TheTrenchcoat Chronicles

Tag: Eric Harris

  • Columbine depositions to remain sealed

    Court upholds decision to keep Columbine depositions sealed:

    The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a decision that depositions given by the parents of the Columbine shooters remain sealed in the National Archives for 20 years.

    Previously U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock ordered the depositions sealed after families of the victims among others had requested that the depositions be made public. The depositions were given by Wayne and Kathy Harris, the parents of Eric Harris, and Thomas and Susan Klebold, the parents of Dylan Klebold. They’re from a civil lawsuit that the family of Columbine victim Daniel Rohrbough filed against the killers’ parents.

    In the new ruling attorneys argued that since the records were made by a court that they qualify under the Federal Records Act. The court disagreed stating the depositions should have been returned to the people who made them. If that had happened I’m sure they’d be nothing but ash by now.

    Judge Babcock originally ruled that way stating that if the depositions were to be made public that would inspire a whole new generation of school shooters. I disagree. In case you haven’t noticed school shooters and would be shooters don’t need some depositions to find inspiration. You would need to erase the memories of Columbine and every school shooting since from everyone on the planet before they would no longer find inspiration. The private journals of both cowardly scumbag killers have been released and that didn’t cause an outbreak of shootings.

    Conversely, I think it would benefit greatly if the depositions were made public. We could learn from the Harrises and Klebolds mistakes in their parenting techniques on how to tell if our children are on a dangerous path like those of the killers.

    Now there will just have to be a 20-year wait for that knowledge. I still say if any school shooting deaths happen between now and then that the blood will be on the hands of Judge Babcock.

  • Columbine principal still doesn’t know why they did it

    Principal still doesn’t know why killers did it:

    This article starts off talking about the three yahoos who were arrested for threatening the life of Barack Obama. Then somehow it morphs into talking about Columbine. I guess because both involved guns and happened in the state of Colorado. However, it contains a great interview with Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis.

    I’d like to address two great quotes made by Principal DeAngelis who is often the target of mutant harassment.

    “Less than a year after the Columbine shootings,” Mr. DeAngelis was saying, “I was on a panel somewhere and I was asked, ‘What could have prevented Klebold and Harris from committing those murders on that particular day?’ I didn’t really have a good answer. The guns that they used were bought legally. An 18-year-old student went to a gun show in Colorado Springs and bought these weapons and gave them to Klebold and Harris.

    I think Mr. DeAngelis is being too kind. The obvious answer is that parental involvement would have prevented Columbine. I’ve said it hundreds of times, if Harris and Klebold’s parents had just gone snooping through their own home they would have discovered what was going on. Whether or not they would have done anything about it is a different story. So maybe Mr. DeAngelis is right and Columbine was inevitable.

    He also addresses the two cowardly scumbags’ motives and their mutant followers…

    “Where I really struggle is, what caused so much hate in those kids’ hearts that they would kill their classmates and their teachers and they would kill themselves? You’re talking about kamikazes, but the kamikazes had a deep national and religious reason to do what they did. With Klebold and Harris, there was only this aspect that they had to do it so that their names would live forever. And you can go on these Web sites that are dedicated to them, and it’s like they do live forever.”

    What caused so much hate is that they are one of those from their generation who believe that the world is fair and that the world owes them everything. It’s not and it doesn’t. And as far as their mutant followers are concerned they buy into every myth about their cowardly heroes, mainly the myth that they were bullied.

    However, I think that they live forever due to their cowardly and violent legacy. Their mutant followers are just a mere footnote.

  • Prevent Future Massacres By Curbing Bullying

    Scoop: Prevent Future Massacres By Curbing Bullying.

    When Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold went on the killing spree at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., that claimed a score of lives, McCullough pointed out, they shouted “this is revenge.” He judged the revenge likely was for bullying.

    No, they weren’t bullied.

    For being such a prominent psychologist you think Mr. McCullough would have done some research.

  • Columbine and computer addiction Part II

    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.

  • Did computer addiction cause Columbine?

    Did computer addiction cause Columbine?

    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.

  • Beware of anti-bullying laws

    Beware of anti-bullying laws

    VIEWPOINT ~~ Beware of anti-bullying laws:

    This is a great editorial on why anti-bullying laws are ineffective. Here’s my favorite part of the article.

    Government regulation of offensive speech opens the door to any complaint of being offended, by anyone, for any reason. The Columbine killers have often been described as victims yet they themselves routinely rejected and harassed all classmates who did not share their antisocial beliefs and behavior. Then they ironically protested of being bullied when their offensive behavior did not endear them to their peers. Had speech laws been in effect at Columbine, students like Klebold and Harris would have made numerous frivolous bullying complaints just to punish everyone they didn’t like.

    So, wouldn’t that be anti-bullying laws being used to bully?

  • The penultimate insult

    The penultimate insult

    Attack plan on school server:

    One of the Columbine killers apparently downloaded plans for a spree of violence into a school computer the day before the shootings, possibly a final act of defiance that might have derailed the massacre if someone had checked the files.

    At least 18 pages found in Eric Harris’ school computer files are dated April 19, 1999, about 8:30 a.m. Among the clearest indicators of the rampage that he and Dylan Klebold carried out the next day is a sort of crude list that mentions, “prepare explosives” and “shells.” Another sheet carries the notations “cannon fuse” and “napalm tests.” Drawings of battle gear and what appear to be a swastika are on other pages.

    “Had myself or anyone in a position of authority seen these, there would have been a definite confrontation, immediately,” Richard Long, former head of technology for Columbine High School, said Friday. “We would have certainly talked to those individuals.”

    But such a scenario was unlikely. The school did not routinely check student computer files partly because it would take so long, Long said. Such files were accessed by authorities only in response to suspicious activity.

    Long was also familiar with Harris and Klebold. They were his student assistants for their first two and a half years at Columbine before they got busted for hacking into the computer system and stealing locker combinations.

    Long saw the two boys change from “bright-eyed” freshmen to teens with darker attitudes. He believes that downloading the material the day before the shootings – if that is indeed what happened – may have been one way of thumbing their noses at authority.

    “They carried propane bottles into the school,” he added. “How much more bold can you be?”

    The last sign to go unheeded.

  • Of God and the Psychopath

    Of God and the Psychopath

    The Columbine Diaries: Old Wounds … New Passions:

    I’m usually not one to force my religious beliefs on others, but I don’t hide the fact that I’m a Christian. And by Christian, I mean one who tries to follow in the teachings of Christ and believes that Christ is the son of God. Not, “bible-beating zealot who thinks you’re going to hell because you don’t believe in the same things I do”. Now having said that, let me share this article with you about a youth pastor from Littleton, Colorado…

    I was a youth pastor in Littleton with a youth group made up primarily of Columbine students. In fact, for a time the Bernall family attended our church and Cassie attended some of our meetings. I had made an appointment to meet a student on the Columbine campus for lunch on April 20th, but that morning I woke up feeling very sick and decided to stay home. At 11:30 I got a phone call from one of my interns who was sobbing and urging me to turn on the television.

    At first the images struck me as a fire at the school, but within seconds the cold hard reality of what was really going on sunk in to my conscious mind.

    The unthinkable was happening. If you were old enough to remember that day, you know what I’m talking about. A quiet suburban neighborhood was transformed into a war zone, except instead of soldiers being shot, there were innocent teens going through hell on earth.

    Over the next several months I met with each of my students who were there to let them pour out their anger and grief, and somehow try to answer the unanswerable question of why God would allow this to happen.

    Now seven years later the old wounds are reopened with the release of over 900 pages of documents from the killers. Inside you’ll find what you probably expected…angst, hate, vitriolic diatribes, and even a glimpse into the thinking patterns of a psychopath and a depressive.

    I’ll be honest, I wasn’t excited about the release of these diaries, I don’t enjoy reliving the feelings of that day. Yet as I have processed things the past few days, I was given an insight that hadn’t occurred to me before.

    Perhaps sometimes when old wounds are opened, new passion is born. And that is the case with me today. I work with a ministry that is trying to reach every teen in America with the life changing message of the gospel, and we believe with all our hearts that the message of Christ is the answer to violence in the schools.

    One of saddest entries in these diaries is from one of the killers who hoped to find peace in the afterlife. The tragedy of that is that the peace he sought was available to him in this life, and perhaps if he would have found it, 15 families would still have their loved ones. Our hope and prayer is that God will take the calamity and heartbreak of Columbine and use it to reach thousands, even millions of anger ridden students who may simply be looking for peace.

    Say what you will about religion, but maybe if Harris and Klebold had a little more “Thou shalt not kill” in their lives, we wouldn’t even be discussing this.

  • Media reaction to the records

    Media reaction to the records

    Some media reactions to the Columbine records…

    NPR:

    NPR reporter Jeff Brady has read through much of the material. He says it is sometimes difficult to tell who wrote what, but he says he believes that this line came from the journal of gunman Eric Harris:

    “I am full of hate and I love it. I hate people and they better f—— fear me if they know what’s good for them.”

    Jeff says the writings depict Harris as an emotional person whose “thought processes are really deep but really disturbing at the same time.”

    Washington Post:

    The newly released papers suggest that the two seniors dropped several clues about their plans in advance. But they were not enough to prompt intervention.

    I disagree that they weren’t enough to prompt investigation. There was too much evidence for not one person to notice.

    Scripps:

    If we didn’t all know that in this case, it ended in bloody mayhem, this could be any parent agonizing over an adolescent’s serious misbehavior and trying to make certain the young person faces up to the consequences and learns better. Which Harris appeared to do, while he was in the program and conforming to its requirements, but secretly he was boiling with rage. He lied to everyone, he was proud of the lies and he fooled the people who were doing what they could to rescue him.

    How can any parent read these lines and not wonder, “Could that be my child?”

    Kotaku:

    The video game references that I’ve read in excerpts (not having had time to consume the entire document yet) paint Harris more as an obsessive fanboy, period, than particularly driven by the game itself.

    Time Magazine:

    The parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have often been portrayed as disengaged from the lives of their sons and unaware of the dark paths lying ahead. But 936 pages of evidence taken from the killers’ homes and cars were released by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office on Thursday, and a notebook kept by Eric’s father, Wayne, details a parent’s involvement in his child’s downward spiral.

    But was still clueless to everything.

    Denver Post:

    In one passage, he foreshadows the blame game that would follow the shootings. “I know I could get shot by a cop after only killing a single person, but hey … I chose to kill that one person so get over it! It’s MY fault! Not my parents, not my brothers, not my friends, not my favorite bands, not computer games, not the media, it is MINE!”

    Harris was right. It was his fault. But plenty of others failed along the way.

  • My thoughts on the records.

    My thoughts on the records.

    Here are my quick thoughts on the journals and other documents that were released today.

    Wayne Harris definitely had the “not my kid” syndrome. Eric Harris broke Brooks Brown’s windshield, and yet, Wayne Harris claims that his family is being victimized and that Brooks Brown is a manipulative con man.

    Eric Harris was definitely a racist and a homophobe, even though on his website he claimed he hated racism. Which would also make him a liar. I would almost say a pathological one.

    Harris wrote reports about Charles Manson and The Third Reich that were almost favorable towards their subjects. Granted, hindsight is 20/20, but if I were a teacher, that definitely would have set off some red flags.

    With all the references to killing and drawing of weapons and the like Harris made in his school work for at least a year, you would think that some adult in his life, be it teacher or parent, would have noticed his unhealthy obsession.

    They got their guns in November 1998. That’s 6 months before the massacre. That should have given the parents ample opportunity to discover the guns. If my kids had records for theft and the like, they would have been under the proverbial microscope.

    These documents should put the final nail in the coffin of the bullying myth. Harris talked about how he was excluded, not bullied. He was jealous of the popular kids. Like I’ve said before, the impression I got is that he wanted to be a prep or jock or whatever and was jealous that they didn’t accept him. They didn’t just snap. This was planned at least a year in advance. It was all about hate and egomania on the part of Harris and his Svengali-like hold over Klebold.

    The most preventable tragedy in history.