Rules: tag nine people you want to get to know better

I was tagged by the lovely columbinekillers, thank you very much!

• Name: Eva

• Nickname: on this blog, it’s usually ‘mama dragon’

• Birthday: February 9th

• Star Sign: Aquarius (trust me, I’m a total Aqua even though the boatload of earth signs in my chart make me sound more sane than I am)

• Gender: female

• Height: 174cm

• Sexual Orientation: bisexual

• Favorite color: purple, blue

• Current time: 15:20, so middle of the afternoon

• Average hours of sleep: 6 during workdays, 8-10 on days off

• Lucky Number: 9

• Last thing I googled: probably the episode title of the TV-show I recently watched, so I could reblog a photoset or two from it (and let’s not talk about the wild ride I had earlier researching chemicals that are used in paraffin tests, hahaha)

• Happy place: libraries, bookstores, anything that has a lot of books really

I’m tagging.. oh gosh this is always tough.. solitude-is-the-best-medicine, travelledthroughlight, otherspook, all-star-aria, nbklambsofgod, ancestorsxvirtues, mollythemurderer, rebvodka-closet-admirers, and rebvodkaworld – with apologies if you’ve been tagged already or hate the everlasting hell out of this kind of thing. 😉

Diane Sawyer Lands First Interview With Columbine High School Killer’s Mom

deadline-yahoopartner:

ABC News’ Diane Sawyer has landed the first television interview with Sue Klebold, mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold. While announced this morning, the primetime interview will not air until February ’16, coinciding with the publication of Klebold’s book, A Mother’s Reckoning: Living In The Aftermath Of Tragedy.

The interview will air during a one-hour ABC News special about school shootings, the lasting impact on the community, ideas for prevention, and mental health.

Klebold writes about the murders of 13 people in the school, committed by her son and Eric Harris at Columbine High School in a suburb of Denver, on April 20, 1999. Another 24 were injured; the two gunmen took their own lives in the school, ending the massacre. Klebold has said she is donating all of her profits from the book to research and to charitable foundations with a focus on mental health issues.

Excerpts from Sawyer’s in-depth interview will air across all ABC News platforms, including Good Morning America, World News Tonight With David Muir, Nightline, ABCNews.com, ABC News Radio and ABC NewsOne.

Related stories‘The Comedians’ Cancelled After One Season By FXShowtime Sets ‘Homeland’ & ‘The Affair’ Premiere DatesBroad Green Dates Three: ‘I Smile Back’, ‘The Dark Horse’, Malick’s ‘Knight Of Cups’

Get more from Deadline.com: Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Newsletter

February 16, 2016 is the exact release date of Sue’s book.. and just look at what she’s doing with the profits of it! Exciting news. ^^

Murder & Lee

This is the other project I’m currently devoting a lot of my time to. It centers around the assassination of John F. Kennedy and has a strong focus on the man thought responsible for the crime: Lee Harvey Oswald. I believe it deserves a self-promo mention here, as I know many of my readers are interested in other cases as well.

It does not mean I will quit blogging about Columbine altogether, but I personally needed the refocus that this new blog has brought about for me. It’s something I’m proud to share, and I hope at least some of you will enjoy it. =)

Murder & Lee

i’m not sure if you’ve talked about this before, and i know that it’s been answered about dylan, but if eric had found a steady girlfriend some time before the shooting (months up to a year prior, maybe), do you think he still would have gone through with it? i hate to sound like “love solves everything” which i know it doesn’t, but including some professional treatment/medication, would those things have been enough? thanks! (and your blog is awesome btw)

Thank you very much for the compliment. =) It’s questions like yours that do remind me why I still love to talk about Columbine and every aspect it brings with it. I’ve lost that love of my research a little lately to the point where I was seriously contemplating taking a long break from blogging about it altogether. So, really, thank you for.. well.. bringing some of that love back.

One of the key words that we’re looking at with Eric is purpose. There’s this loose cannon sense to him in his early writings, even as he is lashing out at random and crafting something for himself to derive enjoyment from. He’s looking for his place in life. For a purpose that will give him direction and make him want to achieve whatever he sets his mind to that falls in line with that purpose. And late in ’98, he thinks he’s finally got it all figured out.

“THIS is what I am motivated for, THIS is my goal. THIS is what I want to do with my life!”

NBK. Purpose.

That sense of purpose carries over into those final months, into that almost military-styled precision as he attempts to make all the cogs in the machine that will take him there functional. This is what makes him the more organised of the duo by far. Eric’s relentless focus on ‘getting shit done’ is what makes him pull and snap at Dylan when Dylan’s on the verge of slipping up or shirking his duties. It’s that sense of driven purpose that has led people to believe Eric was the grand mastermind in putting it together, while really it’s just him doggedly following the step-by-step path toward the goal he set himself.

It’s also this that makes him the more methodical killer of the two when the day finally comes. He’s quiet death following in the footsteps of chaos. All business tinged with the blur of failure that will eventually lead toward him taking his own life. There’s little joy and elation in Eric that day, almost in stark contrast with the enjoyment he derived off the preparations.

And you might think.. “why is she going on about all this, while I just asked what a steady girlfriend would’ve meant for all those best-laid plans?”. (Especially as I have the ability to go off on endless tangents where Eric’s concerned, though they always lead to the same fundamental understanding of who I believe him to have been.) Truth is.. that scenario you propose might have been newfound purpose. A different direction, a reason for betterment even. If it had appeared prior to the set idea for NBK, if it had somehow wedged its way in there before Eric had worked out that he wanted to give his life meaning by throwing it all away.. then, yes, maybe, that would’ve made all the difference in the world.

And it wouldn’t even have to be love, really, that would save the day in there. I have said before and will say again that I don’t believe Eric to have been capable of a fully reciprocal and equal relationship for a longer span of time within that final year of his life. His issues with himself were far too deep-seated for that, his temper too out of his own control for it, and his hurt too unfathomable for him to manage. It would just have to be a different purpose. A different step-by-step path toward some goal, any goal, that he felt strongly enough about to want to attain. True professional treatment would have sought to help him attain that sense of purpose and hold onto it with or without medication. That cry for help at the start of ’98 was Eric knowing that if he didn’t find that undefined something else soon, he would latch onto the very first purpose that would lead to his ruin and not let go until it was done. Until he was done.

Am I really seeing people in the true crime/Columbiner community support and encourage the plans of wannabe school shooters right now? Did I just read all of that excitement correctly?

I don’t even have the fucking words for that. This kind of thing should be reported and spoken about with concern. Not joked about or fangirlsqueed about.

Hey! I’m not sure if it’s okay to post this question on this blog or if this kind goes on your other blog so in advance I’m sorry if I messed up! But I have a question, are your connections to say your passed on relatives stronger then say their friends because of the blood “link”? Are your passed on relatives more likely to hear your call then say their friends? Thank you so much for answering!!!

It’s okay! This kind of question would be better suited on the other one, but I don’t mind answering one of these here occasionally. =)

I think that this would depend on how well you knew the relatives and on how well you got along with them. Blood counts for a lot down here on earth and there is huge power in familial/ancestral bonds, but that’s not always how it is in the afterlife. The soul’s family is what matters there – not tied by blood but tied by energy – and that bond is the stronger one. So if you’ve got friends or other folks around you who’re a part of that soul family of yours, your connection to them will be as strong as (if not stronger than) your connection with the people who’re your blood relatives.

Not to mention, some people don’t even get along with the family they were born into and don’t form a close connection with them at all. Blood doesn’t count for anything there – what matters is who you loved and who loved you. Those connections tend to be strong.

submission from rebvodka-closet-admirers:

love your blog! dont know why i never found it before. i was talking with someone about this before as i re-read No Easy Answers the other day, and I was thinking…given the fact that Eric used to say that Brooks Brown used to always lie to impress others (even BB admitted it)…do you think he could of possibly made up the whole “brooks i like you now” conversation?? just curious about your opinion, but he has been pretty consistent with his story, and it does add up, but maybe eric didnt even say anything to him, and brooks was just outside and heard gunshots?? either way i was just curious haha.

—————–

Thank you! I think you never found it before because I tend to go a little unnoticed and post so irregularly that people only find me when I’ve made a new post or am referred to directly by another blog. 😉 Glad to hear you enjoy it, though!

Eric did say that Brooks lied a lot to impress others or to just sound more interesting or whatever, which seems to have been one of Eric’s pet peeves about Brooks. The tall tales Brooks told certainly got on Eric’s nerves. 😉 Brooks admits to this, too, in later years especially, and I believe he said something along the lines of that kind of lying just being something kids do sometimes.

Brooks has been consistent about that “I like you now”-story, yes. He told police as much from the start, given his witness statements to them, and it’s been a very consistent story from day one onward. The surrounding statements he makes in his witness account about the gym bags Eric carried with him or was moving into the front seat of the car are what make me believe he’s telling the truth, as those bags contained the bombs, and it’s also noteworthy that Brooks mentions Eric didn’t park in his usual space. He definitely encountered Eric that day.

Knowing Brooks’s outgoing nature and inability to keep his mouth shut, he would likely have said something to Eric in that encounter. He said that he commented to Eric about Eric missing the test they had earlier that day, which seems like exactly the kind of exchange Brooks would start in on. Eric responded to that with that weird kind of quiet intensity that I think Brooks knew spelled trouble. Brooks has mentioned since that Eric could have these moodswings and went “hot or cold” at the blink of an eye. Given their past fights, it seems really likely to me that Brooks could predict when to leave Eric alone. He walked away from Eric on that day knowing something was off, but not registering what was going on until he heard the pops of the gunshots. And he knew, immediately, that it was Eric.. if they hadn’t had that odd encounter just before, I don’t think his thoughts would’ve gone to Eric straight off the bat.

And maybe the actual exchange was a little different from how Brooks told it, given how Brooks lied about a lot of things, but I also think of Eric’s long-standing appreciation for irony that makes the “I like you now, get outta here, go home”-statement so much more likely to have been said exactly the way Brooks reported it. Here was this guy Eric had hated and threatened and disliked on principle, standing right in front of him on the day everyone was going to die.. and Eric couldn’t lift a finger to harm Brooks, because he was running late himself and landed himself in a chaotic sense of organisation trying to get it all done in time. Brooks’s timing was what saved him: a few minutes later, and that exchange might’ve seen a different ending. I think that Eric was appreciative of the irony of this – it seems like the sort of thing he would get really amused by, which Brooks essentially confirms by saying Eric was almost chuckling to himself when he told Brooks to “go home”.

Hey, there! First, I just want to thank you for having an awesome blog and writing such detailed, articulate answers for everyone who asks things. Now, I’ve looked through your archive, but I couldn’t quite find what I was looking for as far as info on Eric having surgery on his chest (or maybe I missed it). But do you happen to know when it was, and if he ended up having multiple surgeries?

Hi! Thank you very much for the kind words. It means a lot to me that you are so appreciative of it. =) I don’t think I’ve written at length about Eric’s chest surgery, or indeed about the medical condition that was the cause for it, so let’s remedy that! 😉

Eric suffered from a medical condition known as pectus excavatum. It’s often referred to as a funnel or sunken chest. It is a defect that occurs at birth and is said to worsen during adolescence. The condition is caused by too much growth of the connective tissue that joins the
ribs to the breastbone. This causes the sternum to malform inward. It can be so severe that it affects breathing and exercising, though often the reasons for surgery are more cosmetic/self-esteem boosting in nature. The surgery itself is usually not performed when the child is still small: the common age for the corrective surgery is somewhere between 12 and 16.

The evaluations for Eric’s surgery began when he was about 12 years old. The surgical correction itself was performed on December 16, 1993, at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora. There were two post-surgery evaluations in January and April of the following year. The steel strut that was used in the initial surgery was removed on June 9, 1994, showing that the pectus excavatum had been restructured to the best of the medic’s ability. However, the Mausers recalled that Eric’s parents said that the surgery unfortunately hadn’t turned out as well as Eric had hoped.

What do you think Eric would think about Dylann roofs manifesto? And what do you think Dylan’s and Eric’s opinion would be on Dylann roof?

I have seriously attempted to ignore that bag of racism and history warping that Roof calls a manifesto, as it raises my blood pressure exponentially every time, so I can’t really tell you what Eric would think about it in earnest. Eric had some problematic racist stuff going on, too, so you won’t hear me try to erase that. Yet, he also remarks directly against racism in an earlier stage of his writing and I happen to think that that portion was a more honest opinion than the later aggravating comments were. History was one of Eric’s better subjects that he seemed to have a general interest in, so I have the tiny impression that he might scoff at Roof’s history-bending remarks that slavery and segregation weren’t so bad. He’d be smart enough to realise that Roof’s opinions are even more wildly unfounded than some of his own were.

There was no racist motivation present in the war Eric and Dylan waged on Columbine, so that makes Roof a very different mass murderer who might not even see eye to eye with the guys. I have a feeling that they, like me, might spend the first hour laughing over the dude’s name before going “dude you tried to fucking immortalise yourself while wearing a bowlcut?!”.. It would be almost a personal affront to these two, who’d spent the better part of a few months coming up with their ‘look’ for the grand day. Also, if it’s true that Roof ran out of ammo so relatively quickly.. that’d lead to even more scoffing on the part of Eric and Dylan.

truecrimejunkie77:

ericharrisblog:

Investigators investigating the crime scene where Eric body was found. Here we can see that parts of Eric brain tissues were all over the place, including in the ceiling right above him.

Jesus Christ….if you read the second page of underlined text, is that saying that Eric’s brain tissue was on the table BEFORE the molotov cocktail was lit? Jesus Christ…..omg. That would mean Eric was dead before Dylan even lit that. That would mean he saw……FUCK!

The hit men for hire rants… Who filmed them? Did Eric film Dylan and Dylan film Eric?

Hitmen For Hire was one part of a class project for economics, with the other part being a business plan proposal for the offer of hitman and protection services. Mike Vendegnia and Eric Veik cooperated with them on this project, at least for the filming portions of it, and Chris Walker says in his witness statements that he helped them with the background music for this. I always had the impression that the rants were filmed with the camera being on a steady surface or on something like a tripod, given how the angles barely change throughout, though at least one of them must’ve been behind the camera to check if it was coming across the way they wanted to.

Kelly angel – rationally, what could be on the photo? Any idea how to explain the phenomen? Dave angel – ok, but they look identical. It’s just remarkable & a bit surprising to me at the same time. Harrises have meet with (at least some of) families personaly, which I don’t recall about Klebolds atm. Do you honestly think if you would find a partner to your doom plan back in those days, you wouldn’t be able to go behind the back of your parents and make the fantasy reality? You can always lie.

Rationally, a whisp of smoke? Some weird air/weather phenomenon? It looked a lot like that to me, but you would have to know the exact conditions of the physical environment at the time that photograph was taken to be able to rationalise it away like that. I think I’m just going to call it a grief phenomenon and a message of “I am okay” much like the suddenly blooming flowers on my grandmama’s windowsill were for my family after her passing. And, yes, the poses of the angels look virtually identical – but keep in mind that there are quite a many artistic depictions of angels that have the same pose, especially the guardian/messenger variants. (I have an angel-thing, sorry.)

Yes, the Harrises did meet with at least one family. The Mausers wrote about this meeting extensively, which you will find in Tom Mauser’s book as well. Tom Mauser also met with the Klebolds. We don’t know if any other families did, if memory serves me correctly. There is a nice article about the outreach of the Klebolds here.

I don’t think I would have wanted a partner on my doom plan from way back when. My particular brand of misanthropy doesn’t play well with others. 😉 Going behind the back of my parents to get that done, however.. hahahahaha there is a lot I can get past them and manipulate past them, but preparations for the execution of a mass murder would never be one of those things due to how invested my parents were and are in my everyday life. I would’ve gotten caught no matter how much I lied.

Isn’t death penalty still legal in Colorado though? I imagine they would get it for sure, thus maybe the question would be also from this point of view for you. Are executions filmed? If so, … what if the video would leak? It makes me sick.

Yup, it is, though the death penalty hasn’t been executed since 1977 and therefore makes Colorado a de facto abolitionist state since 2007. =) I made a tiny post about a post-massacre court ruling for them both here. Death penalties can take years before they are executed, so there would be plenty of time to speak with them before then if they were willing to do so. I find the death penalty in itself archaic and not a correct representation of a modern legal system that prides itself on justice, but that is totally not the point here..

I do not believe that executions are filmed, though I’ve seen exceptions to the rule pop up on Google. I think these are mostly private events, as they should be – let’s not make a person’s death crowd spectacle number one again, shall we? I would not watch their deaths if these were filmed and leaked to the public. It’s too upsetting to watch anyone die like that, no matter what they have done. It’s bad enough that we have the suicide photographs that I believe should never have been given to us.

Ok I saw 13 families Columb. 10 years later and I have few questions. What do you think about Kelly’s angel (or for that matter the almost exact resemblance of the Dave angel his daughter had tattoed; it just caught my eye)? There was said the sorry letter from Klebolds were wrote by their lawyer and wasn’t very sincere. And in the end they of course said that parents should be better at parenting – do you thing this would be the case?

Shit, man, I still didn’t watch that in its entirety. I have it saved onto my computer and I’ve been waiting for the mood to strike – it looks so heavy on an emotional level that I’ve been reluctant to get into it now that I’m not feeling my best either. But I actually looked up what you mentioned seeing/hearing in the video itself now – and how wonderful and heartbreaking is it, to hear these families speak about the people they loved more than anything in the universe..

Kelly’s angel is something that is actually not an uncommon occurrence in a grieving process and is something that can be so meaningful for the people left behind. You can see in her mom that she draws a great deal of support from what she sees as this angelic appearance and that it makes her believe that her daughter is doing okay. She saw something incredibly important and strengthening in this experience with the angel she believes was a message from Kelly. That’s something to respect immensely, no matter if we as outsiders see this message the same way or not.

The tattooed likeness of Dave Sanders is wonderful. That man was an absolute angel to many of his students on the day of the massacre. He took on an angel’s role in shepherding them to safety at the cost of his own life – it’s a sacrifice, a strength, a light of goodness walking those halls alongside the darkness Eric and Dylan brought to the school that day. I can’t even write about how much I respect Mr Sanders without getting emotional. That tattooed likeness is a personification of who he was that day – so meaningful it takes my breath away.

The letter from the Klebolds is something I personally believe to be genuine and not written by their lawyer. I believe that Tom and Sue would take it on themselves to write this personally, as they have spoken out about their son and the massacre in the years that followed that letter as well. They have never remained silent about how deeply affected and empathic they are in regards to the suffering their son caused. I would sooner have believed this of the Harrises, who’ve kept so quiet and never did much in the way of outreach toward the families of their son’s victims that we know of.

Parents should be better at parenting? Hmm, yes and no. The thing about parenting is that you do the best you can do with what you’ve been given. I think we must also not underestimate our own childhoods in this respect – a lot of what we do as parents goes back to the rolemodels we were given in our youth and making a conscious decision to ‘do things differently’ with your own children isn’t as easy as it sounds for that reason. Parenting teaches you about yourself more than it ever teaches you about your child, which can sometimes be a pretty ugly mirror to gaze into. I think that there is no real right way to parent, though there is certain a wrong way to go about it. A good parent will try to raise their child to the best of their ability and teach them to be self-sufficient loving adults and be open to learning from their child in turn – but that’s my opinion, having no children of my own but having worked with a lot of kids in the past.

I personally don’t think that the current hypes in parenting are the way to go. Some of it comes off as mollycoddling to me or as something that can be downright detrimental to a child’s independent development. I am also concerned about neglectful parenting where the kids are out on the street or behind a screen all day without their parents having the first clue about what they’re up to. I believe that last bit to have been a contributing factor in Columbine to a degree. (The first thing to come flying out of my own mother’s mouth at hearing about the pre-massacre antics of these boys was “why the hell were they given that much leeway? oh if that had been one of mine, he would’ve been screwed” – and I believe her on that one, really, having been raised to voice my opinion but also to accept that sometimes a parent’s will is the law.) Different parenting styles do contribute to the way a child will behave and grow up, and it is my belief that Eric and Dylan both ‘missed’ an integral part in what they really needed from their parents. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say “they should’ve been better parents” – oh hell no, it doesn’t work like that! I don’t know the Harrises or the Klebolds personally, so I want to extend the courtesy of respect to them by saying “they probably did the best they could with what they were given”. Blaming them for their child’s mistakes will get us absolutely nowhere, as this school shooting epidemic encompasses more than just these two..

Imagine they wouldn’t kill themselves afterwards, how would that make you feel about the whole case? About them?

I expect that would make me feel different about the case, though I’m
not sure how much it would impact my feelings toward the boys overall. I
am pretty set in my ways in regards to how I feel about these two – it
would take more than them simply being alive and present to change
that, because a lot of what I feel is personal and has a lot to do with
my own experiences in life. I recognise them because I was once like
them, which is something that will stay with me forever as being
something that significantly changed who I am as a person. That kind of recognition isn’t wiped out or altered so easily.

A
lot of what we’ve been given evidence-wise are things like witness
statements that speak of different events and impressions of the boys
throughout the years. Most of that stuff is focused around the day of
the massacre, though there are also loose statements that invariably
tell you more about what life in Littleton was like and how Columbine
functioned as a school. We all know that JeffCo and the rest of the
officials fucked up immensely in the way they chose to handle this case.
The common dialogue about it is biased and harmful, not to mention that
the grieving process for some of these families has been even tougher
due to the mistakes that were made during and after the investigation.
Anyone with eyes can see how completely messed-up the evidence is –
look even closer and you’ll find that some interesting things weren’t
even followed up on or were handled in a way that would make anyone go
“huh?!”.

Having the boys here and alive today would impact
that dialogue about this case immensely. Not only would there be an
extensive trial and sentencing process that would likely reveal far more
information about their lives, but there would also be a chance for
them to outright counter the way they are currently portrayed. It would
be fascinating to see this. I would love to see their progress over the
course of time as they would grow and change but yet be invariably bound
to Columbine through their actions. They took a whole lot with them to
their graves when it comes to how they were as people and how they felt
about certain issues and how they experienced the day of. Having them
alive would destroy any myths we have of them if they were inclined to
share – there must be some things we are myth-taken about,
right? I wonder how that would change the way we see them and how we
would feel toward them. Half of what makes this case interesting is that
it’s a hell of a lot of guesswork and a real puzzle – how would we
researchers fare when we could ask these guys anything, when we could
piece the story together more comprehensively? I have been blogging
about this case for exactly two years now (today is my blog’s second
birthday, yay!) and there is so much I still don’t know, so much I would
ask, so much I would want to talk with them about. It would be a real
gift to get to do that while they were alive.

How is Dreaming The Halcyon going? Do you have any other writing in mind but still in secret?

It’s not going. *wails* It’s slipping through my fingers, lol. I have maybe a quarter of it written and was initially hoping to get the rest done within no time at all, too. I have a massive case of writer’s block in this respect. And, yes, I have other writings in mind.. mainly the ones mentioned with tentative release dates in this list. I’m hoping to get some writing in when I hit my summer break, so fingers crossed?

Honestly, I have been going through a pretty rough time personally and have a hard time writing things or getting back to people’s messages because of that. I have a few things left to answer in my askbox that I just can’t find the space for within myself, which bugs me a lot because this kind of writing used to come easy. I would ask for patience.. but I have none with myself.