theydidnthavetodie:

How strong were Eric and Dylan expecting the bombs to be? Since the library is right above the cafeteria, a strong enough bomb could have killed everyone in the library, as well as the cafeteria. Maybe they weren’t expecting to have to shoot themselves. Anyone know more about this? How strong are propane bombs/how strong can they be?

Hope you don’t mind me chiming in!

Deputy Fire Marshal Rick Young spoke with the Governor’s Commission about the many explosive devices that Eric and Dylan had placed in different parts of the building. He voiced the opinion that the death toll at the school would have exceeded a thousand if it had not been for defective fusing of the explosive devices. The two propane bombs alone would have been powerful enough to collapse the school’s physical structure, which would have brought the floor of the library down onto the cafeteria below.

As per JeffCo’s report:

Computer
modeling substantiated by field testing indicated that had those two
large 20-lb. propane bombs detonated with a cafeteria full of students, most
would have been killed or severely injured by the resulting blasts and
subsequent fireballs.  There were
approximately 488 students in the cafeteria at 11:17 a.m. on April 20, the time
the bombs were set to detonate.  In
addition to the casualties caused by the explosions, the computer models
demonstrated a strong likelihood of structural damage and partial collapse of
the cafeteria and possible library above.

You may have already answered this question, but in Brooks Browns’ book, he mentions the day that Dylan handed him a piece of paper folded up I believe, with Erics’ website written down. And they never spoke of it again. A few theories come to my mind, one of which being that Eric and Dylan discussed sharing the website to Brooks. Dylan could have also been warning Brooks, but this random act is very interesting. What are your thoughts on this?

I’ve certainly touched upon it in the past here and here. The story Brooks shares in his book is that Dylan did hand him that scrap of paper that had Eric’s website address on it, telling him to take a look at it and that he couldn’t tell Eric that Dylan had given it to him. That’s one version of it, anyway, because I became aware of the fact that there is another version of it out there that’s backed up by the factual evidence:

In that version, as showcased in the 2004 report into the Brown’s complaints about Eric, Brooks and his brother Aaron were the ones to write the website address down on a scrap of paper after Dylan had told Brooks about the website. That alters a small part of the story here, but in both of these accounts two things remain the same:

1. Dylan was the one to share the information about Eric’s website with Brooks.
2. Brooks told his mom that he couldn’t tell her who had given him the information about the website, because that person was afraid of Eric.

Personally, I’ve always had the impression that Dylan tried very hard to remain friends with everybody. Brooks and Eric were on the outs with each other, sure, but he had known Brooks for a long time and Eric was a good friend too. I think that Dylan felt horribly stuck in the middle there. As anyone who’s ever been in that position can attest, being in the middle is a place where you’re trying very hard to stay neutral (and out of any arguments) and yet a place not everyone can stand seeing you in because they expect you to take their side. I think Dylan saw both sides of the coin at once and decided for himself that he wasn’t going to be their go-between or anything of the sort. However, I think Dylan felt that Eric crossed the line when he began threatening Brooks. Brooks had been a good friend to Dylan in the past and I think Dylan felt that he ‘owed’ it to that friendship to let Brooks know what Eric was up to. Dylan didn’t particularly want to lose Eric’s friendship (or become the target of Eric’s extreme ire as well) so he shared the information about the threats with Brooks while telling Brooks at the same time to please leave him out of it. It suits Dylan’s non-confrontational style to not go to Eric directly and say “hey, man, what the fuck, that’s not cool” in regards to those threats – certainly not when Eric was kind of a hothead who’d just as soon blow up about nobody being on his side. I don’t think Dylan felt safe enough to share his feelings/thoughts about this with Eric, but at the same time I don’t think that Dylan was outright scared of Eric? I think he was scared of losing Eric’s friendship more than he feared Eric himself.

The theory that Eric and Dylan discussed sharing the website with Brooks is an interesting one, and certainly a possible one, but I can’t help but think that that’d be a stupid move to make on their part. Eric had named Brooks on his website and had shared Brooks’s personal information in combination with the threats on there as well, which is generally something that law enforcement takes pretty seriously and could have had far-reaching consequences if such information landed in the wrong person’s lap. Eric had to have known that if the Browns learned of the website’s existence, he would run a risk of having police/the Browns themselves show up on his doorstep while he was already up to his neck in trouble with his own parents to begin with. Judy Brown wasn’t fooled by Eric one bit: he knew he couldn’t deceive her and pull the wool over her eyes the way he always tried to do with his own parents, so I don’t think that Eric would willingly put himself in a position where a confrontation with Brooks’s mom was a strong possibility.

When Eric jumped on the bookshelves and started shaking them, what he was yelling? Why would he do that in the first place, in your opinion? It just seems so silly, he was serious & cold during the massacre and then this happens… I don’t get it

No idea what exactly he was yelling about at the time, though the evidence suggests he was swearing. None of the witnesses could really see what he was doing.
For completion’s sake: this happened shortly after he threw a CO2
cartridge under table 15, where Makai Hall grabbed it and
threw it further south before it exploded.

Witnesses next
described Harris as moving south in the library to the west bookshelves where he
jumped up on the shelves and began shaking them back and forth while swearing.
He then walked between the bookshelves where witnesses lost sight of him.
Witnesses did report hearing books being shot in the area near the west
set of bookshelves shortly after Harris walked into that area. 

The map above shows Eric (red dot) throwing the cartridge southward/down to the table with the green dots. Judging from the description that followed, it seems as though he first moved toward the bookshelves and freaked out on those before disappearing between the two bookshelves and the one long bookshelf to the right of that table.

I think the action only really makes sense when you consider that the boys wanted to cause maximum destruction and make life post-massacre hell for anyone who survived them. Survivors had negative reactions to sounds like a fire alarm and popping noises in the time that followed the massacre. It would stand to reason that Eric’s actions with the bookshelves may have featured in some of their flashbacks as well. Everything they did was designed to maximise the suffering of others. They used their unpredictability to instigate fear. They were both laughing and whooping it up in the library, kind of putting on a show for their victims if you will, so in that context Eric’s actions make perfect sense. I do think he was the more controlled/secluded one of the two, which connects in with his personality and the injury he suffered during the massacre. Eric spooked people by appearance alone: several people stated he looked like he’d been drinking blood.

Dylan writes of going NBK with a female. Do you think Eric would have done the same?

Dylan romanticised that idea of going NBK with a female much like the actual movie Natural Born Killers also glamourises that kind of love relationship of a man and woman killing others together. I think it appealed to him to be so close to a girl that he could kill and die with her by his side. It’s really something that was his preferred idea when it comes to the massacre, to the point where some suggest that Dylan was only using Eric as a last resort. Dylan’s focus on this is rather interesting, as it suggests to me that he expected his great love to be just as miserable in her existence as he was in his. His suicidal ideation created that image of dying together with his love (or dying to be reunited with his love) and can even read as spiritual in nature. I think that Dylan would have to work very hard in an actual relationship with a girl to not let that vision get the upper hand.

Eric didn’t write about love and relationships in the same way that Dylan did. He didn’t express coveting that kind of connection Dylan spoke of so often and chose to focus on the physical aspect of connecting with a girl instead. At the times in his life when he did connect with a girl, Eric was quiet and rather sensitive – the opposite of the Reb-persona he wished to cultivate in every other area of his life. It feels to me like Eric would not have wanted to go NBK with a girl, because the way in which he tried to connect with girls was very different and based off that deeper part of himself that just wanted to belong somewhere. That type of connection wouldn’t mesh to his violent pursuit of that grand vision of destruction and would potentially end up dissuading him from the pursuit altogether.

I sometimes feel that it’s easiest to understand the differences between Eric and Dylan when you focus on how they wrote about love/connection/relationships and how they acted in relation to the women in their life. It paints a rather interesting picture in which Eric feels more realistic about this matter than Dylan, but in which Dylan also feels deeper entangled in the web of his own suicide than Eric was.

This might mean nothing to you, but i can’t wait to read the answer to the very intricate question that you’ve been working on for a while!

It means a lot, thank you! It’s a lot of work to put together, because it essentially is a hunt for the most interesting (and perhaps little-known) facts about the case. It doesn’t help that I keep getting sidetracked because one report doesn’t match up timeline-wise with the other report and I have to go back in and review those sections of the evidence that pertain to that line of information, haha. I still have a fair few information sections to go and will probably wind up posting the whole of this research effort as a downloadable PDF some time in the future.

(That poor anon just thought they were asking me an easy question about the most interesting facts about Columbine back in October-ish and now the answer’s going to go way overboard.. Sorry! ;))

where did that rumour that eric had two different eye colours come from? i’ve seen posts claiming that he had one blue/grey eye, one brown. although to me, it appears that both his eyes were the same colour and were likely brown/hazel since some thought they were green. i wish he did have that eye colour (so we could match!) but his eyes do seem to have been the same colour. dylan’s were blue though, no doubt.

From the autopsy report, which had the right iris as gray in colour and the left iris as hazel. [link to full report]

Of course, the only reason why the right iris was gray in colour is because of the extensive damage Eric did to his face when he put the shotgun upward in his mouth and pulled the trigger. I think it damaged the parts of his eye that give the iris its regular colour, just as it fractured and lacerated his skull completely. We’re talking about a gaping laceration here and an injury that completely distorted his orbits – the description in the full report I linked just now doesn’t leave a lot to the imagination if you understand the terms they use in it.

Eric’s eyes were hazel in colour, based off that one eye of his that didn’t turn gray from the injuries he suffered, and the only source that claims otherwise is his driver’s license (on which his eye colour was said to be green). Hazel eyes certainly can have a green sheen to them, so it’s possible that Eric thought he had green eyes and the medical examiner determined post-mortem that his eyes were hazel.

Why do you think the narrative of psychopath+follower is preferred by law enforcement? If Eric seemed contrite on the basement tapes and Dylan more monstrous, why not advance the same theory with the roles reversed? Do you think the boys’ respective writings played a role in those characterisations?

I think it’s preferential for law enforcement to pigeonhole Eric as the psychopathic ringleader and Dylan as a suicidal depressive who got blindsided/roped into this through Eric’s manipulation, because a fair bit of the evidence can support that narrative when it’s used a certain way. It’s quite easy to skew that narrative to the point where all you’ll hear about Eric is about his rage and violence and all you’ll hear about Dylan is about his sadness and his longing. Their journals do support those characterisations if they are taken at face value and not examined more closely. Fuselier and other trained professionals certainly agreed that Eric was “textbook” in terms of psychopathy based off nothing more than that journal, while I would have expected that people like them would have been able to see through Eric’s act. Furthermore, it’s also the accounts given by friends and family that can support the official narrative when used the right way. Eric’s family has mostly kept quiet and the people who knew him back when he was a young boy never spoke out in the media much, while Dylan’s family and friends have been quite vocal about who he was as a person. The things that are said about Eric in the 11k tend to be less forgiving, because he showcased some of his anger and hatred more readily than Dylan did. Dylan surprised people with his involvement, after all, because most perceived him to be kind and gentle.

Law enforcement can choose to narrow the general public’s focus through being selective with the information they promote most heavily, which is an effort that can be further supported if they get a few psychologists and journalists on their side to fortify these claims. The general public unfortunately trusts what it hears through the media and Columbine has seen some reinterpretations of facts that are very helpful when it comes to promoting the narrative law enforcement wants to push out there most. It’s no mistake that Dave Cullen’s book is considered to be the authority on Columbine, in spite of better materials being available, nor is it a mistake that Peter Langman took the time to detail that Eric had ‘rapist fantasies’ when he last appeared on TV in connection with Sue Klebold’s interview. Anyone who doesn’t know shit about the case is going to think of Eric as that ladies man who had the potential to turn into a violent murdering rapist pig because he lacked the basic ability to be a human being. Anyone who’s not familiar with the case is going to think of Dylan as that poor mentally ill kid who was so very bright and sweet until he ran into a cunning psychopath and was forced/talked into doing the massacre with that person.

Advancing the same theory with an entire role reversal is not going to work, because that was not their dynamic in the first place. I realise it is easiest for law enforcement to pigeonhole the perpetrators of a massacre into these ready-to-go pieces, but that’s not how reality works no matter how much they’d love to bend reality to their vision. They gave the easy cop-out answer to why the massacre happened and to what was ‘wrong’ with the boys who committed the crime. I don’t feel as though reversing it to the point where Eric’s the sweet kid and Dylan’s the psychopath is going to help matters any, especially not because that narrative won’t hold up under close scrutiny any more than the official narrative does. I’ve been trying to step away from these snapshot views of them as much as I can here, because Eric and Dylan were more complicated than this and they deserve a fair story as much as anyone else does. Most of my efforts in this have been focused on Eric, because he drew the short end of the stick (by his own choice) and there is a lot of work to be done in changing people’s views of him. It’s easier to change Dylan’s half of the narrative than it is Eric’s, perhaps, because it’s easier to see the bad in people than it is to make a real effort into seeing the good in them.

How does the fact that you will never see the basement tapes makes you feel? You have researched for years and you know so much about the tragedy, but such an important thing will never be in your possession. I really hurts me so much and it makes me angry at the same time. I keep asking myself why i keep researching while nothing will come out it but sadness. What keeps you going?

Every time I think I’m way over not getting to see the basement tapes, something happens that sets me right back off again into anger-mode. I have yet to hear a good argument against their release, to be honest with you, as none of the reasons currently given are good enough to me. I understand that people fear the potential of copycats and that they don’t want more mass shootings on their hands, but mass shootings already happen regardless of this and the tapes might actually help us figure out what to do about those. Not releasing them does more harm than releasing them. I’ve previously talked about how I feel that not releasing them perpetuates this myth of Eric and Dylan as the feared school shooters and makes law enforcement look like a bunch of cowardly lions, which is an opinion I will stand by for as long as those tapes are not made public. (And as the official narrative tells us they have been destroyed, it seems like I’ll be keeping this particular opinion for the rest of my life.)

All that research and all that knowledge is never rendered invalid just because I don’t have all the data I would like to have in this case. The work I’ve put into this blog and into uncovering the truth about Columbine is something I feel is hard to turn away from, even when it seems like nothing new is forthcoming and all we’ve got so far is not even close to being complete. I make do with what we’ve been given mainly because I feel it’s an important story that needs to be told. It’s a story that is the story of many: it could have been my story, once, and it is the story of many young people who see a part of themselves in Eric and Dylan. If I can use this platform to educate people about it and help others through it, then all that research and all that knowledge are worth having and putting time and effort into. I can’t change what happened in the past, but I can learn from that past so I can be a part of a better future.

I’ve wondered in the past year if I should quit researching/writing and “move on”. I’ve experimented with taking breaks and I haven’t always been the most present/available person in discussing the case over the course of that time.
I worked the introduction to Eric post out of my system months ago
because I had to get that jumble out of my brain before it ate me up.

I had grown tired of all of it, emotionally maxed out on it, and incapable of dealing with all the things that come with cultivating this particular blog. I’m not proud of that – I’ve got questions in my inbox that have been sitting there for months, and I feel guilty as hell about not getting to them sooner. Initially, it was that guilt that propelled me to at least answer some of the easier things. Recently, it was that guilt that propelled me to begin the earnest research for a very intricate question that’s been sitting in my inbox a while. And, guess what? I somehow found my way back into full-blown research because of that. I found something in that evidence pile that didn’t hold up under close scrutiny and yelled about it in private conversations until it began to make sense again. The second I get angry, I know I’m back in the game when it comes to talking Columbine. What keeps me going is that sense of injustice, that sense of something not being right, that sense of an unfair narrative, that sense of incompetence from officials, that sense of Dave Cullen ruling the roost, that sense of never ever ever getting to see the basement tapes just because everyone’s too chicken to release them.. anything that gets me angry long enough for me to want to fight to get the truth out.

Thank you for such a quick response! I saw it for the first time back when I knew nothing about Columbine, so I figured it was real. Now I feel a little silly.

You’re very welcome! There’s no need to feel silly, though. We’ve got so much stuff and so many stories that it can sometimes be difficult to distinguish the truth from the unfounded stuff. Many people believed that photograph to be real back when it started circulating here, just like they believe the very persistent rumour that Kevin named his children Erica and Rebecca. We all have misconceptions and we all can be mistaken sometimes, you know? It’s no biggie. I’m glad we were able to clear it up for you! =)

siciliansilverfox replied to your post “everlasting-contrast replied to your post “I don’t know whether I’m…”

Deffo not Eric and Kevin on that picture. Kevin’s very much blonde like Eric was so no way in hell Kevin would’ve had dark hair as a kid and suddenly light up as he’s got older to a more light/medium brown 🙂

I’m so glad we’ve got a consensus going here that that’s definitely not them! Like you, @siciliansilverfox,
I also felt that Kevin looked different from this.. the dark hair
doesn’t match him whatsoever. (As a kid, I was lighter-haired than I am
today and I think it’s more normal for hair to darken rather than
lighten over time? I could be wrong, though.)

everlasting-contrast replied to your post “I don’t know whether I’m just imagining this or whether it’s real, but…”

Ninja Turtles merch and Halloween costumes were not a thing until the very end of the ‘80s when the first movie released in ’90 and Eric was 9-10 yrs old.

Thanks for that addition, @everlasting-contrast! Just goes to show that we cannot always blindly trust what we see in photographs. =) (Imagine being one of those two kids and finding an old photograph of you is claimed to be a picture of a mass murderer and his brother.. how odd would that be?!)

The first time I heard about Columbine, I have created a first impression that two teenagers could not stand the bullying at school, decided to avenge their humiliation. The question “why” for me was clear. But the more I learned about this tragedy, the more blurred for me was the question about the causes. Only I have such a situation arise?

I think that this is a pretty common first impression for people to have about the case. It’s a narrative that makes sense to many of us and became one of the most promoted in the days and years that followed the massacre.

I remember the moment the news first hit, though, and the confusion that arose from that. It was kids killing kids in a seemingly ordinary high school. Eric and Dylan didn’t look any different from kids I knew and spent time with every day. I recall that I felt a little apprehensive about high school all of a sudden, because I was set to go to high school myself in the year that followed and suddenly had the sense of it being somehow less safe. The question “why?” wasn’t really answered in the earliest news coverage of the event, because everyone was still scrambling to wrap their heads around the fact that it was happening at all. Our children’s news anchor was doing their best to explain what was going on in the simplest terms imaginable while also not shying away from showing the actual footage of what was going on outside the school that day. It was a factual play-by-play that dominated the news more than any reasons why, which is a coverage I feel grateful for nowadays because it allowed me enough space to conceive of the “why?” by myself. One of the things that stands out to me when I look back on it is that I thought that Eric and Dylan must have been very unhappy with their lives to be able to do what they did, and that they must have felt very troubled at school in particular for some reason.

I realise that quite a few of you today don’t have that benefit of having witnessed that early coverage of the event. When you land in this story today, you land in a space that’s already defined by all of the perspectives that arose in the aftermath. It’s something that now offers up a readily-made narrative, in which the themes of bullying and vengeance play a part, and it’s hard to stray away from that narrative to form your own opinions about it. (Just like it’s quite hard to see Eric and Dylan in a new light that’s separate from the preconceived notions of all the researchers who’ve had something to say about their psyches and lives.)

My blog summary includes the lines “Forget the headlines. Forget what the media tells you. Forget what you think you know.” for a very good reason: there is far more to this case than what you’re told or what you read/see at first glance. I believe that it’s very important to open your mind to the possibility that maybe there are “no easy answers” (as a certain book about the case also says) and that the reality of it is more tragic, more terrible, and more complicated than you think. I have learned so much from researching Columbine and am still learning something new every time I dive into the evidence. There are always new perspectives and new ways of combining information into something that makes perfect sense.

What is most interesting to me is that I ultimately arrive back at the same conclusion I drew when I was ten years old and watching Patrick Ireland escape from the library window: whoever did something this horrible must have felt very unhappy in their own life, to the point where they felt that transferring their pain to others was the only right course of action, and nobody in their life really saw what was going on until it was too late.

And this is still the best answer I have been able to give in reply to the question of “what caused Columbine?”..

I don’t know whether I’m just imagining this or whether it’s real, but I swear there was a photo I saw a couple of years ago of two kids in ninja turtle costumes, two brothers. Their faces were partly hidden but it was all over tumblr with people claiming it was Kevin and Eric. I can’t find the photo anywhere now and I’m just wondering whether that’s an actual very rare photo, or whether it was made up. You’ll likely not have the answer but I’m still curious :)

I know the exact photograph you mean and also know that it was said to have been taken around Halloween. The source of the photograph is unknown and I personally do not believe that it depicts Kevin and Eric. You definitely were not imagining having seen that one before – I think most of us who’ve been in this community for years have seen it pop up every so often. That said, here it is:

Compare this to the one genuine photograph we have of kiddie Eric in a Halloween costume:

I get why JeffCo don’t want to release the basement tapes BUT why did they release their video projects for school such as hitmen for hire? Isn’t is basically the same? Them talking about planning on killing students or (1/?)

them acting like the tough hitmen they want to be seen as really doesn’t
make any difference to me? In both they glorify violence and guns so
what’s the deal with releasing some videos such as rampart range or said
hitmen for hire while saying that the basement tapes might cause more copy cat cases? Why releasing
their journals where they act as hateful as in the tapes? What do JeffCo
think is the difference between the tapes and all the released stuff
that drips with hate as well?        
   

P.s. sorry for my bad english and the long question, I’m just really confused by JeffCos behaviour and arguments
       

Your English is absolutely fine, no need to worry! (I personally hate the fact that Tumblr has a character limit when it comes to the askbox – it forces people to try and be as brief as possible, which doesn’t always work when it comes to the more intricate stuff.)

Releasing Rampart Range and Hitmen For Hire does seem like an odd choice, but I think the difference between these and the basement tapes is still pretty big. In Rampart Range, all you really see is them goofing off and practicing with their guns. There are loose comments here and there (like “imagine that in someone’s fucking brain”) that are a precursor to the massacre, but Rampart doesn’t showcase their individual convictions and ideologies whatsoever. Similarly, Hitmen For Hire was a school project that was actually accompanied by a business plan. We do have the paperwork for it in our possession, but it is unfortunately rarely mentioned in conjunction with the video. I personally believe the paper helps clarify the purpose of the video and also puts its existence back into an educational context. (Of course, nowadays teachers would likely not tolerate a video such as this one. Teachers back then weren’t as focused on warning signs that could lead to a school shooting, which allowed this video to fly under the radar as being an acceptable contribution to the class it was needed for.)

Their journals were first released to the public in 2006. The journals and other documents (the so-called 900 pages) were released after The Denver Post sued to force their release, though the Supreme Court left the final decision in the hands of the sheriff’s office. I seem to recall that this lawsuit also involved the basement tapes, which the sheriff did withhold out of the normally cited fear of copycats. It’s entirely likely that they had not really planned on the release of these documents either, but had their hand forced by one of the best media outlets that provided extensive coverage of Columbine back in the day. Still, the journals are an interesting mix of ideologies and their personal emotional processes that run so much deeper than their hate alone.

What sets the basement tapes apart from all of these released materials is that the basement tapes contain not just their entire reasonings for the massacre, but also contain their literal call to arms (”revolution of the dispossessed”) and informational how-tos about the preparations for the massacre. The basement tapes showcase all of the hiding places the boys utilised to the point where law enforcement actually had to go back to Eric’s house after seeing the tapes because they missed a spot. The tapes also clarify how close the boys came to having their plans get discovered and glorify what they were about to do. Most importantly, perhaps.. they show the boys interacting with each other without anyone else present in the room, they show a different dynamic than the psychopath-follower theory promoted by law enforcement, and they show that these two were just awkward angry children at the end of the day. I personally feel that the basement tapes would force many people to reconsider their views on the dynamic between Eric and Dylan in particular, as the description of the tapes basically says “Harris is contrite; Klebold is monstrous” and doesn’t add up to the view of “Harris the psychopath; Klebold the nice fool” that many have promoted over the years. 

It is the fear of many that the tapes would inspire other kids, because Eric and Dylan are very relatable in those hours of footage and talk about their preparations in easy-to-understand terms. In a few of the videos we have, Eric and Dylan are acting as different characters (though they do break character every so often) and they don’t really promote the massacre in any of those because they did not film those videos alone. The Eric and Dylan we would see on the basement tapes would be closest to how they actually were around one another and how they were as people in those final months of their lives. The vivid descriptions of the tapes are alternately horrendous and heartwarming, painting the two in a new light that makes them both horrible and sympathetic, and it’s not very hard to see why JeffCo would do anything within their power to ensure that these never see the light of day. The tapes would upset the carefully cultivated story as much as they would also humanise Eric and Dylan.

Also, it is the impression of many researchers (myself included) that the transcripts/descriptions we have of the tapes may not be entirely complete and that it is likely that some things on those tapes may be very instigative or may contain material that law enforcement wants to omit from the narrative altogether for whatever reason they may have. Law enforcement’s unfortunate habit when it comes to Columbine is to be deliberately vague and obtuse in the information they do release to the public, which is something that becomes increasingly clear when you compare various evidence parts about the same moments to one another and find a multitude of discrepancies. Their actions concerning the basement tapes are directly in line with their desire to sweep certain things under the rug.

youve probably answered this before, but do you think they boys had help from their friends?

I’ve talked about some friends like Nate Dykeman in the past in relation to this and also mentioned in one of my posts that I believe that virtually all of their friends knew what was going on. Nobody seemed to take the dropped hints seriously, but I think that all of their friends combined could’ve put two and two together and figured out what those two were planning. What’s interesting to me is that Nate literally failed the lie detector and that Chris Morris was roped into getting information out of Phil Duran about the gun sale, in addition to other things like Kristi Epling’s attempts to hide notes she received from Eric and Robyn Anderson’s flimsy reasonings for the gun purchases. Their friends knew more than they told law enforcement officials, or at the very least knew enough to not be that surprised over events, and they cooperated willingly in what I deem to be attempts to keep their own asses out of hot water.

When you read the so-called associates file of the 11k, it becomes increasingly clear that quite a few friends were downplaying their knowledge about the massacre preparations and that some of these friends were also downplaying their own role in this. I feel this about Chris Morris in particular, to be quite honest with you, as he had exhibited problematic behaviour himself in the past and reads to me like he tried very hard to convince law enforcement that he had truly changed his tune prior to the massacre already. Also, one might argue that Robyn Anderson helped the boys in the way you mean: without her, the gun purchases wouldn’t have happened at that point in time because Eric wasn’t of age yet to buy them himself.

Ninety-nine explosive devices were recovered in the aftermath of the shooting, which seems like a whole lot of stuff for them to have constructed on their own. Investigators also found a crude form of napalm on their bodies and in their cars, which is interesting because the boys joked “the napalm had better not freeze at [friend]’s house” on the basement tapes. There are small hints that perhaps they did have help, although I am also entirely convinced that the more people know about a secret the more likely it is that this secret will be revealed to others. I think it was already hard enough for Eric and Dylan to keep their plans a secret and to make sure that they were the only two people to know about it – if they had added in more friends, there would’ve been higher risks of fights/arguments and the secret leaking before its time. It doesn’t make logical sense to have so many people know about it in a way that involved them directly, so it’s still my belief that their friends could’ve known about it but that they didn’t assist directly in making it happen.

Can we please clear something yp? A lot of people are saying that Eric killed Dave sanders but in sue klebolds book she confirmed that nobody actually knows who killed him. Do we know? Is there proof? Thabks lovely. 🙆🙈🙉🙊

There has never been any dispute about Dave Sanders being shot and killed by Eric. All of his injuries match Eric’s weaponry, as can be seen in this overview below. (I would also argue that SWAT had a hand in speeding his death along, though, but that’s something for another discussion.) Most of the official reports don’t mention if it was Eric or Dylan, but information about the injuries sustained by the victims goes a long way to confirming the who-did-what stuff.

The only debate that ever arose about a victim’s death was about Daniel Rohrbough’s, which was cause for a reinvestigation because it wasn’t clear if it had been Eric, Dylan, or law enforcement that delivered the killing blow in that case. The reinvestigation judged the death to have been Eric’s doing.

Don’t let your character change colours with your environment. Find who you are and let it stay in its true colours.

Rachel Joy Scott (via weirdthinkingliving)

PSA

If I follow/message you or comment on one of your posts, I will do so through crunchydragon! (That blog used to be my personal blog, but now it’s more like an archive and a means to keep this sideblog intact.)

ss-maus:

we can’t be friends if you think Eric Harris was a psychopath and only wanted to destroy everything he touched

I have some thoughts… Dylan and Eric didn’t want to be like other school shooters. Perhaps they thought those kids losers. Apparently, killing several people (even personal enemies), not worth it to risk their freedom or life. They are ready to sacrifice themselves just for the sake of something truly huge, so terrible that the whole world will tremble. I wonder what they felt when their grand plan A has completely failed?

If killing several people hadn’t been worth risking their freedom or life over, we wouldn’t be sitting here today discussing the fact that they did just that. They could’ve packed their bags and gone home the second those bombs didn’t detonate. They could’ve sat on the hood of one of their cars, looked each other square in the eye, and said “dude, let’s go grab some ice-cream and forget about this”. They may not have wanted to be like other school shooters (and I’d argue that they created a new view of the term) but they were still willing to become that when it appeared that their grand plan wasn’t really working out the way they’d planned. They’d come too far to turn back now. They’d amped themselves up, fantasised about this day for months, done all that preparation work.. no way in hell would they turn away and not kill people now.

I’m sure that the Plan A failure was one huge letdown for them that likely became a focal point for Eric in particular the longer they were in the school. I think it was a disappointment for Dylan as well, as he’d been looking forward to it and hoping the victim count would be substantial, but the bombs were Eric’s babies and he must’ve felt just awful about his grand vision not coming to pass. (I’ve theorised about this failure being one of the instigator moments that fast-tracked him to committing suicide so relatively quickly, which might be worth spending some thoughts on too if you’re interested in how the failure affected them.)

By the way, I’m a little iffy on using the term “sacrifice themselves” when it comes to their plans for NBK. That dances far too close to martyrdom for me, which those two dudes sure as hell have no right to. I understand the use of the term and why it can be used in conjunction with “dying for your goal/ideal/etc”, but I also worry that using it in this way may give off the wrong impression. The concept of sacrifice is at its core a very selfless act that can be construed as even being noble in certain ways, while what Eric and Dylan did is actually very selfish of them and certainly not an act to aspire to.