The Hinterland
Rants from the hinterland. Denver writer and pretend anthropologist Dave Cullen's take on the world.

The Columbine Navigator

Section 1:

Comprehensive News Stories

 

One-stop stories that summarize the full Columbine tale:

 

r  Slate -- April 2004:  I didn't create this site to tout my own work, but in April 2004, a few years after setting it up, I published a story in Slate which pulls a lot of the earlier Columbine threads together. So here is a one-paragraph nutshell on that story, followed by the original contents of this page:

         In April 2004, on the fifth anniversary of the massacre, the leader of the FBI's Columbine team, Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier, team finally went public with his views on the killers. While Fuselier is far to humble to admit it, he is easily the world's leading authority on Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, and his is considered by everyone close to the case to be the definitive account. I spent three years discussing the case with him, and published his views and those of others brought in by the FBI in this Slate story.

 

The Slate piece is much shorter than the five highlighted below, so for a fuller picture you'll want to read them all. They're all excellent. The Westword piece still offers the best single repository of leaked passages from Eric Harris's journal.

 

Original contents of this page:

 

To resolve myths, read either the Time or Salon pieces, plus the Westword to fill in info learned later. If it isn't mentioned here, it almost surely did not happen. 

r  Time -- December 1999: Time mag’s cover story about the videos in Dec 99 was not actually just about the videos. It pulled together all the known facts at the time, with full participation of lead investigator Kate Battan. It summarized the full case very well, and is probably the best thing published so far. Unfortunately, they have stopped offering these archives for free, but here are the links, which will give you the opening paragraph of each, the info you'll need to look them up elsewhere, and the chance to buy them for a few bucks if you're so inclined: The Dec 20, 1999 issue included several stories on Columbine, though the cover story was by far the most important. The cover story is here, the dramatic cover shot with table of contents (and links to everything in that issue) is here, and the one really shitty thing about the issue, the highly disingenuous Letter From the Editor (signed by Walter Isaacson), "Why We Went Back To Columbine" is here.

 

r  Salon (me) -- September 1999: I think my stories on the myths from September 99 are the next best thing, and offer a few things the Time story does not. The main story "Inside The Columbine High Investigation" lays out what officials knew at the time, including the first public statements from Lead Investigator Kate Battan, who spoke extensively, about most major areas of the case. The other companion stories might actually be more useful in filling in the gaps Time didn’t focus on. My sidebar to the main story--"Kill mankind. No one should survive"--focuses on the killers’ motivations, with a lot of passages from Eric Harris’s journal (also known as Eric Harris's diary) and website and other sources that Time doesn’t have. Finally, the third installment, a week later, lays out most of the story on Christian martyr Cassie Bernall, who supposedly "Said Yes." My revelation that police believed Cassie Bernall never told the killers she believed in God provoked a bitter controversy in Christian evangelical circles, and many of them insist to this day that Cassie did. I am rooting out links to some of the major rebuttal pieces--particularly by Wendy Zoba in Christianity Today magazine--and will post them here. You can decide for yourself.

r  Rocky Mountain News -- December 1999: For a look behind the scenes at how law enforcement addressed the case, from Day One through the investigation, see The Rocky Mountain News’s three-part series, "Inside the Columbine Investigation": "Part 1: Inside the Columbine Investigation" (yes, they decided to confuse you with the same name for part 1 and the full package),  "Part 2: Amassing the facts," and "Part 3: Biggest question of all." Also, the primary reporter on the series, Dan Luzadder has written the best stuff of anyone locally on the case. Look for his byline on any Columbine stories, and trust him above almost all others. (On a par, would be Tom Kenworthy, who covered the story initially for the Washington Post, later for USA Today.)

r  Westword -- December 2001: In the most revealing story to come out since the Basement Tape videos, Alan Prendergast at Westword got ahold of actual pages from the still-secret journal of Eric Harris. Fascinating material, great story: "I'm Full of Hate and I Love It". They also posted scans of several pages from Eric's journal, some handwritten, some typed, all by him. It's the biggest chunk of leaked passages from the journal. (Links updated 7-28-05; the scans are visible again.) 

 

Update: The single best story I've ever read about Columbine:

r GQ -- April 2004: "Columbine Never Sleeps"--a look back at how Columbine affected us, primarily through the eyes of five people deeply affected by the tragedy. (It's not available online, unfortunately, but it begins on p. 206 of the issue dated April, 2004, with Viggo Mortensen on the cover.)

Dazzling writing that propels you first back into the tragedy, in a moving but non-manipulative way, then straight into the lives of five survivors of sorts, in a powerfully empathetic way. Beware: It had me sobbing uncontrollably. But gave me fresh insights into the lives of subjects I had interviewed many times and thought I very well already. The most personal story I've ever seen on Columbine, and the most moving. Five years later, someone has truly gotten it pitch perfect.

Disclaimers: I worked as a researcher on the story, but had nothing to do with the writing. I got to know and like the writer, Michael Paterniti during his reporting, but I tend to judge my friends much more harshly. I couldn't read the story for a few weeks, fearing I might hate it. If you believe that biases me, discount my opinion, but I assure you that it made it all the harder for the piece to win me over.

It is also not perfect on the myths, but close, and that is not the purpose of the piece. (If I had known he was going to cover some of that ground I would have consulted more closely on that.)

One of the subjects of the piece, Rev. Don Marxhausen, the respected Lutheran minister who got fired in the fallout of performing Dylan Klebold's funeral, and one of the wisest men I have ever encountered told me six months after the massacre that no one could tell the real Columbine yet, because that world was still in such a frenzy. It was like one of those Christmas globes with the water inside that you shake up and all the little snowflakes flutter around for a few minutes and you can't see anything. Our little world has just been shaken up, he said. The truth is still obscured. If you care about this story, come back and see me in a year, or better yet five years. Mike Paterniti came back in five years. What he produced went beyond stunning me. It was so powerful, so revealing, that it shook my own confidence in myself as a writer. This is the story I wish I would have, could have written. If you have any interest in this subject matter, do yourself a favor. Go read it.

The one great film on Columbine so far:

r  Zero Day: I should be careful. There could be others that I have not seen. But this one is incredible. Chilling. I kept watching it, thinking, "Has this guy been reading my interview notes?" Captures the interplay between two Columbine-like killers in a chilling way, that may or may not be what Harris and Klebold did, but captures to emotions in a way that I thought was extraordinary. (Look for it on video/DVD. It may be hard to find, but it got nominated for an Independent Spirit Award this spring, so that might help.)

(I also loved Bowling for Columbine, but it's barely about Columbine. And it's title is based on a myth, by the way.)

Columbine Comments -- Open thread for readers.
This comment thread, begun in Oct 2003, is open to anything related to Columbine: about the Almanac, things you read elsewhere, questions about myths or rumors, current news on shooters or troubled youth . . . or anything else. I get email alerts on all comments now, so feel free to pose questions to me about Columbine, and I will do my best to answer.

My Slate story on Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold's motives: "The Depressive & The Psychopath."

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