Dave Cullen - Columbine

Some of that was true—which is to say, it was high school. But Columbine came to embody everything noxious about adolescence in America. A few students were happy to see some ugly truths about their high school exposed. Most were appalled. The media version was a gross caricature of how they saw it, and of what they thought they had described.

It made it difficult for social scientists or journalists to come to Littleton later, to study the community in-depth and see what was really going on. Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle had played out in full force: by observing an entity, you alter it. How bad were the Columbine bullies? How horribly were the killers treated? Every scrap of testimony after day two is tainted. Heisenberg was a quantum physicist, observing electron behavior. But social scientists began applying his principle to humans. It was remarkable how similarly we behaved. During the third week of April, Littleton was observed beyond all recognition.

The bright side is that a tremendous amount of data was gathered in those first few days, while students were naive, before any developed an agenda. Hundreds of journalists were in the field, and nearly as many detectives were documenting their findings in police reports. Those reports would remain sealed for nineteen months. Virtually all the early news stories were infested with erroneous assumptions and comically wrong conclusions. But the data is there.

Two years before he hauled the bombs into the Columbine cafeteria, Eric took a crucial step. He had always maintained an active fantasy life. His extinction fantasies progressed steadily, but reality held firm and was completely separate from his fantasy life. Then one day, midway through sophomore year, Eric began to take action. He wasn’t angry, cruel, or particularly hateful. His campaign against the inferiors was comically banal. But it was real.

The mischief started as a threesome. Dylan and Zack were co-conspirators and squad mates. In his written accounts, Eric referred to the two by their code names, VoDKa and KiBBz. They launched the escapades in January 1997, second semester of their sophomore year. They would meet at Eric’s house mostly, sneak out after midnight, and vandalize houses of kids he didn’t like. Eric chose the targets, of course.

They had to be careful sneaking out. They couldn’t wake his parents. Lots of rocks to navigate in Eric’s backyard and a pesky neighbor’s dog kept “barking its faulking head off,” Eric wrote. Then they plunged into a field of tall grass he compared to Jurassic Park’s Lost World. To Eric, it was one hell of an adventure. He had been role-playing Marine heroes on military maneuvers since grade school. Finally, he was in the field conducting them.

Eric dubbed his pranks “the missions.” As they got under way, he ruminated about misfit geniuses in American society. He didn’t like what he saw. Eric was a voracious reader, and he had just gobbled up John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, which includes a fable about the idiot savant Tularecito. The young boy had extraordinary gifts that allowed him to see a world his peers couldn’t even imagine—exactly how Eric was coming to view himself, though without Tularecito’s mental shortcomings. Tularecito’s peers failed to see his gifts and treated him badly. Tularecito struck back violently, killing one of his antagonists. He was imprisoned for life in an insane asylum. Eric did not approve. “Tularecito did not deserve to be put away,” he wrote in a book report. “He just needed to be taught to control his anger. Society needs to treat extremely talented people like Tularecito much better.” All they needed was more time, Eric argued—gifted misfits could be taught what was right and wrong, what was acceptable to society. “Love and care is the only way,” he said.

Love and care. Eric wrote this at the very moment he started moving against his peers. Sometimes he attacked their houses to retaliate for perceived slights, but most often for the offense of inferiority.

Between missions, the boys got into unscripted trouble. Eric got mad at Brooks Brown and stopped talking to him. Then he escalated a snowball fight by breaking a chunk of ice off a drainpipe. He hurled it at the car of a friend of Brooks’s and dented the trunk. He grabbed another hunk and cracked the windshield of Brooks’s Mercedes.

“Fuck you!” Brooks screamed. “You’re going to pay for this!”

Eric laughed. “Kiss my ass, Brooks. I ain’t paying for shit.”

Brooks drove home and told his mom. Then he headed to Eric’s. He was furious, but Kathy Harris remained calm. She invited Brooks in and gave him a seat in the living room. Brooks knew lots of Eric’s secrets, and he spilled them all. “Your son’s been sneaking out at night,” he said. “He’s going around vandalizing things.” Kathy seemed incredulous. She tried to calm the kid down. Brooks kept ranting: “He’s got liquor in his room. Search it! He’s got spray-paint cans. Search it!” She wanted him to talk, but he felt that she was acting like a school counselor. He was out of there, he said—he was getting out before Eric got back.

Brooks went home and discovered his friend had grabbed Eric’s backpack, taking it hostage, more or less. Brooks’s mom, Judy, took control of the situation. She ordered everyone into her car and brought them to see Eric.

He was still enjoying the snowball fight. “Lock the doors!” Judy demanded. She rolled her window down a crack and yelled over to Eric: “I’ve got your backpack and I’m taking it to your mom’s. Meet us over there.”

Eric grabbed hold of the car and screamed ferociously. When she pulled away, he hung on, wailing harder. Eric reminded her of an escaped animal attacking a car at a wildlife theme park. Brooks’s friend shifted to the other side of the back seat. Judy was terrified. They had never seen this side of Eric. They were used to Dylan’s tirades, but he was all show. Eric looked like he meant it.

Judy got up enough speed, and Eric let go. At his house, Eric’s mom greeted them in the driveway. Judy handed her the backpack and unloaded the story. Kathy began to cry. Judy felt bad. Kathy had always been so sweet.

Wayne came home and threw the fear of God into Eric. He interrogated him about the alcohol, but Eric had it hidden and played innocent convincingly. He wasn’t taking any chances, though—as soon as he got a chance, he destroyed the stash. “I had to ditch every bottle I had and lie like a fuckin salesman to my parents,” he wrote.

That night, he went with the confessional approach. He admitted a weakness to his dad: the truth was, he was afraid of Mrs. Brown. That explained a lot, Wayne thought.

Kathy wanted to hear more from the Browns; Wayne bitterly resented the interference. Who was this hysterical woman? Or her conniving little brat Brooks? Wayne was hard enough on the boys without outsiders telling him how to raise his sons.

Kathy called Judy that night. Judy felt she really wanted to listen, but Wayne was negative and dismissive in the background. It was kids’ stuff, he insisted. It was all blown way out of proportion. He got on the line and told Judy that Eric had copped to the truth: he was afraid of her.

“Your son isn’t afraid of me!” Judy said. “He came after me at my car!”

Wayne jotted notes about the exchange on a green steno pad. He outlined Eric’s misdeeds, including getting in Judy Brown’s face and “being a little bully.” At the bottom of the page he summarized. He found Eric guilty of aggression, disrespect, property damage, and idle threats of physical harm. But he did not look kindly on the Browns. “Over-reaction to minor incident,” he concluded. He dated it February 28, 1997.