Eric began to shoot randomly. Dylan shot at a display case and then at the nearest table, where he hit and injured Mark Kintgen. He shot again, injuring Lisa Kreutz and Valeen Schnurr. Then he killed Lauren Townsend.
Eric bent to taunt two girls under a table, then fired at Nicole Nowlen and John Tomlin. When John tried to move away, Dylan killed him. Eric then shot Kelly Fleming, killing her instantly. He hit Lauren Townsend and Lisa Kreutz again, and wounded Jeanna Park.
The boys went to reload their weapons at a table. Eric noticed John Savage, a boy Dylan knew. John asked Dylan what they were doing, and he said, “Oh, just killing people.” John asked if they were going to kill him. Dylan told him to leave. John fled.
Eric shot and killed Daniel Mauser. Both Dylan and Eric then fired under another table, injuring Jennifer Doyle and Austin Eubanks, and fatally wounding Corey DePooter. The two of them found and taunted injured Evan Todd.
Eric had broken his nose with his own shotgun’s recoil and was bleeding heavily. The boys made their way to the library entrance. Dylan shot into the library break room, hitting a TV. He slammed a chair down on top of the library counter where Patti Nielson was hidden.
Then the two boys left the library. After they were gone, thirty uninjured survivors and ten injured survivors evacuated the area. Patrick Ireland and Lisa Kreutz remained in the building; Patrick was unconscious, and Lisa could not move. Patti Nielson, another teacher, and the two library staff members locked themselves into rooms adjoining the library.
For the next thirty-two minutes, Eric and Dylan wandered through the school, firing their guns at random and setting off pipe bombs. Kate Battan pointed out to us how many people, probably between two and three hundred, were still left in the building. Many teachers and other staff had stayed in the building to warn and protect the remaining children. During the presentation, Kate reiterated how remarkable it was no one else had been killed. The boys went back to the cafeteria and tried to detonate the propane bombs they’d left there earlier. They looked through classroom windows, making eye contact with kids hidden there, but did not go into the rooms or shoot. They did not cause any further injury at all. They went back to the cafeteria and into the school kitchen. Then they returned to the library, where they again shot through the windows at police officers outside before killing themselves. They left behind the biggest bombs of all in their cars, set to go off around noon. These did not detonate.
Patrick Ireland regained consciousness and crawled to the library windows, where he fell into the arms of two SWAT team members standing on the roof of an armored truck. Lisa Kreutz, who sustained multiple gunshot wounds, was evacuated later in the afternoon, along with the four people hidden in the break room.
One teacher, William “Dave” Sanders, was dead, along with twelve students: Cassie Bernall, Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Isaiah Shoels, Rachel Scott, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend, and Kyle Velasquez. Twenty-four other students had been injured, three hurt as they tried to escape the school.
I went completely numb as detailed information about the massacre rained down on us. It was like a documentary so violent and depraved that I would never, ever, under ordinary circumstances, have watched it.
A single fact had emerged, without any ambiguity at all: Dylan had done this thing.
The event had been planned a long time in advance, and Dylan had participated in the planning. The attack had been carefully timed and strategically constructed. Dylan had deliberately killed and injured people. He had derided them as they begged for their lives. He had used racist, hateful language. He had not shown mercy, regret, or conscience. He had shot a teacher. He had killed children in cold blood.
I was, and will always be, haunted by how those lives ended.
For the first time in months, my eyes were dry. Not only could I not grasp what I had just heard, but I couldn’t feel anything at all. Every belief I had created in order to survive had been shredded. The notepad filled with our questions sat unopened on my lap.
As the details began to sink in, so did one of the most shocking and terrifying revelations of that morning: the destruction intended was of a far greater scope. The attack was really a failed attempt to blow up the entire school. The large propane bombs the boys had placed in the cafeteria had been timed to go off when the room was full of students. Because of a miscalculation, they did not explode. Kate said that if they had, a wall of fire would have enveloped the crowded cafeteria, trapping hundreds of students. The ceiling might have collapsed, bringing the whole second floor crashing down into the cafeteria.
The horror of what happened, then, paled in comparison with what the boys had planned. I could barely breathe, thinking about it. As catastrophic as the tragedy was, it could have been much, much worse. Indeed, that was what my son had intended.
Gathering himself, Tom pressed for more information. The greatest mystery still had not been explained: What was Dylan’s state of mind? Why was he there? What thoughts and feelings would cause him to take part in this atrocity?
We believed Dylan had left absolutely no trace behind to explain his actions. The investigators had already told us he’d erased the hard drive on his computer, and they had taken from his room everything that might have given us insight into Dylan’s frame of mind. We had searched and searched for a note. I’d asked his friends to look when they visited; they’d opened CD cases and rifled through books. None of us had found anything.
So Tom and I were still clinging to one last shred of hope. It was obvious that Dylan had fully participated in the massacre, but had he done so willingly? Was it not possible he might have been brainwashed, drugged, or otherwise coerced? Kate shook her head and told us the police were sure Dylan had participated willingly. When we asked how she could be sure, she told us the boys had left behind a videotape.
This was the video evidence we’d been warned about. Although the boys had taken video production classes together, it had never occurred to me that Dylan and Eric might have created a videotape of their own. The news that they had done so sent a jolt of terror and dread through my gut. Still, there was no way I could possibly have been ready for what I saw when Kate inserted the tape and hit Play.
• • •
Once again, my life broke apart. If I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have believed it. My worst fears have come to pass. I keep thinking about his crazy rage and his intent to die. He lied to us and to his friends. He was so far removed from feeling. I keep trying to understand how that sweet, beloved child got there. I’m so furious with God for doing this to my son.
—Journal entry, October 1999
The “Basement Tapes” were videos of Dylan and Eric talking to the camera in various places and times in the weeks before the shootings. Many of them were shot in Eric’s basement bedroom, which explains the name they were given by the media.
We’d had no idea these videos existed, but as soon as the tape started to play, I realized I was going to have to let go of every one of my assumptions about my son’s life, and about the actions leading up to his death and the atrocities he committed.
My heart nearly broke when I first saw Dylan and heard his voice. He looked and sounded just as I remembered him, the boy I had been missing so much. Within mere seconds, however, the words he was saying came into focus, and my brain reeled. I stood up from my chair, wondering if I’d have time to get to the restroom before being sick to my stomach.
He and Eric were preposterous, posturing, giving a performance for each other and their invisible audience. I had never seen that expression of sneering superiority on Dylan’s face. My mouth gaped open when I heard the language they were using—abominable, hate-filled, racist, derogatory words, words never spoken or heard in our home.
The dynamic between the boys was laid bare, and it was a revelation. Adrenaline coursed through me, making it hard to concentrate, though the information on the tapes felt so important I didn�
�t even want to blink.
On the first recording, we saw Eric act as emcee, introducing topics he wants memorialized on the tape, while Dylan adds contemptuous support. At first glance, Eric seems like the calm, sane one, while Dylan rages in the background. It is obvious that Dylan’s rage is a crucial component in the dynamic. Over and over, Eric urges him to “feel the rage,” and Dylan obliges by pulling out anything he can to lock himself into a state of anger and hold himself there. The lengths he goes to are ridiculous, as when he recalls slights from his preschool days.
The psychologists who reviewed the tapes would come to a similar conclusion: that Eric relied on Dylan’s slow-burning, depressive anger to fuel and feed his sadism, while Dylan used Eric’s destructive impulses to jolt him out of his passivity. It would take years for me to filter what I heard on the tape and to understand the role of anger in Dylan’s self-destruction.
Through the appalling bravado, and the shocking, hateful words spilling out of his mouth, I could see Dylan’s familiar adolescent self-consciousness, the same awkward embarrassment he displayed whenever Tom brought out the video camera to make a home movie. I wanted to both leap through the screen and beat him with my fists while screaming at him—and, in the same moment, to reach back in time, to hold him and tell him that he was deeply loved, and not alone.
I no longer remember the order in which the segments played. In one, the two boys sit in two chairs facing the camera, eating and drinking alcohol from a bottle. They list the people they want to hurt, and describe what they would like to do to them. (As Kate pointed out, none of the people mentioned on the tapes were injured in the attack.) In another segment, Dylan holds the camera while Eric plays dress-up and shows off weapons. They talk about keeping the plan a secret. Eric shows how carefully he hid the weapons so his parents would not find them.
Kate inserted a side comment here for our benefit. This portion of the video was a real eye-opener, she said, even for those who worked in law enforcement. Investigators had failed to discover one of Eric’s hiding places in their initial search of the Harrises’ home; they’d had to go back after seeing the tape. She added that people on the team went home and searched their own children’s rooms as they had never searched before.
Dylan talks about sneaking his newly purchased shotgun into our house. He had sawed off the end, making it smaller and easier to conceal—not to mention illegal to own. He describes his tension as he held the gun inside his coat and slipped up to his room without being suspected. We’ve never learned whether the gun was stored inside our home or elsewhere. It might have been kept inside his box-shaped headboard; the inside could not be accessed unless the bed was taken apart. Watching, I felt hopeless. Even if we had continued to search his room, as we did regularly for six months after his arrest in junior year, we probably would not have looked there.
At one point on the tape, Dylan makes a derogatory comment about my extended family, and another about his older brother, Byron. We had been grieving for six full months, and nobody had borne the brunt of the world’s venom more bravely than Byron had. Our older son had stepped up and shouldered the terrible responsibilities that had landed on him with astonishing grace and courage. It was ironic. Dylan had so little to complain or be angry about that he was reduced to grasping at straws like his relationship with his brother or rarely seen relatives in order to stoke the rage Eric needed him to sustain.
In another snippet of tape, Dylan complains to Eric that I am making him participate in a Passover seder. On the weekend they made the video, I had decided to make a traditional Passover dinner and invite a neighbor to join us, and I asked both of my sons for their work schedules so I could plan accordingly. Dylan responded in a way I found immature and self-centered. He didn’t want to participate. The youngest person at the table has to read part of the service, and he found it embarrassing.
I asked him to reconsider. “I know this holiday means nothing to you, but it means something to me. We’ll have a good dinner. Do it for me?” When he said he would, I thanked him and told him I appreciated it. Then there he was on the video, complaining to Eric about his obligation to attend.
Eric, who is playing with a gun while Dylan talks, becomes very still and silent when he hears the word “Passover.” He hadn’t known my family was Jewish. When Dylan realizes what he has let slip, he starts backpedaling. He seems afraid of Eric’s reaction, and tells him I’m not really Jewish—just a quarter, or an eighth. I couldn’t tell if he was worried about being judged, or being shot.
Eric finally breaks the tension by offering a word of consolation to Dylan. Watching it, I thought, You stupid idiots! All this talk about hating everyone and everything, and you don’t even know what you’re talking about. It’s all something you’ve invented in your minds to sustain your anger. The heartbreaking thing was that, for a moment there, it seemed like Dylan had almost realized it.
At one point on the tapes, Eric suggests they each say something about their parents. At that, Dylan looks down at his fingernails and says, almost inaudibly, “My parents have been good to me. I don’t want to browse there.” Neither one of them acknowledges a connection between the actions they are planning and the pain they will cause the people who love them. In another recording, they go so far as to announce that their parents and friends hold no responsibility for what is about to happen, as if tidying this minor detail will make everything fine for their families when it’s all over.
The last segment was the shortest one. It was also the most difficult for me. In it, the boys pause to say a few words of farewell before going over to the school to carry out their plan. Supplies are piled around them, as if they are heading out on an expedition. Eric tells his family how they should distribute his possessions.
Dylan does not utter an angry word or speak of hatred or vengeance. He makes no mention of the death and destruction to come. There is none of the braggadocio of the previous tapes. He does not cry, either; his affect is flat, resigned. Whatever else he intends to do, he is going to the school to end his own life. He looks away from the camera, as if speaking only to himself. Then he says softly, “Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much….”
Watching this, I had to bite my lip to stop myself from screaming, Stop! Stop! Don’t go. Don’t leave me! Don’t do this. Don’t hurt those people. Give me a chance to help you! Come back. But wherever he was, Dylan couldn’t hear me anymore.
• • •
Tufekci: “I can see no benefit whatsoever to releasing those tapes, only the possibility for great harm.”
—Notes from a conversation with sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, February 2015
Years later, Tom and I would fight to make sure the so-called Basement Tapes were not released to the public.
We encountered a lot of resistance. People believed we were hiding something, or protecting Dylan’s reputation. (As I drily commented to Tom the first time we heard that particular accusation, “I think that horse has already left the barn.”) I was even challenged by some survivors of suicide loss: “Don’t you think making the tapes public would help people to understand why this happened?”
The answer was No, I don’t. I still don’t—and my reasons are closely interwoven with many of the broader, global issues surrounding suicide and violence at the heart of this book: specifically, the real fear that another disturbed child would use the tapes as a blueprint or a model for their own school shooting.
Dylan and Eric had already been, in certain quarters, heralded as champions for a cause. Tom and I had received chilling letters from alienated kids expressing admiration for Dylan and what he’d done. Adults who had been bullied as children wrote to tell us they could relate to the boys and their actions. Girls flooded us with love letters. Young men left messages on our answering machine calling Dylan a god, a hero. An acquaintance working at a youth correctional facility told me some of the imprisoned boys cheered as they watched television coverage of the destructi
on at the school. A video project Dylan and Eric had made, leaked to the media, had become a rallying cry for bullied kids.
These communications made me sadder and sicker than the most castigating hate mail. If the tapes were made public, we would never be able to control who could see them. (Even writing about the timeline of the events at the school and describing the tapes, as I have done in this chapter, makes me nervous, and I would not have done so without getting an explicit go-ahead from people who study these issues.) We could not, in good conscience, release the tapes. Enough harm had been done.
This wasn’t mere superstition on our part. As the years went on, our fears that Dylan and Eric’s actions would provide inspiration to other disturbed kids were confirmed over and over again. Columbine-related materials were found among Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho’s possessions, and in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza’s belongings. An investigation by ABC News published in 2014 found “at least 17 attacks and another 36 alleged plots or serious threats against schools since the assault on Columbine High School that can be tied to the 1999 massacre.”
We know, without a doubt, that exposure to suicide or suicidal behavior can influence other vulnerable people to make an attempt. Over fifty studies worldwide have powerfully connected news coverage of suicides to an increased incidence of similar, or copycat, suicides. This effect is called “suicide contagion.” It’s also known as the Werther effect, a term coined by sociologist David Phillips in the 1970s. The name itself highlights how long we’ve known about the phenomenon: in the eighteenth century, a host of young men imitated the protagonist of Goethe’s novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, dying by suicide dressed as he did, in yellow pants and a blue jacket.
The media’s acknowledgment of the Werther effect has unquestionably saved lives. Perhaps you’ve noticed that suicide deaths, especially those of teenagers, are rarely reported in the news. That’s not accidental; it’s because media outlets are following guidelines endorsed by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institute of Mental Health, both of which suggest that limiting and dampening coverage may save lives.
Mother's Reckoning : Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy (9781101902769) Page 16
