack on the high school, he notes that “they never interviewed me, and as far as I know, never mentioned by book.”

Adding to his frustration is the willingness of so many reviewers and observers to accept Cullen’s conclusions as definitive. In Kass’ view, “Columbine is a major social issues, and it deserves a lot of books to be written about it – a lot of serious books.” Moreover, he says, “I have issues with some of the things he says in his book. I just don’t find the attribution for a lot of it. There’s room for contradictory and conflicting opinions as long as they’re backed up by facts – and I feel I’m able to back up everything in my book.”

Of course, the authors agree on plenty of things, including the relative unimportance of bullying as a motivator for the killing spree launched by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold – a major bone onetime Columbine parent and activist Randy Brown has to pick with Cullen. Kass bases his beliefs in this area on diaries kept by the murderers. “They write about everything from losing their Zippo lighter to not being able to get a date,” he points out. “But they barely talk about bullying, period, and they never talk about being bullied themselves. And you’d think they would have if it had been such a factor for them.”

Likewise, Kass concurs with Cullen about Klebold’s depressive tendencies. But he’s not as willing to suggest that Klebold merely followed Harris’ orders. “Dylan’s writings show him to be pretty entranced by the plan. And their code word for the shootings – NBK, which stood for Natural Born Killers, one of their favorite movies – came from him. He was the first to mention doing an NBK, going NBK. That says to me that he wasn’t such a secondary participant.”

Kass and Cullen also have slightly different takes on Harris. Both argue that he was probably a psychopath – although Kass acknowledges some evidence to the contrary. “The trademark of a psychopath is that you have no emotion, no feelings. And in Eric’s diaries, he does have emotion. For one thing, he worries about what’s going to happen to his parents, and he feels bad about not being able to bond with his father more. And he feels devastated that he has no friends and that people ignore him and he can’t get dates.”

This last point is a key one from Kass’ perspective. “He says Eric Harris was this wildly popular student, especially with the girls – that he’s dating or having sex with all these girls at school. And I totally disagree with that. I don’t find any attribution in his book or in the end notes for that. I don’t know where it comes from. I’d like to know. And he says similar things about Dylan. He says Dylan had all these friends, and that he was well-connected at school and at least was more popular than we thought he was. And I don’t know where he comes up with that, either.”

"Now, maybe you can find a study showing that if you have five close friends, you’re a normal high school student in America,” he goes on. “But even if you could prove that Dylan had five close friends, that doesn’t mean he was a normal high school student, because Dylan didn’t believe that himself. Dylan was blinded to friends by his depression, and Eric was blinded to any friends he had by his rage. So I think you’re in this academic situation. You could say, ‘Gee, Eric and Dylan, you had a lot of friends, and you lived these great middle-class lives.’ But that didn’t get through to them. They thought their lives were miserable. So it’s a classic case of perception versus reality.”

As for Kass’ perceptions, he says, “I think both Eric and Dylan died virgins. And even though it’s sort of a weird topic to get into – their sex lives – I really think it’s illustrative of how well-connected, or not connected, they were to the school community. I feel they were outcasts. I feel they were among the most unpopular kids in the school – and my evidence is their diaries. Pick up almost any page and all they talk about is how much they are outcasts, how they don’t feel part of the school or any community.”

More distinctions between the books crop up in terms of the topics the authors tackle. Cullen focuses almost entirely on the crime itself, whereas Kass devotes his epilogue to what he describes as “the cover-up” conducted by Jefferson County law-enforcement officials. He also attempts to find links between Columbine and other school shootings around the country, and his research leads him to conclude that the vast majority take place in suburban communities in the southern and western parts of the United States. He’s also come up with a theory to explain the regional nature of the phenomenon.

“I found studies done before Columbine and with, from what I could tell, no notion of school shootings in mind that talked about the culture of honor,” he says. “It’s a well-known concept in the South, but also in the West, where, if you feel your honor has been violated, you feel the need to retaliate to defend it – and you feel that it’s okay to do that with violence. That’s seen as an acceptable means of avenging your lost honor.”

For Kass, getting this information out to the broader public remains important – and even though Columbine’s tenth anniversary has passed (with Cullen grabbing the vast majority of spotlight time), he hasn’t given up on reaching readers. He’s hoping to arrange a book tour to other places that have suffered through mass shootings at schools, such as Jonesboro, Arkansas, Blacksburg, Virginia and West Paducah, Kentucky.

“I think there’s still a window of opportunity to promote the book, and really, it’s always going to have relevance,” he says. “Even if all of this was to stop tomorrow, people would still want to know about what happened and why.”

[Source]

[Jeff Kass]

A Deeper Understanding: Meg Hains

MEG HAINS, 17, junior,  a biracial student at Columbine,
claims that she knew both the gunmen and that the two were her friends at school through friends in the trench coat mafia and had always been nice to her. [Source]   She ran outside the school thinking there was a fire drill and found her way blocked by a fence she could not climb. 

“Jock is a kind of slang down term, like some people will call other people freaks because their hair is different. They’d call them freaks, weirdos, faggots. It was just stupid name calling, acting like little children. It’s like my cousins come home, they’re only 2 and 3, and they come home and start calling me names, calling each other names like butt-head and all these other things. They probably couldn’t handle it.”

“I have a friend, he doesn’t dress like everybody else. He wears heavy metal band T-shirts, black shorts no matter what the weather, and a black hat, and he has long hair. And friends who normally just come up to me and talk to me and are so nice to me – when I’m around him, they give me looks. And people come up to me after I talk to him, they’re like, “How can you talk to him? How can you even acknowledge his presence?’ I’m like, "It’s simple, he’s nice."That was the same with Eric and Dylan. I knew both of them. I went bowling with them occasionally. And they were extremely nice. They never showed any signs that they’d like to go off and hurt people.”

“I’ve played the game Doom that they’re saying Dylan and Eric constantly played. And I don’t think it was that game. I’d go to school and there were people that would so royally piss me off, and I’d just go home and I’d sit on that game for hours, just taking out my stress on it. And the next day I’d be perfectly fine.That’s the way I get rid of my stress, instead of going out and really killing people. It saves a lot of time. I know this sounds weird, but some violent games are a therapy for kids.  “I am utterly afraid of guns. When I heard somebody had a gun, I was fine, but then I had to jump over the pit fence and I couldn’t make it. My arms just went totally wobbly. And then I found out he was shooting people. I broke down into tears, a mass of tears. I couldn’t find my best friend. And this was all over guns.”

I was in a drawing class. I saw my friend Lance. He was shot. My teacher would constantly tell him to sit down, sit down, Lance. He was always standing up, walking around talking to everybody.On Tuesday night I got maybe an hour of sleep, but I had a dream. I was walking into my drawing class and there was Lance. It was just me, Lance and the teacher. And the teacher tells him, "Go sit down, Lance.” And he goes over to his desk, sits down, and blows up. And then I see Dylan and Eric laughing. I have never had a worse dream. It’s been recurring for the past week. And I just can’t get rid of it. Because I’ve known Lance since middle school. And I’ve also known Dylan and Eric all year. I’m literally torn between them.”

[Source]

“There are cliques all over the place,” said Meg Hains, a 16-year-old sophomore. “You can’t go to high school without cliques."Hains and her friends Jessica Jones, 15, and Erin Brinkley, 15, who gathered outside the high school on Wednesday with hundreds of other students, classified themselves as their own tiny group, "the individuals.”“We’re the outsiders,” she said.The “individuals” shun clothes bought at the Gap and Abercrombie & Fitch, the labels favored by the jocks and preps. “We vowed we would never wear Abercrombie,” said Jones, adding that she could not afford the $30 shirts and $25 hats even if she did like them. 

[Source]

Shades of Gray

 “Both Sides”:  The Eric that Sarah Davis knew

Sarah Davis, had little firsthand experience with guns. But when Davis was a 6th grader, she met Eric Harris, one of the two boys who would later kill 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, before committing suicide. Davis tells author S. Beth Atkin about her history with Harris, her reaction to the shootings, and what she thinks schools need to do to keep other students from taking the same tragic turn.

People will read this with their own agenda and get out of it what they want. I hope people think that I see both sides of things, but it’s a possibility they won’t. I’ve tried to be clear that I think what happened at Columbine was a horrendous act. I don’t feel like I’m the best person to talk about what went on that day because I wasn’t there. But I do feel like I can give my perspective because I had some experience with somebody who committed a horrible crime. But he wasn’t a horrible person. The negative side has been put out there so much. I guess my goal is just to balance it out.

I don’t necessarily talk about Columbine and what happened after. I have a few friends that I talk to. I didn’t take the time to deal with it right then. To grieve for the loss of a friend was next to impossible because of everything else that was going on. So that’s something that I have not done completely. It’s now been five years, and just over the past year, I’m just starting to process this. But I mean it’s affected every part of my life. It’s affected every part.

The day of the shooting, I was outside playing street hockey with my friends. I was 18 then. My mom came to the door and said, “There was another school shooting.” And your heart kind of drops. I later came inside with my friends.We were watching TV, flipping through the channels, and saw the school shooting thing. On the bottom of the TV it says where they are, Littleton, Colorado. I just sat there and couldn’t move at first. Then I got up and I went in my room. I shut the door and I started bawling. It was awful. And then my mom came down and asked, “What’s wrong?” And I couldn’t even get the words out. I finally told her, “Littleton. Eric lives in Littleton. That’s where the school shooting was and I’m really worried about him.”

The next morning I went to my softball practice and I didn’t take my sunglasses off. My eyes were beet red from crying the whole night. When I got home, my dad came out and his eyes were all puffy. He said, “I have bad news. Your friend Eric was one of the shooters.” I pretty much broke down there in the driveway.

I didn’t talk to anyone about knowing Eric. But this girl who had been at my house when we saw the shooting on TV, I think she called the media. So this is how the whole fiasco with the media got started. I don’t want to say it was easy for the media to cover this story, ‘cause there was nothing easy about this situation. But they ended up focusing on that Eric was my boyfriend in 6th grade. I thought it was ridiculous that they concentrated on that, instead of the substance of what I had to say.

The problem I have with the media now is they label people negatively and it sticks. You’ll never hear me making excuses for what Eric did. He did commit a monstrous act. All I ask is that people take a second and look a little bit deeper, just a little bit. Maybe I’m not going to convince anyone that he wasn’t an evil entity or a monster. That’s what they made him out to be. I don’t even think the word human being was ever used in relation to him. I feel like, by the media not telling the whole story, it was easier for people just to say, “Oh well, those are evil little monsters.We can deal with them because we know who they are.” Then they label them as wearing a black trench coat and being angry all the time. The stereotyping led to this situation where the real issues weren’t addressed afterward. And if you’re looking for answers as to why it happened, or how somebody can go from being your boy next door to the point where they’re able to do this-well, maybe if the media had covered it differently, it would shed light on the idea that it was a process.

Eric and I were in 6th grade when we first met, and I was so awkward then. And he was really quiet. We have an Air Force base in Plattsburgh, [New York]. So he was an Air Force base kid. I wouldn’t say we were close friends right away. But we became friends and he was like a nice quiet kid. So he was one of my first boyfriends-well, it doesn’t really matter. I mean, it was like a 6th grade boyfriend.

It’s kind of funny to think back about things we did together. Like we went to the Clinton County Fair with two other kids. I don’t like certain rides very much. They were all about to go on one and he came running out so I didn’t have to be by myself. He was just a sweetheart. He was a nice kid. I mean, he had friends. It wasn’t like he was a loner then. Maybe he was out in Colorado-actually I guess he was, ’cause they wrote and talked about that in the media. But when he was in Plattsburgh, he wasn’t like that.

When we first kept in touch, we wrote letters. I have some of them and it’s funny to look back and read them, because some of them are really silly. He said things like, “I don’t want to see other girls.” And we also talked on the phone. There was a time when we lost touch for a little bit, but not that long. Then we got into the Internet. So we would e-mail and didn’t talk as much on the phone. But once some of the serious stuff happened-like when he got caught robbing that van-we talked then because he was having some real issues. I think I was 16 or early 17. Then it was every couple of weeks we’d e-mail or talk, and it was always a good thing. I’m a very quiet and not a very emotional person and tend to listen. He tried to be open, and get me to talk about things that were going on in my life. I really liked that about him. He was compassionate.

I remember this one phone conversation, I was standing in my kitchen talking to him. I said, “Why would you do that-break into a van?” He said, “I don’t know. It was spur of the moment.We saw it there.” I’d like to believe what he said was true. I don’t know if it was or not. He told me, “Now I have to deal with this court stuff. My parents are real pissed off.” And I said, “OK, you made a mistake. Live with the consequences, learn from it. And move on from there.” He said, “I definitely am. I think I’m going to start a new job. I’m playing soccer here. And things are going better.”

Later on, I was thinking that Eric had lost a lot of hope for his future. I thought things were getting better with him. But he was having a problem with his after-school plans. He told me he’d gotten rejected from the armed forces. And his college prospects weren’t looking up all that much. I don’t feel like he thought that he had a lot going for him. After it all happened, I just remember thinking that these were important things. But I don’t have an answer to the big question: “How could this have happened?” I would never pretend to have an answer for that.

I guess it was a combination of things that told me something was wrong. I was concerned about the van break-in, and Eric didn’t seem to be responding well to his juvenile diversion program. He seemed angry and resentful. I remember sitting with a friend after one of the school shootings that happened before Columbine. I was telling her I was concerned about Eric and that the shooting had made me think of him and it seemed crazy, but I felt like it was something he was capable of. You know it’s funny, because he never mentioned guns. I know that one time he sent me this Web site. It was something very dark and creepy. I was surprised and even thought that he had sent me the wrong link to look at.

Sometimes I separate thinking about the Eric I knew from the person who did this shooting. But it really can’t be separated. When I found out that Eric was one of the shooters, obviously I was upset. But the reality is I would never say I was shocked. Did he ever say to me, “Sarah, I’m going to go on a shooting rampage at my school?” No. But I just knew it was him. People say he must have said something. But he didn’t, and there wasn’t any one thing that told me this would happen. I think I will always have to fight the feeling that I could have done something to stop this. But I also have come to see that I wasn’t right there with him and I really didn’t know it would happen.

What would I want people to know about Eric? My whole point is he was a good person to me and so I know at least part of him was good. I wish people could look at him, or at other young people who have committed horrible acts, as human and capable of doing something good. I understand why people define someone by what they’ve done, but that one action is not always the whole person.

Every school is going to make kids bring mesh backpacks and have metal detectors and guards. You’re just putting a Band-Aid on the problem, you’re not fixing it. One thing I recognize as being a positive change is that in certain schools, but not most of them, you see people making an effort and making it a community. They’re not letting kids go unnoticed by an adult in their life. I’m not saying that was the situation with Eric. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. But I saw it at my own high school. There were kids who were allowed to slip through the cracks. And that’s not OK. When I’m finished with law school, I would like to help kids and their communities to find better options for juvenile offenders. Yeah, no doubt it has something to do with Eric. Like I said before, this incident affected every part of my life. So it affects my choice about where I want to go and what I want to do, definitely.

What would I say to Eric if he were here right now? My mind doesn’t work like that. I’ll never have that opportunity, so I don’t go there because that doesn’t do anything for me. What I do think is, it all comes back to the idea of, if we’re ever going to put a stop to things like this, then we need to come to terms with the fact that people who do this, they’re human. They’re not so different from you and me and you’re not going to be able to just pinpoint and figure out who’s evil. It doesn’t really work that way.

[Source]

 Excerpted from her book Gunstories: Life-Changing Experiences With Guns (HarperCollins), writer-photographer S. Beth Atkin interviewed dozens of teenagers who’d experienced the effects, both positive and negative, of guns on their lives. Some speak of newfound confidence developed by learning to target shoot or hunt, while others recount how crime and violence wreaked havoc on friends and loved ones. HarperCollins Publishers (www.harpercollins.com).

—

More articles on Sarah Davis under the cut…..

From a Plattsburgh newspaper interview with Sarah Davis

How could it happen? How could two young gunmen enter a school and open fire on students and faculty, leaving a path of death and destruction behind them? But for Sarah, the tragedy soon struck much closer to home, when she learned one of the two suspected killers was her friend Eric Harris She had stayed in touch with him since he moved from Plattsburgh six years ago.

“He was my boyfriend when he left,” Sarah said, sitting on the patio of her Plattsburgh home Sunday afternoon. “But we were in the sixth-grade. He was a boy who was my friend.“  The last time they saw each other, Sarah, Eric Harris and some other friends went to the Clinton County Fair together. Sarah knew Eric was moving away, but the trip to the fair was not to say good-bye to friendship. It was just a group of kids having fun on the carnival rides. "He was a shy kid, but he was a good kid,” she recalled. “I never knew him to do anything wrong when he was here. We were in the same group of kids, and we always hung out together, both inside and out of school.”

When Harris moved away, the two kept in touch writing letters. But soon they realized they could stay closer by e-mailing and talking online through America On Line’s Instant Messaging. ”I don’t know if it was a conscious decision or what, but we just continued to stay in touch,” Sarah said. “Definitely, it has declined over the years, but, basically, I would tell him what was going on in my life, and he would talk to me about his.”

Sarah said she seldom saw the anger that was building up inside Harris, though he let her know that he wasn’t happy in Littleton. ”When he first moved there, he didn’t like it at all,” she said. “I don’t remember if it was because he didn’t have any friends or if he didn’t like the environment.” The Eric Harris she knew did not like violence, Sarah said.

She never knew that he had become interested in guns and bombs, or about his homepage that described an angry teenager filled with hate. ”Obviously, things changed,” she said. “If he had stayed here, I don’t think this ever would have happened.” Sarah said she only saw the angry Harris once in an e-mail he wrote a while ago. But she can’t recall what it was about. She didn’t respond to it at the time, but, she said, it “did scare me a little.” Harris did tell her about the time he and Dylan Klebold, the other suspected gunman, were arrested for vandalizing a vehicle about a year ago. ”We talked about it online, and we talked about it on the phone a little, but he said it was not a planned thing,” she said. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision. He was put on probation and grounded. I remember he couldn’t use his computer, so we didn’t talk for a while. I don’t think we discussed it again.”

E-mails and phone conversations between Sarah and Harris were not very regular anymore. Usually, the two would hook up on Instant Messaging, the AOL service that allows people to write notes to each other very quickly, almost as if they were in the same room talking. Still, the conversations did not reveal Harris’s dark side. Sarah talked about her future plans at college, and Harris said he was considering a local college but might go into the military. But that all changed Tuesday night. Sarah was sitting in the den with some friends, knowing that something had happened in a school in the Denver area. It wasn’t until she saw it was Harris’s school that she started to worry about him. ”I had a feeling something bad had happened,” she said.When her friends left, Sarah went on-line to see if Harris might be online as well. He was not. She tried calling his house several times, but there was no answer. It wasn’t until the next day when Sarah was about to leave for a trip to Brandeis University, where she’ll attend college in the fall, that she found out. ”My dad came out to the car and told me Eric was one of the shooters,” she said. “That’s how I found out.” At freshman open house that day, all Sarah could think of was her connection to the Colorado tragedy. ”I cried all day,” she said. “The second day I pretty much stopped crying, except when people mentioned it. But I’m kind of glad I was out of town. There was just too much going on here for me to deal with.” She said it’s still hard to connect Harris with the killings. ”I’ve been thinking and thinking about what I would say to him if he was alive,” she said. “I can’t even describe to you how I feel about this. I know it’s real, but I can’t believe it. ”I focus on Eric killing people, and I just can’t picture it. ”I can’t imagine what those people are going through. I can’t imagine what the parents of Eric and — Dylan, is it? — are going through. I extend my deepest sympathy to all of those people.” Sarah doesn’t recall the last time she talked to Harris. She can’t check her e-mail because, for some reason, all the Davis AOL accounts have been frozen. Sarah guesses it might be because she was on Harris’s e-mail list.

[Tumblr Source – original source not found]

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After bill’s veto, Columbine victims on his mind

The FBI refused to show Sarah Davis the email Eric Harris composed but didn’t send to her on April 20, 1999, just before he and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, guns blazing.

Before the firing ceased with their suicides, the two friends had killed 12 students and a teacher while wounding 23 others.I had gotten to know Sarah when she worked on an anti-gang initiative for North Shore Community College where I served as president. She attended Northeastern Law School dedicating herself to understanding “how somebody can go from being your boy next door to the point where they’re able to do this.” (Sarah Davis, “Both Sides” published in Gun Stories: Life-Changing Experiences with Guns; S. Beth Aiken, Katherine Tegen Books; 2006.) Sarah and Eric had been childhood friends in Plattsburgh, NY, and were boyfriend/girlfriend in the sixth grade. He was not the monster the press made him out to be though committing a despicable act. Sarah dedicated her life after this incident to find out how good kids can do very bad things and ways to intervene in their lives to prevent atrocities such as happened at Columbine.

Sarah as she puts it, does not dislike guns. She believes people have their rights but thinks it has to be done within reason.But she does believe that “guns were a major part of Columbine.” In her essay she continues, “We are talking about an incident that occurred in a state that is notoriously ‘gun friendly’.” Eric grew up in a military family in which guns were more acceptable than elsewhere. “Then you add in that he played a lot of violent video games and watched violent media.”While Sarah doesn’t blame the media she does believe that “the combination of being in a gun-friendly environment and becoming numb to violence can be dangerous for a young person.” She continues, “The fact that guns are so easily accessible is a huge problem, and it makes it so much easier for tragic things like this to happen. If you can’t get a gun, you can’t use a gun.”

Towards the end of her essay she brings it together, “it all ties in – the guns, the violence, and the circumstances that push young people to want to kill each other and themselves.”I will be thinking of Sarah, Eric and the victims of the Columbine massacre as I vote to uphold Governor Hassan’s veto of SB 116 which would eliminate the requirement for securing a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Like Governor Hassan I believe that balancing the rights of gun owners with the rights of citizens to be safe in our communities means that in this instance the latter outweighs the former.And yes, I will vote to uphold her veto having voted against the bill in the first place, in the name of both the kids who became killers and those who lost their lives needlessly at Columbine High in 1999. Unless and until we can change the culture of gun violence one message at a time, such atrocities are more likely than less to occur. This bill fails to pass the “within reason” test Sarah Davis proposes in her compelling essay.Rep. Wayne B. Burton represents Strafford District 6 in the NH Legislature.

[Source]

–
Shattered Lives

Still, both boys were making plans: Sarah Davis, 18, a friend of Eric from Plattsburgh, said he was planning to visit her this summer on a cross-country road trip. And Devon Adams had a date to see the film “The Matrix” with Dylan and another friend on Wednesday evening, April 21…..

[Source]

–

Harris sixth grade girlfriend Sarah Davis was allegedly Jewish – she said “Eric was angry when his family moved from New York to Colorado”  

Killer Friendship
The Tattoo, By Amanda Lehmert and Jessica Majerus 

Colorado shooter Eric Harris’ old middle school classmates remember a normal kid, not an outcast.  In a town of 25,000 people, no one suspects the kid she sits next to in class may someday be a mass murderer.   At least Abi Tenebaum and Jessica Sapel never thought Eric Harris – now one of the infamous Columbine High shooters – would cause such terror and devastation. Harris, who with his friend Dylan Klebold gunned down a dozen fellow students and a teacher before killing themselves in an April 20 attack at their high school in Littleton, Colo., was a former middle school classmate of Tenebaum and Sapel’s in Plattsburgh, N.Y. Tenebaum, now a 17-year-old senior at Mayo High School in Rochester, Minn. and Sapel, an 18-year-old senior in Plattsburgh, each knew Harris when his family lived on the local Air Force base. Plattsburgh, on the western shore of Lake Champlain in the northernmost part of New York, is less than 25 miles from the Canadian border.

Tenebaum said Harris was a “normal sixth grader,” and “not one of the outcasts.” Sapel called Harris  a “good kid” and “sweet.” He “never struck me as someone who would do this,” said Sapel. Although there have been reports that Harris and Klebold chose the date because it was Hitler’s birthday and singled out a black student and athletes as victims for their savage attack, both teenagers said when Harris lived in Plattsburgh he never showed signs of any hatred toward those groups.

According to Tenebaum, Harris dated a Jewish girl, Sarah Davis. Davis and Harris apparently remained friends after Harris left town, exchanging messages via e-mail. Contacted recently in Plattsburgh, Davis didn’t want to talk about Harris. “It’s been difficult,” she said. Sapel said she didn’t believe the news that Harris had targeted a black student. She said Harris’ two best friends in Plattsburgh were an Asian student and a black student.

Harris was also an active athlete who played Little League in the town. Tenebaum said that Harris associated with “preps,” but said he wasn’t  "an annoying prick.“

Sapel can’t imagine how this gentle middle schooler turned into a trench coat toting criminal, but she thinks Harris began having problems after his family moved from New York to Colorado, during their seventh-grade year. "It didn’t happen to him here (in Plattsburgh),” Sapel said. “None of us can imagine what happened.” In Plattsburgh, Harris was a “nice, normal kid” who wore “jeans, t-shirts, and sweatshirts,” Sapel said. If any group of students in the country has stopped to think twice about the massacre in Columbine, it’s the students of Plattsburgh. When she heard from a local newspaper reporter about Harris’  role in the killings, Sapel said, her mouth just dropped. She said she was amazed that “something like this could happen to someone I know.”

At first, Sapel said, getting attention from the national media who came to the town to talk about the incident, “was kinda exciting.” But the attention soon became too much. Sapel said she felt like telling the media to “go away.” “We don’t want to talk about this. It isn’t a news story, it’s a tragedy,” she said. Now Sapel said teenagers in her town are wondering what might have happened “if [Harris] had stayed here” instead of moving to Colorado just five years ago. “We’re glad it didn’t happen to us,” said Sapel. “It could have been us.”  

[Source]

—
Pair Bragged of Slay Plan

S. Air Force major retired from the military. During the early 1990s, the family lived in upstate Plattsburgh, a small community where Harris attended Stafford Middle School and had many friends. Although he and Klebold allegedly singled out Columbine student jocks for execution, Harris was once an avid athlete. He played right field for the Sun Foods team in the Plattsburgh Little League and constantly talked baseball in school. “When he found out he was moving to Colorado, he became a big fan of the Colorado Rockies. He wore their baseball cap all the time,” said Kyle Ross, a former Plattsburgh classmate. Harris kept in touch with Sarah Davis, another Plattsburgh friend, and planned a trip back East to see her this summer. When she heard about the slaughter, Davis anxiously called Colorado trying to reach Harris hardly anticipating he was one of the gunmen. “She was really shocked when she found out,” said Nora Bordeau, a Plattsburgh friend of Harris and Davis. If Harris stood out for anything beyond membership in the rebel clique, it was for his skill at Doom, the shoot-’em-up computer game he played for hours in the four-bedroom, three-bath house on Reed St. his father and mother, Katherine, bought in 1996 for $180,000. Klebold, 17, often came by to join the computer play, tooling over in a BMW.

[Source]

Eric Harris in the sixth grade – the year his family moved states for a third time to Plattsburgh New York, where he attended Stafford Middle School up until the seventh grade.

“He was a really nice kid. He was really sweet, got good grades. He loved sports,” a former classmate, Nora Bordeau, said in an interview a week after the shootings. “He was a shy kid, but he was a good kid,” another classmate and old friend of Eric, Sarah Davis, recalled. “We just wanted people to know he wasn’t always like that. It’s scary that people can change so much in five years.”

 [Original source unknown]

Something to remember us by..

Attorney, DeCamp asked about Eric and Dylan’s love of video games, namely Doom. Kriegshauser said the game came up when he mentioned he was looking for “fun things to do” on his computer, and Eric and Dylan gave him a “Doom Bible.” Kriegshauser said he kept it for a bit, then gave it back because it was inappropriate for him to accept gifts.

Kriegshauser “terminated” Eric and Dylan from diversion early on February 3, 1999. On the last day he met with them, he might have learned their nicknames, Vodka and Rebel. “I have a bulletin board in my office,” he said in his deposition. “And when I was out getting their paperwork, they individually took my—one of those plastic pin things you stick up on a thing, and they put out a V and an R.  And I said, ‘W hat’s that? Well, it’s just something to remember us by. Really? What does it mean?’ And I recall them saying, ‘Virtual Reality.’ But they might have said Vodka and Rebel. Now, I don’t know. But that’s the only time I ever knew about it.”

Source: Columbine: A True Crime Story – By Jeff Kass

 Changes beget Choices

March 1998

An attempt at distancing Eric…

“It took two months for the Diversion program to begin. In the meantime, Tom and I worked together to tighten the reins at home. We created a curfew schedule, limited Dylan’s social activities, took away his computer keyboard, and restricted his driving privileges. We searched his room regularly, and told him he could not spend any free time with Eric. He was expected to spend time with us, and to be cooperative when he did. Work and his participation in plays at the school were constructive influences, and he would continue to be able to do those things.

Dylan did make efforts to extricate himself from the relationship with Eric. My guilt about this, in particular, fills me with despair. After the two boys got into trouble in their junior year, Dylan made an attempt to distance himself, and he asked for my help. We developed an internal shorthand: If Eric called to ask Dylan to do something, he’d say, “Let me ask my mom,” and shake his head at me. I’d say, loudly enough to be heard on the other end of the line, “I’m sorry, but you can’t go out tonight, Dylan. You promised you’d clean your room/do your homework/join us for dinner.”

At the time, I was simply happy that Dylan wanted distance. I had told both my sons they always use me as an excuse in an emergency. I was thinking particularly of drinking and driving, but I meant any unsafe situation. So I was pleased, not only that Dylan had taken me up on my long-standing offer, but that he’d found a way to separate from his friend without hurting Eric’s feelings.

After I saw the dynamic between Eric and Dylan on the Basement Tapes, I found myself revisiting this episode in a new light. If Dylan didn’t want to go out with Zack or Nate or Robyn or any of his other friends, he simply told them so: “Nah, I can’t this weekend. I need to write this paper.” Only with Eric did he need me to bail him out. I never wondered about that or thought to ask Dylan: “Why can’t you just say no?” Asking for my help seemed like a sign of his good judgment, but afterward I realized that it was a portent of something much more disturbing. It was a sign I had missed until it was too late..”  
– Sue Klebold

Summer  1997 and 1998

Zack distancing Dylan – Dylan aligning with Eric – Eric distancing Zack

“The Subject stated that during that summer (’97), he (Zack Heckler) had met a girl identified as Devon and that ht two of them spent a lot of time together.  The subject stated that he went to Pennsylvania for two weeks during this summer and that during that time, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had built their first pipe bomb.

The subject stated that this past summer, 1998, Eric Harris really didn’t like him for some unknown reason, but the subject stated that he was still good friends with Dylan Klebold.”  – Zack Heckler from the 11k

June 1998
    Dylan writes…

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me
6-10-98
i think i don’t care

Forever fate, up & down spiral

1.5 human years … so much changed in small time, my
friends (at my choice) are depleting & collapsing under
each other (Eric & redacted (Zack) ) like I thought they would, I am ready to be with [redacted]  The ups & downs
of fate are forever, good & bad equal me.   ‡
the lost highway, downward spiral never end. existence
is like infinity times itself.
—

..the dynamic is solidified; the wheels are set in motion……

Unrequited Expectation

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“If you dont know who I am still then I apparently haven’t been noticeable enough.… please don’t take offense or worry about this note… if you do know who I am, or if you want to anyway, leave me a note please leave a note in my locker saying whatever you want whether that be telling me to fuck off or else you’ll call the cops, or if you want to say whatever, just please do me that favor…

if you tell me to leave you alone, I will. 
I like you. but I won’t force that ever.”       

                            – Dylan

  

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“I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you have time in your life to just sit down, relax, and talk with a guy who cares a lot about you, and if you want to , let me know.  Because I really want to get to know you, and who knows, maybe even go out.

If you don’t…. Just don’t say anything.
I’ll understand I’m used to it ” 

                                                  Love, Eric

CVA Update…

Well, CVA finally popped back into existence and here is the update on his mysterious disappearance. 

“Well, this last month has been rough. I travel a lot with work. Upon arrival to this new country that I am currently in, I was hacked.

My email that is linked to my Youtube, Facebook, and Twitter account were all DELETED (columbinevideoarchives@gmail).   The guy(?) that hacked me didn’t play with my personal info.  He didn’t steal my identity, he just deleted all content. Then deactivated the account. I have been contacting google for a few weeks…and they are just about useless as gun free zones. (bad joke?)

So, I took a week to contemplate my return….if at all.  I didn’t want to come back and be the same. I took it as a time to evolve. I have huge plans with this new channel. (Vlogs, Face reveal, Live streams, guest speakers)  Still, focusing on Columbine, but also going above just researching it, but also how to prevent and read warning signs of mass shootings.  I also want to help people learn how to deal with loss, I am no stranger to that.  

I could keep going and going and going…but I think everyone gets the gist.  I hope that my old 8200+ subscribers would be interesting into something like that.  It will be a fun and engaging road! Thanks to everyone for the videos on youtube saying goodbye to me.
But from the looks of it. I’m just getting started.”

Update: CVA’s new channel

His first video sounds melodramatic almost like this was a publicity stunt?  😉

Dylan & Eric:  Astrology Series      ♎  Mercury Signs ♈

Their signs in Mercury…

Mercury not only rules communication, it represents coordination. Thought processes, ideas, and sensory information from both conscious and unconscious sources all need to be coordinated and understood. Mercury analyzes, sorts, groups, and makes sense of things. How do we handle nervous energy? How do we express and convey our thoughts? How do we approach others and information in order to learn and exchange ideas?

Mercury is the messenger of the gods and is ruled by Gemini and Virgo and and the Third and Sixth Houses. . Mercury is the messenger in Astrology as it is in Mythology. It is the planet of day-to-day expression and communication.  It is connected to communication, reasoning, intellect and awareness. Due to its affect on brain power, Mercury will show short term planning, observation and deductive reasoning abilities.  Mercury’s action is to take things apart and put them back together again. It is an opportunistic planet, decidedly unemotional and curious.  Mercury looks for opportunity to act. It inspires ideas, thought processes and the unconscious mind, which all must be coordinated. Analytical ability, sorting and grouping and other methods of making sense of things all come from this planet.

In modern times, we tend to “meet” people’s Mercury first. Many people make a connection for the first time through e-mails, for example. Mercury rules whether we are flowery in our speech and/or written words, concise in our choice of words, or business-like even in our personal communications. Mercury not only rules communication, it represents coordination. Thought processes, ideas, and sensory information from both conscious and unconscious sources all need to be coordinated and understood. Mercury analyzes, sorts, groups, and makes sense of things. How do we handle nervous energy? How do we express and convey our thoughts? How do we approach others and information in order to learn and exchange ideas?

When we are “acting out” our Mercury, we are inquisitive, curious, communicative, and versatile. On the negative side, we can be high-strung or nervous, nit-picky, indecisive, and overly technical.

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Mercury in Libra 

♎:

Mercury in Libra is pleasing. They are natural diplomats, or at least make the effort. They wish everyone were equal in the intellectual circles.

It is very important for them to have a mental connection to those they have relationships with. Chances are, if they feel there is no connection, it is because Mercury in Libra is trying too hard to be intellectual in their relationships instead of paying attention. They have a need for fairness, but their constant comparisons can appear to be unfair instead.

While they strive for perfection and can’t help criticizing, they try to be tactful. They are always looking for compromise, so everyone is happy. Opinions from either end of the spectrum can make them uncomfortable, but if they favor the middle ground, Libra Mercury is happy. This creates a great personality for a counselor or mediator. It may also cause them to be indecisive. They can’t help but see both sides to everything. This may cause them to lose out on opportunities sometimes because they take too long.

Mercury in Libra can be objective because they are able to think in the abstract. They are intelligent, but it is subtle. They don’t push it on anyone. They don’t like to play the bad guy, and will drive themselves mad trying to make everyone happy.

Mercury in Libra is good at networking with people, but due to a trend towards mental laziness, they may not always follow up on those connections or maintain them. They often turn to others for opinions when they need to make a decision. They may have a fondness for playing devil’s advocate. They are usually rational and well balanced. They don’t like arguments and prefer to have a quiet discussion.

Libra Mercury is friendly and broad minded, but they can stick to their principles when need be. They don’t like conflict or when people act in a crude manner. Quickly changing situations can be difficult for Mercury in Libra because they don’t adapt very fast. They prefer to study an issue and slowly come to a decision.

Mercury in Libra likes the arts and they enjoy literature. Culture is important to them. If they are not expressive in the arts themselves, they enjoy supporting others. They may not like seeing the darker side of life, and may appear to be rather shallow.

Libra Mercury is fun at parties. They are easy going, warm and charming. They may have talents as a speaker or performer of some kind. They need to learn that it is okay to disagree. Once that lesson has been understood, life becomes much easier for them. Writing comes naturally to them, and they are good at merging ideas. Overall, they work well with almost anyone.

When you date someone with Mercury in Libra, you can assume that their mind is almost always on your relationship. Libra is the sign of partnership and all Libra wishes for is to please their lover and be appreciated in return.

Mercury in Libra isn’t the type to think about sex in a raunchy sense; Libra prefers class and grace when it comes to dating and love. In fact, this is one of the most romantic signs of the zodiac so a great deal of mental energy will be spent on thinking up new ways to seduce you. What you will love most about Mercury in Libra is the ability to truly understand your point of view. In a relationship, that is priceless.

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Mercury In Aries

♈

:

Mercury in Aries is quick thinking. They don’t have a lot of patience for studying every angle to every problem… they would rather make a decision and let you know. Candid and direct, they get to the point.

While they may appear crude or aggressive at times, it is usually because they are trying to overcome opposition to their ideas. Like a child, it doesn’t occur to them that someone may disagree with them, and so they may act out of frustration. Mercury in Aries is very attached to their ideas.

They tend to streamline their learning so they don’t get too bogged down in details. They take what they want and dismiss anything they feel may be irrelevant. Mercury in Aries has a certain innocent charm. They love to begin new things, and they are very enthusiastic. Any negative criticism will be taken personally, even if it was not meant that way. They are not afraid to stand up to a challenge. While idealistic, they are very intelligent.

Aries Mercury may quickly jump from old ideas to new if they seem more exciting. They are excellent promoters. They know how to motivate people and make things sound fun. They enjoy competing with others, and may argue a point just for fun.

They are mentally agile and can think well on their feet. Obstacles in their path are terribly frustrating for them. This may bleed over to other areas in their life as well as communication. Aries Mercury is known for their impatience.

Concentration may be difficult for long periods of time. It is easy for them to jump to conclusions, and they tend to be impulsive. Witty and inventive, they are great conversationalists as long as they don’t need to delve deeply into a subject. As charming as they may be, they can also be brutally honest.

They will do anything to win an argument, even with those they love. Aries Mercury can become a terrible know-it-all if this is not controlled. On the other hand, they can let their confidence inspire others with excitement. They tend to be original, and stand out in their areas of expertise. They are challenged to learn to love details and stick through projects no matter how tedious.

Opinionated almost to a fault, Mercury in Aries is quick to share theirs even when it isn’t wanted. They are not blessed with a lot of tact. They are restless, and seem full of nervous energy. They need to be kept busy, and often don’t seem to have any to spare. They like to do things their own way; they don’t like to be told what to do. Aries Mercury can be a great leader, and even when not in such a position, they may have a handful of followers. Their excitement and enthusiasm is infectious.

When Mercury is in Aries you can be sure of one thing – honest and blunt communication. This Mercury placement will waste little time on conversation unless the talk is new, fresh and stimulating. In a relationship, someone with Mercury in Aries is often the initiator and may have more than a few sexy pick up lines at his disposal.

It’s common for those with Mercury in Aries to be fast talkers. This person will enjoy the occasional argument with a lover so don’t expect dating to be peaceful. There is only one thing you can count on when it comes to talking to your Mercury in Aries lover – it will never get boring!

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Previous posts of the Astrology Series: The Boys:
Sun Signs | Rising Signs | Moon | Venus | Mars

At last! I’ve located the 60 Minutes interview featuring that Nate Dykeman interview.  Among other goodies; 🙂

  1:12 sharper senior photos of Eric posed by the bench
30:04 – Brooks Brown, Randy and Judy Brown interviews
35:51 – two more clearer Eric senior photo
34:02 – Nate Dykeman interview (yes that one!)
34:44 – Devon Adams interview – reported Eric to the school; clearly no love.

I found this 60 minutes to be pretty interesting thorough show.  They really pursue and demonstrate to us how unquestionably poor Jeffco police/SWAT handled Columbine. Lives were lost due to their lack of action.  They justify it as following the protocol they had in place which is basically a passive ‘wait and see’ response but no adequate excuses can be given to justify the lives that were lost because of their lack of flexibility in an emergency situation. Their fuck up cost their own children’s lives. Some of those cops had children in that school too!  The poor parents, two years in and filled with grief, still do not understand how police could’ve stayed outside waiting hours to get the green light to go into the school and do their job.  Even then, the cops went in on the far/east side of the school (where none of the action occurred) and slowly combed through. Such a waste of time and resources.  Today, Eric and Dylan would not at all have had the upper hand they were given by the authorities back in ‘99.  It’s amazing when you think of E and D walking around lazily in the cafeteria trying to get the bombs to explode when they could clearly see the cops surrounding the school from the cafeteria windows.  They must have continually wondered why in the back of their minds that no confrontation was happening. They were ruling the roost for far longer than any school shooter today would be allowed to.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)