TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

I've posted about Dr. Jerald Block before. He's a psychiatrist from the Oregon Health & Science University who theorizes that the cowardly scumbags Harris and Klebold went on their rampage because they were both denied access to their computers in the days prior to their attack. While I don't agree 100% with Dr. Block's theory I do think that is does have a lot of merit and may have been the breaking point.

However I'm not here to talk about Dr. Block's work. I'm here to talk about what in my opinion is lazy journalism.

In this article from UPI they editorialize while paraphrasing Dr. Block...

Prior to the shootings, both teens spent a significant amount of time playing first-person-shooter computer games. Block suggests that these virtual worlds became essential for the teens and that Harris and Klebold may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives -- in effect mixing the two.

That seems to imply that Dr. Block thinks that games like Doom were the main cause behind Columbine.

However in this article by WebMD, who Dr. Block actually spoke to, he says no such thing.

Before the attack, shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold spent "more and more time with their computers, to the point that they may have been unable to distinguish the boundaries between their virtual lives and their real lives," says Oregon Health & Science University psychiatrist Jerald Block, MD.

"Then, as they got into trouble with school authorities, limits were put on their use of the computer. This made them react with homicidal rage and suicidal depression," he tells WebMD.

Does that sound like Dr. Block is blaming video games? Not to me. Personally it doesn't even sound like he's blaming computers or the internet.

He is basically giving a warning to parents to not let their kids immerse themselves wholly into any of these things. Yet the UPI article never mentions that at all.

There's nothing wrong with editorializing, that's what I'm doing right now. Editorializing in what's supposed to be an informative article is just bad journalism.

(Cross posted at CrimeNe.ws)

Killer posted Web links to Columbine videos:
I'm officially going to declare cowardly scumbag church shooter Matthew Murray a mutant. It seems he took a page out of the Cho Seung-Hui handbook and posted links to pro-Columbine videos from YouTube between shootings.

Eleven messages posted between Sunday's attacks by "nghtmrchld26" spoke of abuse at the hands of Christians, of leaving this nightmare behind to a better place, and quoted liberally from the hate-filled screeds of Columbine High School killer Eric Harris.

Two of the posts also included links to videos featuring Harris and fellow Columbine killer Dylan Klebold that are posted on the Web site YouTube.com.

One five-minute video features still images of Harris and Klebold as well as actors who played them in a movie about the April 20, 1999, attack on the high school. As the pictures flick through in slide- show fashion, the song Anarchy from the band KMFDM plays.

A poster for KMFDM hung on the wall in Harris' bedroom the day of the Columbine killings.

Another message has a link to a video called Hitmen for Hire - a project Harris and Klebold did for a marketing class. In the video, they pose as hit men who get even with students who bully others.

He also posted a link to a video about Ricky Rodriguez who was allegedly abused in a cult before stabbing and killing a big wig in the church before killing himself.

Apparently Murray thought he was abused by his strict religious upbringing. Do you know how he was abused? He wasn't allowed to listen to rock music or play video games or stuff like that.

On another website, a poster named nghtmrchld26, believed by police to be Murray, said he rebelled against an upbringing that forbade him from buying rock music, video games and popular DVDs.

He writes that he felt oppressed by the restrictions. The hypocrisy of religious leaders, he wrote, prompted him to rebel, although he feared "returning back to what is at least 'familiar,' into a system I at least know how to behave in.' "

And here's some more mutant activity from the same article...

DyingChild_65 did not feel loved. He wrote that he was angered by being rejected by various groups over the years.

"I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things," one post said. "Never inviting me to all your fun parties, never inviting me to hang out."

As I've posted before he's not even an original mutant. Those are the exact words of his cowardly scumbag hero Eric Harris.

DyingChild_65 ends his rant by saying: "Like Cho, Eric Harris, Ricky Rodriguez and others, I'm going out to make a stand for the weak and the defenseless this is for all those young people still caught in the Nightmare of Christianity for all those people who've been abused and mistreated and taken advantage of by this evil sick religion Christian America this is YOUR Columbine."

If he hated the Christian life so much why was he still living with his folks at 24? I'll tell you why. Because just like his heroes Cho and Harris he's a loser. Matthew Murray, you're not famous, you're not great, you're not a martyr. You're just another name to add to the pantheon of cowards that preceded you. The only thing you'll be remembered for is making the flames of hell burn a little more yellow.

As always it was your pleasure.

Web posting replicates Columbine shooter's manifesto:
If you've been following the church shootings in Colorado you know that the gunman, Matthew Murray, posted violent anti-Christian diatribes on a website that's dedicated to people who've left the evangelical life. He also copied almost word for word one of Eric Harris' rants and posted it.

I'm coming for EVERYONE soon and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth and I WILL shoot to kill. ....God, I can't wait till I can kill you people. Feel no remorse, no sense of shame, I don't care if I live or die in the shoot-out. All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you ... as I can especially Christians who are to blame for most of the problems in the world.

Well all you people out there can just kiss my (expletive removed) and die. From now on I don't give a @#%$ about what all you (expletive removed) have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely, but for those of you who do happen to know me and know that I respect you, may peace be with you and don't be in my line of fire, for the rest of you, you all better @#%$ hide in your houses because I'm coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the @#%$ teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL @#%$ KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy, crazy is just a word, to me it has no meaning, everyone is different, but most of you @#%$ heads out there in society, going to your everyday @#%$ jobs and doing your everyday routine (expletive removed) things, I say @#%$ you and die, if you got a problem with my thoughts, come to me and I'll kill you, because........God (expletive removed), DEAD PEOPLE DON'T ARGUE! My belief is that if I say something, it goes. I am the law. If you don't like it, you die. If I don't like you or I don't like what you want me to do, then you die. If I do something incorrect, oh @#%$ well, you die. Dead people can't do many things, like argue, whine, @#%$, complain, name, rat out, criticize, or even @#%$ talk. So that's the only way to solve arguments with all you (expletive removed) out there, I just kill. God I can't wait till I can kill you people, I'll just go to some downtown area in some big city and blow up and shoot everything I can.

So far that's his only mutant tendency, well that and taking the coward's way out. However I wouldn't be surprised if he was a full blown mutant.

The cyber school for killers:
According to the article not only were Dillon Cossey and Pekka-Eric Auvinen YouTube buddies but it seems they belonged to the same pro-Columbine groups on MySpace.

Police do not believe this to have been a coincidence. The two youths are thought to have made contact over two MySpace groups, “RIP Eric and Dylan” — a reference to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 12 schoolmates at Columbine — and “Natural Selection”.

And people wonder why I think that sites like MySpace and YouTube need to shut down what basically amounts to hate groups.

But like I've said before MySpace and YouTube wouldn't have to if parents just paid better attention to their kids.

Speaking of parents...

Auvinen’s parents are regarded as somewhat bohemian in the small dormitory township of Jokela. His father plays part time in a jazz band and composes his own music; Auvinen’s mother is an activist for the Greens. They are regarded as stalwart members of the community and neighbours describe them as a “normal family”.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that one.

Study links computer denial to Columbine:
This is one of the more sensible explanations for Columbine I've heard in a long time.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on a killing rage at Columbine High School in 1999 because they were abruptly denied access to their computers, an Oregon psychiatrist says in a published study.

The two young men relied on the virtual world of computer games to express their rage and to spend time, and cutting them off in 1998 sent them into crisis, said Jerald Block, a researcher and psychiatrist in Portland.

"Very soon thereafter - a couple of days - they started to plan the actual attack," Block said.

Block published his research in the current issue of the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry, a peer- reviewed journal.

The paper is likely to generate debate, said Cheryl Olson, co-director of the Center for Mental Health and Media at the Massachusetts General Hospital.

Block sifted through thousands of pages of documents released by Columbine investigators and said he believes both Harris' and Klebold's parents banned them from their computers after the two were caught breaking into an electrician's van in 1998.

Harris and Klebold had each previously been temporarily kept off computers at school or at home, and after each incident, Block said, the boys' writings or behavior became more violent.

Block said he worries about people immersing themselves so deeply and also about cutting them off cold-turkey.

"How do you pull them out, without triggering homicidal or suicidal behavior?" he asked.

Personally I don't think that was the only reason but it very may well have been a major one. However those two cowardly scumbags were so selfish and spoiled that Dr. Block may be on to something.

Gunman's Parents Don't Object to Seal:
Here's a shocker. Eric Harris' parents, Wayne and Kathy Harris, have no problem with their depositions being sent to the National Archives for 25 years.

Depending on the final details, Wayne and Katherine Harris do not oppose storing the depositions under seal "in order to bring closure to this matter," their attorney, Michael Montgomery, said Wednesday in a court filing.

Closure for who? Not the victims' families obviously. The Harrises don't deserve closure. They let their psychopath son develop his deadly plan for over a year. As far as I'm concerned they're just as responsible for the deaths of the 13 victims at Columbine as their cowardly son is.

The depositions should be unsealed immediately.

Judge: Seal Columbine papers for 25 years:
U.S. District Court judge Lewis Babcock has suggested that the depositions given by the parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold should be sent to the National Archives and be kept sealed for 25 years.

In 2002, the parents of Columbine killer Eric Harris gave more than 16 hours of depositions in connection with a lawsuit by Columbine survivor Mark Taylor against Solvay Pharmaceuticals, maker of Luvox.

Taylor claimed that Luvox, an anti-depressant, made Harris homicidal and suicidal. However, Taylor dropped the lawsuit in February 2003 after Solvay agreed to contribute $10,000 to the American Cancer Society.

The other depositions of Harris' parents and the parents of Dylan Klebold took place over a four-day period in August 2003 in connection with a lawsuit filed by the families of five slain Columbine students. But, like the Solvay lawsuit depositions, the depositions were sealed when those families reached a settlement with the Harris and Klebold families.

The depositions have since been sitting in a highly secured evidence room at the federal courthouse awaiting a decision by Babcock about what should be done with them.

After 25 years, the National Archives would decide if the depositions are of significant social value and could release them to the public. Otherwise, they'd be destroyed, according to evidence presented at today's hearing.

Babcock said he wouldn't make a final decision until all sides had an opportunity to file written responses with him. He gave the parties a two-week deadline to file motions.

I understand that depositions in privately settled lawsuits are supposed to remain sealed but this is a special case. I'll be honest with you. I can think of no legal reason why the depositions should be made public. I only want to see the released for my own personal curiosity. In my opinion it's already been proven that the Harrises dropped the parenting ball. I just want to see how many opportunities they had to prevent the massacre but didn't.

Lawyer: Threat charges ‘overreaction’:
Remember Darren Thompson? He's the self proclaimed "teenybopper killa" who made threatening remarks on a fan site for teen celebrity Jesse McCartney. Well, in true criminal defense attorney fashion his attorney is claiming that the charges against his client are an ‘overreaction’…

Mr. Thompson appeared in court yesterday for a bail hearing with his lawyer, Anthony M. Salerno. Mr. Salerno said he appealed the bail amount and wants it reduced, because the case is an “overreaction and over-prosecution.”

“After my initial review of the preliminary evidence, I would categorize this as a situation where it’s more about attention versus intention,” Mr. Salerno said. “He (Mr. Thompson) certainly got attention for it, but not the way he was seeking.”

Mr. Thompson did not post threats to anyone in particular, Mr. Salerno said, and his Web postings were likely a call for attention. Mr. Thompson was not charged with threatening to commit a crime, which is a charge police can file if someone makes a verbal threat to kill or harm another person.

“I assert that there is a strong difference and a bright line between intentions and someone looking for attention. There is absolutely no evidence that he harbored any specific intentions,” Mr. Salerno said. “I would not consider him dangerous to the point where he should be held on excessive bail.”

Mr. Thompson has no prior record. Mr. Salerno would not allow his client to be subjected to a mental health evaluation, which was discussed at the initial hearing Friday. “I wouldn’t let them do that because at this time, no mental health defense has been raised,” Mr. Salerno said.

Let me refresh your memory on some Mr. Thompson's threats…

He even gives out his Whitehall Circle address and warns that he’ll be “waiting” with his SKS assault rifle, the same type of gun police confiscated from his home.

“This anger I have towards the types of people I hate is only gonna get more intense as I get older,” he writes. “So yeah, I think I will hurt and kill at least one disgusting preppy teenybopper before the decade is over. I can only hope. Watch, I’ll be the guy at the top of the clock tower.”

Just because a name wasn't used in the threat doesn't mean that Thompson isn't a danger to himself and others.

And let's not forget the illegal weapons in his possession…

Police searching Mr. Thompson’s bedroom closet Thursday recovered an SKS 7.62 x 39 mm rifle, 22 rounds of ammunition, and a nail-studded baseball bat Mr. Thompson called the “ugly stick,” according to court records.

Mr. Thompson works at the Beechwood Hotel, according to court records. During the police interview, Mr. Thompson said he purchased the assault rifle for $200 from a friend at work, and the ammunition for it while on a hunting trip in Vermont in late October.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention his mutant tendencies…

Police also recovered a diary from his bedroom in which he wrote of his admiration for Eric Harris, one of the two high school students involved in the Columbine High School massacre in Jefferson County, Colo., on April 20, 1999.

When state and Shrewsbury police interviewed Mr. Thompson, he allegedly told state Trooper Matthew D. Murphy that he was picked on in elementary school and high school.

Overreaction? Hardly. As a matter of fact I believe the judge under reacted by setting Thompson's bail at $25,000.

Web hater had preps in sights: Threats led to gun bust:
This is a bizarre one. A 23-year-old banquet chef by the name of Darrren Thompson was arrested in Shrewsbury, Mass. on Thursday for making threatening comments on line and having stockpiled weapons like an AK-47. It''s the targets of his threats that are unusual.

In shockingly graphic online postings, Thompson railed against “mind numbing” pop culture and teens who shop at preppy stores such as Abercrombie & Fitch. He bragged he would one day be “on the news” for a killing spree.

“I’d love to kidnap a teenybopper and cut her up real good before blowing her head off with a shotgun loaded with buckshot,” he wrote in a posting Monday. “That’s what they deserve.”

State police were tipped off to Thompson by someone who read his hatred-filled postings on a fan bulletin board for teen pop star Jesse McCartney.

Why am I writing about this story? This is why…

A Shrewsbury chef who dubbed himself the “teenybopper killa” and cited Columbine killer Eric Harris as an inspiration was nabbed with a stash of weapons after making online threats to snuff out “preppy” teens, authorities said.

Police said they also found a journal in Thompson’s bedroom that referenced Eric Harris, one of two teen outcasts who killed 12 students and a teacher before committing suicide at Colorado’s Columbine High School in 1999.

“Thompson told me that he respected Harris for what he did because Thompson himself was picked on in elementary school and high school,” state Trooper Matthew Murphy wrote in court papers.

This continues a disturbing trend of pathetic morally deficient losers who can't seem to let go of their high school years. Not unlike Kimveer Gill or Sebastian Bosse. You may say pathetic morally deficient loser is a little harsh. To you I say this…

Police served a search warrant Thursday night and arrested Thompson at the Shrewsbury home where he lives with his parents.

Some more of his ranting…

In a bio on the Internet Movie Database site, he writes of the teen celebs: “They all suck, and don’t deserve the fame they have. Anyone who supports preppy teenyboppers is a (expletive) moron with the intelligence of bird (expletive), and I wish I could meet you so I could smash you in the face and break your (expletive) arms.”

His most violent tirades are saved for teenage girls, some of whom he urges to come to his Shrewsbury home to “fight” him.

“And what the (expletive) does everybody have against a guy hitting a chick? What do girls expect? To be unharmed because of their gender? That’s a (expletive) rip off,” he writes.

He even gives out his Whitehall Circle address and warns that he’ll be “waiting” with his SKS assault rifle, the same type of gun police confiscated from his home.

“This anger I have towards the types of people I hate is only gonna get more intense as I get older,” he writes. “So yeah, I think I will hurt and kill at least one disgusting preppy teenybopper before the decade is over. I can only hope. Watch, I’ll be the guy at the top of the clock tower.”

And here are even more tirades of his from the Jesse McCartney fan site.

So he's been out of high school for at least 4 years. He's working as a banquet chef which is probably a lot better than a lot of his class is doing. And yet this mutant still rages on about "preps" and "teenyboppers". Once you get into the real world there are no more preps and other cliques. There's only other people that you have to cope with in daily life. People like Thompson are no better than the people who allegedly bullied him. Still stuck in a high school mentality. And what did all his hate and thoughts of violence get him? Probably a long stay in prison where he'll wish he was still being bullied in high school.

Thanks to an anonymous German reader we have a link to Sebastian Bosse's diary.

My German skills are basically non-existent but I do recognize at least one phrase. On the entry dated 26.09.2006, which is September 26th for us non-Europeans, he wrote the phrase ERIC HARRIS IST GOTT. It doesn't take a genius to know that says, "Eric Harris is god". In the same entry he also invokes the names of Dylan Klebold, Kip Kinkel, and Kimveer Gill.

On the following page assuming that's from the same date is what appears to be a hit list and possibly a list of names of people to spare. From November 6th on he writes exclusively in English. On November 17th he states that he is "not a fucking psycho". I beg to differ but I've already expounded on that.

On November 18th he laments over the fact that he never had a girlfriend. Neither did I until I was almost 20 but so what? Again, it's not a reason to shoot up a school. There is no reason to shoot up a school. Cowards like this are just trying to justify to themselves about their murderous intent. It's not the world's fault that you don't have a girlfriend. It's nothing to be ashamed about. And after I got into my mid to late 20's I had a lot of girlfriends. So trust me, you're not going to go your whole life without a girlfriend and there is no woman alive out there worth killing yourself or anybody else over. He also makes a point that he's not gay, not that there's anything wrong with that, he says. He stated that he liked the character Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil videogames. Almost like she's a real person, which leads me to believe that Bosse was detached from reality. He says that's why he named one of his guns Jill. He also says that he named his other gun after Homer Simpson's gun. I must have missed that episode.

Then he talks about how much he loves his family and how much he hates himself for hurting them like this. If he loved his family so much he wouldn't have done what he did. He committed one of the most selfish acts a person could commit. He then states that he hopes the other outcasts at his school will be treated better. I can almost guarantee they won't. Bullies and other criminals don't care about the repercussions of their actions so they're probably just going to come down even harder on the outcasts. Then he says he hopes some of the outcasts will be like him and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, heroes. Like I've said before none of them are heroes. People like Bosse, Harris and Klebold are now and have always been cowards. Unable to deal with their own issues they take the cowardly, murderous way out and make things worse for other outcasts. That's not a hero.

Report: German who attacked ex-school praised Columbine gunman
Well I was wrong. Earlier today I said I would be very surprised if the fact that German gunman, Sebastian Bosse, was a Harris and Klebold worshiping mutant would make it to the mainstream press…

BERLIN: A German teen who stormed his former school with guns and bombs had venerated as "God" one of the gunmen in the 1999 Columbine shooting in the U.S, according to excerpts from his diary published Wednesday.

"It is terrible how similar Eric (Harris) was to me. I am the further development" of Harris, Bosse said. "I have learned from his mistakes, the bombs."

On Friday, Bosse had written: "In three days, it will all be over! The people will lie dead on the school yard, the school will burn and my brains will be blown out!"

On the eve of the attack, he wrote that he was sad that what he was planning would distress his family, complained that he had never had a proper girlfriend — and hoped that other "outsiders" would "be like me: a Goddamn hero."

The article also states that the guns were purchased legally. The article also draws the comparisons between the fact that both Bosse and Harris liked to play "violent" videogames. I'm not going to make the argument about videogames don't cause people to kill because that's just common sense.

However I will comment on something else that's pretty much common sense. Bosse considered himself and Eric Harris heroes. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just like his so called hero Bosse is just another cowardly scumbag who couldn't face up to his own inadequacies. Luckily he failed to live up to his hero's "standards" by not killing anyone. He was a failure in life and a failure in death just like his heroes.

The flames of hell burn a little more yellow today with addition of one more cowardly soul.

Threat prompts school evacuation:
Yesterday around noon local time Horizon High School in Colorado was evacuated over a bomb threat. The threat was not deemed credible. Law enforcement really needs to start making examples out of all these kids calling in bomb threats.

Here is a great piece from GetReligion about Brian Rohrbough’s comments regarding the latest spate of school shootings. For those of you who don't know Brian Rohrbough lost his son Daniel in the Columbine massacre. I can partially see his point of view as Eric Harris was always talking about natural selection.

Suspected Kimveer Gill wannabe arrested:
18-year-old Renaud Emard from Quebec was arrested on Wednesday after exchanging threatening messages with undercover police…

A special cyber squad became interested in Emard in the days following the Dawson shooting. He allegedly posted messages on vampirefreaks.com applauding Kimveer Gill.

The teenager also posted various pictures of himself with different weapons, as did Kimveer Gill, and made derogatory comments about various different minorities.

When he was arrested at his parent's house, probably in the basement, a cache of 20 weapons was found.

The Return of the School Shooting:
This is an opinion piece from Blogger News Network about school shootings which also come to the most logical conclusion about them...

However, I think it's important to note that kids getting picked on doesn't explain the totality of the issue. Something had to make school shootings start in the first place in the mid-to-late '90s -- bullying has been going on for ages -- and analyses of Columbine showed the shooters did not concentrate on those who'd picked on them, opting instead for "Doom"-style random violence.

My preferred explanation -- one that ruffles feathers -- is parenting. Many of these kids had plenty of time alone in their houses (Harris and Klebold made pipe bombs), and in most cases I can recall, the parents could easily have afforded quitting one job or working fewer hours. It's also a parent's job to monitor his/her children's mental health issues, and keep guns away from the offspring if need be.

I think it's the only explanation that stands up to scrutiny, as it's one of the few explanations that changed markedly between my parents attending high school in the '70s (much bullying, lots of access to guns, no shootings) and now. Other factors can make it wax and wane, but as long as parents let a violent media raise their kids, the shootings won't disappear.

I'm glad to see that I'm not going crazy by having the same opinion.

Even campus killers have their groupies:
This is an intersting article about a reporter's first encounter with mutantdom.

As a matter of fact it's such a good article I can't pick what to quote. So I'll give you just a brief taste.

"You wanna know why there has only been three school shootings in Quebec? It's because the people here don't have the balls to do it, as much as they want to ... as much as they plan it all ... make `hit lists' and just wish they had the guts that Eric and Dylan had ... you know ... the real victims of Columbine! They are looked up to by many bullied high school students ... and many believe that the bullies got what they deserved on April 20th, 1999.

"Kimveer will be greatly missed by the people who actually understood him ... the people who don't have their heads up their asses."

Welcome to my world. I get e-mails like this all the time.

Hopefully this article will be read by parents and others to let them know that these kind of murderer worshipping people exist and one of them may be a family member. And if it is please get them the help they need.

As always it was your pleasure.

Murder Suspect Sent Video to Newspaper:
More on Alvaro Castillo's Columbine obsession and the failure for anyone to do anything about it...

Investigators say Castillo was obsessed with Columbine. During a search of the Castillo home on Lipps Lane in Hillsborough, deputies found a diary entitled "Mass Murders and School Shootings of the 20th and 21st Centuries," as well as directions to the homes of the Columbine school shooters.

Eyewitness News has learned that the Castillo family knew of this obsession, saying Alvaro Castillo identified with the deep depression of Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, but never anticipated it could lead to violence.

I apologize to the family for giving them grief at a time like this but what did they think this obsession could lead to?

This should serve as a warning to parents who have kids that look up to school shooters as heroes. It's not just a phase. It's an unnatural lifestyle that could get them or someone else killed.