‘Columbine’ by Dave Cullen
On Tuesday April 20th, 1999, eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold, both seniors at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, an affluent Denver suburb, made good on their macabre promise to leave 'a lasting impression on the world' by killing twelve of their fellow students and one teacher before turning their weapons on themselves in what, along with the Virginia Tech massacre of April 2007, has come to be considered one of the most notorious school shootings in recent memory. Dave Cullen, a freelance journalist who has written for publications including The New York Times, began reporting on the incident at around noon the day of and has since spent nearly ten years trying to piece the horrific events together. Columbine, as the book is so simply titled, is the culmination of this near-decade's worth of work and it may well be the definitive account of the massacre. The book has garnered comparisons to Truman Capote's In Cold Blood in that it is a startlingly comprehensive work of narrative non-fiction. Cullen leaves no stone unturned regarding the events of that fateful April day, and the two troubled young men responsible for them.
The book, which was published in April 2009 to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the massacre, is dedicated to the memory of the thirteen victims: Rachel Scott, Danny Rohrbough, Coach William 'Dave' Sanders, Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, and Kyle Velasquez. The student victims would be in their late twenties and early thirties by now, while Coach Sanders would likely be enjoying a well-earned retirement with his wife Linda. It is these excruciating details, the heartbreaking accounts of the victims and their families, which bring to light the true devastation of the massacre and lend Columbine a more human feeling that seems to have been missing from previous Columbine-related works.
Certain stories stand out. My heart quite literally sank while reading about the parents' agonising wait for their children at nearby Leawood Elementary School. While many parents experienced the joy and relief of being reunited with their kids at Leawood, other parents were left to prepare themselves for the worst possible news as bus after bus pulled up and their sons and daughters remained unaccounted for. 'I was getting envious of parents who were finding their kids and screaming out their names,' recalls Doreen Tomlin, mother of John Tomlin, who was just sixteen years old when Dylan Klebold shot him in the head at point-blank range, killing him instantly.
Yet more heartbreaking, and indeed rather appalling, is the story of Brian Rohrbough, father of Danny, who first learned of his son's death by opening the Wednesday April 21st edition of the Rocky Mountain News. There, on page thirteen, was a clear overhead shot of his son lying dead on the pavement outside the main school building. Nothing, not the sheriff's department or the coroner, had informed Mr Rohrbough of his son's murder. That grisly photograph, which took up half a page, was his first notice. Cullen adds that Danny Rohrbough lay out on that pavement for a total of twenty-eight hours. Columbine really does run the emotional gamut, and this particular story gave rise to feelings of outrage as well as pity.
As well as reaffirming the plight of the victims and their families, Cullen successfully debunks the myriad myths and inaccuracies that arose in the wake of the shooting. Those who know little or nothing of the massacre itself will no doubt be familiar with the questionable hypotheses and conclusions that were formed as a result. There was the whole 'misfits getting revenge on the jocks' angle; drugs and alcohol were blamed, as they so often are; the term Trench Coat Mafia was thrown around by news anchors; and, of course, there was the infamous scapegoating of Marilyn Manson, who subsequently cancelled his remaining North American tour dates out of respect for the deceased. The finger-pointing was so aggressive that it informed some of the lyrics to Eminem's The Way I Am:
WHEN A DUDE'S GETTIN' BULLIED AND SHOOTS UP HIS SCHOOL/
AND THEY BLAME IT ON MARILYN, AND THE HEROIN/
WHERE WERE THE PARENTS AT?
And, loath as I am to admit it, being a Marshall Mathers fan and all, even he misses the mark by some distance.
In Columbine it is made clear early on that Eric and Dylan were not the outcasts or bullying victims that the media portrayed them as. Sure, they were not all-star athletes or the toast of their senior class, but they seem to have led active social lives within their own slightly off-centre circle. Friday evenings were spent at Rock 'n' Bowl, a big weekly social gathering held at the local bowling alley, and mere days before the shooting Dylan attended the prom - with a date. While Dylan was evidently very shy, Eric was almost the exact opposite: confident, self-assured, and in Cullen's exact words, 'a little charmer.' The jock revenge theory lacks credibility, however, mainly because the entire school was targeted - they hadn't picked out their victims beforehand. If Eric and Dylan had indeed sought revenge on the jocks, surely they would have descended on the locker room or the football field, places where these jock types have a tendency to congregate? As chilling as it may sound, it is clear that their violence was indiscriminate.
As far as drugs and alcohol are concerned, there seems to be little evidence of either: Eric liked a Jack Daniels every now and again while Dylan had a well-documented penchant for vodka (so much so that he was nicknamed after it), but toxicology reports show that neither had any drugs or alcohol in his system at the time of the shooting. The only substance found in Eric's system was fluvoxamine (Luvox), a prescription antidepressant that was, rather unsurprisingly, yanked from the United States pharmaceutical market not long thereafter. Neither boy seems to have had any particular interest in harder drugs - Cullen even mentions that Dylan's parents, Tom and Sue Klebold, had kicked their older son out due to his drug use.
The connection of Eric and Dylan to the ominous sounding Trench Coat Mafia came about, as Cullen clarifies, due to unreliable eyewitness accounts and the resultant media confusion. Yes, there was a gang of trench coat-wearing subversives at Columbine High School, and they did indeed refer to themselves as the Trench Coat Mafia, but primary sources would later insist that the shooters were not members. Apparently, most of the members had left Columbine long before the massacre took place. So why all the confusion? The boys appear to have been wearing black duster coats at the start of their rampage, though CCTV footage from the cafeteria shows that these were later removed, which ought to explain the misunderstanding. However, as Cullen states, these long black coats were not so much a fashion statement as a practical necessity - each shooter needed something to conceal his extensive array of weapons.
On top of providing a thorough account of the events of April 20th, 1999, Columbine also provides ample food for thought - the true meaning of psychopathy is discussed at length, as are the changes in police protocol following the shooting. One segment even explains how changes made in the wake of Columbine helped to halt the killings at Virginia Tech. Cullen's writing style is a reflection of journalism at its best and at 357 pages long Columbine reads a lot like an especially gripping crime novel, albeit with one chilling caveat - everything detailed therein actually happened, and it happened only thirteen years ago.
This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in March 2012.