Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mom!

Columbine by David Cullen

Posted by Pamala on Jan 11th, 2010 in Reading | Comments Off

No he’s not related to a certain vampire that is so loved, although I’ll never understand that. Perhaps I should review that series. I will once I finish Breaking Dawn in whatever month I slotted that book to be read. Now onto the review. There are spoilers so if you don’t want to read those just read at the bottom.

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Columbine is a good read. It’s a hard read too. David Cullen was one of the first journalists on the scene when the news came out and he’s been working on it ever since. He put together a great book of facts. The part I like the most was his detailed explanation of why at least Eric Harris did what he did. Dylan was a bit more difficult for anyone to nail down, they have a general idea of what may have driven him to do it, but no clear explanation of it, unlike with Eric, who was just plain a psychopath.

Although knowing why it was done doesn’t make it better, it helps you understand the whole incident in general. But the question that comes with knowing why it was done was could it have been prevented. What I got out of the book is that for Eric there was no way his parents could have caught onto what he was doing. He was that damn good at lying and pulling the wool over the eyes of everyone. He was a well liked boy, thought of as the perfect student, liked by a lot of kids and teachers, there was no outside clues that something was wrong with him. Although he did joke about what was going to happen, it was just so unbelievable to people, so not Eric.

Through readings of Eric’s journal though he details the deceptions he played on people and enjoyed them so much that he often lied even when he didn’t need to. Sure there were signs, that even the most professional of professional mental health people wouldn’t have caught. The signs sure as hell wouldn’t have been caught by any lay person at all. They just wouldn’t have realized something was wrong with him.

Dylan on the other hand was severely depressed and although never showed murderous tendencies, he needed help and his parents just ignored it as a teenage phase. He never was able to get the help he needed and over about a two to three year period he got more and more depressed, to the point of wanting to kill himself. The conclusion was by how I read it, that Dylan did what he did because he wanted to die, and figured why not go along with Eric’s plan.

What’s most interesting was the police cover up after the shootings. Eric kept a website which he detailed his hate list. He even threatened to kill a fellow classmate on this site which prompted that student’s parents to call the police. The police pulled the website and set up a search warrant to search Eric’s home. They never got around to it. Had they done it they would have discovered the pipe bombs and his journal (this happened about a year before Columbine and is the point where Eric finalized his plans to destroy the school). The Jeffco police department (I’m not sure if it’s a county sheriff’s office or it’s a police department that covers several cities in the county) knew immediately upon learning that Eric was one of the shooters that they royally messed up and went about hiding and destroying any evidence to support that they knew of Eric’s hate site as well as possible bomb activity before hand.

Another thing that really interests me is the Cassie myth. She’s the one that was supposedly a martyr for saying she believed in God. Sadly that’s not how it happened, she never got a chance to even speak before she was killed. Another girl though did get asked if she believed in God and she said yes, she wasn’t hurt. Sadly most think her story is fake, although it’s not.

Some of the other myths that came out, the Trench Coat Mafia (not involved), that Eric and Dylan were loners and picked on (truth is they were popular and were bullies themselves), that there were more than just the two of them involved (journals only indicate that the two were involved), and more were just a by product of a hungry media looking to feed the next story, get the one up on the other.

For anyone who likes to read novels about crimes and gain a greater understanding of incidents like this, this book is one to read. I especially thought the timeline layout (which I’ve never heard before) of what happened and what the boys intended to happen that never did, is especially intriguing.

While reading this book I was reminded of a fellow classmate when I attended NAU. His name oddly enough was Brian. We took a Criminal Justice class together. I’m thinking it was like a beginner course. We were talking about the death penalty and what crimes warrant that sort of punishment. We went through several people, I think Manson and several others. Then the teacher asked about Eric and Dylan, had they not killed themselves would you put them to death?

I’m not sure why Brian decided to speak up on that, perhaps because he was there. He was a graduate of the class of 2000 so in 1999 he would have been a junior. He told us how he was there, in the Commons (which I believe is what they called the cafeteria). How they heard the shots, which many had no idea what there were and how they were rushed out of the area and up the stairs and out of the school.

I can’t remember what he said in regards to whether they deserved death. For some reason I think he said that they didn’t. But I think that I may not be remembering that right. I’ve always wondered about him, since at that point it was 2001 or maybe spring 2002. How was he dealing with it? Did he know anyone who was killed? What was it like to return? How’s he doing now?

Anyhow it was amazing to actually be in a classroom with someone who’d been through it. This book gave me a bit of insight into how he must have felt and what he had to go through.

This book gives a lot of information and leaves you asking a lot of questions about the lies, myths, and the how’s. Some of it will never be answered but this book does answer a lot of questions that were left behind.

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Columbine by David Cullen

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