Last night was rough. I've been sailing along, ecstatic about the progress of my book, but a few events this week forced me to confront something that's been looming: the brutality in my book. There's some pretty searing stuff in there.

So the past few days, I've been thinking about the parents reading it: parents of the victims and the killers. I wrote someone an email about it last night, after midnight, before I went to bed, and I thought that would help a little, but it tore me up and I was here all alone and needed a hug or something. Or just to say it out loud, because sometimes I can't get to the sadness and let it out unless I say it to someone first. It wells up, but I can't get it to the surface.

I couldn't figure out who was up--most of my best friends are on the east coast, or central, so I texted a few people to see if they were without waking them (what a great invention that is), but nobody was, so I went to sleep.

I woke up numb, which is worse. I know it's still in there, but couldn't feel sad, or anything. That just means it's lying in wait.

And then I turned on Craig Ferguson on the tivo to share breakfast, and I have it set to catch the last four minutes of Letterman to play the musical guest.

I was not hopeful. The album cover, the title and the group name--The Gaslight Anthem singing "The '59 Sound"--all screamed rockabilly. 

I used to enjoy rockabillly, but it's a thin vein and been mined pretty deep. Can't remember the last rockabilly sound that felt fresh.

The singer started wailing on his guitar, and I thought, "Great, a noise-band, shitty garage band. Blech."

But the band kicked in and they hit a rhythm and it was glorious. Their faces were so expressive, but that was nothing compared to their bodies. They really meant it. They were playing for dear life. You could hear it, you could feel it, that's everything. (And only vaguely rockabilly, btw. Kinda punk. Fresh. They made it fresh.)

And the opening lines, which Brian kinda shouted:

Well I wonder which song they’re gonna play when we go
I hope it’s something quiet and minor and peaceful and slow

Minor? Peaceful? Nothing like what was coming out of him. This guy had a heart. And a brain. 

Then he sang about chains, Marley's chain's that he'd been carrying around his whole life. (Apparently the ghost from Dickens' A Christmas Carol, who carried one rung on his chain for each bad thing he'd done.)

There's a car crash, she didn't make it, he wonders if she was scared when the metal the glass, and most of all, he wonders if she heard one last beautiful song:

Did you hear the ’59 sound coming through on Grandmama’s radio?
Did you hear the rattling chains in the hospital walls?
Did you hear the old gospel choir when they came to carry you over?
Did you hear your favorite song one last time?

He sang it exhuberantly. Painful, but joyous. Life is exhilarating. Every brilliant song that revs up your bloodstream and makes you feel alive.

I felt a little guilty enjoying it. Romanticizing death, maybe, doesn't seem appropriate--ever, maybe, but particularly for me right now. But he was romanticizing life, I think, all those joyous moments the victim radiated life. This guy is radiating one on my teevee right now. I'm absorbing it and maybe some will reflect back.

The guilt helped, made me sob. The sadness in the lyric is understated, but it's everywhere, that got them rolling, too. It all boiled up to the surface and spilled out. Thank you. I got it all out, or crap, I guess the first wad of it out. There will be more, but I got the big chunks up. And I got hope with it. I feel alive. And I've got a wonderful new band who feel life and know how to write it and sing it and play it and explode with it to explore and enjoy. Who knows how much I might learn from them. They might comfort me and enliven me for years and years. Maybe they'll unlock nothing. This could be their one good song. It happens, sometimes. But I'll wager against it.

This is the thought that is really healing me right now: Each one of the victims in my book felt moments like this--I'll take that on faith; everybody does sometimes--even a baby, first time she notices her toes and latches onto them, you can see a delerious little smile. They had thousands of these moments, hundreds of thousands. Me too. Hopefully their parents still do, from time to time. I wish them more.

It may piss their parents off to hear me say that--I hope not. I started off worrying about the parents, but maybe it was the kids and the teacher I was hurting for, too. I never met any of the victims. I met a lot of parents, and so freaking many survivors in the school. I got a feeling for them. They were all different, but I got to know them. The victims--I have no way to reach them, to grasp who they were.

I think this song helped. He made me feel closer to the victim of this car crash because he knew her and he makes her real for me in this song.

My little sister Missez Che (that's what we call her) wrote me years ago and asked me to make sure they play Prince's "Sometimes It Snows In April" at her funeral, and to put a baseball in her hands, so that somebody will know how much she loved watching the Cubs. (We've from Chicago.) Wow, some weird paralells in that song. But this line leaps out at me right now: "Always cry 4 love, never cry 4 pain." I always thought that was niave, especially in light of the song, which is SO painful. I don't think he's suggesting we make true very often, just that we're better off when we try.

I asked her to play Rickie Lee Jones' "Company" for mine. I heard it first in 1979 and t's still the sweetest song I've ever heard. Sweetest sentiment: not I loved you madly and I'll miss the passion, she says, "I will miss your company." 

I hope someone misses mine. I hope somebody remembers which song. I better write it down somewhere.

I'm so grateful for pop music--and films, and books and sometimes even TV shows. Painting rarely does it for me, or live theater, opera, sculpture . . . most of classic arts, sorry. I don't feel the passion--or it's a passion I can't internalize. I may be a dimwit, but pop culture speaks to me. The good stuff zaps right through me: I feel what he felt when he wrote it, when they played it like their life depended on it.

It's a gift. How how does it know to arrive just when I need it?

Thank you, The Gaslight Anthem. I've replayed the song at least eight times already--I'm afraid my neighbor below is going to walk up the stairway and complain--and it's not wearing out, not fading a bit.

I'm going to grab a Kleenex and then plug you into itunes, but youtube first, because I want to see more of that torutured smile. (Update: tons of free downloads at their myspace page.) Looking forward to plunging into your backlist. And hoping for many great moments to come.

I got a really nice message from my editor today. Alexandra Fuller, who wrote the critical hits and bestsellers Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight and The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, sent a really nice blurb for my book Columbine:

"Like Capote's In Cold Blood, this is a vivid exploration of the broken logic that drove two young men to commit a terrible, senseless crime. A stunning achievement -- clear-eyed, compassionate, thoroughly researched. However much we may want to, we cannot afford to look away."

How cool to get compared to Capote, and In Cold Blood. I freaking love that book.

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FYI, here are the previous blurbs. (My editor says I can't repeat them too much. hahaha. So I just added them to the sidebar, too):

"Half the anguish of Columbine is our mystification. How did those boys get so twisted, so murderous? Now, after nine years of great reporting, Dave Cullen has done the impossible: you will know these killers -- and it will shake you up. This is a big-time work that will endure."
        --Richard Ben Cramer, author of Joe DiMaggio and What It Takes

 
"Dave Cullen is the Dante of this high school hell. I came away from it thinking of Jack Nicholson hollering 'You want the truth? You can't handle the truth!'. Read this quietly powerful account of Columbine and find out if you can."
        --Ron Rosenbaum, author of Explaining Hitler and The Shakespeare Wars

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BTW, I would greatly appreciate any links to my book site -- http://davecullen.com/columbine.htm -- preferably with "Columbine" as the anchor text--so that google searches on "Columbine" find it. I'm currently ranked #16 on that keyword, and need to break into the top ten. So the completed link would look like this: Columbine.

Thanks.

I just saw The CBS Evening News, which described the new string of school shootings, different than Columbine, because they are committed by outsiders--adults. The reporter referred to this as 'puzzling.' I don't think so.

I really need to go to the gym to work out some of this anger and frustration, but I'll come back this evening after I've collected my thoughts on why.

Three hours after the hostage standoff at Platte Canyon High School ended, that seems to be the vexing question: Why did the cops move in?

I'm listening to talk radio here in Denver, and there is a lot of speculation about what was going on in that classroom to cause the cops to charge in. Some high-profile hosts and some of there guests are suggesting that the SWAT maneuver was a risky move, meaning that there was probably more happening than we now know about. I'm not going to repeat the rumors being bandied about, but there are plenty.

Yow. Those are some terrible questions to contemplate, and they are definitely burning for me tonight: What was happening in that classroom, and what calculation was made? Of the two hostages at the time, we now know that one survived without injury, one died. That's a terrible price, but it might have been twice as bad.

At this point, we don't know, but we are wondering.

As for other risk factors . . . I wonder. If you've read much about hostage negotiation, you'll know that this gunman was exhibiting very high risk factors already. I've spent a lot of time researching these situations for my Columbine book. I've also spent a great deal of time with retired FBI Agent Dwayne Fuselier, who led the Columbine investigation for the bureau. He is also one of the country's leading experts on hostage negotiation. 

Before he came to Colorado, he worked in the FBI's special hostage unit near Washington. His team studied a large number of critical incidents from around the country and drew several conclusions. His work is widely cited in scholarly work in the field, as well as the FBI's field manuals. You can see a really great document from the FBI here (Fuselier is cited, but not the author):

It's called 'Negotiation Concepts for Commanders,' and it was published in the 'FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin,' in January 1999 (three months before Columbine.) It's available to anyone online as a PDF. It runs just nine pages, and it's written in a style that's easy for a layman to understand.

The crucial first question a negotiator faces, it stresses, is answering a deceptively simple question: Is this a hostage situation or non-hostage situation? That may sound too obvious to even mention, but it's not always as obvious as it may sound, and the consequences are crucial. All the suggested actions branch off from the answer to that question.

Today's situation sounds like an obvious hostage situation, but it actually has some of the trademarks of non-hostage. Consider these passage from the piece, starting on p. 7 (the second page of the piece--it begins on p. 6 of the journal. Also note that I use ellipses in order to give you a quick taste. I'm not editing to suit a particular line of thinking, just for brevity. I urge you to follow the link yourself):

'During hostage situations, subjects hold another person or persons for the purpose of forcing the fulfillment of substantive demands upon a third party, usually law enforcement. . . . Hostage-takers demonstrate goal-oriented and purposeful behavior. . . . The primary goal is not to harm the hostages. In fact, hostage takers realize that only through keeping the hostages alive can they hope to achieve their goals.

In nonhostage incidents, individuals act in an emotional, senseless, and often-self-destructive way. . . They are motivated by anger, rage, frustration, hurt, confusion or depression. They have no clear goals and often exhibit purposeless, self-defeating behavior.' They typically issue no demands, because 'What they want is what they already have, the victim. . . . The potential for homicide followed by suicide in many of these cases if very high.'

Still convinced we were dealing with a hostage situation? In reality, there were hostages. But from a negotiators' point of view, trying to comprehend and predict how his gunman is likely to react, he has to see past the obvious and I think he/she probably realized this afternoon that the gunman was exhibiting classic non-hostage-taker traits.

According to the Park County Sheriff's descriptions, the gunman was acting erratically and appeared to have no clear idea what he wanted to accomplish. He did not appear to seize the hostages with an agenda, but in some sort of desperation. Desperate people tend to do desperate things. Or as the FBI piece puts it, 'The potential for homicide followed by suicide in many of these cases if very high.'

The outcome bears that out: homicide followed by suicide is exactly what happened. Of course the SWAT team bursting into the room may have provoked that--or it might have just accelarated it. Not everyone responds to an attack by shooting the victim, much less killing himself. The fact that he did bolsters the probability that he had been erratic all along, and headed in that direction.

Consider also, how the negotiations were progressing. The same FBI piece cites eleven criteria for assessing progress. It states:

The following indicators signify progress and generally mean that current negotiation initiatives should continue. Specifically, since negotiations have begun:

• no additional deaths or injuries have resulted,
• the subject has reduced threats and is using less violent language,
• the subject's emotions have lowered,
• the subject has exhibited increased rationality in speech and action,
• deadlines have passed [Note from Dave. This one can be confusing; I believe it means that deadlines imposed by the subject have passed, without incident]
• the subject has become increasingly willing to bargain,
• the subject has lowered demands,
• the subject has released a hostage,
• the negotiator has built a rapport with the subject,
• the subject has made positive statements about the welfare of the hostage/victim and/or
• the subject has asked about the consequences of surrendering.

We don't have all the information yet, but from the sheriff's press conference, it sounded like only two of those eleven criteria had been met--the most basic two: letting hostages go and refraining from murder. And he had stopped releasing hostages and was giving an ultimatum, so progress there seems to have ended, too. All the other warning signs look pretty bleak, in this case.

If you start with the awareness that a situation like this begins with a high risk of murder/suicide, and then the gunmen fails to exhibit almost any of the indicators that suggest a diffusion . . .

Well, I guess I'd challenge the notion that there would have to have been more risk factors for a prudent commander to order an attack. I'll defer an opinion until I know more, because there is a great deal we don't know.

What I really suggest is that once we do know more, there may be a whole lot of screaming and yelling about it. And the command team's decisions may look wise or they may look foolish. But let's look at them with educated eyes. Just a few pages of reading on hostage-negotiation situations could clarify a great deal. It's just nine pages. Consider reading it.

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(Meanwhile, I feel like hell. This sure dredges up a lot of awful memories. I'm sure it's a hundred times worse for the people I've been working with the past seven years.)

Ugh. Too many of these lately.

And two recent ones from adults. The Montreal shooter did several things to make his Columbine-like, in an apparent desperate and disgusting attempt to garner more press. I hope that's not the case here, and/or a new pattern. These are awful enough for kids to do. Adults . . .

This is apparently still going on. No injuries yet, and hopefully it will stay that way.

This from the Denver Post:

A gunman is holding two girls hostage at Platte Canyon High School in Bailey.

Jefferson County spokesperson Jackie Kelley said the parents of the two students being held have not yet been notified.

She said there were no reported injuries, despite multiple shots fired. Originally, six students were taken hostage in a second-floor classroom, she said, but four had been released.

More than 20 jurisdictions have sent law enforcement support, and minor negotiations are underway with the gunman, but Kelley had no information about whether those negotiations had been successful.

Kelly said the gunman is an adult male, between 30 and 50 years old. He is armed, but the caliber of his weapon was unknown. Suspicious devices were found at the school, she said, prompting the bomb squad's response.

Park County authorities requested help from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department's bomb squad and SWAT team, said Jim Shires, Jefferson County sheriff's spokesman.

From the Rocky Mountain News:

BAILEY — Two Platte Canyon High School students remain in a second floor classroom with an armed man who walked into the school at took six hostages at noon today, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of students.

Four hostages were released uninjured, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.

Kelley said the gunman is an adult and not a student.

The students taken hostage were in an English college prep class.

At least one suspicious device needs to be checked by a bomb squad, she said.

Authorities continue to negotiate with the man, Kelley said, but are "sporadic."

There were no immediate reports of injuries at the schools in a narrow, winding canyon carved by the South Platte River about 35 miles southwest of Denver. The two schools have an enrollment of about 770 students, with 460 in the high school.

The Rocky also provided this link to google maps, with a satellite view.

You can zoom out to see the location better. The hybrid or map views-options (top, right of the screen) will help you see its location in relation to roads and towns. I made a view that puts it in better relation to Denver.

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UPDATE:

Rocky Mountain News update (same link; they're pasting over previous versions, apparently, which makes sense):

BAILEY — Two Platte Canyon High School students remain in a second floor classroom with an armed man who walked into the school, fired one shot and then at took six female students hostage at noon today, prompting the evacuation of hundreds of students and the closure of Highway 285.

Four hostages were released uninjured, Jefferson County Sheriff’s Spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.

Authorities believe the man, who is carrying a handgun, is a parent, said Lance Clem of state Department of Public Safety.

The day finally arrive. The Jeffco sheriff finally released Eric's journal, and close to 1,000 other pages from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and Eric's father, Wayne Harris.

There is an AP story here, which oddly focuses on some passages that were already public. (I guess they had not kept up to date):

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/07/06/columbine.records.ap/index.html

The Rocky Mountain News has a story here:

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/local/article/0,1299,DRMN_15_4825673,00.html

You can read the full 1,000 pages here, in a pdf (it's 32 MB):

http://denver.rockymountainnews.com/pdf/900columbinedocs.pdf

I have been reading through it and there's a lot of interesting stuff in there--much of it I had seen, but some I had not. It pretty much follows along the lines I had been led to believe.

I don't want to say too much here, because I'm developing all these thoughts for my book, but it's fascinating to see how Eric can take nearly any assignment--or any little inspirational phrase in his day-timer--and make it about death and murder.

Eric's journal--which he referred to as The Book of God in the Basement Tapes, is on 84-99, with more diagrams and budgets immediately after.

His budgeting for his bomb-making is one of the things that really startled me the first time I saw it. I was just in disbelief that he was so cold and calculating about it. (Not that inventorying the # of targets in the commons each minute is not more horrifying. I guess that came out early and I was used to the idea. When I first saw the budget, I was just flipping through it and spotted that and realized what it was and just gaped.)

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Unfortunately, it looks like The Basement Tapes may never be public--though the contents have been widely reported. The sheriff refused to release them, and the attorney for the Denver Post--which brought the lawsuit--said yesterday that they would not appeal. What a shame. Perhaps some future sheriff will release it.

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FYI, the Rocky's archive of recent Columbine stories is here:

http://cfapp2.rockymountainnews.com/archives/sections/news/columbine/

Hey. Just wrapping up writing for the night, and making a blog-free-weekdays exception to pass along this quick but important Columbine news flash my assistant sent me tonight:

From Wednesday morning's Denver Post:

The Colorado Supreme Court today agreed with The Denver Post that items seized from the homes of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold are criminal justice records, which clears the way for their release if Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink determines the release would benefit the public.

The Denver Post is seeking notes written by Wayne Harris about his son Eric and Dylan Klebold; medical records of the teenagers; the audio and videotapes they made; and their writings, including school papers, notations in the Columbine yearbook and the diaries.

Release of the items was strongly opposed by the Harris and Klebold families and by Mink, who must now decide whether to release the records.

If Mink refuses to release some or all the items requested, The Post can seek a judicial review of that refusal, said Steve Zansberg, The Post's lawyer.

Nice! I had faith the court would do the right thing. And unanimously.

I do not have faith that the sheriff will release the material -- at least The Basement Tapes -- but I still believe the lower courts will.

(And in a weird twist, the attorney, Steve Zansberg represented me last winter when the Air Force subpoenaed me and a bunch of other reporters for our notes in a rape court martial. Great guy. And I watched his performance in front of the court on this case. Very impressive.)