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Actually, they weren't members of the Trench Coat Mafia but that myth was perpetuated by the media. There's a lot of misinformation about this crime. To the OP, read the book Columbine by Dave Cullen. The author spent ten years researching this crime and dispelled many of the myths about it (the fact that Harris and Klebold were bullied, for one.) Debunking the myths of Columbine, 10 years later - CNN.com
The media also said Klebold and Harris were neo-Nazis because Columbine happened on April 20, 1999, but I don't believe anyone has ever verified that. And yes, the Trench Coat Mafia thing was untrue too. So was that story of one of them shooting a girl who said she believed in God.
I remember it as clear as day. I was a senior in high school at the time, same as these two. Let's just say I never looked at the "alternative" kids (goths, skateboarders, whatever you want to call them. We called them alternative kids.) the same way after the Columbine incident. There was this one particular kid in one of my classes who always sat in the back by himself and hardly ever talked, painted his fingernails black, always dressed in black and tended to get picked on at times. I remember always looking over my shoulder at him, being paranoid he was going to go postal or something. I look back now and I don't like the fact that I stereotyped a group of kids like that based upon the actions of 2 nutjobs, but hey, I was a teenager.
One of them was very popular, good-looking and -- judging by his criminal history and psych evals -- sociopathic as anything. The other was not as cool or popular, chronically depressed, borderline suicidal and at some point he latched onto his buddy's ideas about going out with a bang -- literally. They both had their own reasons for wanting to make a big statement and go down in a hail of bullets, along with taking down as many people as they could when they died.
There's a pretty good discussion of what happened and why in Dave Cullen's Columbine.
Actually, they weren't members of the Trench Coat Mafia but that myth was perpetuated by the media. There's a lot of misinformation about this crime. To the OP, read the book Columbine by Dave Cullen. The author spent ten years researching this crime and dispelled many of the myths about it (the fact that Harris and Klebold were bullied, for one.) Debunking the myths of Columbine, 10 years later - CNN.com
Great article. One thing it doesn't mention that I would like to bring up is WHO specifically was targeted for blame. One of those figures was Marilyn Manson, and he wrote an article two months after Columbine, an article that, in many regards, still holds up today.
The media also said Klebold and Harris were neo-Nazis because Columbine happened on April 20, 1999, but I don't believe anyone has ever verified that. And yes, the Trench Coat Mafia thing was untrue too. So was that story of one of them shooting a girl who said she believed in God.
Yes, there were many rumors spread about the killers' motive, none of which were ever verified. There was another rumor about how one of the victims was one of just six black students in the school, and was shot and killed simply for being black.
Two students arrived at school and began shooting people. They appeared to target athletes. They also killed a teacher while he was evacuating some students. They also planted some homemade bombs which failed to detonate. They ended up in the Library where they shot several students and then took their own lives.
They were members of a "Trench Coat" club, the existence of which was denied by the school's Principal until shown a yearbook picture of the group. He also tried to deny that Klebold and Harris were students at the school.
The incident changed the way that police departments respond to those situations, instead of awaiting the arrival of the SWAT unit officers are now trained to do immediate building entry and clearance.
somewhat of a common misconception is that they were targeting the stereotypical jocks of the school. of the victims only 4 were athletes and only two of those were football players (in fact one of those two had actually not played that school year due to supposed racial issues).
I was a senior in high school at the time in Ohio and remember the days events like it was yesterday. Came home from school early before baseball practice, turned on CNN and at the time did not grasp the severity of what was going on (this was like 2 pm that day). It was not til later on that I grasped the impact.
side note - I was even more shaken up later on as the night before I had had a dream where a guy was chasing me down one of the hallways at my school shooting at me.
Columbine to me is a red letter date / event in that america's schools went on lock down after this both literally and figuratively.
As I recall, there was a whole lot of talk about FPS video games with this because one or both of them had designed levels on "Doom" with the same layout as the school.
I recall a case, sometime around 1995.. A kid in high school for part of the senior prank parked a Ryder truck outside the entrance.
No bomb threat phoned in.. Nothing.. Just rented the truck, parked it at the front entrance of the school and walked away from it.. Kid was an honor student at the school..
Feds wound up charging him as an adult and he spend about a year in federal prison for it.
Just did something dumb, and when the facts came out that he just did something dumb.. I always felt that making him a convicted felon and serving a year in prison was not serving justice in any way.. Could have put his butt out doing 5k hours of service and been alot better all around..
The worst I had in high school, and.. I attended high school at the largest public building in the state of Virginia.. A quasi-friend of mine set the SADD float on fire.. INSIDE the school. Now.. A year after I graduated.. There was a massive LSD bust at the school..
Great article. One thing it doesn't mention that I would like to bring up is WHO specifically was targeted for blame. One of those figures was Marilyn Manson, and he wrote an article two months after Columbine, an article that, in many regards, still holds up today.
All though I don't listen to his music, I have read this and several other things he has written, very well thought out and articulate. If he gets out of music, he could always get into writing opinion pieces.
I was in my last semester of college (journalism school), just weeks from graduation. We even had a Columbine High School graduate in the student newsroom.I remember it coming across the A.P. wire something to the effect of "Denver television stations report a shooting at a high school in Littleton, Colo." Really, by the time the media arrived, the shooting had already ended. What we watched on television were students trying to get out, including one covered in blood who climbed out a broken second-story window. It could have been worse, because the shooters also placed explosives in the school, but none detonated with full power.
In the moral panic that followed, people tried to latch on to anything for which to place blame. In reality, the two kids were depressed, on medication, one more sociopathic than the other, and they rationalized this would secure a place in history. It worked.
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