THE INACCURATE REPORTING OF THE COLUMBINE SHOOTINGS

On April 20th 1999 two high school seniors, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, arrived at their high school in Littleton Colorado with the intention of causing as much devastation as they feasibly could. They entered the campus armed with months of preparation, years of resentment, a slew of various weapons to aid them in their goal of killing as many people as possible. Although their original plan failed; they did succeed in taking innocent lives, devastating the entire community of a small mountain town and irrevocably changing the country. The attack was intended to be the deadliest domestic bombing in American history surpassing the desolation of the Oklahoma City bombing, but turned into (what was at that time) the deadliest school shooting in American history. By the end of the gunfire the pair injured twenty-four people, took the lives of twelve students and one teacher. After the violence of Harris and Klebold, the American education system was changed forever, American popular culture was heavily criticized and the effects of bullying were fiercely debated. All of these actions were taken to help the country heal as well as comprehend the very shocking tragedy. Unfortunately all these myths seemed to do is create a giant witch hunt as to who or what was to blame and everyone appeared to have a different answer. Frantic for answers, everyone seemed to find them in several different places. Some people blamed the heavy metal music the two kids listened to, some blamed the violent video game culture they were apart of and some blamed the bullying that they endured at their school; but could something that unthinkable be that easy to explain? Could it really be as simple as they listened to Marilyn Manson and other heavy metal artists and the music made them do it? They played violent video games were they shot at everything and the games gave them the inkling to do it in real life? They went to school each day and were bullied then finally they simply could not take it anymore so they acted in revenge and that is why they did it? Could it be as simple as any one of these influential factors? The answer to all of these questions is no. No outside factors influenced them to the point where action (as well as innocent lives) was taken. What most people either did not know because it was not reported on the nightly news or failed to admit because it is not convenient is there were several warning signs that were visible for years before the massacre. Both of these young men showed signs of mental instability and an overall hatred for society as a whole. As time grew closer to the day of the shooting, their grasp of reality slipped further and further away from them as they fell deeper into anger as their disdain for people grew. So how did we in America believe these theories to begin with? And why were we so quick to believe these theories in the first place? The media’s coverage of the shooting influenced if not defined how we in society thought about this tragedy; unfortunately as time would tell they got a lot of things wrong. Most of America accepted the story of bullying, and that is what seemed to be everywhere. As news accounts came in they pushed that these quiet outsiders were sent over the edge into a place where most do not go. They reported false stories because they did not have all the information needed to fully tell the story of what happened that day. Most of the reports immediately following the shooting talked about these weird loner kids that were part of the Trench Coat Mafia and took revenge out on the entire school. When the news broke to the nation, we did not know much about the shooters motivation but we did know that they wore trench coats. This image of young white males in long black trench coats would be the image Americans would have of troubled youth for many years to come. In journalism, repeatedly telling one aspect of the story in order to keep the entire story interesting is referred to as frame-changing’, and that practice was used severely in the coverage of Columbine. Throughout most of the coverage the same adjectives were used to describe the shooters; this painted a very clear picture in the mind of Americans everywhere. However as time would tell this picture was not accurate. Since the tragedy occurred, there have been several new survivor accounts and previously unreleased facts that have surfaced that disproved many popular opinions about Columbine. With the help of survivor’s testimony and documents released by the Jefferson county police department, we today now have a new perception of Columbine. This paper will attempt to clarify some of the false stories that the media conveyed directly following the shooting, explain why they were created and show how societal views about the tragedy have changed over the sixteen years since the event occurred. In this paper Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s past will be explored in an attempt to disprove the bullying myth at Columbine and the Cassie Bernall story will be explored as an example of how the media falsely reported accounts from the shooting. With these methods, the media’s role in the creation of America’s perception of Columbine will be evident.

Before the Columbine shootings Littleton Colorado was a small quiet mountain town whose only claim to fame was being immortalized in the popular and controversial animated series South Park. On the surface it seemed no different than any of the other small mountain towns; in fact most of its residents would describe it as painfully ordinary that would all change with the actions of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. After what started out no differently than any other regular day in April, the tightknit community of Littleton Colorado (as well as the rest of America) would be changed forever. To completely tell the story of what happened that day and to better understand why it happened at all, one most go back and look at the two young men who did the unthinkable. Both Eric and Dylan on the surface seemed like what most would describe as regular teenage boys. They were intelligent students who made relatively good grades, they had a circle of loyal friends who they spent their free time with and held after school jobs at a local pizza shop. To many they appeared to be like all the other teenage boys with nothing special separating them from any other kids in that community. Although all of those things were true, however they both showed signs of being mentally disturbed. As time grew closer to that fateful day in April, the signs of danger a head became more and more clear. Eric Harris would become more and more psychopathic while Dylan Klebold would become more depressed and more susceptible to influence. For most of their childhood they were no outward signals, but as they grew up and went through high school the signs were blaring. Some friends described the change as almost night and day. In 1996 Eric Harris would begin to share with the world his hatred of society and his growing interest in weapons. He would do this by creating his own website for sharing gaming levels for the popular and very violent video game Doom. Later the site would include a blog where he shared his thoughts about his parents, his friends and his school. By the end of that year it would include a list of the trouble he and Dylan were causing as well as instructions on how to make explosives. By 1997 he would start to share his growing contempt for society. At this time the internet was still in its infancy so the site received very little attention; that was until the end of that year when he posted death threats against a former friend. Brooks Brown was a longtime friend of Eric and Dylan and the three were friends all the way until their senior year of high school. There is no known reason of why the friendship ended, but Brown credits Harris’s “hot and cold” mood swings and Dylan’s tendency to be a follower as why they stopped being friends. Dylan Klebold stepped outside of his follower role and shared the address to the site with Brown who then quickly passed the information on to his mother. His mother, who always was weary of Eric, called Jefferson county sheriff Michael Guerra, who would investigate the matter. During the investigation of the site he found not only the death threats made against Brown, but others made against students and teachers at Columbine high school. Guerra wrote a draft affidavit, but never filed it. The unfiled affidavit would not be made known to the public until his interview on sixty-minutes in September of 2001. This could have been the moment that prevented the entire tragedy, but sadly it was not and time would continue to move closer to that morning in April. Although they came close to being stopped, the unfiled draft affidavit would not be the last time police would be involved in Harris and Klebold lives.

On January 30th 1998 the two would be arrested for breaking into a van and stealing all of the equipment inside. The two would be sent to a juvenile detention center until their joint trial. At their trial the two would plead guilty and were sentenced to attend a juvenile diversion program. As a result of the arrest the two would later have their computer access taken away for a month. During that time they started to make movies in which they documented their hatred for society and their accumulation of weapons. On these tapes we can see the early planning stages of the bombing. The two planned to blow up their school and shoot as many people trying to escape as they could; they even planned to place rigged gasoline bombs inside of their cars to kill police, rescue teams, journalists and parents who rushed (basically anyone who would be on school grounds) the school long after they were dead. In order to accomplish this, they spent the rest of that year collecting various weapons and ammunition. After the trial the court made Harris write an apology letter to the owner of the van; afterwards he would write in his journal that the owner had it coming and he (Harris) deserved to take whatever he wanted. In December of 1998 Harris and Klebold made a video project for school entitled Hitmen for Hire; in which they swore, yelled at the camera, made violent statements all while acting out shooting and killing students in the hallway of their school as Hitmen for Hire. On January 17, 1999 Eric Harris wrote a Doom-based story that also contained violent images, to which his teacher said: "Yours is a unique approach and your writing works in a gruesome way—good details and mood setting”

On the morning of the shooting the two went to their favorite class gym, in which they went bowling like any other day. Afterwards they proceed to set off a bomb about three miles away from the school to draw responders to that location and further away from the school. That bomb would partially detonate starting a small fire that was quickly extinguished by fire fighters. They proceed then to the school and went to different parking lots. After their cars were in position, they got the explosives and entered the cafeteria. They set up their bombs and went back to their cars. While they were setting up the bombs two unfortunate occurrences transpired that could have prevented the massacre. First, the security guard on duty did not see the two leaving the bombs in the cafeteria. It is now known that the day of the shooting the guard, who was a Jefferson County Sheriff's Deputy, Neil Gardner was eating his lunch in his patrol car instead of in the cafeteria as he usually did. Secondly, the custodian was replacing the school security tape when the two entered the building. After the new tape was in the bags that were holding the bombs were not suspicious as they were amongst close to four hundred other book bags in the cafeteria. On the way back to his car, Eric Harris would see Brooks Brown going into the cafeteria and say Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home, advice the young man would take. After realizing that the bombs were not going off, the two quickly changed their plans. They decided to go in and attempt to set them off themselves, while shooting as many people as they could. The pair quickly armed themselves and walked towards the school. At 11:19 A.M Harris and Klebold shoot two students who were sitting outside the school. Upon entering the school, the shooters encountered three friends on a stairwell; all three were shot but not fatally wounded. After that the two turned and shot at five students on a hillside while on the way to the cafeteria to check on the propane bombs. Once he realized what was occurring, the custodian called the police at 11:22 A.M. By 11:24 deputy Neil Garner made it to Columbine and engaged in a gunfight with the shooters; neither side was successful in this exchange. As soon as the gunfight ceased, the duo walked down the hallway towards the school’s library. Harris and Klebold would enter the library at 11:29 A.M., at which time one of the people in there was on the phone with emergency services. They proceed to walk down the rows of the Library firing at the students that they saw. It was at this time where one of the most infamous stories from the shooting occurred; the death of Cassie Bernall. What happened directly before she was killed would create controversy, which will be addressed in depth later in this paper. They would leave the library at 11:35, after which there were no further injuries. The time spent in the library is very important because that is when and where they caused the most damage; they killed ten people and wounded twelve. For the next thirty two minutes, Harris and Klebold wandered the building; firing guns and setting off bombs. They committed suicide at 12:08. By twelve the school was surrounded by SWAT team and first responders to help with survivors. There were several complications that delayed the rescue missions however; responders outside did not know that the two gunmen were dead and there was also a fear of bombs going off at any time. It was not until four-thirty until the school was declared safe to enter. Shockingly, the bodies of the victims would not be removed from the school until the next day; the names of the victims would not be released until five o’clock that day. With the release of the list of victims’ names, America now knew exactly how many people died in the shooting. This would finally clear up all the confusion made by the press, which started the long healing process for families and the county as a whole.

Amongst all of the sadness, mourning and raw feelings still being felt directly after the shooting, a new controversy for the small community would come just days later. Makeshift memorials were started right after the shooting; but it was the first attempt of a permanent one that would cause an uproar. Right after the violence ended, relatives and friends started to place flowers, candles, teddy bears and other various items around Clemet Park; which is next to the school’s campus as a way to remember their lost loved ones. One of the most popular places for people to make these memorials was on the victim’s cars that were still parked in the parks parking lot. It was not long before busloads of mourners came to see these monuments like they were a macabre tourist attraction. As the memorials grew in size so did the problems they caused the community, so the beyond difficult decision to have many of them removed was made. The items, which were damaged by weather conditions, were gathered by volunteers of local museums and would be temporarily stored in a vacant federal building in Denver. Up until this point these actions were typical of a community in mourning; the sense of normality would be changed when the son of a priest would come to build a permanent monument. Carpenter Greg Zanis conducts a private ministry called Crosses for Losses, and came to Littleton to place crosses as a way to remember those who died. He erected fifteen six-foot tall crosses in Clement Park; the problem is two of them were for the shooters. Many in the community were outraged to hear that Zanis erected crosses for the boys who shot their children. Many felt that it was disrespectful and extremely insensitive for him to memorialize the killers in any way, especially in the same exact way that he choose to memorize the victims. Outraged by the extra crosses, one of the victim’s fathers decided to take actions into his own hands and remove the two crosses. When asked about why he removed them, he was quoted as saying we don’t build a monument to Adolf Hitler and put it in the Holocaust museum- and it’s not going to happen here. After hearing that Harris and Klebold’s crosses were removed, Zanis came back and removed all of the crosses. When asked why he built two for the shooters at all, Zanis said because his son asked him to. After all of the crosses were removed, a church would plant fifteen trees as a memorial. There would not be another permanent memorial until the one that was dedicated on September 21, 2007. The memorial that stands today, also built in Clement Park, is a brick wall with plaques of all the victims’ names.

When the Columbine shooting occurred it was the deadliest rampage style school shooting in history as well as the second most-covered breaking news story of the 1990’s; these as well as others factors made Americans glued to their televisions. For the first time we have up to that very second updates as to what was occurring; but we also had intimate first-hand images from the killers themselves. We had video footage of the killers planning this event, as well as journal entries and online rants to give us a peak into the minds of the killers. These elements brought the killers into our homes in a way we had never seen before, making the entire event more intriguing to people. Their faces were everywhere; their names were on everyone’s lips and their actions were on the mind of the entire country, finally giving the shooters the fame some argue they craved. With any tragedy that unfolds in front of cameras, people begin to become fascinated by watching it; wanting to learn everything they can about what happened. This cultural phenomenon combined with the use of sensational journalism makes true life events must see television to the point where it can become just as followed by the viewing public as the most popular nightly drama television program. What is interesting about how most people followed Columbine is that they were interested in figuring out why it happened first before they learned what happened. People seemed more interested in learning what made these seemingly normal kids act the way they did as opposed to what they actually did. This collective thought practice makes sense on the surface, but unfortunately (as Columbine illustrates) by doing this people begin to overlook what is right in front of them. To fully understand why something happens, you have to first understand what really happened. If people fully understood the plan that Eric and Dylan tried to execute, then bullying or popular culture may not have been blamed at all.

Columbine affected everyone who learned about it; sadly like every tragedy it can positively influence the wrong people. After the Columbine shootings, several other future shooters would be inspired to commit acts like Harris and Klebold. The phrase pulling a Columbine has since been used by other school shooters who were in a macabre way paying homage to Harris and Klebold. The Santana High School shooter Charles Williams said those exact words to his friends before the shooting and to reporters afterwards. Of the twelve documented rampage shootings in America that occurred after Columbine and the end of 2007, eight of the perpetrators directly referred to Columbine; that is an alarming rate of sixty-six percent. The evidence proves that they influenced others, but it does not answer the questions of why and how. What made the Columbine killers different than the killers that came before them? What was it about these two that made such an impression close to a decade after they died? The most understandable answer is that they documented nearly every step on their dark journey towards Columbine. We can look at their videos and writings and see what they were thinking and feeling as well as a paradigm of how to plan and execute a shooting. This practice of vide taping their lives would be continued by many killers that aimed to follow in the footsteps of Harris and Klebold. Convicted murders Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik of Idaho said in their home made movies that they were planning a “Columbine-like” shooting. Seung-Hui Cho, the Virginia Tec shooter, credited Harris and Klebold as inspiration for his actions, he even went as far as to refer to them as martyrs to the cause of the downtrodden. The Virginia Tec shooting is now thought of as the deadest shooting in history. Minnesota’s Jeffery Weise would closely imitate Harris and Klebold in his shooting of Red Lake Senior High School. Weise made references to Adolf Hitler on his website; who was someone we know that Eric Harris admired and referenced in his personal journals. Weis also wore a trench-coat and asked a student if they believe in God during the shooting; both of which directly happened the day of the Columbine shootings. Harris and Klebold influence would not be contained to America as we know that of thee eleven rampage shootings that occurred in other countries six directly referenced Columbine.With the massive exposure the two received, they attained an almost mythical status in some subcultures.

The Columbine shooting shocked the entire country to its core. It left everyone asking themselves how two seniors, who were just months shy of gradation, could commit such a horrific act against their fellow classmates. Amongst all of the confusion, the media started to paint the picture of two social outcasts that were on the bottom of the high school popularity hierarchy. They showed us two victims who just could not take the abuse anymore and decided to take the ultimate revenge on a school full of people that tortured them. They showed the world two boys who snapped after years of torment by the popular athletes and after years of exclusion by the entire student body. Reports just kept coming most of which telling how they were relentlessly bullied. Every night on the evening news Americans heard the story of the two loners in trench coats who broke under the pressure from exclusion. Even later reports conformed this; in a December 1999 interview for Time Magazine a Columbine victim was asked about the bullying that occurred at Columbine, he answered most kids didn’t want them there…If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease’ em. So the whole school would call them homos… With all the coverage and negative reports about student life at Columbine high school, this once unknown small mountain town’s tragedy became the nation’s cautionary tale of the damaging effects of bullying. Students across America were forced to listen to what happened in Littleton and were told that the same could happen to them at their school if they bullied others. Clear backpacks, regulated dress codes, zero-tolerance anti bullying policies, security cameras, strict dress codes, metal detectors and more campus security guards became the new norm at most high schools after Columbine, and have since only increased. Our popular culture was also changed as the word “Columbine” or phrases like “pulling a Columbine” and “Columbine like incident” became integrated into the everyday vernacular of Americans. The term Columbine has since been used as a synonym for rage. Columbine has become the tragedy that all other school shootings have since been compared to and has become macabre inspiration for shooters that have since followed. With all the various forms of coverage, there was one blaring problem; that initial story we were told was not the complete truth. Like so many times before the media did not accurately report what happened at Columbine. Yes there was unquestionably bullying at Columbine, and yes the two boys were teased and harassed by some of the other students, but there is a whole other side that was left unreported. What the media was seemingly unaware of is that these two had a close circle of friends that they spent time with, both had relatively good family lives and somewhat shockingly both even had dates for their prom; so the label of rejected lonely outcasts really does not fit. There is in fact evidence that supports the claim that they bullied other students. Eric would post freighting rants about his several of his classmates on his website, many of which contained death threats. Those rants are what we today call cyberbullying, and are an offense that we take very seriously. Cyber bullying is an epidemic today, one that has driven several young people to suicide. The full extent of how much Harris and Klebold were being bullied will forever be unmeasurable, but the extent of the bullying that they committed is easily accessible. The “bullying myth” is one that is easy to perpetuate and even easier to comprehend, but that does not mean that we should continue to do it simply because it is easier. We should not continue to tell our children this cautionary tell to scare them into treating their fellow classmates with respect, because it is not true. Young people do need to learn to treat each other with respect, but to claim that bullying is why Columbine happened is border-line disrespectful to those who died. In order to learn from this and prevent reoccurrence in the future we must fully understand what happened and why it happened. Reporter David Cullen spent ten years writing his semi controversial 2009 book Columbine, where he explores several of the myths and theories surrounding Columbine. After all of the extensive research he has conducted, he has become a huge advocate that the two killers were not bullied any more than any of the other students at Columbine and that they were in fact bullies. Cullen described the duo as “the depressive” (in reference to Dylan Klebold) and “the psychopath” (in reference to Eric Harris; who Cullen describes a textbook psychopath) and claims that the two were mentally disturbed long before being teased at school. Cullen described Harris as a smart, charming liar with a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority and an excruciating need for control. He supports the claim of Harris’s delusion of superiority by using Harris’s own journal entries, in which he wrote I feel like God and I wish I was, having everyone being OFFICIALLY lower than me. Cullen who descried Dylan Klebold as a depressive supports this claim by using his journal entries, I have always been hated, by everyone and everything, and me is a god, a god of sadness. To compare the differences Cullen says Harris drew swastikas in his journal; Klebold drew (broken) hearts. With all of the evidence of mental instability available, Cullen theorizes in his book that the shooting was no different than any other terrorist attack. He goes on to say that Eric Harris was such a psychopath that it was just a matter of time before something like this happened and he says that if it was not Columbine it would have been somewhere else. This claim is supported by the evidence that it was planned not as a shooting but as a bombing that just happened to occur at a school. If the bombs would have been constructed properly they would have killed 600 people. In addition to all the bombing evidence that was found, there were also plans for other attacks; one of which included high jacking a plane and crashing it into a building. With all of this evidence, it is really hard for someone to argue that this was a case of victims taking revenge on their tormentors. Psychologist Peter Langman reinforces Cullen writing that the two were not ordinary kids who were bullied into retaliation…these are not ordinary kids who played too many video games. These are not ordinary kids who just wanted to be famous. These are simply not ordinary kids. These are kids with serious psychological problems. Psychologist Katherine Newman elaborates on the bullying myth saying the two were not bullied loners, but disturbed psychopaths who wanted to be seen successful killers and not failures. She wrote they were not loners, they’re just not accepted by the kids who count. Getting attention by becoming notorious is better than being a failure. Bullying is an unfortunate part of going to high school; it is something every student will either experience or witness first hand at some point in their education. The fact that it is something that everyone can relate to, people began linking it to Columbine as an easy way of comprehending the unthinkable actions of two kids who look like they would be targets for bullying. What seemed to get over looked is that kids who kill their classmates are an enigma that cannot be easily rationalized.

One of the most powerful stories that came out of the Columbine shooting is the story of the seventeen year old victim Cassie Bernall, who was killed because of her devout faith. The infamous story goes that while she was in the library working on a school project Eric Harris walked over to her and asked her if she still believed in God, and when she answered yes, you know I do he shot her at point blank range. The story of the conversation that occurred before Cassie’s death became so famous that books, songs and even a play have been written about it. There is also plenty of Cassie memorabilia available on the Cassie is my hero website which has T-shirts emblazoned with Cassie  is My Sister in Christ, bracelets, hats and even key chains just to name a few. With all of the attention this story received, Cassie became regarded as a martyr for her faith. Church’s across America would tell the story to impressionable young people as an example of how strongly they should take their beliefs. The only problem with this inspirational story of courage in the darkest of times is that the interaction between Cassie and her killer never happened. We now know that the story was reported wrong and that the conversation about faith occurred between the shooter and another student. That student was sixteen year old Valeen Scnurr, and her relocation of events is that after she was shot in the hallway she repeatedly said oh God, oh, God, don’t let me die! Then the shooter who was only an arm’s length away asked do you believe in God, I answered yes. After a pause he asked why, and I said because I believe and because my parents brought me up that way. Many who heard this exchange thought that Schnurr was Cassie and told the media what they (thought) they heard. Almost instantly Cassie’s story was everywhere; growing rapidly as people became more enthralled in the coverage of Columbine. Survivor Emily Wyant is also accountable for not correcting the Cassie myth as she is the only living survivor who was next to Cassie before she died. When she did tell the truth, Emily said Harris walked up to Cassie, who was crying and saying dear God, dear God why is this happening, slapped the table and yelled peek a boo before shooting her. When asked why she did not speak up immediately, Emily explained that she was afraid to tell the truth and her mother said that the story was a good memory for Cassie’s family to have of their daughter. People were very shocked to hear about the mistaken exchange; especially those who learned that Cassie’s parents knew the truth before the public and still chose to write a book. Although highly inspirational and a great attempt to find light amongst all of the darkness, the Cassie myth is a great example of how stories from that day grew without being checked for accuracy.
Two young men in long black trench coats armed with guns and bombs changed the world as we knew it forever. In less than an hour of violence nothing would be the same again. The Columbine shooters took the lives of twelve people in an attempt to hurt as many people as they could. Making this senseless killing worse is that it was perpetrated against young students by their fellow classmates. Aside from the literal devastation of taking innocent lives; Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold damaged American society. This horrific act made us look harshly at our society and question everything about it. We questioned the affect popular music, movies and video games had on our children. We questioned how adversely bullying could affect young people and what we had to do to prevent it from happening again. The search for answers after Columbine made people place blame where it didn’t belong, believe as well as tell half-truths and credit false martyrs. America became swept up in the sensationalism of the story and was unable to look at the facts. The truth became almost of secondary importance to the advancement of individuals agendas. With an event so unthinkable it was hard to process; and many used that to their advantage. Columbine became the worst case scenario of what would happen if we did not solve all of our problems. People used it to rage a war on popular culture and as a weapon to solve the ancient problem of bullying. Some took this tragedy and tried to turn it into a cautionary tale for years to come. When it comes to a school shooting like Columbine many would assume that the shooting itself said a lot about the American people; but if one takes a step back to look at the bigger picture how we handled it says a lot more. Society will constantly be forced to rebuild itself after heartbreaks like Columbine, but the true test of that society is not that they had misfortune but how they rebuild itself after it. Senseless murder is an unfortunate reality that will always occur; prevention is important, but the method of putting ourselves back together is even more so. There were some positive results to come out of the aftermath of Columbine, but for the most part people took advantage of a small mountain town’s pain. Some received financial gain, while others perceived it as confirmation that their views were correct all along. If we can learn anything from this heartbreaking story it should be to learn as much as you can about a news story while not believing everything you hear at first. Fact checking should be a huge part of the reporting process, but as we saw it sometimes is not. That makes it our own personal responsibility to not take what is said (especially at first) at face value; and to do as much research as we can about what really happened.

Columbine Timeline

• April 9 1981 Eric Harris is born in Wichita, Kansas.
• September 11 1981 Dylan Klebold is born in Lakewood, Colorado.
• July 1993 Dylan and Eric meet.
• April 19 1995 Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols perpetrated the Oklahoma City bombing, killing 168 people. This event would later inspire Eric and Dylan to commit an act that was worse than this.
• 1996 Eric Harris starts a video game website for the game Doom, which he would use to create levels for the game. One such level he entitled “Tier” (which he described as his life’s work) included what some researchers concluded was a mock-up of Columbine high school. By the end of the year the he starts a blog which contained instructions on how to build bombs and cause trouble.
• 1997 Eric Harris’s blog starts showing signs of his anger towards society, by the end of that year the site contained death threats for Eric’s former friend and fellow classmate Brooks Brown. Brown’s mother would go to police investigator Michael Guerra who after visiting the site wrote a draft affidavit but would did not file it. The affidavit would not be revealed until September 2001.
• January 30, 1998 Harris and Klebold were arrested for stealing tools from a van. They both would plead guilty during their joint court hearing. The two were sentenced to attending a juvenile diversion program. As a result of the arrest the two would later have their computer access taken away for a month during which they would use their free time to document their hatred for society and begin planning the bombing.
• 1998 Harris and Klebold collected various weapons and ammunition. During this year they obtained two 9 mm firearms, two 12-gauge shotguns and a 9 mm TEC-9 handgun (a gun they bought from their friend Phillip Duran, who would later be charged for selling the gun to them. Duran would have to pay money to the victim’s families for his involvement in the crime). The two would document the collection of these weapons in their homemade movies and journals.
• December 1998 Harris and Klebold made a video project for school entitled Hitmen For Hire, (in the project they swore, yelled at the camera, made violent statements, and acted out shooting and killing students in the hallway of their school as Hitmen for Hire).
• January 17, 1999 Eric Harris wrote a Doom-based story to which his teacher said: "Yours is a unique approach and your writing works in a gruesome way—good details and mood setting”
• April 21 1999 Bomb squads combed the high school and declared it safe at 10:00 AM. At 11:30 AM a spokesman for the sheriff announced that there would be a full investigation. At 5:00 the full list of victims was released to the public
• April 22 1990 carpenter Greg Zanis came to Littleton with his private ministry Crosses for Losses to place crosses as a way to remember those who died.
• April 30 1999 The Jefferson county sheriff’s office would have a meeting to discuss if they should reveal detective Guerra’s unfilled affidavit, they all decided not to.
• May 1 1999 Marilyn Manson would defend his music in the Rolling Stone Article “Columbine: Whose Fault Is It?” In the article Manson criticized the media and chastised America’s habit of blaming a scapegoat to escape blame and responsibility. Manson would further explore these topics in his 2000 album Holy Wood.
• July 1999 The F.B.I would hold a summit on school shootings.
• December 20, 1999 A Columbine survivor (a football player who was wounded in the shooting) when asked in an interview with Time Magazine about the bullying that occurred in Columbine answered, “Most kids didn’t want them there…If you want to get rid of someone, usually you tease’ em. So the whole school would call them homos…”
• 2000 Melissa Helmbrecht organized a remembrance event called the “Day of Hope”. The event featured two surviving students.
• November 2000 shock-rock band Marilyn Manson releases its fourth studio album entitled Holy-Wood (In the Shadow of the Valley of Death, which is a concept album based on the Columbine shootings as well as a rebuttal to the accusations that the band inspired the shooting.
• April 2001 families of more than 30 of the victims received a $253,800 settlement for their case against the families of Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Mark Manes and Phillip Duran.
• 2002 Columbine survivor and childhood friend of the shooters Brooks Brown releases his book entitled No Easy Answers: The Truth Behind Death at Columbine.
• August 2002 the lawsuit filed against the Jefferson county sheriff’s office regarding the death of Columbine teacher Dave Sanders was settled out of court for $1,500,000. The case argued that the police prevented paramedics from going in and helping Sanders for hours even after they knew the two shooters were dead.

• 2002 Filmmaker Michael Moore would make a documentary entitled Bowling for Columbine which explored the shooting and Americans fascination with guns and not taking responsibility for its actions. In the film Moore would conduct a publicity stunt at K-Mart headquarters. The stunt involved two of the wounded survivors of the shooting as well as Brooks Brown (who was not credited for his role in the stunt) requesting the store no longer sell handgun ammunition which they agreed to do in 2001. He would also interview Columbine Scapegoat Marilyn Manson before his concert in Denver Colorado (the first one since the shooting). Moore asked Manson what he would have said to the shooters; Manson answered “I wouldn’t say a single word to them. I would listen to what they have to say and that’s what no one did”
• April 20 2004 (the fifth anniversary of the shooting) an article was published by the F.B.I and several psychiatrists which revealed their consensus that Harris and Klebold were psychopaths.
• September 2004 the Grand jury’s full Columbine investigation was released to the public
• April 16, 2007 Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people and wounded 17 others in two separate attacks at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. This became known as the Virginia Tec massacre. Cho directly showed his inspiration by the Columbine shooters, calling them martyrs for the cause of the downtrodden.
• September 21 2007 a permanent memorial was dedicated in a park close to the school.
• October 30, 2007 the bad Flyleaf releases its self- titled debut album which contained the song Cassie inspired by Columbine victim Cassie Bernall.
• 2009 David Cullen’s controversial book Columbine was published. In his book Cullen attempts to dispute the theory that the shooting was “revenge for bullying”. Cullen also claimed that Eric Harris revered Nazis.