Columbine (29 page)

The emphasis on larger explosives continued; some of the timing devices began to work. Eric discovered that he could light the tip of a cigarette and let it burn down toward the fuse for an added delay. The boys survived a few close calls, including near detection by a police officer in a squad car. On the sixth outing, they brought along Dylan's sawed-off BB gun and fired randomly into houses. "We probly didnt do any damage," Eric wrote, "but we arent sure." That same night, they stole some Rent-a-Fence signs from a construction site. Eric didn't make much of the swipe, but this appears to be the moment where they crossed the hazy boundary between petty vandalism and petty theft.

____

The missions had been satisfying for a couple of months. But sophomore year was over. Eric was hungry for more. In the summer of 1997, Zack Heckler went to Pennsylvania for two weeks. When he got back, Eric and Dylan had built a pipe bomb. Dylan was involved, but it was Eric's baby.

Eric would not begin his journal until the spring of 1998. But he was active with his Web site the previous year. By the summer of 1997, he had posted his hate lists:

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!?

--Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!!

YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!?

--R rated movies on CABLE! My DOG can do a better damn editing job than those tards!!!...

YOU KNOW WHAT I REALLY HATE!!!?

--THE "W.B." network!!!! OH JESUS MARY MOTHER OF GOD ALMIGHTY I HATE THAT CHANNEL WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL.

The list went on for pages, fifty-odd entries about hating "fitness fuckheads," phony martial arts experts, and people who mispronounced "acrosT" or "eXspreso." At first, his targets seem preposterously random, but Fuselier divined the underlying theme: stupid, witless inferiors. It wasn't just the WB network Eric hated heart and soul, it was all the morons watching it.

Eric's briefer love lists backed Fuselier's analysis. Eric loved "Making fun of stupid people doing stupid things!" His greatest love was "Natural SELECTION!!!!!!!!!!! God damn it's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms. I wish the government would just take off every warning label. So then all the dumbasses would either severely hurt themselves or DIE!"

What the boy was really expressing was contempt.

____

Eric's ideas began to fuse. He loved explosions, actively hated inferiors, and passively hoped for human extinction. He built his first bombs.

He started small: nothing that would kill anyone, just enough to injure people or their property. He went searching for instructions and found them readily available on the Web. During the summer of 1997, he built several explosives and began setting them off. Then he bragged about it on his Web site.

"If you havent made a CO2 bomb today, I suggest you do so," he wrote. "Me and VoDkA detonated one yesterday and it was like a fucking dynomite stick. Just watch out for shrapnel."

That was an exaggeration. They had taken small carbon dioxide cartridges--which kids often called whip-its--and punctured them, then shoved gun powder inside. Eric called them crickets, and they were closer to a large firecracker than a bomb. Eric had also built pipe bombs, which were more powerful. He was still searching for a spot safe for detonation.

Eric realized his Web audience would doubt him. He backed his claims with specifications and an ingredient list. He wanted to make sure his readers understood that he was serious.

____

Someone sensed the danger. On August 7, 1997, a "concerned citizen"--apparently Randy Brown--read Eric's Web site and called the sheriff's department. On that day--one year, eight months, and thirteen days before Columbine--the killers' names permanently entered the law enforcement system.

Deputy Mark Burgess printed out Eric's pages. He read through them and wrote up a report. "This Web page refers to 'missions' where possible criminal mischiefs have occurred," he wrote. Curiously, Burgess made no mention of the pipe bombs, which seem far more serious.

Burgess sent his report to a superior, Investigator John Hicks, with eight Web site pages attached. They were filed.

____

Eric and Zack and Dylan were working age now. They all got jobs at Blackjack together. There were flour fights and water chases all the time. Eric plunged right in; Dylan watched from the sidelines. They made dry-ice eruptions out back in the parking lot, watched how high they could get a construction cone to sail. It was great. Then Zack met a girl. Bastard.

Dylan took it hard. Devon was her name, and she totally ripped the team apart. Zack was with her all the time now, and that squeezed his buddies out of the picture. Eric and Dylan were nobodies. The missions were suddenly over. Eric didn't seem to mind too much, but Dylan was a mess.

It wasn't good for him now, he confided to "Existences." "My best friend ever: the friend who shared, experimented, laughed, took chances with, & appreciated me, more than any friend ever did.... Ever since Devon (who i wouldn't mind killing) has loved him--that's the only place hes been!" They had done everything together: drinking, cigars, sabotaging houses. Since seventh grade, he had felt so lonely. Zack had changed all that. "hello I finally found someone who was like me! who appreciated me & shared very common interests. I finally felt happiness (sometimes)." But Zack had found a girlfriend and moved on. "i feel so lonely, w/o a friend."

Who he wouldn't mind killing?
Dylan tossed out the comment in passing, and presumably it was just a figure of speech. Presumably. But he had verbalized the idea--a big step. And Dylan did not yet consider Eric his best friend. Dylan belabored the point that no one besides Zack had ever understood him; no one else appreciated him. That would include Eric.

____

Dylan was lonelier than ever. Conveniently, he stumbled into a solution: "My 1st love???"

"OH My God," his next entry began. "I am almost sure I am in love w, Harriet. hehehe. such a strange name, like mine." He loved everything about her, from her good body to her almost perfect face, her charm, her wit and cunning and
not
being popular. He just hoped she liked him as much as he
loved
her.

That was the wrinkle. Dylan had not actually spoken to Harriet. But he couldn't let that stop him. He thought of her every second of every day. "If soulmates exist," he wrote, "then I think I've found mine. I hope she likes Techno."

That was the other hurdle. He had not yet established whether she liked techno.

____

Dylan felt happiness sometimes. He got excited about his driver's license. But he couldn't stay happy. Shortly after falling for Harriet, he returned to his journal to complain. Such a desolate, lonely, unsalvageable life. "NOT FAIR!!!" He wanted to die. Zack and Devon looked at him like he was a stranger, but Harriet had played the meanest trick: Dylan had fallen for "fake love."

"She in reality doesn't give a good fuck about me," he said. She didn't even know him, he admitted. He had no happiness, no ambitions, no friends, and "no LOVE!!!"

Dylan wanted a gun. He had spoken to a friend about getting one. He planned to turn the weapon on himself. That was a big step in the long suicide process: from writing about it to action.

At this point, nearly two years before Columbine, Dylan saw the gun as his last resort. He continued his spiritual quest "i stopped the pornography," he said. "I try not to pick on people." But God seemed intent on punishing him. "A dark time, infinite sadness," he wrote. "I want to find love."

Love
was the most common word in Dylan's journal. Eric was filling his Web site with hate.

____

When Fuselier examined a crime, one of his primary tactics was to begin ruling out motives. Dylan seemed like a classic depressive, but Fuselier had to be sure. With both Columbine killers, an obvious question loomed: Were they insane? Most mass murderers act deliberately--they just want to hurt people--but some truly can't help themselves. Fuselier would describe those killers as psychotic. A broad term,
psychotic
covers a spectrum of severe mental illnesses, including paranoia and schizophrenia. Psychotics can grow deeply disoriented and delusional, hearing voices and hallucinating. In severe cases, they lose all contact with reality. They sometimes act out of imaginary yet terrifying fear for their own safety, or according to instructions from imaginary beings. Fuselier saw no indication of any of that here.

Another possibility was psychopathy. In popular usage, any crazy killer is a called a psychopath, but in psychiatry, the term denotes a specific mental condition. Psychopaths appear charming and likable, but it's an act. They are coldhearted manipulators who will do anything for their own gain. The vast majority are nonviolent: they want your money, not your life. But the ones who turn sadistic can be monstrous. If murder amuses them, they will kill again and again. Ted Bundy, Gary Gilmore, and Jeffrey Dahmer were all psychopaths. Typically, murderous psychopaths are serial killers, but occasionally one will go on a spree. The Columbine massacre could have been the work of a psychopath, but Dylan showed none of the signs.

Fuselier continued ruling out profiles. None of the usual theories fit. Everything about Dylan screamed depressive--an extreme case, self-medicating with alcohol. The problem was how that had led to murder. Dylan's journal read like that of a boy on the road to suicide, not homicide.

Fuselier had seen murder arise from depression, but it rarely looked like this. There is usually a continuum of depressive reactions, ranging from lethargy to mass murder. Dylan seemed muddled on the languorous side. Depressives are inherently angry, though they rarely appear that way. They are angry at themselves. "Anger turned inward equals depression," Fuselier explained. Depression leads to murder when the anger is severe enough and then turns outward. Depressive outbursts tend to erupt after a debilitating loss: getting fired, dumped by a girlfriend, even a bad grade, if the depressive sees that as significant. "Most of us get angry, kick a trash can, drink a beer or two, and get over it," Fuselier explained. For 99.9 percent of the population, that's the end of it. But for a few, the anger festers.

Some depressives withdraw--from friends, family, schoolmates. Most of them get help or just get over it. A few spiral downward toward suicide. But for a tiny percentage, their own death is not enough. They perform a "vengeful suicide"--a common example is the angry husband who shoots himself in front of his wedding photo. He deliberately splatters his remains on the symbol of the marriage. The offense is directed straight at his conception of the guilty party. A tiny number of angry depressives decide to make the tormentor pay. Typically that's a wife, girlfriend, boss, or parent--someone close enough to matter. It's a rare depressive who resorts to murder, but when one does, it nearly always ends with a single person.

A few lash out in a wider circle: the wife and her friend who bad-mouthed him; the boss and some coworkers. The targets are specific. But the rarest of these angry depressives take the reasoning one step further:
everyone
was mean to them;
everyone
had a role in their misfortune. They want to lash out randomly and show us all, hurt us back and make sure we feel it. This is the gunman who opens fire on a random crowd.

Fuselier had seen each of those types several times over the course of his career. Dylan didn't look like a candidate. Murder or even suicide takes willpower as well as anger. Dylan fantasized about suicide for years without making an attempt. He had never spoken to the girls he dreamed of. Dylan Klebold was not a man of action. He was conscripted by a boy who was.

34. Picture-Perfect Marsupials

P
atrick Ireland was trying to learn to talk again. So frustrating. The first couple of days he couldn't manage much of anything. He struggled to spit out a single sentence, word by word, and when he had finished, it often made no sense. In his best moments, Patrick spoke like the victim of a severe stroke: slow, labored attempts would produce a single guttural syllable, then a sudden burst of sound. He could form the words in his head, but few made the passage to his mouth. Where did all the rest go? Any chance distraction could hijack the thought as it made its way to his vocal chords. Random phrases often slipped in to replace the ideas. His mom would ask how he was feeling, and he'd answer in Spanish, or recite the capitals of South American countries. His brain was never aware of the mix-up. He was sure he had just described his mood or asked for a straw, and was confused by her confusion.

Patrick's brain tended to spit out whatever was in short-term memory. He had been studying the capitals just before the shooting, and recently returned from Spain. Often the memories were more immediate. Hospital intercom announcements were constantly echoing out of Patrick's mouth, in response to unrelated questions. He had no idea he had even heard the voices in the background. Other times it was complete nonsense. "Picture-perfect marsupials" kept popping out. No one knows where that came from.