tell-me-what-to-swallow0:

JeffCo, release the basement tapes, so Dylan and Eric can teach us how to make a shitty bomb that doesn’t work

because she could take care of him and hold him in her arms,caress him and tell him to calm down. I know how bad he was feeling. He needed help.

Jen actually described that she put her head down on Corey’s back after the shooting and ‘played dead’, so she was touching him at the time.

I’ve just explained to you that talking with him would’ve likely drawn the attention of Eric and/or Dylan and that Corey’s injuries were so severe that he could only be helped with urgent medical attention. I don’t know what else to tell you in relation to this.

The Pulitzer Prizes | I cried and cried…now I’m dry of tears

Cries of anguish and devastation carried across Clement Park on
Wednesday, as throngs of students from Columbine High School gathered
for an impromptu memorial and reunion in the aftermath of the worst
school shooting in the nation’s history.

 "You see who’s OK, and you cry,“ said freshman Chanelle Plank. "Then you find out who’s not OK, and you cry some more.”

Authorities did not release the names of the dead. But friends and
relatives confirmed the deaths of some victims and the names of several
others still unaccounted for.

Dead were teacher and coach Dave Sanders and students Daniel Mauser,
Isaiah Shoels and John Tomlin. Still missing – and feared dead – were
students Cassie Bernall, Corey DePooter, Matt Kechter, Rachel Scott and
Lauren Townsend.

Surrounded by scores of newspaper and television reporters from around
the world, the mourning students cried, hugged, reminisced and
contemplated the rampage.

 "I cried hysterically,“ said a shellshocked Melanie King, a
17-year-old senior who had been looking forward to her last 17 days of
school. "I cried and cried and cried. Right now, I’m dry of tears.”    

The Pulitzer Prizes | I cried and cried…now I’m dry of tears

i read it better now. Thanks for post it. anyways i can’t like Angel have a friendship with Austin. Somenthing says in my mind,i swear. Austin wasnt my angel’s true friend. See my last posts to understand it better.

You’re very welcome! Honestly, the evidence provided to us by JeffCo is so extensive that it can be a little daunting to read through. =) It gets very emotionally draining, too, especially when you read about the events that took place in the library. It’s a terrible thing that can really grab you by the throat and lead to the occasional kneejerk reactions for sure. I personally use the evidence files to make sure that I’m telling things factually and am not just using my own interpretation of events.

Mmm, all of the reports on their friendship called those two guys “inseparable” and “best friends”. Austin’s spoken with nothing but kindness about Corey from what I’m currently able to tell. I can’t imagine what it was like for Austin to escape from that library knowing that his best friend died. I’m not even willing to guess how that felt, though I can imagine the survivor’s guilt that followed. There’s nothing inside of all the evidence we’ve been presented with that would lead me to believe that their friendship wasn’t “true”.

Jennifer was a girl,she could do somenthing. She should take care of him,like Jessica trying to help Lauren. If my angel was moaning,its because he was in so much pain and he needed help. Why? Nobody hold his hand and told him to calm down,nobody have compassion of him. Isnt fair…

How is Jennifer being a girl relevant in her “being able to do something”? I don’t believe that girls should function as default caregivers/caretakers all the time. Guys can do that just as much, as Corey showed by reaching out to everyone under his table and telling them it was going to be okay.

Moans and grunts are one step above total non-responsiveness when we’re talking about the level of trauma Corey went through, so I would say that he may not have been wholly aware of the pain and was probably already slowly sliding into unconsciousness and eventual death. We’re talking multiple gunshot wounds to the chest, neck, arm, and back as well as blunt force injuries to his forehead and knee. From his autopsy summary, I can deduce that he suffered internal bleeding in his chest area. Most who suffer that amount of injury do not survive for very long and go into a semi-conscious state at best, which would be consistent with the witness statements that Corey had passed away before they even left the library.

Providing Corey with support (that’s all it would be, as you cannot truly help someone with these extensive injuries unless you’re a medic) in the verbal and physical sense would have likely drawn the attention of Eric and Dylan. Speaking to Corey, even at a whisper level, could’ve made at least one of the two walk back to their table and ‘finish the job’. We know that they responded to things like Isaiah’s cry for his mother and began targeting an individual based on that, so it’s not a far stretch to assume that any talking done under Corey’s table after they’d gotten shot at could’ve made Eric and/or Dylan re-target them.

That’s the reality of it. I know you think none of this is fair – and no death from that day was truly fair, in my opinion – and I have the impression that you seem to think you would’ve acted differently if you had been there with them that day. Truth is, it’s easy for us to think about what we would have and could have done for any one of them that day.. Reality is often far more painful, traumatic, and terrifying than what we can envision here. We don’t know how we would behave in these situations. I pray none of us will ever have to find out.

If you’re going to stick up for Austin,thats okay. I really know he’s not my angel’s true friend. He didn’t check his pulse,he get out the library fast with Jennifer.

I would stick up for anyone who’s being misrepresented in a tragedy. I don’t think that you or I or anyone else can really say what Corey’s friendship with Austin was like, but the fact that they were friends likely made the ordeal in the library even tougher for Austin to deal with in the aftermath.

In that post, I put screenshots of the witness statements as they are presented to us in JeffCo’s evidence file. You can read Austin’s statement that he checked for Corey’s pulse in one of those. His witness testimony in general doesn’t show any huge anomalies when you compared it with other testimonies, which leads me to believe that he could report factually and accurately about the events in the library that day. I am not willing to contradict Austin’s official statement about his actions. Your belief and opinion that Austin didn’t check Corey’s pulse shouldn’t be presented as fact when the evidence clearly states he did.

Witness statements describing some of the circumstances surrounding the death of Corey DePooter. Austin Eubanks, Jennifer Doyle, and Peter Ball were hiding under the same table as Corey and consistently speak of their own disorientation (ringing ears from the gunshots, dissociated screaming) and the injuries they experienced after being targeted by Eric and Dylan. All three described Corey’s injuries, as seen above, and seemingly indicate that he was bleeding profusely from his wounds. Jennifer states that she wrapped her own injured hand in Corey’s shirt, which showcases how close they were in proximity to one another under that table.

Note that both Austin and Jennifer believe Corey to have passed away prior to them leaving the library. Austin went as far as to check Corey’s pulse for signs of life before leaving himself, while Jennifer clearly states she heard Corey “breathe his last”. (Given her close proximity to him, that doesn’t seem terribly unlikely!) Peter does state that he still heard Corey “moaning” as people were leaving the library, but it’s not clear how much time passed between that particular observation and Peter’s own exit from the library.

Jennifer and Austin were injured in the shooting and treated for their injuries in the hospital. They gave shorter witness statements on the day itself, but the screenshots above come from their detailed witness statements made in May 1999. Peter Ball gave only one witness statement in that same month and was not immediately interviewed post-massacre. This isn’t an anomaly: a lot of the witness statements were unfortunately given to law enforcement long after the case had gone through extensive media coverage.

(heavensgainedanangel1999, I realise you feel very strongly about Corey’s death and the circumstances surrounding it. What I cannot abide is seeing your judgemental statements toward Austin and Jennifer in particular for leaving him there and escaping that library when they had the chance. You cannot possibly begin to fault two injured, terrified teenagers for leaving someone they both believed to be dead behind and getting themselves to safety. What happened in that library is already tragic enough without misinformation adding insult to injury.)

What do you think about all the documents regarding the supposedly bullying and other horrible stuff Eric and Dylan would do and say to others? I’m in no way making excuses (ironically, they became the major bullies on 4/20) but I’ve also seen people who found about that and would say stuff like ‘There it is for everyone who’s making excuses for them. I’m glad those two fucks never grew up to be adults.’ I mean… little bit hypocritical, no?

Documents like this one, you mean, where people have actually taken the trouble to compile witness statements from the 11k by subject? I find those quite interesting, because they show both sides of it: they don’t exclude the bullying done to Eric and Dylan, but they also don’t blank out the times where Eric and Dylan exhibited bullying/problematic behaviour toward others.

Discussions about Columbine tend to be incredibly polarised. I think that a lot of it has to do with people’s own experiences, which makes it a difficult subject to navigate because you never know what someone’s going to kneejerk at next. Some people can’t imagine ever plotting murder and carrying it out, while others have plotted it numerous times and not committed it outright for whatever reasons they can cite. Some people were bullied extensively in school and find recognition in what was done to Eric and Dylan, while others breezed through school with ease and may find themselves on that other side going “why is everyone making excuses for two dudes who gave as good as they got in terms of bullying?”. And, let’s face it, there are a million other positions to consider between one side and the other that will lead someone to say the things they do about the boys and about Columbine. 

I can’t really get behind comments like “I’m glad those two fucks never grew up to be adults”, because I firmly believe that everybody in this universe should be given the chance (and the means and the support) to grow into adulthood and experience everything they want to experience in a lifetime. Eric and Dylan deserved (yes, folks, deserved – come argue with me later) that shot at life just as much as any of us. What I think gets to so many people is the fact that they didn’t only take their own shot at it away, but also decided that it would be best if they took other (young) people’s shots at it away too. I think that many have the habit of identifying with their victims and their families – logically so – and find it very hard to come to terms with the fact that anyone would decide to take another human being’s life away. Eric and Dylan are demonised and vilified over what they did, but there is a nuanced difference between holding them accountable/responsible and saying “good fucking riddance” that I think escapes many.

Similarly, I think that those who identify with Eric and/or Dylan can sometimes gloss over their problematic behaviour a little too much. They weren’t sweet darling angels by any and all accounts, including their own, and it does sometimes pain me to see people elect to ignore those deep-set issues in favour of a romanticised view of those two. To say that they weren’t bullied is to ignore a whole set of evidence, but to say that they never bullied or harrassed anybody else is to ignore the other set of evidence. (Wow, they’re multidimensional human beings like the rest of us! Who knew?) There’s an incredible ability in quite a few to paint Eric and Dylan as only vaguely problematic and to say “yeah they were only really bad for the last hour of their lives” that leads me to go “what the fuck did you miss the years of shitty asshole behaviour that came before that hour?”.

I’m not in the business of making excuses for those two. I’m also not in the business of annihilating their characters to make them into perfect two-dimensional villains, though. Eric and Dylan were great and terrible in equal measure: the best and worst of humanity can be found in them. I understand that a lot of the debate on them is very polarised, so I always hope to bridge the gap between “those two fucking assholes” and “those poor lonely creatures” a bit with the things I say and provide a more all-sides-matter kind of viewpoint in this case.

What do you think Elliot Rodger experiences in the afterlife? ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I’m not in the business of talking about Elliot Rodger (get him the hell away from me, I get punchy about him) but I’m sincerely hoping he gets the Reb ’n Vodka Trunk Treatment™:

Eric was a boy to whom love was lacking within. I think we all agree on that to a degree. However, I think people tend to focus more on his tantrums than on “that issue” mostly because he “passionately” insisted on letting show that side of him, the “I love to piss off people” side. What amazes me is that I strongly believe that he was crying for help on a regular basis at the same time demonstrating that he didn’t need it. I came to a conclusion that acting that way would “protect his walls”.

Do you think that if we record all of these accurate thoughts on Eric and play them to Dave Cullen non-stop for about a year straight, we could brainwash good ol’ Dave into stepping away from the psychopath pedestal?

Because, really, you’re preachin’ to the choir over here. =) I think he had a lot of love, but was either too scared or too quick about expressing it. Eric only had one intensity setting (Dramatic In-Your-Face Kaboom, in case anyone missed the blinking neon lights of doom here) and he either exploded it outward or imploded inward with that. The only time he cried out for help was the time he was put on medication that likely made him worse, so I think he decided along the way that he really didn’t need any more ‘help’. And, of course, Eric used his anger as a defense mechanism to prevent people from getting close to him. I think there was a part of him that desperately wanted to open up and be vulnerable with someone, but that he didn’t trust his environment enough and wasn’t equipped enough in emotional expression to do so.

If I was gonna shoot up a school, I’d wear a ski mask and clothing I don’t normally wear. Near the end of the shooting I’d go to a empty class room and take of my clothing, foot wear and ski mask, hide the guns and ammo. Put on another pear of clothes and shot myself (but only graze my body) then go out in a hallway and lay there. The s.w.a.t/ cops come and take me to a ambulance and when there not looking I just walk out. Then get a train to Alaska and live of the land. Boom.

If you were going to shoot up a school, I’d tell you the following:

– ski masks are a dead giveaway and there’s a reason why even Eric and Dylan weren’t stupid enough to actually wear those for a prolonged stretch of time

– if you do that on a warm day, they’re going to be able to recognise you by smell and dishevelled look alone

– law enforcement and school authorities have improved their response to active shooters massively post-Columbine and if you think they’re just going to let you dawdle around happily you’ve got another surprise coming

– there is no way you can hide all of that shit in an empty classroom unless we’re talking the equivalent of the Room of Requirement

– I hope you know anatomy and how to graze-shoot yourself because I’m pretty sure that could go seriously and horribly wrong for you and right for everybody else

– if you think S.W.A.T. and the rest of ‘em aren’t going to monitor everybody as long as they don’t know who the active shooter is.. then I don’t even know what to say

– come up with a better plan because this is kinda questionable and even I can poke a million holes in it

– shooting up a school is a total waste of time and energy, if you’ve got issues you’re better off dealing with them away from guns and explosives, school should never be the end of your life or anyone else’s, and I would never seriously recommend hurting and killing other human beings as a proper course of action to take

What was the purpose of sending me this message?

it’s kind of this halfway point
though the horizon stays the same
the sun always rises in the east
and sets near your home out west
(you’re not here to see it)

it’s kind of this halfway point
like standing on a bridge
thinking “what if I jump”
but remaining still instead
(you leaped further than any of us)

it’s kind of this halfway point
death balances the scales of life
the weight of a legacy remembers
all the bright and dark of time
(your everlasting contrast)

it’s kind of this halfway point
of seventeen long years
scratch out that number
it should’ve been thirty-four
(you know this as well as I)

it’s kind of this halfway point
between a hello and a goodbye
and it makes me say “I can’t
forget about you even if I try”
(happy birthday)

whispered at the sky

I’ve read your answer regarding Eric and when you supposedly thought on a reaction from Eric where he would that “the human race is too stupid” it made me thought when he said he could make people believe in everything (even wings growing on his back). And I guess he knew people would be focused on everything the media would say. It only makes me sad that he was really aware about that and still chose to portray him as a “devil” who didn’t deserve love to the public.

Eric was very convinced of his abilities to lie and manipulate, that’s for sure.. I do wonder at times if he ever really did try to sell that ‘siamese twin growing out my back’-thing as fact? *laughs* I think that he could be persuasive and pushy if the situation called for it, but some of the stuff he lied about is pretty see-through. It blows my mind that people around him seemed to accept it from him, because even I can spot the half-truths and the misdirections a mile off when I see the stuff he came up with and I obviously never met the dude.

I think that Eric wanted very badly to be seen as a tough cookie who did whatever the hell he wanted, even if it went against society’s moral code and against everyone’s sensibilities. I believe he wanted to break free from what was expected of him. I don’t think he wanted anyone to really see him as vulnerable and fragile as he was on the inside. He was acutely aware of how the world saw him while he was alive and I’m pretty sure he was aware of how he could influence that view through his words and actions. The worse those would be, the more alienating he was in his rage and hate, the less the world would look at him and really see him. He made a conscious decision to portray himself as a cold killer incapable of relating to other human beings: he perfected that image to the point where you could call it his best lie ever.

The fact that I’m actively advocating a different view of him is something I think he’d argue with me over for ages, to be honest with you. 😉

When I first started “studying” Columbine I felt connected to Eric straight away, I still am although he is just annoying most of times, but I just can’t help and be “”protective”” of him. I think, sometimes, people make too much of Dylan and forget that he also had “those evil thoughts”.

It was actually the other way around for me when I first started researching: I didn’t click with Eric at all in the beginning, but recognised a lot in Dylan and understood where he was coming from straight away. Over the years, I’ve done a total 180 to the point where I find it very difficult to write about Dylan but can write endless diatribes on Eric. (Even though he exasperates and annoys me a lot, lol, I feel fiercely protective of Eric and this whole ‘mama dragon’-thing I’ve got going started off as a semi-joke about how much I jump to the dude’s defense.)

I think that people are sometimes ‘made to forget’ about Dylan’s responsibility and darkness. And that makes sense, doesn’t it? Look at how different the (media) representations of Dylan are and have always been in comparison to Eric’s. Dylan was ‘at home’ in Colorado, whereas Eric was the new military brat on the block, and people can argue with me about it until they’re blue in the face but I really do believe that people are more inclined to want to see the good in ‘one of their own’ when their family has been around forever and fits into the local community seamlessly. The fact that the Klebolds have stayed and the Harrises have left really says a lot, too.

Furthermore, let’s look at their own part in things. Dylan kept a journal that was all about his innermost thoughts and feelings, with only parts of that writing hinting at something violent and angry. He’s been painted as ‘the romantic’ of the duo for a reason: that’s literally how Dylan represents himself throughout. He’s said to be ‘more monstrous’ on the basement tapes, sure, but we’re denied access to those and so we can’t judge for ourselves how terrifying Dylan really could get. The only hint we have of that intimidating quality to Dylan is on the 911 call, as he is goofing off in virtually every video we have of him and visibly struggling to work up enough believable rage for that Hitmen for Hire-rant.

But then you’ve got Eric, and it’s not hard to see why he’s been treated as the more responsible culprit for years now. His journal is mostly audience-oriented and started with the knowledge that this document would likely be carried forward into a public setting post-NBK. He spews vitriol and annoyance the way Dylan spewed hearts: it’s a running commentary on every single fucking thing the world ever did wrong, and he’s sure as hell going to do something about it. The so-called professionals working the case have erroneously seen that journal as a means with which to set a damaging post-mortem diagnosis of psychopathy, which is absolutely ridiculous but did help define the dialogue about Eric that made its way out there. Eric had a huge hand in how most people see him and I do believe that he would smile gleefully about it before commenting “see, told you the human race is too stupid to survive”. I think that there was a part of Eric that hoped some people would see more than the rage, much like Dylan created this magic realism construct by stating that people would be blocked from entering his journal.

Basically, Eric brought this landslide of pseudo-psychology on himself entirely with the way he waffled around in his writings and we don’t have the material available on Dylan that would change the public view of ‘the follower’ to a more accurate depiction. No matter how much I feel protective over Eric, I cannot feel that same protectiveness over the Reb-persona he willingly and knowingly demonstrated and put out there as his lasting legacy.

I apologize if you have been asked this before but if Columbine never happened do you think E/D would have eventually found successful relationships or stuck being single?

That’s all right, I’ve got so many posts that I don’t always recall what I did and didn’t answer – so I’m treating almost everything as a brand new question! 😉

If Columbine never happened, they’d probably both go their separate ways. Dylan to college in Arizona, as was his original plan, which would open up new experiences for him and introduce him to people from all walks of life. Most of Dylan’s world had centred around Colorado, so I think that it’d have been good for him to get more ‘out there’ and be challenged in his perceptions of the world. Eric, on the other hand, was more of a wildcard in terms of future plans. I believe that community college was something that was mentioned offhand, but his real dream at the time was to make it into the Marines. Maybe, if he’d worked/travelled for a year post-Columbine and gotten off his meds, that latter thing would still be an option for him after all.

Removing them both from their everyday routine and from the environment they despised would’ve been good for them. But it wouldn’t solve every single one of their problems. They would still struggle with themselves and with their place in the world. They’d still alienate people, look down on people, hurt people, and be destructive little shits any which way you look at it. Neither of them were relationship material in those last years of their lives, so I’m not holding my breath and imagining that their potential futures would somehow magically change the assholes they were. They’d need to do some serious work on themselves before they would be anywhere near capable of having a healthy and sane relationship. Hopefully, the change of scenery and being away from the harmful system that is high school would help in that case. There are plenty of girls who say “oh I would’ve loved them so much just the way they were”, of course, and that does lead me to suspect that someone would eventually fall for them in real life and have to put up with Dramatic Possessive Little Shit or Dramatic Clingy Little Shit for all eternity. (Which leaves a bad taste in my mouth: Eric and Dylan are exactly the types I’d warn girls to stay the hell away from unless they somehow got their shit together and matured.)

I have always had the impression that Eric would get married early and get divorced before the time he’d hit the grand ol’ age of 30. It’s just one of those gut feelings that I can’t really explain, but I could easily imagine that it’d be a rushed relationship that would end in a big explosion once routine struck the couple. He’d end up classifying those few years as ‘the time I wanted to live up to my family’s expectations’ and remain single (and really fucking bitter about the ex-wife) for years afterward. The traditional role pattern he expected out of a family is something I don’t think he’d have been happy with in the long run, so I could see him lead a more ragtag existence with a new wife and two kids and a whole bunch of dogs later on in life. (The dogs are kind of a mandatory staple: I have this crazy thought that he’d have joined the Marines and end up adopting half the stray dogs he came across while on a mission, thus leading an exasperated wife to go “not again and no they’re not sleeping in our bed” when he turned up on the family home’s doorstep carrying one dog and having another three dance around his legs.)

With Dylan, I don’t think that divorce or a string of girlfriends would really be in the cards. Sure, he fell in love quite often if his journal’s anything to go by.. but he rarely acted on the way he felt. I think that it’d take time for him to learn how to put himself out there and not be “that weird guy who stuttered something about a date” to the girls he had a crush on. I have this feeling that he might meet a girl in the later years of college or early days of work and take forever to work up the nerve to ask her out. She might say ‘yes’, who knows, and I think that they would take a long time dating before finally settling down together. They’d have their occasional fights that would cause tears and misery for ages, but with the right girl I think that Dylan wouldn’t close himself off from his emotions the way he usually did. Of course, there’s also a chance that Dylan would spend forever looking for ‘his ideal love’ and turn a blind eye to what was right in front of him all along. I think that’s the most tragic scenario, though I could sadly see that be a reality too.

Do you think Eric and Dylan ever threw tantrums?

HELL YES.

(There is a tiny vindictive part of me that went “Eric’s entire existence was one major tantrum start to finish” as soon as I’d finished articulating the ‘hell yes’, but Dylan can give him a run for his money there as well..)

From the semi-reliable fountain of information that is Brooks Brown, we know that Dylan was prone to throwing tantrums when he was a child. His book mentions an occasion where Dylan had a total meltdown when people were laughing ‘at’ him over the slide he took into mud. It must’ve been a funny sight, but rather than laughing it off Dylan yelled “stop laughing at me!”. As he grew older, the explosive tantrums mostly vanished and Dylan learned to exercise what I think was an extreme amount of control over his emotions. I’ve spoken with someone in private today about how difficult it can be to find an ‘access point’ for Dylan’s anger, because so much of it is hidden in other things he says/does or made inaccessible for us due to withheld evidence. One of the few ‘openings’ I see where one can learn to comprehend the depth of Dylan’s rage are in the instances where Dylan vocalises disdain for humanity, where you can see the frustration and contempt written all over the pages of that journal. He was less prone to outbursts as a teenager, but there are accounts of him perhaps having struck a coworker and other issues that would lead me to believe Dylan flew off the handle very rarely but could still work himself up into a frenzied kind of rage if he felt something too strongly. I also think that Dylan could be very acerbic and went for the proverbial throat in a psychological manner – he’d want to sear his hurt into someone else’s brain so that they would think twice about crossing him again.

Eric’s childhood behaviour is a little harder to determine due to the semi-lack of sources that speak of the time before he landed himself in Littleton. We know that he was a timid kid, shy even, and that he fretted over letting people down. We also know that he was not a kid causing too much trouble: he is described as ‘bright’ and ‘just a good kid’ throughout the information we do have. I do have the feeling that Eric could be extremely hard on himself and that he may have thrown a tantrum in private where he felt safe to release those emotions for himself. I don’t think he was given the space within his family to really throw a tantrum in public and have the impression that he learned to bottle the negative emotions up for himself. Every pressure cooker needs a release option, though, and by the time he was a teenager Eric could no longer keep a lid on it. He was prone to sharp outbursts of rage. There’s at least one documented instance of him having injured his hand, most likely from punching the wall, and you have to look no further than the Browns’ account of Eric flying off the handle to realise that everybody around Eric knew when it was time to start walking on eggshells around him. I’d classify all of that behaviour under the moniker ‘temper tantrum’, but I would not classify NBK as such. (Funny how that works, huh?)