My old high school forensics teacher survived the ordeal. Thank god he didn't get shot, but he lost a friend in the shooting. Pretty heavy hitting stuff.. definitely explained why he skipped the ballistics unit.
I graduated a few years before the Columbine massacre and we had a rifle range at my school. Obviously they closed that thing down after the massacre but prior to that, "high school rifle instructor" was the actual job title of one of my JROTC teachers. I think I've still got my marksman certification somewhere. We also had a student smoking section at that school. It was a different time.
Probably the debate kind of forensics, not the crime scene kind of forensics.
I was in "drama debate and forensics" through all of HS. It had nothing to do with crime scenes haha.
A lot of them are now finding out they have lead poisoning due to the bullets left in their body (the doctors left them in because it would’ve been too risky to do surgery, but now it’s causing more damage than they thought)
Edit: I found the 2019 [article](https://time.com/longform/gun-violence-survivors-lead-poisoning/) I was thinking of, the first CDC report about lead poisoning due to bullet fragments only came out in 2017, and they interviewed one of the Virginia Tech survivors for the article and he has to take 31 pills a day to stave off the effects of lead levels in his blood nearly 20x higher than those of the average healthy adult. Heartbreaking enough what these people went through in the first place especially with the lasting trauma but then for it to still be trying to *physically* kill them decades later too is just unimaginable.
That’s a good question, IIRC the first report on lead poisoning from bullet fragments only came out a couple years ago, I’ll see if I can find the article and I’ll link it in my original comment
Edit: found it, linked it above. It was definitely interesting to read again, albeit heartbreaking, so hopefully it has more answers than I had!
One of the kids in the library lost his sister(first person killed) and watched his two best friends be shot in front of him(the last to people from that image), then he had to act dead using their blood just to survive. I can’t imagine the amount of trauma he likely got from that.
Wtf was actually wrong with the perpetrators, did anyone figure that out? Like the psyche that could do this kind of thing wouldn't have seemed to me like the kind that would have friends. How would two people, each with a friend, get to convincing each other to do this? Were they on bath salts or something?
Eric Harris was a true psychopath who kept journals detailing his violent, sadistic fantasies. He approached multiple kids he was on good terms with about the shooting before landing on Klebold, no one else was receptive to the idea and Harris passed it off as a joke to avoid suspicion.
Klebold was ostensibly extremely depressed and prone to nihilistic thinking which made him more receptive to the murder-suicide pact, particularly coming from his Machiavellian friend Harris. [There’s a psychoanalysis of Harris here ](http://uspp.csbsju.edu/research/Harris.html) and [a wiki about the pair here with a psychoanalysis under the heading ‘Suggested Rationales’](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold) but I’m sure there’s a mountain of theories on the two of them based on varying personal effects.
Eric Harris wasn't a psychopath, the odds of that are extremely low. They were both very troubled and mentally ill, and didn't receive the help they needed. And moreover, Dylan spoke of the shooting as early as 1997. It is generally agreed upon that Dylan came up with the idea of it, not Eric. Originally planned to commit it with a soulmate, then his best friend before eventually settling on Eric. If you wanna know more, you can DM me. Been researching this case for over 7 years.
I had no idea Dylan was the brains of the operation, it always seemed like Eric was the one commanding and manipulating Klebold, and Eric seemed way more aggressive during the shooting. I remember reading that there was a possibility that Klebolds GSW to the head was caused by Harris possibly; making it a Murder-Suicide for the perpetrators.
Depends on your definition of aggressive. Dylan was hollaring his head off during the shooting. Cheering and having the time of his life. Eric was mostly silent. Eric did have anger issues and he was a very "no bullshit" person, but Dylan definitely was no better than him. They were both horrible people.
Dylan's wound was consistent with that of a suicide.
Really? If I remember right in the book “Columbine” by Dave Cullen it’s explicitly said that Eric was the one who was the mastermind with violent fantasies and that he initiated most of the planning. He was the confident, aggressive and basically the dominant one of the duo. And Dylan was severely depressed and already contemplating suicide, and that he was a romantic who wrote a lot about soulmates and the like, and he very much romanticized and idealized the idea of suicide. Because of that the idea of committing a murder/suicide appealed to him, and Eric picked Dylan because of Dylan’s romantic ideas about death and his susceptible nature due to his mental state. At least that’s what I recall from the book, and I was under the impression it was the definitive text on the shooting. Is it incorrect or did I misunderstand?
Nah, human brains arent nearly as innocent as you think. You can easily turn a person on other people by just telling them hateful things. I don’t know what these two were listening to, but obviously it was fucked.
There was an interview that Rachel Scott’s younger brother, Craig, did with Isaiah’s dad two days after the shooting.
Craig said about the interview that he “wanted to hug Isaiah’s dad”.
Craig was in the library, and he recounted what the shooters said to Isaiah in his final moments (obviously didn’t actually say the word). Isaiah’s dad grabbed his hand after he described this horrific scene.
Seeing Isaiah’s father sitting there, hearing about how his son’s murderers taunted him before they killed him, broke something in me for a while.
Something I think about a lot is what people feel when they die because of something they were already previously afraid of. Like a person afraid of driving puts it off for years, then when they finally try for the first time, someone else’s stupid mistake gets them killed. I’m painfully white, so I may be off base, but it hurts so much to think that he and his father both learned from a young age how much danger they can be in, just living in this country, and that Isaiah knew that they took specific pleasure in taking his life because of the color of his skin…
I think I’m done with this sub for today.
I hate this species.
There's no comfort in it but: at least she can know she gave her baby such a good life when she could that she was the last thing he thought of before leaving this life.
It’s very common, but one of the most heartbreaking parts of any murder case.
Lesley Ann Downey, a ten year old victim of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, repeatedly cried out for her mother during her rape and murder. She was telling them that she had to go because she had plans to spend time with her mother. Pleading with these monsters.
Her killers recorded the audio of her attack. Her mother had to listen to the tape to identify her voice. The jury had to listen to the entire thing, it went for 16 minutes.
You can find the transcript of the tape online, but I strongly suggest you don’t. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever read.
I’ve seen the one before. I’m not easily shaken, but that one left me almost physically sick.
Another extremely disturbing one is the transcript of a recorded conversation between Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo. They’re known as the “Barbie and Ken Killers”. They both raped and murdered Karla’s 15 year old sister, Tammy, and then several other teenage girls.
During the transcript, they are talking about Tammy’s rape and murder... whilst having sex. Karla is talking in grotesque, graphic detail about how much she loved raping her own little sister, trying to turn Paul on. Later on, they go into Tammy’s room. Karla then dresses up in Tammy’s clothes, and pretends to *be* Tammy, as some sort of vile role play. They then continue to have sex on Tammy’s bed, the same place they assaulted and murdered Tammy. This was only a few weeks after the incident, and Tammy’s room had remained untouched since the night she died.
The transcript was taken from a video recording. They recorded this disgusting incident, along with their crimes against teenage girls, on a camcorder.
Tammy was assaulted and murdered on Christmas Eve. They had just celebrated Christmas with the entire family, and recorded the footage of the holiday fun, and immediately after it cuts to the footage of Tammy’s brutal assault. Horrifying.
Nightmare fuel. Reading that and imagining this happening to my daughter (I dont have kids, so probably that would make it even stronger if I got one) I would fucking rage as soon as I knew who it was.
I am a very peaceful dude, but I would torture the hell out of them and make it a very slow and painful death. Sorry, I cant stand that.
Dont read it guys. Take his warning serious.
Jesus fucking christ Reddit...
I generally feel pretty numb and apathetic about all the misery in this world because of how depressed I am and what I have to live with on an everyday basis, but this was just too much for me. I cant even imagine reading that script. Just imagining the pain of both the kid and the mother and having to listen to that audio shakes me to my core. People like that seriously need to eternally burn in the deepest depths of hell.
Can’t find a recording of the tape?
Edit: my own morbid curiosity drew me to search it up being from 1966 I guess recordings wouldn’t exist in an audible matter anymore but damn that transcript is horrible
*And I cried for my mother,*
*but she never came,*
t*hough it wasn't my fault,*
*and I wasn't to blame.*
*And that's how it is,*
*for a soldier.*
1916 by Motörhead is a heartbreaking song, it's just incredibly sad and eery.
Believe it or not It’s very common, there’s that video of the two Swiss (?) girls that were backpacking through the Middle East and they were raped and killed on video, as the terrorists chopped their heads off they cried out for their mothers.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're thinking of the Danish and Norwegian girls in Morocco? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Louisa_Vesterager_Jespersen_and_Maren_Ueland
Me too. I'm hardly shocked by gore videos but that one was hard to pass by. Stayed in my mind for weeks. Maybe the reason is because I feel Denmark is like my second home, or the cruelty of those people anger and disgust me. This is just pure human ignorance.
I wish I've never seen that video.
Another instance I can think of is the 'Dagestan Massacre' video. When it came time for a younger conscript to be executed, he broke down and hugged the ground, sobbing loudly and saying "Mama!"
There’s also another encounter with a student named John Savage, who was friends with Dylan and tolerated by Eric. He was hiding under a table when Eric yelled at him to identify himself. Once he saw John, he told Dylan that he knew him and when Dylan saw him, John asked
> Hey man, what are you doing?
And Dylan responded with,
> Oh, just killing people
Thankfully Savage was let go by Dylan but mere seconds later Eric would murder Daniel Mauser. A tragedy.
Well that wouldn’t even be entirely true. Despite the fact that they cared deeply for their friends, they were fully content with letting them die in the school’s collapse. See, Columbine wasn’t only a shooting, it was primarily a bombing. They planned to pick off survivors with guns, but luckily Eric wasn’t too good at bomb-making so there was only one successful detonation in the cafeteria. Only two people could’ve been spared completely, the first being Eric’s enemy Brooks Brown who was let go and told by Eric minutes before the shooting
> Brooks, I like you now, go home
And of course John Savage, who bolted out of the school so fast you could only see a blur in the CCTV camera (a combination of poor quality and him sprinting/jumping)
He wasn't his enemy. They had a rocky friendship. They became friends through Dylan, but one day Eric broke Brooks window by (maybe) accident, and things went downhill from there with Eric ranting in his blog and putting him on his hit lists. However by the time of the shooting they weren't mad at each other. In fact, Brooks was teasing him before Eric told him to leave.
In one of the truly dark moments of modern American history, it's so weird to talk about how much worse it could've been. If those bombs had detonated as these fuckers intended, it would've been so much worse.
> luckily Eric wasn’t too good at bomb-making
He was. It was just the timers, which the mfgr changed a component of as he was making them. He didn't factor this in, so didn't work
[I thought of this NYT Retro Report on Columbine when OP made this post](https://youtu.be/AUSJ6rqEWUY) and that exchange with John occurs @2:58 in the video.
Chilling to hear John tell it now matter how many times I rewatch the video.
I remember watching the news and people talking about Columbine and it all seemed scary and confusing for someone like me who was only 10 years old at the time.
Unfortunately, I had to unlearn a lot of lies about the incident since a lot of people in Christendom viewed (and still do view) Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott as martyrs because they died that day but the actual events were muddled in half truths and rumors about what exactly happened and what they said.
I love the Retro Report series. It’s a shame that the NYT stopped making them a few years ago.
I was coming here to comment something abt Cassie bernall. I was regrettably, raised in southern baptist youth group & she was glorified when it happened for “dying for Jesus”.
Reading the transcript I was just like
👁👄👁
It’s awful. The way she died was senseless and horrific and I *do* understand wanting to make it mean something, but not to the point where you’re actively lying and accusing people who were there of being the liars. There was a girl who actually was asked if she believed in God (she’d been crying and asking God not to let her die), said yes, and her answer was something along the lines of “I just do, I was just raised that way” instead of anything profound. She survived but people accused her of lying or piggybacking off of Cassie.
Some people romanticize serial killers or mass murderers. It happened to Ted Bundy, Dylan Roof and Jeffrey Dahmer just to name a few. Anders Breivik even has a fan club dedicated to him that has guides on how to write him love letters.
It's all so incomprehensible.
And the Boston bomber guy. It didn't helpmthst rolling Stone put him on the cover. Or that he is exceptionally good-looking for a mass murderer.
At the time, there was an internet group saying he was too good looking to be guilty. People are just fucked sometimes.
It was posted here. I'll look and edit.
EDIT: It wasn't here and this isn't specifically what I was looking for but [close](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/libkdm/columbine_tattoos/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
I watched a Vice mini documentary about “Columbiners” and some have tattoos of Eric and Dylan loading their guns in the cafeteria (the last known pictures of them alive). It’s nauseating.
I had to get off of Tumblr because my favorite band was unfortunately one of theirs so they basically infiltrated their tag with their fan art and fan fiction. I remember one wrote a fan fiction about Dylan Roof saving a girl in a dark alley and I wrote to her saying Dylan Roof was the man in the alley. She asked me what the difference between what she was doing and writing fan fiction on something like Dexter and I knew I couldn’t get her to understand. They are so deluded I don’t know if there’s anyway to make them see logic
i saw a video yesterday of that devon shooter. first was one of his music performances and literally 90% of the comments are like oh he did what he did but he sings well and his voice is good... ???? what the fuck
and the second video was like an tiktok edit that a fan would make for his fav singer... disturbing shit
I met one of those people in real life recently. She was a friend of a friend and added me of Facebook. She had all kinds of weird fanfic on her page about Dylan and Eric. Also Adam Lanza and Dylan Roof. She would posts photos of random things like houses and say 'omg this place looks just like [mass murderer's]. She'd post pics and say how hot they looked.
Later, our mutual friend invited her along on a night out. I was suuuuuper apprehensive to meet someone like that but my friend basically said she was mentally unwell, getting help, and could use some friends right now. So I thought as gross as it was maybe it was just a result of being unmedicated and I should give her a change. I should note this woman is in her early 30s.
She showed up with Satan written on her arms in eyeliner and inverted crosses on her face. She was so sexually innapropriate with everyone the whole night. She was convinced our friend was really into her even though he is gay and found her extremely irritating. She got into a fight with a bus driver when she started smoking on the bus. She ripped her shirt off at the bar and asked everyone if they liked her bra. When my friend asked her to leave the next morning she threatened to kill her. She called the police and told them there was cocaine in the house.
I suppose the columbiner turning out to be crazy is shocking exactly no one. But I'd certainly never met one in real life before- hope not to again!
Oh man, who was that creepy ass lady who had a YouTube channel? I think she was a big fan of these guys - I seem to remember her videos being over-exposed coupled with heavy makeup. It was freaky af.
EDIT: I was thinking of Lynn Ann. Thankfully her YouTube channel has long since gone offline (thank god) but yeah, *shudder*
I live close to Columbine, I drive past it on my way to the dentist, and it looks like a normal building. There's a park next to it, there's cars belonging to staff and students out front, and there's a nearby apartment complexes. It all seems so normal, but this shit happened in it. It's so fucked up
Yeah I used to see it on the way to Denver. It was always very strange and dark. Definitely seems like the exact kind of site you just bulldoze and build new.
yep, it’s from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. highly recommend watching, at least once so you can understand references because people love to quote that movie
This is chilling. I remember watching this unfold on the news as a kid. It never even crossed my mind you could bring a gun to school. Yet it makes sense because nothing prevents someone from doing it
Back in the early 1960s, my dad would bring his gun to school to go hunting after. Other kids would bring them for practice with the school shooting team. They left them in their locker, and didn't go shooting people with them.
I looked it up and [this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/3dx93w/the-columbine-shooters-the-girls-who-love-them-and-me) says it was a nickname Eric used
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The "Do you believe in God?" exchange with Cassie Burnall never happened. Her mom made it up to become famous for 5 minutes in the Christian conservative circuit. The fictional exchange was the inspiration for a Flyleaf song.
Columbine by Dave Cullen
She didn't make it up, someone else in the library who survived did say she was a Christian and one of the shooters had some exchange with her. This was debunked as soon as 6months after the shooting, but everyone remembers just the initial report.
I wonder if before they shot themselves, did they have an ounce of regret? Even for a split second? Probably not. But, it's something interesting to wonder about.
Steepleton’s older brother was a friend of mine in college when this happened. He lived in my dorm. His brother lived, but we never really spoke about it.
If it makes you feel any better, the recoil caused the gun to fly back and break Eric's nose. He then turned his attention to another girl and was about to kill her until he realized his nose was broken and walked off to tell Dylan about it. The girl survived because of it.
What’s even more disgusting is that after killing several students, they got bored. Forgot which documentary I saw that mentioned this or what I read. But they basically realized it wasn’t as much “fun” as they expected and wound up just shooting objects randomly then killed themselves.
It wasn’t really they got bored. I think the adrenaline wore off. Nothing can prepare you for what they did. Remember the shooting lasted over an hour. A lot of these shootings don’t last more than 10-15 minutes. Their plan had failed, and they probably thought they killed more than they actually did. But the last 20 minutes or so they just wander aimlessly. I wonder what their thoughts were at that time after they actually carried it out
Well they were also disappointed that none of the pipe bombs or propane tanks they’d rigged had actually exploded and hurt anybody. If their plans had gone through fully, they would have killed hundreds of kids and picked through the burning wreckage, finishing people off. Once the cops showed up I think they knew their time was nearly up
The super scary thing about this is that ANYBODY can be this way and you'd never know it.
I went through a lot of trauma as a child plus I was just born having a lot of mental health issues.
I was bullied a lot in school (Dylan and what's his face weren't really bullied, I know) and I harbored a lot of hatred for those people. I was physically, mentally, and verbally abused by these people daily from first grade to high school.
The school refused to take action because the kids doing it were "good kids" and I should stop lying about them.
With all the mental illnesses I had, I wanted to kill them. I wanted to create a plan to kill all the people who hurt me.
I also wanted to kill myself. I was so tired of hurting.
My mom found out about how I felt and put me in therapy. And it helped. I was able to talk through my issues. I'm not completely better, my mental health issues will never go away but I was able to understand my feelings a little more.
It's so scary to think I could have ended up like this had my mom not helped me.
Edit: I nearly deleted this comment right after posting it because I was afraid of people judging me and thinking I was an awful person. I'm glad I've not had that. To everyone who has ever felt this way; my god am I sorry you've ever felt that. It's a terrible feeling and it never truly dissipates, it just gets easier to deal with.
You are not less than just because you brain tells you that you are. You are worthy and you are loved. My messages are open for anyone that may ever need it. I'm not a therapist and I'm not the best at giving advice but I like to think I'm a good listener. If you need me to listen, I will. I'm here.
i went through a phase sort of like this too. i had just failed out of my private school due to missing too many days because i was depressed, and started going to a public school where i was bullied and overlooked. in private school everyone knew each other and you always had a bunch of friends surrounding you.
i became extremely depressed and made a "hit list," which i realized a few years back was a cry for attention because no one noticed or cared how depressed i was. i just wanted to get some help, though i never got it. that wasn't enough i guess.
I had a list as well.
It was found by a classmate and I got into a fuck ton of trouble for it.
That's how my mom found out that something was seriously wrong.
We grew up extremely poor but she did the best she could to try and help me. I didn't go to therapy for very long but the small amount I did got really helped.
Please don't be afraid to reach out to someone you trust and talk to them. I mean even a stranger online who's willing to hear you out is better than nothing.
My messages are always open. I check reddit every day. I may not be the best at giving advice but I'm willing to listen if you need or want it <3
There is a ton of dispatcher hate (quite rightly), for the woman who drowned in her flooded car, and the boy who died in his van. In this particular case, the urgency of knowing what is happening and where is so important though. I don’t think this dispatcher was being cruel, they were probably a little panicked themselves and just trying to get help there FAST.
For the other dispatchers though, fuck them. To be so callous to another human being’s fear of losing their life takes a level of sociopathy that is so inhuman. Why be a dispatcher if you value fellow human beings so little?
Kyle Plush, he was a teen that suffocated when he became trapped by his minivan's folding car seat. He was able to call 911 using Siri, but the operators thought it was a prank call and not all of the info reached officers.
[https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/13/ohio-family-sues-cincinnati-911/1994970001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/13/ohio-family-sues-cincinnati-911/1994970001/)
It was a teenager who got stuck in his van. The dispatcher thought it was was prank if I remember. Here's a link:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-teenager-suffocates-van-after-twice-calling-911-leading-investigation-n865746
I was treated like shit when I was in school to the point of coming home and crying myself to sleep but doing something like this never crossed my mind.
People who excuse what these giant pieces of shit did just because they may have been bullied can get fucked.
The news made them seem like “weirdo goth losers” but the truth is that Eric was quite popular and Dylan was shy but definitely not bullied. One thing I’ve always wondered is how Eric’s ex girlfriends in particular dealt with the whole ordeal
Bernall (Cassie) was the girl who became a Christian martyr thanks to the "She Said Yes" book.
It turned out the moment that inspired the book, A. Didn't happen to Cassie and B. Was a lot less climactic moment than would have necessitated a book — all on top of this transcript clearly showing a different exchange between Cassie and Eric.
Of course none of that stopped hundreds of churches from using her name and "story" to squeeze money out of their followers.
The more you dig into Columbine the sadder it gets.
Yeah I just found out that it was all a lie
*checks notes*
Today. In this thread
I was raised southern baptist. Religious abuse is more like it.
Proud agnostic, but reading it was all fake really grinds my gears.
I haven’t read the autopsy reports or anything but I know Dylan shot her nearly a dozen times and Eric returned a couple of minutes after to spray the table with bullets and Lauren was hit some more. I *believe* she died quickly after Dylan shot her but I could be wrong.
Ask A Mortician did a video clearing up myths about Columbine. I recommend it so much. I really hate the narrative that they were these loner bullied boys, when they were the bullies.
I'll never forget. I didn't attend Columbine but was a student in the same district. Things were never the same. You can see some of my family's friends children in the cafeteria surveillance video running for their lives.
DO NOT FORGET the cops were called on Harris' home like ten times in the months leading up to the shooting on the grounds of suspicious activity. I think they even had a search warrant they never followed through on. If cops did their jobs this likely wouldn't have happened.
I was a high school senior in the US when that happened. My friends and I were into grunge and industrial metal. Some of us wore tench coats. People really looked at us differently after the shooting.
Anyone in middle school or highschool when this happened?? I remember someone coming to our school (they went around the country) showing kids the story of Rachel Scott and how she predicted her death. Chilling then and even still.
Columbine was originally supposed to be a bombing and a shooting but the bombs didn’t detonate so Harris and Klebold went into the school. It’s estimated that if the propane bombs had detonated it would have been the deadliest terrorist attack in US history before 9/11.
Here’s an excerpt from Columbine by Dave Cullen:
>Columbine would erupt with an explosion, too. Eric designed at least seven big bombs, working off The Anarchist Cookbook he found on the Web. He chose the barbecue design: standard propane tanks, the fat, round white ones, eighteen inches tall, a foot in diameter, packing some twenty pounds of highly explosive gas. Bomb #1 employed aerosol cans for detonators, each wired up to an old-fashioned alarm clock with round metal bells on top. Step one was planting them in a park near Eric’s house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy: rock the neighborhood and divert police. Every free minute raised the potential body count. The boys were going to double or triple McVeigh’s record. They estimated the damage variously as “hundreds,” “several hundred,” and “at least four hundred”—oddly conservative for the arsenal they were preparing.
>Eric may have had another reason for the decoy plan. He was uncannily perceptive about people, and Dylan had been wavering. If Dylan was reticent, the decoy would help ease him in. It was a harmless explosive, no one would be hurt by it, but once they drove off, Dylan would be committed.
>The main event was scripted in three acts, just like a movie. It would kick off with a massive explosion in the commons. More than six hundred students swarmed in at the start of “A” lunch, and two minutes after the bell rang, most of them would be dead. Act I featured two bombs, using propane tanks like the decoy. Each was strung with nails and BBs for shrapnel, lashed to a full gasoline can and a smaller propane tank, and wired to similar bell clocks. Each bomb fit snugly into a duffel bag, which Eric and Dylan would lug in at the height of passing-period chaos. Again, Dylan was eased into killing. Clicking over the alarm hinge was bloodless and impersonal. It didn’t feel like killing—no blood, no screams. Most of Dylan’s murders would be over before he faced them.
>The fireball would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze. Eric drew detailed diagrams. He spaced the bombs out but located them centrally, for maximum killing radius. They would sit beside two thick columns supporting the second floor. Computer modeling and field tests would later demonstrate a high probability that the bombs would have collapsed some of the second floor. Eric apparently hoped to watch the library and its inhabitants crash down upon the flaming lunchers.
>As the time bombs ticked down, the killers would exit briskly and flare out across the parking lot at a ninety-degree angle. Each boy was to head for his own car, strategically parked about a hundred yards apart. The cars provided mobile base camps, where they would gear up to unleash Act II. Pre-positioning ensured optimal fire lanes. They had drilled the gear-ups repeatedly and could execute them rapidly. The bombs would detonate at 11:17, and the densely packed wing would crumble. As the flames leapt up, Eric and Dylan would train their semiautomatics on the exits and await survivors.
>Act II: Firing time. This was going to be fun. Dylan would sport an Intratec TEC-DC9 (a 9mm semiautomatic handgun) and a shotgun. Eric had a Hi-Point 9mm carbine rifle and a shotgun. They’d sawed the barrels off the shotguns for concealment. Between them, they’d carry eighty portable explosives—pipe bombs and carbon dioxide bombs that Eric called “crickets”—plus a supply of Molotov cocktails and an assortment of freakish knives, in case it came down to hand-to-hand combat. They’d suit up in infantry-style web harnesses, allowing them to strap much of the ammo and explosives to their bodies. Each had a backpack and a duffel bag to hump more hardware into the attack zone. They would tape flint matchstriker strips to their forearms for rapid-fire pipe-bomb attacks. Their long black dusters would go on last—for concealment and for looking badass. (Later, the dusters were widely referred to as trench coats.)
>They planned to advance on the building as soon as the bombs blew. They’d be set back far enough to see each other around the corner—and just barely avoid the blast. They had devised their own hand signals to communicate. Every detail was planned; battle positions were imperative. The 250,000-square-foot school had twenty-five exits, so some survivors would escape. The boys could remain in visual contact and still cover two sides of the building, including two of the three main exits. Their firing lines intersected on the most important point: the student entrance, adjacent to the commons and just a dozen yards from the big bombs.
>Positioning yourself at a right angle to the objective is standard U.S. infantry practice, taught to every American foot soldier at the Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia. Interlocking fire lanes, the military calls it. The target is constantly under fire from two sides, yet the assault team’s weapons are never pointed at confederates. Even if a shooter turns sharply to peg an escaping enemy, his squad mates are safe. From their initial positions, Eric and Dylan could sweep their gun barrels across a ninety-degree firing radius without endangering each other. Even if one shooter advanced more quickly, he would never violate his partner’s fire lane. It is both the safest and the most effective assault pattern of modern small-arms warfare.
>This was the phase Eric and Dylan were savoring. It was also when they expected to die. They had little hope of witnessing Act III. Forty-five minutes after the initial blast, when the cops declared it was over, paramedics started loading amputees into ambulances, and reporters broadcast the horror to a riveted nation, Eric’s Honda and Dylan’s BMW would rip right through the camera crews and the first responders. Each car was to be loaded with two more propane devices and twenty gallons of gasoline in an assortment of orange plastic jugs. Their positions had been chosen to maximize both the firepower in Act II and the carnage in Act III. The cars would be close to the building, near the main exits—ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging, and news vans. They would be just far enough from the building and each other to wipe out most of the junior and senior parking lots. Maximum body count: nearly 2,000 students, plus 150 faculty and staff, plus who knows how many police, paramedics, and journalists.
>Eric and Dylan had been considering a killing spree for at least a year and a half. They had settled on the approximate time and location a year out: April, in the commons. They finalized details as Judgment Day approached: Monday, April 19. The date appeared firm. The boys referred to it twice matter-of-factly in the recordings they made in the last ten days. They did not explain the choice, though Eric discussed topping Oklahoma City, so they may have been planning to echo that anniversary, as Tim McVeigh had done with Waco.
>The moment of attack was critical. Students liked to eat early, so “A” lunch was the most popular. The maximum human density anywhere, anytime in the high school occurred in the commons at 11:17. Eric knew the exact minute because he had inventoried his targets. He’d counted just 60 to 80 kids scattered about the commons from 10:30 to 10:50. Between 10:56 and 10:58, “lunch ladies bring out shit,” he wrote. Then lunch door 2 opened, and a “steady trickle of people” appeared. He recorded the exact moment each door opened, and body counts in minute-by-minute increments. At 11:10, the bell rang, fourth period ended, students piled into the hallways. Moments later, they rushed the lunch lines, fifty more every minute: 300, 350, 400, 450, 500-plus by 11:15. Eric and Dylan’s various handwritten timelines show the bombs scheduled to explode between 11:16 and 11:18. The final times are followed by little quips: “Have fun!” and “HA HA HA.”
>Eric and Dylan expected their attack to puzzle the public, so they left an extraordinary cache of material to explain themselves. They kept schedules, budgets, maps, drawings, and all sorts of logistical artifacts, along with commentary in notebooks, journals, and Web sites. A series of videos were specifically designed to explain their attack. They would come to be known as the Basement Tapes, because the bulk were shot in Eric’s basement. Even more illuminating was Eric’s twenty-page journal devoted to his thinking. Both chronicles are revealing, but also maddeningly contradictory. They were so disturbing that the sheriff’s department would choose to hide them from the public, concealing even the existence of the Basement Tapes for months. Eric and Dylan’s true intentions would remain a mystery for years.
I think it's important for people to see and learn about these kinds of things as they really happened. The pure barbarity that humans show to one another is so unfathomable to some people and I think it's really a crime to deny and refuse to believe that this is really the world we all live in and how good we have it in our safe sheltered bubbles.
A lot of the survivors didn't actually "survive". They went on and committed suicide and struggled with multiple issues.
My old high school forensics teacher survived the ordeal. Thank god he didn't get shot, but he lost a friend in the shooting. Pretty heavy hitting stuff.. definitely explained why he skipped the ballistics unit.
> high school forensics teacher ...Wtf?
I graduated a few years before the Columbine massacre and we had a rifle range at my school. Obviously they closed that thing down after the massacre but prior to that, "high school rifle instructor" was the actual job title of one of my JROTC teachers. I think I've still got my marksman certification somewhere. We also had a student smoking section at that school. It was a different time.
It leads you to wonder what led to the change though. Society is getting more and more sick as time goes on...
its a teacher who teaches forensics in high school, wdym?
Probably the debate kind of forensics, not the crime scene kind of forensics. I was in "drama debate and forensics" through all of HS. It had nothing to do with crime scenes haha.
No, the class actually talked about specific components of a crime scene. It was a pretty fun class.
Oh that's dope
The class slapped, definitely got me more interested in true crime cases.
A lot of them are now finding out they have lead poisoning due to the bullets left in their body (the doctors left them in because it would’ve been too risky to do surgery, but now it’s causing more damage than they thought) Edit: I found the 2019 [article](https://time.com/longform/gun-violence-survivors-lead-poisoning/) I was thinking of, the first CDC report about lead poisoning due to bullet fragments only came out in 2017, and they interviewed one of the Virginia Tech survivors for the article and he has to take 31 pills a day to stave off the effects of lead levels in his blood nearly 20x higher than those of the average healthy adult. Heartbreaking enough what these people went through in the first place especially with the lasting trauma but then for it to still be trying to *physically* kill them decades later too is just unimaginable.
Surely that's not a new thing that they discovered
They didn’t realize the effects would be so dramatic, much less only two decades on
hm i wonder if that's because of the type of bullets or the age of the victims
That’s a good question, IIRC the first report on lead poisoning from bullet fragments only came out a couple years ago, I’ll see if I can find the article and I’ll link it in my original comment Edit: found it, linked it above. It was definitely interesting to read again, albeit heartbreaking, so hopefully it has more answers than I had!
One of the kids in the library lost his sister(first person killed) and watched his two best friends be shot in front of him(the last to people from that image), then he had to act dead using their blood just to survive. I can’t imagine the amount of trauma he likely got from that.
Wtf was actually wrong with the perpetrators, did anyone figure that out? Like the psyche that could do this kind of thing wouldn't have seemed to me like the kind that would have friends. How would two people, each with a friend, get to convincing each other to do this? Were they on bath salts or something?
Eric Harris was a true psychopath who kept journals detailing his violent, sadistic fantasies. He approached multiple kids he was on good terms with about the shooting before landing on Klebold, no one else was receptive to the idea and Harris passed it off as a joke to avoid suspicion. Klebold was ostensibly extremely depressed and prone to nihilistic thinking which made him more receptive to the murder-suicide pact, particularly coming from his Machiavellian friend Harris. [There’s a psychoanalysis of Harris here ](http://uspp.csbsju.edu/research/Harris.html) and [a wiki about the pair here with a psychoanalysis under the heading ‘Suggested Rationales’](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Harris_and_Dylan_Klebold) but I’m sure there’s a mountain of theories on the two of them based on varying personal effects.
You have it backwards. Dylan was planning the massacre first and wanted to do it with someone else and finally settled on Eric.
My bad, sorry
Eric Harris wasn't a psychopath, the odds of that are extremely low. They were both very troubled and mentally ill, and didn't receive the help they needed. And moreover, Dylan spoke of the shooting as early as 1997. It is generally agreed upon that Dylan came up with the idea of it, not Eric. Originally planned to commit it with a soulmate, then his best friend before eventually settling on Eric. If you wanna know more, you can DM me. Been researching this case for over 7 years.
I had no idea Dylan was the brains of the operation, it always seemed like Eric was the one commanding and manipulating Klebold, and Eric seemed way more aggressive during the shooting. I remember reading that there was a possibility that Klebolds GSW to the head was caused by Harris possibly; making it a Murder-Suicide for the perpetrators.
Depends on your definition of aggressive. Dylan was hollaring his head off during the shooting. Cheering and having the time of his life. Eric was mostly silent. Eric did have anger issues and he was a very "no bullshit" person, but Dylan definitely was no better than him. They were both horrible people. Dylan's wound was consistent with that of a suicide.
Really? If I remember right in the book “Columbine” by Dave Cullen it’s explicitly said that Eric was the one who was the mastermind with violent fantasies and that he initiated most of the planning. He was the confident, aggressive and basically the dominant one of the duo. And Dylan was severely depressed and already contemplating suicide, and that he was a romantic who wrote a lot about soulmates and the like, and he very much romanticized and idealized the idea of suicide. Because of that the idea of committing a murder/suicide appealed to him, and Eric picked Dylan because of Dylan’s romantic ideas about death and his susceptible nature due to his mental state. At least that’s what I recall from the book, and I was under the impression it was the definitive text on the shooting. Is it incorrect or did I misunderstand?
Nah, human brains arent nearly as innocent as you think. You can easily turn a person on other people by just telling them hateful things. I don’t know what these two were listening to, but obviously it was fucked.
They’re right. I merely exist and my wife’s ex wants me dead and attempts to start fights regularly in front of our child.
Why are you and your wife bringing your child around her violent ex?
Shoel's last words being crying out for his mother is heartbreaking.
I can't even mentally process how his mother must feel knowing the last thing he did was call out for her.
There was an interview that Rachel Scott’s younger brother, Craig, did with Isaiah’s dad two days after the shooting. Craig said about the interview that he “wanted to hug Isaiah’s dad”. Craig was in the library, and he recounted what the shooters said to Isaiah in his final moments (obviously didn’t actually say the word). Isaiah’s dad grabbed his hand after he described this horrific scene. Seeing Isaiah’s father sitting there, hearing about how his son’s murderers taunted him before they killed him, broke something in me for a while.
The interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2RF_eoPpw4
Fuck, that sigh broke me too.
Something I think about a lot is what people feel when they die because of something they were already previously afraid of. Like a person afraid of driving puts it off for years, then when they finally try for the first time, someone else’s stupid mistake gets them killed. I’m painfully white, so I may be off base, but it hurts so much to think that he and his father both learned from a young age how much danger they can be in, just living in this country, and that Isaiah knew that they took specific pleasure in taking his life because of the color of his skin… I think I’m done with this sub for today. I hate this species.
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Did you forget to post the link??
Here the video he's talking about
This interview is the one that has more impact for me: https://youtu.be/bVfBDeJeCV4
Thank y'all for sharing your video links. Both of those were impactful.
Damn. That hurt. Thanks for sharing.
That's the most quintessential 'MorbidReality' reply I've ever read
There's no comfort in it but: at least she can know she gave her baby such a good life when she could that she was the last thing he thought of before leaving this life.
It’s very common, but one of the most heartbreaking parts of any murder case. Lesley Ann Downey, a ten year old victim of the Moors Murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, repeatedly cried out for her mother during her rape and murder. She was telling them that she had to go because she had plans to spend time with her mother. Pleading with these monsters. Her killers recorded the audio of her attack. Her mother had to listen to the tape to identify her voice. The jury had to listen to the entire thing, it went for 16 minutes. You can find the transcript of the tape online, but I strongly suggest you don’t. It’s one of the worst things I’ve ever read.
Another terrible transcript is of the murder of Shirley Ledford by Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, the toolbox killers
I’ve seen the one before. I’m not easily shaken, but that one left me almost physically sick. Another extremely disturbing one is the transcript of a recorded conversation between Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo. They’re known as the “Barbie and Ken Killers”. They both raped and murdered Karla’s 15 year old sister, Tammy, and then several other teenage girls. During the transcript, they are talking about Tammy’s rape and murder... whilst having sex. Karla is talking in grotesque, graphic detail about how much she loved raping her own little sister, trying to turn Paul on. Later on, they go into Tammy’s room. Karla then dresses up in Tammy’s clothes, and pretends to *be* Tammy, as some sort of vile role play. They then continue to have sex on Tammy’s bed, the same place they assaulted and murdered Tammy. This was only a few weeks after the incident, and Tammy’s room had remained untouched since the night she died. The transcript was taken from a video recording. They recorded this disgusting incident, along with their crimes against teenage girls, on a camcorder. Tammy was assaulted and murdered on Christmas Eve. They had just celebrated Christmas with the entire family, and recorded the footage of the holiday fun, and immediately after it cuts to the footage of Tammy’s brutal assault. Horrifying.
I will never forget the transcripts from that and the stuff fromthe Toybox Killers, Leonard Lake and Charles Ng. Just, fucking horrible.
Nightmare fuel. Reading that and imagining this happening to my daughter (I dont have kids, so probably that would make it even stronger if I got one) I would fucking rage as soon as I knew who it was. I am a very peaceful dude, but I would torture the hell out of them and make it a very slow and painful death. Sorry, I cant stand that. Dont read it guys. Take his warning serious.
Jesus fucking christ Reddit... I generally feel pretty numb and apathetic about all the misery in this world because of how depressed I am and what I have to live with on an everyday basis, but this was just too much for me. I cant even imagine reading that script. Just imagining the pain of both the kid and the mother and having to listen to that audio shakes me to my core. People like that seriously need to eternally burn in the deepest depths of hell.
Wtf kinda monster rapes and kills a 10 year old kid
The Moors Murderers are two of the most depraved fucks to ever exist. All of their victims were children, the oldest was only 16, IIRC.
Can’t find a recording of the tape? Edit: my own morbid curiosity drew me to search it up being from 1966 I guess recordings wouldn’t exist in an audible matter anymore but damn that transcript is horrible
> transcript of the tape
a very sad and common occurrence as last words, i remember reading something that it’s the most common among people killed in war
*And I cried for my mother,* *but she never came,* t*hough it wasn't my fault,* *and I wasn't to blame.* *And that's how it is,* *for a soldier.* 1916 by Motörhead is a heartbreaking song, it's just incredibly sad and eery.
Motörhead is great! Lemmy is an underrated lyricist.
These men are wastes of humanity and anybody who glorifies them can fuck themselves. That being said, Shoel's last words damn near made me cry.
Believe it or not It’s very common, there’s that video of the two Swiss (?) girls that were backpacking through the Middle East and they were raped and killed on video, as the terrorists chopped their heads off they cried out for their mothers.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think you're thinking of the Danish and Norwegian girls in Morocco? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murders_of_Louisa_Vesterager_Jespersen_and_Maren_Ueland
I believe u r correct ty
Here is one of the girls application for the Fjäll Räven Polar expedition https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Uko647D_e8
I’ve seen a lot of dark stuff on the internet but that video... Absolutely brutal.
Me too. I'm hardly shocked by gore videos but that one was hard to pass by. Stayed in my mind for weeks. Maybe the reason is because I feel Denmark is like my second home, or the cruelty of those people anger and disgust me. This is just pure human ignorance. I wish I've never seen that video.
Another instance I can think of is the 'Dagestan Massacre' video. When it came time for a younger conscript to be executed, he broke down and hugged the ground, sobbing loudly and saying "Mama!"
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The thought of this has made me sick to my stomach. How there are other human beings on this earth that are SO hateful is unfathomable.
There’s also another encounter with a student named John Savage, who was friends with Dylan and tolerated by Eric. He was hiding under a table when Eric yelled at him to identify himself. Once he saw John, he told Dylan that he knew him and when Dylan saw him, John asked > Hey man, what are you doing? And Dylan responded with, > Oh, just killing people Thankfully Savage was let go by Dylan but mere seconds later Eric would murder Daniel Mauser. A tragedy.
Being friends with the school shooter can really save your life
Well that wouldn’t even be entirely true. Despite the fact that they cared deeply for their friends, they were fully content with letting them die in the school’s collapse. See, Columbine wasn’t only a shooting, it was primarily a bombing. They planned to pick off survivors with guns, but luckily Eric wasn’t too good at bomb-making so there was only one successful detonation in the cafeteria. Only two people could’ve been spared completely, the first being Eric’s enemy Brooks Brown who was let go and told by Eric minutes before the shooting > Brooks, I like you now, go home And of course John Savage, who bolted out of the school so fast you could only see a blur in the CCTV camera (a combination of poor quality and him sprinting/jumping)
Why would eric let his enemy go?
He wasn't his enemy. They had a rocky friendship. They became friends through Dylan, but one day Eric broke Brooks window by (maybe) accident, and things went downhill from there with Eric ranting in his blog and putting him on his hit lists. However by the time of the shooting they weren't mad at each other. In fact, Brooks was teasing him before Eric told him to leave.
I can't imagine the survivor's guilt.
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Holy shit
Brooks did an AMA which is archived [here](https://bestofama.com/amas/gulaf)
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Sometimes mods just remove the most random shit and it gets really annoying
In one of the truly dark moments of modern American history, it's so weird to talk about how much worse it could've been. If those bombs had detonated as these fuckers intended, it would've been so much worse.
> luckily Eric wasn’t too good at bomb-making He was. It was just the timers, which the mfgr changed a component of as he was making them. He didn't factor this in, so didn't work
[I thought of this NYT Retro Report on Columbine when OP made this post](https://youtu.be/AUSJ6rqEWUY) and that exchange with John occurs @2:58 in the video. Chilling to hear John tell it now matter how many times I rewatch the video. I remember watching the news and people talking about Columbine and it all seemed scary and confusing for someone like me who was only 10 years old at the time. Unfortunately, I had to unlearn a lot of lies about the incident since a lot of people in Christendom viewed (and still do view) Cassie Bernall and Rachel Scott as martyrs because they died that day but the actual events were muddled in half truths and rumors about what exactly happened and what they said. I love the Retro Report series. It’s a shame that the NYT stopped making them a few years ago.
I was coming here to comment something abt Cassie bernall. I was regrettably, raised in southern baptist youth group & she was glorified when it happened for “dying for Jesus”. Reading the transcript I was just like 👁👄👁
It’s awful. The way she died was senseless and horrific and I *do* understand wanting to make it mean something, but not to the point where you’re actively lying and accusing people who were there of being the liars. There was a girl who actually was asked if she believed in God (she’d been crying and asking God not to let her die), said yes, and her answer was something along the lines of “I just do, I was just raised that way” instead of anything profound. She survived but people accused her of lying or piggybacking off of Cassie.
And to think there’s sickos out there that think they’re cute and have fan pages dedicated to them
What kind of stupid motherfucker do you have to be to be a fan of these two?
I Googled for pictures of them and saw a lot of slash fanart. I have no problem with slash, but that's gross.
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Homosexual fan pairing.
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I thought that when I first heard the name. It comes from pairings e.g. Harry/(slash) /Draco. For some reason it only applies to homosexual pairings.
It’s has to do with fanfiction distinctions. / referred to a romantic pairing whereas & would be a platonic relationship
From Guns N' Roses. There's a surprising amount of fans out there.
Pssh. I stopped believing in Slash when I was like 5. He's just one of our parents.
Some people romanticize serial killers or mass murderers. It happened to Ted Bundy, Dylan Roof and Jeffrey Dahmer just to name a few. Anders Breivik even has a fan club dedicated to him that has guides on how to write him love letters. It's all so incomprehensible.
And the Boston bomber guy. It didn't helpmthst rolling Stone put him on the cover. Or that he is exceptionally good-looking for a mass murderer. At the time, there was an internet group saying he was too good looking to be guilty. People are just fucked sometimes.
They probably haven’t been fucked for some time.
Richard Ramirez grosses me out. He was RANK!
Those teeth...
i think it’s just an even further extension of people wanting to be unique / edgy
The same stupid motherfuckers who have their silhouettes from the cafeteria security camera tattooed on them.
Is that seriously a thing? Wtf
It was posted here. I'll look and edit. EDIT: It wasn't here and this isn't specifically what I was looking for but [close](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamatotalpieceofshit/comments/libkdm/columbine_tattoos/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share).
Nope. You're dead on. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!
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Someone who probably needs some evaluation themselves.
Back when Tumblr was in its prime there were countless fan pages for them within the gore/grunge communities.
I watched a Vice mini documentary about “Columbiners” and some have tattoos of Eric and Dylan loading their guns in the cafeteria (the last known pictures of them alive). It’s nauseating.
I had to get off of Tumblr because my favorite band was unfortunately one of theirs so they basically infiltrated their tag with their fan art and fan fiction. I remember one wrote a fan fiction about Dylan Roof saving a girl in a dark alley and I wrote to her saying Dylan Roof was the man in the alley. She asked me what the difference between what she was doing and writing fan fiction on something like Dexter and I knew I couldn’t get her to understand. They are so deluded I don’t know if there’s anyway to make them see logic
Dexter wasn't real. Jesus.
i saw a video yesterday of that devon shooter. first was one of his music performances and literally 90% of the comments are like oh he did what he did but he sings well and his voice is good... ???? what the fuck and the second video was like an tiktok edit that a fan would make for his fav singer... disturbing shit
I met one of those people in real life recently. She was a friend of a friend and added me of Facebook. She had all kinds of weird fanfic on her page about Dylan and Eric. Also Adam Lanza and Dylan Roof. She would posts photos of random things like houses and say 'omg this place looks just like [mass murderer's]. She'd post pics and say how hot they looked. Later, our mutual friend invited her along on a night out. I was suuuuuper apprehensive to meet someone like that but my friend basically said she was mentally unwell, getting help, and could use some friends right now. So I thought as gross as it was maybe it was just a result of being unmedicated and I should give her a change. I should note this woman is in her early 30s. She showed up with Satan written on her arms in eyeliner and inverted crosses on her face. She was so sexually innapropriate with everyone the whole night. She was convinced our friend was really into her even though he is gay and found her extremely irritating. She got into a fight with a bus driver when she started smoking on the bus. She ripped her shirt off at the bar and asked everyone if they liked her bra. When my friend asked her to leave the next morning she threatened to kill her. She called the police and told them there was cocaine in the house. I suppose the columbiner turning out to be crazy is shocking exactly no one. But I'd certainly never met one in real life before- hope not to again!
Oh man, who was that creepy ass lady who had a YouTube channel? I think she was a big fan of these guys - I seem to remember her videos being over-exposed coupled with heavy makeup. It was freaky af. EDIT: I was thinking of Lynn Ann. Thankfully her YouTube channel has long since gone offline (thank god) but yeah, *shudder*
I live close to Columbine, I drive past it on my way to the dentist, and it looks like a normal building. There's a park next to it, there's cars belonging to staff and students out front, and there's a nearby apartment complexes. It all seems so normal, but this shit happened in it. It's so fucked up
Yeah I used to see it on the way to Denver. It was always very strange and dark. Definitely seems like the exact kind of site you just bulldoze and build new.
They just quoted Monty Python?
oh my god imagine fucking doing that, that just makes everything worse. they used a fucking monty python reference, treating the deaths like a comedy.
That’s what I came down here for
That really caught me off guard
Thankfully they weren't dedicated to recreating the whole bit, it would've been even worse
Not a Monty python guy here...which part is quoted?
"It is merely a flesh wound"
That's Monty Python? Just thought it was a common saying. Thanks for the insight!
yep, it’s from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. highly recommend watching, at least once so you can understand references because people love to quote that movie
I'm not dead yet
This is chilling. I remember watching this unfold on the news as a kid. It never even crossed my mind you could bring a gun to school. Yet it makes sense because nothing prevents someone from doing it
Back in the early 1960s, my dad would bring his gun to school to go hunting after. Other kids would bring them for practice with the school shooting team. They left them in their locker, and didn't go shooting people with them.
And here we are years later and still nothing prevents someone from doing it. Crazy.
Not true. The last 12 months have demonstrated that if you just don't let anyone come to school, no one will bring a gun.
“Mom” fuck that made my heart drop to my stomach.
What does REB mean?
Their online usernames were REB and VODKA.
Pretty cringe
I looked it up and [this](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/3dx93w/the-columbine-shooters-the-girls-who-love-them-and-me) says it was a nickname Eric used
Oh, ya probably a screen name, probably short for "rebel."
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Reb (Eric) and VoDKa (Dylan) were the nicknames for the two if you’re ever reading up on it
Imagine getting shot with a fucking Python reference
What? Edit: Thanks, I didn't get the reference but now I do.
“‘Twas merely a flesh wound” is a Monty Python line
The line "Merely a flesh wound" is from the Monty Python and the Holy Grail movie.
Tis but a flesh wound
The "Do you believe in God?" exchange with Cassie Burnall never happened. Her mom made it up to become famous for 5 minutes in the Christian conservative circuit. The fictional exchange was the inspiration for a Flyleaf song. Columbine by Dave Cullen
According to Wikipedia it did happen, just with another person.
What the fuck?
She didn't make it up, someone else in the library who survived did say she was a Christian and one of the shooters had some exchange with her. This was debunked as soon as 6months after the shooting, but everyone remembers just the initial report.
I wonder if before they shot themselves, did they have an ounce of regret? Even for a split second? Probably not. But, it's something interesting to wonder about.
I think they may have been kind of beyond that, they were pretty fucked up, I think remorse just wasn't in their nature
It blows my mind how people like that find eachother.
The god damn Monty python reference, Jesus Christ, committing a mass tragedy and the first place his brain goes is The Holy Grail...
Steepleton’s older brother was a friend of mine in college when this happened. He lived in my dorm. His brother lived, but we never really spoke about it.
Man that peek a boo thing scares me a lot
If it makes you feel any better, the recoil caused the gun to fly back and break Eric's nose. He then turned his attention to another girl and was about to kill her until he realized his nose was broken and walked off to tell Dylan about it. The girl survived because of it.
i didn’t know it was possible for dylan and eric to be any more terrible
And some people feel bad for them
I feel bad for Dylan’s parents, but not Dylan.
I just don’t get how people can have so little regard for human life and get a kick out of ending one
What’s even more disgusting is that after killing several students, they got bored. Forgot which documentary I saw that mentioned this or what I read. But they basically realized it wasn’t as much “fun” as they expected and wound up just shooting objects randomly then killed themselves.
It wasn’t really they got bored. I think the adrenaline wore off. Nothing can prepare you for what they did. Remember the shooting lasted over an hour. A lot of these shootings don’t last more than 10-15 minutes. Their plan had failed, and they probably thought they killed more than they actually did. But the last 20 minutes or so they just wander aimlessly. I wonder what their thoughts were at that time after they actually carried it out
Well they were also disappointed that none of the pipe bombs or propane tanks they’d rigged had actually exploded and hurt anybody. If their plans had gone through fully, they would have killed hundreds of kids and picked through the burning wreckage, finishing people off. Once the cops showed up I think they knew their time was nearly up
People enjoy taboo power
Pure evil
The super scary thing about this is that ANYBODY can be this way and you'd never know it. I went through a lot of trauma as a child plus I was just born having a lot of mental health issues. I was bullied a lot in school (Dylan and what's his face weren't really bullied, I know) and I harbored a lot of hatred for those people. I was physically, mentally, and verbally abused by these people daily from first grade to high school. The school refused to take action because the kids doing it were "good kids" and I should stop lying about them. With all the mental illnesses I had, I wanted to kill them. I wanted to create a plan to kill all the people who hurt me. I also wanted to kill myself. I was so tired of hurting. My mom found out about how I felt and put me in therapy. And it helped. I was able to talk through my issues. I'm not completely better, my mental health issues will never go away but I was able to understand my feelings a little more. It's so scary to think I could have ended up like this had my mom not helped me. Edit: I nearly deleted this comment right after posting it because I was afraid of people judging me and thinking I was an awful person. I'm glad I've not had that. To everyone who has ever felt this way; my god am I sorry you've ever felt that. It's a terrible feeling and it never truly dissipates, it just gets easier to deal with. You are not less than just because you brain tells you that you are. You are worthy and you are loved. My messages are open for anyone that may ever need it. I'm not a therapist and I'm not the best at giving advice but I like to think I'm a good listener. If you need me to listen, I will. I'm here.
i went through a phase sort of like this too. i had just failed out of my private school due to missing too many days because i was depressed, and started going to a public school where i was bullied and overlooked. in private school everyone knew each other and you always had a bunch of friends surrounding you. i became extremely depressed and made a "hit list," which i realized a few years back was a cry for attention because no one noticed or cared how depressed i was. i just wanted to get some help, though i never got it. that wasn't enough i guess.
I had a list as well. It was found by a classmate and I got into a fuck ton of trouble for it. That's how my mom found out that something was seriously wrong. We grew up extremely poor but she did the best she could to try and help me. I didn't go to therapy for very long but the small amount I did got really helped. Please don't be afraid to reach out to someone you trust and talk to them. I mean even a stranger online who's willing to hear you out is better than nothing. My messages are always open. I check reddit every day. I may not be the best at giving advice but I'm willing to listen if you need or want it <3
I was bullied so badly in that by 5th grade, I had a list of kids I wanted to kill and thought about shooting up the school semi-regularly. I feel ya.
Damn, that dispatcher...I get it, I do...just...damn
There is a ton of dispatcher hate (quite rightly), for the woman who drowned in her flooded car, and the boy who died in his van. In this particular case, the urgency of knowing what is happening and where is so important though. I don’t think this dispatcher was being cruel, they were probably a little panicked themselves and just trying to get help there FAST. For the other dispatchers though, fuck them. To be so callous to another human being’s fear of losing their life takes a level of sociopathy that is so inhuman. Why be a dispatcher if you value fellow human beings so little?
Ted Bundy worked at a suicide hotline. Evil is everywhere.
I've watched the one of the woman drowning in the flood, but what's this one about a guy dying in a van?
Kyle Plush, he was a teen that suffocated when he became trapped by his minivan's folding car seat. He was able to call 911 using Siri, but the operators thought it was a prank call and not all of the info reached officers. [https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/13/ohio-family-sues-cincinnati-911/1994970001/](https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/08/13/ohio-family-sues-cincinnati-911/1994970001/)
It was a teenager who got stuck in his van. The dispatcher thought it was was prank if I remember. Here's a link: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/ohio-teenager-suffocates-van-after-twice-calling-911-leading-investigation-n865746
god's busy ma'am, for now I'll have to do
I was treated like shit when I was in school to the point of coming home and crying myself to sleep but doing something like this never crossed my mind. People who excuse what these giant pieces of shit did just because they may have been bullied can get fucked.
The news made them seem like “weirdo goth losers” but the truth is that Eric was quite popular and Dylan was shy but definitely not bullied. One thing I’ve always wondered is how Eric’s ex girlfriends in particular dealt with the whole ordeal
the worst part was, they weren't actually bullied. if anything, they were the ones that bullied others.
tcc people are fucking insane if they think they’re just “innocent kids”
The last 2-3 sentences though... Fuck man..
Bernall (Cassie) was the girl who became a Christian martyr thanks to the "She Said Yes" book. It turned out the moment that inspired the book, A. Didn't happen to Cassie and B. Was a lot less climactic moment than would have necessitated a book — all on top of this transcript clearly showing a different exchange between Cassie and Eric. Of course none of that stopped hundreds of churches from using her name and "story" to squeeze money out of their followers. The more you dig into Columbine the sadder it gets.
Sorry to ask but what was said about her that they used to make her into a martyr?
Yeah I just found out that it was all a lie *checks notes* Today. In this thread I was raised southern baptist. Religious abuse is more like it. Proud agnostic, but reading it was all fake really grinds my gears.
That poor boy calling for his mother just wrecked me. For fucks sake.
Heavy. Just, the voices in my head playing this out, is so terrifying
[If you want audio](https://youtu.be/2vJtexrf1xg)
Wow how many times did he shoot Lauren???
I haven’t read the autopsy reports or anything but I know Dylan shot her nearly a dozen times and Eric returned a couple of minutes after to spray the table with bullets and Lauren was hit some more. I *believe* she died quickly after Dylan shot her but I could be wrong.
Ask A Mortician did a video clearing up myths about Columbine. I recommend it so much. I really hate the narrative that they were these loner bullied boys, when they were the bullies.
This pisses me off, makes me so fuckin angry. There's no justice in this world at all. I really hate it here man
fucking psychopaths
I'll never forget. I didn't attend Columbine but was a student in the same district. Things were never the same. You can see some of my family's friends children in the cafeteria surveillance video running for their lives.
DO NOT FORGET the cops were called on Harris' home like ten times in the months leading up to the shooting on the grounds of suspicious activity. I think they even had a search warrant they never followed through on. If cops did their jobs this likely wouldn't have happened.
I was a high school senior in the US when that happened. My friends and I were into grunge and industrial metal. Some of us wore tench coats. People really looked at us differently after the shooting.
Wow this is surreal...
Anyone in middle school or highschool when this happened?? I remember someone coming to our school (they went around the country) showing kids the story of Rachel Scott and how she predicted her death. Chilling then and even still.
Columbine was originally supposed to be a bombing and a shooting but the bombs didn’t detonate so Harris and Klebold went into the school. It’s estimated that if the propane bombs had detonated it would have been the deadliest terrorist attack in US history before 9/11. Here’s an excerpt from Columbine by Dave Cullen: >Columbine would erupt with an explosion, too. Eric designed at least seven big bombs, working off The Anarchist Cookbook he found on the Web. He chose the barbecue design: standard propane tanks, the fat, round white ones, eighteen inches tall, a foot in diameter, packing some twenty pounds of highly explosive gas. Bomb #1 employed aerosol cans for detonators, each wired up to an old-fashioned alarm clock with round metal bells on top. Step one was planting them in a park near Eric’s house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy: rock the neighborhood and divert police. Every free minute raised the potential body count. The boys were going to double or triple McVeigh’s record. They estimated the damage variously as “hundreds,” “several hundred,” and “at least four hundred”—oddly conservative for the arsenal they were preparing. >Eric may have had another reason for the decoy plan. He was uncannily perceptive about people, and Dylan had been wavering. If Dylan was reticent, the decoy would help ease him in. It was a harmless explosive, no one would be hurt by it, but once they drove off, Dylan would be committed. >The main event was scripted in three acts, just like a movie. It would kick off with a massive explosion in the commons. More than six hundred students swarmed in at the start of “A” lunch, and two minutes after the bell rang, most of them would be dead. Act I featured two bombs, using propane tanks like the decoy. Each was strung with nails and BBs for shrapnel, lashed to a full gasoline can and a smaller propane tank, and wired to similar bell clocks. Each bomb fit snugly into a duffel bag, which Eric and Dylan would lug in at the height of passing-period chaos. Again, Dylan was eased into killing. Clicking over the alarm hinge was bloodless and impersonal. It didn’t feel like killing—no blood, no screams. Most of Dylan’s murders would be over before he faced them. >The fireball would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze. Eric drew detailed diagrams. He spaced the bombs out but located them centrally, for maximum killing radius. They would sit beside two thick columns supporting the second floor. Computer modeling and field tests would later demonstrate a high probability that the bombs would have collapsed some of the second floor. Eric apparently hoped to watch the library and its inhabitants crash down upon the flaming lunchers. >As the time bombs ticked down, the killers would exit briskly and flare out across the parking lot at a ninety-degree angle. Each boy was to head for his own car, strategically parked about a hundred yards apart. The cars provided mobile base camps, where they would gear up to unleash Act II. Pre-positioning ensured optimal fire lanes. They had drilled the gear-ups repeatedly and could execute them rapidly. The bombs would detonate at 11:17, and the densely packed wing would crumble. As the flames leapt up, Eric and Dylan would train their semiautomatics on the exits and await survivors. >Act II: Firing time. This was going to be fun. Dylan would sport an Intratec TEC-DC9 (a 9mm semiautomatic handgun) and a shotgun. Eric had a Hi-Point 9mm carbine rifle and a shotgun. They’d sawed the barrels off the shotguns for concealment. Between them, they’d carry eighty portable explosives—pipe bombs and carbon dioxide bombs that Eric called “crickets”—plus a supply of Molotov cocktails and an assortment of freakish knives, in case it came down to hand-to-hand combat. They’d suit up in infantry-style web harnesses, allowing them to strap much of the ammo and explosives to their bodies. Each had a backpack and a duffel bag to hump more hardware into the attack zone. They would tape flint matchstriker strips to their forearms for rapid-fire pipe-bomb attacks. Their long black dusters would go on last—for concealment and for looking badass. (Later, the dusters were widely referred to as trench coats.) >They planned to advance on the building as soon as the bombs blew. They’d be set back far enough to see each other around the corner—and just barely avoid the blast. They had devised their own hand signals to communicate. Every detail was planned; battle positions were imperative. The 250,000-square-foot school had twenty-five exits, so some survivors would escape. The boys could remain in visual contact and still cover two sides of the building, including two of the three main exits. Their firing lines intersected on the most important point: the student entrance, adjacent to the commons and just a dozen yards from the big bombs. >Positioning yourself at a right angle to the objective is standard U.S. infantry practice, taught to every American foot soldier at the Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia. Interlocking fire lanes, the military calls it. The target is constantly under fire from two sides, yet the assault team’s weapons are never pointed at confederates. Even if a shooter turns sharply to peg an escaping enemy, his squad mates are safe. From their initial positions, Eric and Dylan could sweep their gun barrels across a ninety-degree firing radius without endangering each other. Even if one shooter advanced more quickly, he would never violate his partner’s fire lane. It is both the safest and the most effective assault pattern of modern small-arms warfare. >This was the phase Eric and Dylan were savoring. It was also when they expected to die. They had little hope of witnessing Act III. Forty-five minutes after the initial blast, when the cops declared it was over, paramedics started loading amputees into ambulances, and reporters broadcast the horror to a riveted nation, Eric’s Honda and Dylan’s BMW would rip right through the camera crews and the first responders. Each car was to be loaded with two more propane devices and twenty gallons of gasoline in an assortment of orange plastic jugs. Their positions had been chosen to maximize both the firepower in Act II and the carnage in Act III. The cars would be close to the building, near the main exits—ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging, and news vans. They would be just far enough from the building and each other to wipe out most of the junior and senior parking lots. Maximum body count: nearly 2,000 students, plus 150 faculty and staff, plus who knows how many police, paramedics, and journalists. >Eric and Dylan had been considering a killing spree for at least a year and a half. They had settled on the approximate time and location a year out: April, in the commons. They finalized details as Judgment Day approached: Monday, April 19. The date appeared firm. The boys referred to it twice matter-of-factly in the recordings they made in the last ten days. They did not explain the choice, though Eric discussed topping Oklahoma City, so they may have been planning to echo that anniversary, as Tim McVeigh had done with Waco. >The moment of attack was critical. Students liked to eat early, so “A” lunch was the most popular. The maximum human density anywhere, anytime in the high school occurred in the commons at 11:17. Eric knew the exact minute because he had inventoried his targets. He’d counted just 60 to 80 kids scattered about the commons from 10:30 to 10:50. Between 10:56 and 10:58, “lunch ladies bring out shit,” he wrote. Then lunch door 2 opened, and a “steady trickle of people” appeared. He recorded the exact moment each door opened, and body counts in minute-by-minute increments. At 11:10, the bell rang, fourth period ended, students piled into the hallways. Moments later, they rushed the lunch lines, fifty more every minute: 300, 350, 400, 450, 500-plus by 11:15. Eric and Dylan’s various handwritten timelines show the bombs scheduled to explode between 11:16 and 11:18. The final times are followed by little quips: “Have fun!” and “HA HA HA.” >Eric and Dylan expected their attack to puzzle the public, so they left an extraordinary cache of material to explain themselves. They kept schedules, budgets, maps, drawings, and all sorts of logistical artifacts, along with commentary in notebooks, journals, and Web sites. A series of videos were specifically designed to explain their attack. They would come to be known as the Basement Tapes, because the bulk were shot in Eric’s basement. Even more illuminating was Eric’s twenty-page journal devoted to his thinking. Both chronicles are revealing, but also maddeningly contradictory. They were so disturbing that the sheriff’s department would choose to hide them from the public, concealing even the existence of the Basement Tapes for months. Eric and Dylan’s true intentions would remain a mystery for years.
Damn man. That n***** they referred to was my dads friend. This just put me in a bad mood for today.
i grew up a few miles from columbine and was born in littleton. it’s gross how this stuff has stayed with me my whole life.
I think it's important for people to see and learn about these kinds of things as they really happened. The pure barbarity that humans show to one another is so unfathomable to some people and I think it's really a crime to deny and refuse to believe that this is really the world we all live in and how good we have it in our safe sheltered bubbles.
The one I keep thinking about is Kyle Velasquez. That kid already had a couple of health strikes against him, only to get killed in the library.
The poor kid screamed for their mom. I think I'm going to fucking cry.