Columbine

This chapter focuses on the early years of Eric Harris. A military brat, his family moved around often; he was born in Wichita, Kansas, then moved with his parents, Wayne and Kathy, to Beavercreek, Ohio, before again moving to first Oscoda, Michigan, and then Plattsburgh, New York. Eric was “enrolled in and pulled out of five different schools along the way.” The Harrises were described as friendly by neighbors, and Cullen states that Wayne Harris “did not tolerate misbehavior in the home” (112). Eric grew up having a racially-diverse group of friends (which would contradict the notion that the shootings were somehow Nazi-inspired or otherwise racially-oriented), and was often the shyest among those friends. In 1993, roughly six years before the shootings, the Harrises moved to Jefferson County, Colorado. 

Thirty-six hours after shootings, the Denver Post’s headline is HEALING BEGINS. Bodies are returned to the victims of families. Danny Rohrbough, one of the victims, erroneously has a heroic story attached to him, saying he died saving others. Students throng to Clement Park to grieve together. Another church service is held; the students chant their high school’s name, and Principal DeAngelis again speaks.

The school decides to restart classes at another, nearby high school one week later. There is debate about what to do regarding Columbine in the longer-term: some parents and community members want it torn down, while others say that survivors should not be forced to never set foot on the campus again. Church leaders speak of the presence of Satan in the community. Some churches use the tragedy as a means of marketing salvation. Dozens of witnesses reenter the school with law enforcement escorts, in order to help piece together the details of the attack. ATF looks into the figurative lifespan of the firearms used in the attack; some of the guns are decades old and have no paperwork, while others do not have up-to-date paperwork.

Robyn Anderson meets with detectives, who grill her about details regarding the purchase of the firearms at the Tanner Gun Show. Bomb squads discover nearly one hundred bombs on school grounds. Cullen notes, “Had the propane bombs detonated, they would have incinerated most or all of the inhabitants of the commons. They would have killed five hundred people in the first few seconds. Four times the toll in Oklahoma City. More than the ten worst domestic attacks in U.S. history combined” (125).

Cullen concludes the chapter with two important points, the first regarding investigators’ realizations and the second regarding the media’s fixation on the ‘nature’ of the massacre. He writes, “For investigators, the big bombs changed everything: the scale, the method, and the motive of the attack. Above all, it had been indiscriminate. Everyone was supposed to die. Columbine was fundamentally different from the other school shootings. It had not really been intended as a shooting at all. Primarily, it had been a bombing that failed” (125).

Cullen follows this by saying that the bombs and their discovery, “instigated a new media shock wave. But, curiously, journalists failed to grasp the implications. Detectives let go of the targeting theory immediately. It had been sketchy to begin with, and now it was completely disproved. The media never shook it off. They saw what happened at Columbine as a shooting and the killers as outcasts targeting jocks. They filtered every new development through that lens” (125).

This chapter focuses on the earlier years of Dylan Klebold. Cullen says that Klebold was “born brilliant” and that “the idealistic Klebolds named their two boys after Dylan Thomas and Lord Byron” (Byron is Dylan’s older brother) (126). Cullen describes the Klebold family residence as “orderly and intellectual.” As boy, Dylan was “painfully shy with strangers,” adding that, “he couldn’t be more adorable, until you tripped his fragile ego. It didn’t take much” (127-27).

Dylan’s mother is Jewish, and the family observed both Jewish and Christian holidays. Cullen states that Klebold “never shared Eric’s fascination with Hitler, Nazis, or Germany, and some suggested it bothered him” (128). Dylan’s parents ran a real estate management business; his father had done well in the oil business, and his mother worked in a program “to help vocational/rehab students” in the Colorado Community College system. 

The Klebolds contact Reverend Marxhausen, at the St. Philip Lutheran Church, to request a funeral for Dylan. Marxhausen’s congregation is several thousand in size. The Klebolds had, for a short time, attended St. Philip’s. The service is “done quietly, with just fifteen people, including friends, family and clergy” (131). Afraid to bury their son, due to his grave being defaced, the Klebolds have Dylan cremated and keep his ashes at home. Cullen concludes the chapter, “Wayne and Kathy Harris presumably held some ceremony for Eric. But they have never once spoken to the press. Word never leaked” (133). 

This chapter focuses on Eric and Dylan before the shooting. The two boys were in school together as of the seventh grade. Brooks Brown, already friends with Dylan from youth, reacquaints himself with Dylan and becomes friends with Eric, as well; Cullen describes them as being “three aspiring intellectuals” (134). He adds that Eric “dreamed of a world where nothing ever happened. A world where the rest of us had been removed,” and that “extinction fantasies cropped up regularly and would obsess Eric in his final years” (136). Cullen also focuses in this chapter on the friendship between Zack Heckler and Dylan; both Zach and Dylan were largely timid personalities and needed Eric’s bravado and boisterous charm. Eric’s freshman year, he wrote an essay for class entitled “Similarities Between Zeus and I”; in it, he includes, “Zeus and I also get angry easily and punish people in unusual ways” (137).