Cover of Columbine
On 20th April 1999 Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 people at their high school, injured a further 24, impacted the whole collective consciousness of an entire community and inspired terror across America and into Europe. For years afterwards the name of the tragedy would simply be referred to as "Columbine". There would be books and documentaries made. There would countless reports and stories. This was not the biggest mass killing in American history. As terrible as it was, it was not even the largest school mass killing in history. However, what it did provide was a powerful resonating narrative and that is really all that is required for a legend to be born. From the day of the killing onwards the general public and authority figures would buy into stories about misunderstood outcast teenagers - often members of the Goth community - who suffered from inferiority complexes and finally snapped after suffering at the hands of bullies for too long. They would also hear about heroic Christian martyrs who refused to abandon their faith when taunted by their executioners. Fitting the typical criminal profile the killers were clearly seduced by the darker side of teenage subculture; controversial rock bands like Marilyn Manson and violent online video games provided them with motives and the conditioning to carry out these horrendous crimes. These killers were loaners and also members of a networked sect of other outcasts, collectively known as the Trench Coat Mafia (or TCM). What they did was the terrible consequence of the pressures suffered by teenagers who refused to fit into the world of jocks and cheerleaders. Working off this premise church leaders, self-help counsellors, concerned parent groups, anti-bullying societies and, in my world, combative instructors have sold us all solutions. According to the accounts given by the media and the subsequent reflections offered by these groups and individuals in places of influence, Columbine was to usher in a new wave of mass killings... However, the premise was a complete myth. "Columbine" shows us how a combination of several factors helped to distort the story from the day of the incident. This was remarkable considering the evidence that some mainstream press actually reported the true facts of the case too. Problems seemed to have occurred when the situation was initially misjudged. A running theme throughout the case appears to be bad assumptions being made. For a start, the SWAT team protocol of the time did not lend itself to the type of incident the police were facing. Secondly it was misread as a hostage standoff. It wasn't. It was a suicide mission. The killers did not fit the criminal profile. As one of the book's clear heroes, Agent Dr Dwayne Fuselier, FBI hostage negotiator, clinical psychologist, terrorist expert and father of a student at Columbine, pointed out "There is no profile". School mass-killers cross social, class, ethnic and psychological categories. There is no recognizable pattern. The massacre is remembered as a mass-shooting when it was actually a failed bombing. Cullen reveals through Fueslier's analysis and in line with real psychological science that the killers were not downtrodden victims of bullying who sought the comfort of alternative subcultures; they were fairly popular teenagers who had little trouble getting dates and took a fair amount of joy in bullying others. Erik Harris, the inspiration and leader in the massacre, did not suffer from an inferiority complex. The last thing he needed was for some to boost his confidence. He was a textbook psychopath who left journals and video diaries that indicated he believed himself to be the superior of just about every other human being on the planet. Dylan Klebold, by contrast, was a loved-up and timid depressant with a long held desire to commit suicide. Comparable with Truman Capote's genre-defining true crime book "In Cold Blood" Cullen's book is a genuine page-turner. He is clearly top of his game. Having spent nigh on 10 years to write "Columbine", he uses a huge amount of solid data taken from the official records and numerous eyewitness testimonies to help shape a compelling story. However, like any disciplined writer of credible non-fiction rather than "pulp non-fiction", Cullen never falls into speculation or sensationalism. He understands the story is interesting enough and by keeping a rational head, allowing the various real-life characters to speak, there is no need to add to huge amount of media hype that has already been created. Although he does share some opinion it is nearly always the opinion of true experts rather than exercising his own artistic licence. He could have easily gone into autobiographical territory given the amount time he spent at Columbine and reported on the case, but he also understands that this is not required. In fact, so removed is Cullen's presence from the book that a final endnote reveals that the journalist mentioned in "When a journalist stopped by" was the author. The book is set out like an epic saga, divided into five parts. The first part follows a linear timeline, starting four days before the killings and introducing us to the key players - the school principle, parents of the victims, parents of the killers, Fuselier and the killers themselves. The rest of the book then alternates timelines from chapter to chapter. One timeline traces events set immediately after the tragedy. The other starts with early criminal activities of the two killers, their social lives and all events leading up to the tragedy. In the hands of a lesser author this could be pretentious and confusing. However, the juxtaposition of chapters actually works really well. Unlike the first part of the book the chapters detailing the events leading up to the killings in the latter four parts are told with the benefit of hindsight. Cullen reveals how these two intelligent young boys were able to fool everyone and how their combination of personalities, psychopath and manic depressant, were always going to be combustible. Recently I have been fortunate enough to read several excellent books on popular psychology. They debunked much of the nonsense that stems from folklore, pre-scientific ideas and even superstition often reinforced through movies and TV and that many of us consider as fact. However, what I see to be a clear problem in influencing most people's ideas about psychology is the legacy of Sigmund Freud. Cullen doesn't even touch upon this in his book, but nevertheless the shadow is unmistakeable. The idea of the criminal profile, a highly controversial and limited concept that has been given far too much credence through crime fiction, has led us to think in Freudian terms of the type of environment that spawns a killer. Whereas the nature versus nurture argument is far from won, scientific consensus seems to be shifting closer towards the idea that people are generally born with dangerous tendencies and environmental factors play a secondary role. Richard Wiseman's "59 Seconds" and the entertaining statistical conclusions drawn in the book "Freakonomics" reveal that parents have far less of an influence over their offspring than they think. And yet in a time when most psychologist and psychiatrists regard Freud's association with psychology to be as much as astrology's association with astronomy, we still buy into the belief that good parenting will never spawn a bad person. The evidence presented in "Columbine", including Fuselier's expert opinion reveals that the Harrises and Klebolds were anything but bad parents. This is taken under a fine microscope as the reports on the killers' lives at home and their early criminal careers are well documented. Eric Harris's father did consciously take a firm hand, but nothing more than any concerned parent might. On a scale of extremes the Harris household seems to have been moderately conservative and the Klebolds were moderately liberal. There were early indications that are easy to see in hindsight, including violent outbursts, a fascination with weaponry and the petty crime incident that got them both arrested. However, both families seemed to have worked hard with psychiatrists and took a strong interest in their children's lives. Eric Harris's father even wrote a regular journal and interviewed numerous psychiatrists before he was confident he had the right one to see his son. Neither killer resented their parents. Like the other professionally trained authorities in Eric and Dylan's lives, the police, the judge, the teachers, the counsellors and psychiatrists, the Harrises and Klebolds were completely unaware of what they were dealing with. In this respect, "Columbine", should be credited alongside "50 Myths of Popular Psychology" and "The Psychopath Test" for providing a better understanding of the nature of psychopathology to a mainstream audience. Contrary to popular belief - and all three books make this point - around 90 per cent of psychopaths are not dangerous to others. However, what they are - and this is very important when you we are discussing a violent psychopath - is manipulative. Understanding this factor helps us understand how well Eric played those around him. The contrast between his carefully considered performances in front of people of authority and the murderous disdain he expressed in his journals afterwards, show the hallmarks of the psychopath. His manipulation of Dylan, an individual who was divided between love for a girl and the lure of suicide, into committing a carefully planned mass murder helps us understand how such relationships work. Just as the apparently harmless Broadmoor inmate in "The Psychopath Test" fooled Scientologists into believing they had a textbook example of how psychologists could completely misdiagnose someone for over two decades, so members of the press were fooled by the "Basement Tapes" Eric and Dylan recorded. Many wrongly concluded that Dylan was the dominant personality, but none of this is born out in the journals the two boys kept, the statements made by their friends or an analysis of the psychology. Cullen explains via his interviews with Fuselier that although Dylan appears to be the more animated, loud and vocal of the two, it is Eric who is coolly directing all the action. Sadly as if there were not enough mythology written about the tragedy there are those who do the opposite of Dave Cullen and choose to sensationalize the story further. Perhaps inspired by the confused witness testimonies, which are completely understandable given how the attacks happened, some authors have constructed weird JFK style conspiracy theories about the whole episode. This is not discussed by Dave Cullen, but he provides more than information for us to understand why people might think there were more than two shooters and why they might not realize when the killings had ceased. However, who needs a conspiracy theory when large scale human error and incompetence prior and during the incident is clearly revealed through the begrudgingly released official records. As Cullen notes far from all the evidence has been released. Some, it seems, has definitely been destroyed and other documents will not be released for over a decade. Having worked with people in positions of authority in many different departments at different times and seen some unimaginable buffoonery, I can well believe that is often the real nature and motives behind cover-ups. Perhaps the most popular response off people who read this book is revulsion at the opportunism displayed by the religious right. Although there were clearly examples of this happening with certain pastors and church attendance did briefly shoot up following the tragedy, Cullen does not judge those seeking heroes, affirmation of faith and easy answers. The false account of the nature of Cassie Bernall's death provided evangelical Christians with a martyr - the story goes that she was taunted by one of the killers with question whether or not she believed in God to which definitely replied in the affirmative. It inspired her mother to write a book about her daughter called "She Said 'Yes'". The debunking of how she died revealed another example of the fallibility of memory. Aspects such as this have ensured "Columbine" did not only turn up on my true crime podcasts, but also my sceptical ones. Dave Cullen's book is currently the undisputed account of the whole Columbine incident and the fallout. A journalist with a thorough inside knowledge on the media, evangelical Christianity (which dominated Columbine) and pop culture, Cullen is perhaps one of the most perfect people to tell the story. He was connected with it from the very beginning and his book, although never misleading and dense with verifiable facts, does an excellent job of taking the reader through the real-time developments of how information we know today came to light. Alongside the revelation of the facts he shows the way misinformation and disinformation also made into the mainstream, and provides strong theories for the way feedback loops of myths were propagated.
Comments