Christian pop star Amy Grant sang twice; a drum and bugle corps performed a stirring rendition of "Amazing Grace"; and a succession of thirteen white doves were released as Governor Bill Owens recited the names of the victims. Toward the end, it began to rain. A slow, steady shower. Nobody moved. Thousands of umbrellas went up, but tens of thousands of mourners just got wet.
For many, Cassie Bernall was the heroine of Columbine. Word spread quickly that her killer had held her at gunpoint and asked if she believed in God. "Yes," she'd answered. She'd professed her faith and had promptly been shot in the head. Vice President Gore recounted her story to the crowd and the cameras. He quoted liberally from Scripture throughout his speech.
"To the families of the victims, may you feel the embrace of the literally hundreds of millions of Americans who grieve with you," Vice President Gore said. "We hold your agony in the center of our prayers. You are not alone."
____
The country was transfixed. In the first ten days, newsmagazines on the four main broadcast networks devoted forty-three pieces to the attack. The shows dominated the ratings that week. CNN and Fox News charted the highest ratings in their history. A week afterward, USA Today was still running ten separate Columbine stories in a single edition. It would be nearly two weeks before the New York Times would print an issue without Columbine on page 1.
And Cassie Bernall's martyrdom was showing the most legs. "Millions have been touched by a martyr," Pastor Kirsten proclaimed to his congregation. He shared a vision his youth pastor had received while ministering to the Bernalls: "I saw Cassie, and I saw Jesus, hand in hand. And they had just gotten married. They had just celebrated their marriage ceremony. And Cassie kind of winked over at me, like, 'I'd like to talk, but I'm so much in love.' Her greatest prayer was to find the right guy. Don't you think she did?"
Kirsten consoled his grieving congregation, but he saw opportunity in the tragedy to unabashedly save more souls. "Pack that ark with as many people as possible," he said.
Down the road at the Foothills Bible Church, Pastor Oudemolen was sharing a similar enthusiasm. "Men and women, open your eyes!" he declared. "The kids are turning to God! They're going to churches!"
Much of the Denver clergy was appalled. The opportunism at the public service drew an outcry, particularly from mainline Protestant pastors. Reverend Marxhausen, the pastor who'd performed Dylan's funeral, told the Denver Post he'd felt "hit over the head with Jesus" at the service.
Evangelicals faced a profound moral dilemma: respect for others' beliefs versus an obligation to stand up for Jesus as the only way, every day. Eric and Dylan had terrorized the country, but they offered an invaluable opportunity as well. Evangelical clergy would answer to God if they wasted it. One thoughtful Evangelical pastor said he approved of using the massacre for recruitment, as long it was truly done for God. He bristled at "spiritual headhunters, just racking up another scalp. The Bible was never meant to be a club," he said. "If I'm using it as a weapon, that's really sad."
____
Craig Scott was a sophomore, sixteen years old, and exceptionally good looking, like his sister Rachel. He had hidden under a library table with Matthew Kechter and Isaiah Shoels. While he was down there, one of the gunmen yelled, "Get anyone with white hats!" Craig was wearing one. He yanked it off and stuffed it under his shirt. Both killers passed his table several times. They stopped there, eventually, and both of them fired. Matt slumped; so did Isaiah. Craig was spared. The shots were so loud Craig thought his ears were going to bleed. He spent much of his time in the fetal position, with his head down, silently praying for courage and strength. When he looked up to assess the damage, Matt and Isaiah had collapsed leaning against each other and moaning. Their blood had pooled around Scott--he couldn't tell whose it was that had soaked into his pants. Smoke or steam was rising up from the rupture in Matt's side.
Then the killers moved into the hallway. "I think they're gone," Craig called out. "Let's get out of here." Other kids were getting up slowly, heading for a side exit. Craig dropped his white hat on the floor by his table. On his way out, a girl under the computer desk said, "Please help me." Kacey Ruegsegger had a big hole in her right shoulder. Scott helped her up. He draped her good arm over his shoulder and led her out.
Outside, they ran for a police car parked on the side of the hill. Cops were there, pointing their guns at the library windows. Craig continued to pray. He asked other kids to join him. Craig had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, and they needed Him badly now. He led a small prayer group.
The cops shuttled the wounded out first. When Craig's turn came, he heard more gunfire behind him. "They're shooting at us," one of the cops said.
The officers dropped the kids off at a cul-de-sac just off the school grounds. Craig joined hands with others in a group to pray. Then he got to a phone, called his mom, and asked her to pray for his sister. He had a bad feeling about her. He prayed that Rachel was not injured. Within an hour or two, he began accepting that she might be dead. She was. Rachel had been the first one killed, on the lawn outside. Matt and Isaiah were dead too. Kacey lived.
Craig took it hard. He had seen horrible things, but he'd heard something wonderful. In the worst of it in the library, he'd heard a girl profess her faith. Amazing. Craig began telling the story early that first afternoon. It spread like brushfire. Among Evangelicals, e-mails, faxes, and phone calls whipped across the country.
On Friday it hit the mainstream media. Both Denver papers featured it. The Rocky's piece, "Martyr for Her Faith," opened with a play-by-play:
A Columbine killer pointed his gun at Cassie Bernall and asked her the life-or-death question: "Do you believe in God?"
She paused. The gun was still there. "Yes, I believe in God," she said.
That was the last thing this 17-year-old Christian would ever say.
The gunman asked her "Why?" She had no time to answer before she was shot to death.
Bernall entered the Columbine High School library to study during lunch. She left a martyr.
The Post ran a similar account. The national press quickly jumped aboard. On Saturday, an Evangelical Teen Mania rally in Michigan "turned into a Cassie Bernall festival," according to Weekly Standard writer J. Bottum. He described 73,000 teens in the Silverdome "weeping along with sermon after sermon about her death." On Sunday morning, it was proclaimed from countless pulpits.
At first, her mother was unsure what to make of Cassie's martyrdom. But soon Misty was bursting with pride, and her husband, Brad, was, too. "This tragic incident has been thrown back into the face of Satan," Brad said in a statement. He called on teens to step forward while The Enemy was in retreat: "To all young people who hear this: Don't let my daughter's death be for nothing. Make your stand. If you're not in the local church's youth group, try it. They want you and will help support you."
On Monday, Brad and Misty were featured on a 20/20 segment titled "Portrait of an Angel." Stories were circulating that the killers had targeted Evangelicals as well as jocks and minorities. Brad's community presumed that Cassie's response had provoked the killer to shoot. "She knew where he was coming from," Brad said. "And she was saying that, 'You can't defeat me. You can't really kill me. You can take my body away, but you can't kill me. I'm going to live in heaven forever.'"
Initially, Brad seemed to draw a bit more strength from Cassie's bravery than Misty did. "You wake up crying," she said. "I hope one day I can wake up in the morning and not cry. But I said to Brad, I wondered how they could do this. Why did they kill our baby girl? Why did they do that? Why?"
A few days after the 20/20 segment, Brad and Misty appeared on Oprah. "Do you wish she had said 'No'?" Oprah asked.
"Knowing that a girl begged for her life and was released" made a big difference, Misty said. Eric had taunted Bree Pasquale for several minutes, repeatedly forcing her to beg, then finally dismissed her. "As a mom, you would have wanted her to beg," Misty said. "So on the one hand, you're li
ke, 'Yeah, I'd have wanted her to beg.' But I can't think of a more honorable way to die than to profess your faith in God."
33. Good-bye
Two years before Cassie's murder, Dylan laid out his case for God. He enumerated the pros and cons of his existence. Good: a nice family, a beautiful house, food in the fridge, a few close good friends, and some decent possessions. The bad list went on and on: no girls--not even platonic, no other friends, nobody accepting him, doing badly in sports, looking ugly and acting shy, getting bad grades, having no ambition in life.
Dylan understood what God had chosen for him. Dylan was to be a seeker: "one man in search of answers, never finding them, yet in hopelessness understands things. He seeks knowledge of the unthinkable, of the undefinable, of the unknown. He explores the everything--using his mind, the most powerful tool known to him."
Dylan thrashed about madly, but clarity sometimes emerged: "death is passing through the doors," he wrote. "the ever-existant compulsion of everything is the curiosity to keep moving down the hall." Down the hall, exploring the rooms, finding the answers, raising new questions--at long last, Dylan the seeker would achieve the state he was searching for.
____
Dylan took to referring to humans as zombies. That was a rare similarity to Eric. But pitiful as we zombies were, Dylan didn't want to harm us. He found us interesting, like new toys. "I am GOD compared to some of these un-existable brainless zombies," he wrote.
That was Dylan's first brush with blasphemy. He immediately qualified it: he wasn't claiming godhood, just that he was like God compared to humans. It would be months before he'd try it again. Each time, he would push the idea further, but he never quite seemed to believe. As spring 1997 progressed, he filled page after page with aborted attempts.
He saw history as good vs. bad, love vs. hate, God vs. Satan--"The Everlasting Contrast." And he saw himself on the good side.
Eric had more practical concerns. Two months of heat from his dad taught Eric to cover his tracks better. The vandalism missions continued through spring and early summer, with no record of further detection. By mission 5 the boys were drinking again. Wayne appeared to have watched Eric closely for a while, then resumed trusting him. According to Eric, only one outing went alcohol-free.
The emphasis on larger explosives continued; some of the timing devices began to work. Eric discovered that he could light the tip of a cigarette and let it burn down toward the fuse for an added delay. The boys survived a few close calls, including near detection by a police officer in a squad car. On the sixth outing, they brought along Dylan's sawed-off BB gun and fired randomly into houses. "We probly didnt do any damage," Eric wrote, "but we arent sure." That same night, they stole some Rent-a-Fence signs from a construction site. Eric didn't make much of the swipe, but this appears to be the moment where they crossed the hazy boundary between petty vandalism and petty theft.
____
The missions had been satisfying for a couple of months. But sophomore year was over. Eric was hungry for more. In the summer of 1997, Zack Heckler went to Pennsylvania for two weeks. When he got back, Eric and Dylan had built a pipe bomb. Dylan was involved, but it was Eric's baby.
Eric would not begin his journal until the spring of 1998. But he was active with his Web site the previous year. By the summer of 1997, he had posted his hate lists:
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!?
--Cuuuuuuuuhntryyyyyyyyyy music!!!
YOU KNOW WHAT I HATE!!!?
--R rated movies on CABLE! My DOG can do a better damn editing job than those tards!!!...
YOU KNOW WHAT I REALLY HATE!!!?
--THE "W.B." network!!!! OH JESUS MARY MOTHER OF GOD ALMIGHTY I HATE THAT CHANNEL WITH ALL MY HEART AND SOUL.
The list went on for pages, fifty-odd entries about hating "fitness fuckheads," phony martial arts experts, and people who mispronounced "acrosT" or "eXspreso." At first, his targets seem preposterously random, but Fuselier divined the underlying theme: stupid, witless inferiors. It wasn't just the WB network Eric hated heart and soul, it was all the morons watching it.
Eric's briefer love lists backed Fuselier's analysis. Eric loved "Making fun of stupid people doing stupid things!" His greatest love was "Natural SELECTION!!!!!!!!!!! God damn it's the best thing that ever happened to the Earth. Getting rid of all the stupid and weak organisms. I wish the government would just take off every warning label. So then all the dumbasses would either severely hurt themselves or DIE!"
What the boy was really expressing was contempt.
____
Eric's ideas began to fuse. He loved explosions, actively hated inferiors, and passively hoped for human extinction. He built his first bombs.
He started small: nothing that would kill anyone, just enough to injure people or their property. He went searching for instructions and found them readily available on the Web. During the summer of 1997, he built several explosives and began setting them off. Then he bragged about it on his Web site.
"If you havent made a CO2 bomb today, I suggest you do so," he wrote. "Me and VoDkA detonated one yesterday and it was like a fucking dynomite stick. Just watch out for shrapnel."
That was an exaggeration. They had taken small carbon dioxide cartridges--which kids often called whip-its--and punctured them, then shoved gun powder inside. Eric called them crickets, and they were closer to a large firecracker than a bomb. Eric had also built pipe bombs, which were more powerful. He was still searching for a spot safe for detonation.
Eric realized his Web audience would doubt him. He backed his claims with specifications and an ingredient list. He wanted to make sure his readers understood that he was serious.
____
Someone sensed the danger. On August 7, 1997, a "concerned citizen"--apparently Randy Brown--read Eric's Web site and called the sheriff's department. On that day--one year, eight months, and thirteen days before Columbine--the killers' names permanently entered the law enforcement system.
Deputy Mark Burgess printed out Eric's pages. He read through them and wrote up a report. "This Web page refers to 'missions' where possible criminal mischiefs have occurred," he wrote. Curiously, Burgess made no mention of the pipe bombs, which seem far more serious.
Burgess sent his report to a superior, Investigator John Hicks, with eight Web site pages attached. They were filed.
____
Eric and Zack and Dylan were working age now. They all got jobs at Blackjack together. There were flour fights and water chases all the time. Eric plunged right in; Dylan watched from the sidelines. They made dry-ice eruptions out back in the parking lot, watched how high they could get a construction cone to sail. It was great. Then Zack met a girl. Bastard.
Dylan took it hard. Devon was her name, and she totally ripped the team apart. Zack was with her all the time now, and that squeezed his buddies out of the picture. Eric and Dylan were nobodies. The missions were suddenly over. Eric didn't seem to mind too much, but Dylan was a mess.
It wasn't good for him now, he confided to "Existences." "My best friend ever: the friend who shared, experimented, laughed, took chances with, & appreciated me, more than any friend ever did.... Ever since Devon (who i wouldn't mind killing) has loved him--that's the only place hes been!" They had done everything together: drinking, cigars, sabotaging houses. Since seventh grade, he had felt so lonely. Zack had changed all that. "hello I finally found someone who was like me! who appreciated me & shared very common interests. I finally felt happiness (sometimes)." But Zack had found a girlfriend and moved on. "i feel so lonely, w/o a friend."
Who he wouldn't mind killing? Dylan tossed out the comment in passing, and presumably it was just a figure of speech. Presumably. But he had verbalized the idea--a big step. And Dylan did not yet consider Eric his best friend. Dylan belabored the point that no one besides Zack had ever understood him; no one else appreciated him. That would include Eric.
____
Dylan was lonelier than ever. Conveniently, he stumbled into a s
olution: "My 1st love???"
"OH My God," his next entry began. "I am almost sure I am in love w, Harriet. hehehe. such a strange name, like mine." He loved everything about her, from her good body to her almost perfect face, her charm, her wit and cunning and not being popular. He just hoped she liked him as much as he loved her.
That was the wrinkle. Dylan had not actually spoken to Harriet. But he couldn't let that stop him. He thought of her every second of every day. "If soulmates exist," he wrote, "then I think I've found mine. I hope she likes Techno."
That was the other hurdle. He had not yet established whether she liked techno.
____
Dylan felt happiness sometimes. He got excited about his driver's license. But he couldn't stay happy. Shortly after falling for Harriet, he returned to his journal to complain. Such a desolate, lonely, unsalvageable life. "NOT FAIR!!!" He wanted to die. Zack and Devon looked at him like he was a stranger, but Harriet had played the meanest trick: Dylan had fallen for "fake love."
"She in reality doesn't give a good fuck about me," he said. She didn't even know him, he admitted. He had no happiness, no ambitions, no friends, and "no LOVE!!!"
Dylan wanted a gun. He had spoken to a friend about getting one. He planned to turn the weapon on himself. That was a big step in the long suicide process: from writing about it to action.
At this point, nearly two years before Columbine, Dylan saw the gun as his last resort. He continued his spiritual quest "i stopped the pornography," he said. "I try not to pick on people." But God seemed intent on punishing him. "A dark time, infinite sadness," he wrote. "I want to find love."