Dylan: emo Nein, monster Ja

Let us consider the ways in which Dylan Klebold, the sad cowering puppy-dog emo who got totally jacked in the ass by the big bad pussy-pounding psycho Eric, was, on the late morning of Tuesday, April 20, 1999, something of an absolutely horrific monster.

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This article ran in the Rocky Mountain News on Sunday, June 6, 1999:

Lance Kirklin lay on the grass outside Columbine High School, blood pouring from gunshot wounds in both legs and his chest.

A shadow appeared over him.

``Help me,'' he moaned. ``Help me.''

The next voice was a gunman's.

``You want help?'' the killer said. ``I'll help you.''

Then he raised a shotgun and pulled the trigger, blowing away the left side of Kirklin's face.

It was a brutal moment in the brutal April 20 attack on Columbine High that left 12 students, a teacher and the two gunmen dead and more than 20 others wounded.

Today, as Kirklin struggles to recover, he's sure the gunman who coldly tried to finish him off was Dylan Klebold.

He's not alone in this belief - other students who survived the assault have described similar scenes.

The accounts defy the image that developed in the first days after the attack.

Many then assumed it was Klebold's partner, Eric Harris, who led the death march. After all, he's was the one with the violent rantings into cyberspace, the diary planning the attack, the Internet death threats, the customized version of a violent video game.

He was the one who dreamed of joining the military, going to war and killing people, who boasted of how much he'd like to blow up his school.

Klebold had enrolled in college to study computer programming. Friends had described him as a pacifist.

But slowly a picture of the mayhem at Columbine is emerging that shows Klebold and Harris equally capable of pulling the trigger and lighting the fuse.

``Dylan isn't as much of a follower as everyone thinks he is,'' said Columbine graduate Brooks Brown, who had known Klebold since first grade.

Brown still can't believe that either Klebold or Harris could have planned the horrific attack. But once it started, Brown said, Klebold wouldn't have stood around while Harris did all the shooting.

``I've been thinking a lot about this,'' Brown said. ``And Dylan wasn't calm when he was angry like Eric was.

``Dylan would just lose it.''

Sophomore Evan Todd, who was later treated for a minor wound to the back, dived under a table in the library after Harris and Klebold launched the attack. Then Klebold jammed a TEC-DC9 semiautomatic pistol in his face.

He wanted to know if Todd was a jock. Todd, a football player and wrestler, lied and said no.

``He wanted to see my face,'' Todd said. ``I was under a desk at that time. I held my face out. He asked me if I wanted to die. I said, `I don't want to get into any trouble.'

`` `Trouble!' Klebold said, `you don't know what trouble is.' I said, `That's not what I mean. I don't have a problem with you guys. I never did. I never will.' ''

Klebold turned away. Then Todd watched as the two gunmen killed two of his friends.

Klebold shot at least one of them, he believes, and along with Harris hurled racial slurs at Isaiah Shoels, a black student killed in the attack.

Then, also like Harris, Klebold laughed.

``The Dylan of late sounded not like the Dylan of old time,'' said Lyle Welsh, whose two sons survived the assault on Columbine.

Aaron, a senior, was in the library on April 20. He later wrote about the way both gunmen systematically fired their weapons under desks where terrified students hid.

``Aaron definitely says Dylan was as much a participant in the library as Eric,'' Lyle Welsh said.

Other students also described an equal partnership.

``They said they had waited to do this their whole life,'' recalled Crystal Woodman, who survived the library. ``Someone asked them what they were doing and they said, `killing people.'

``They just had this happy tone in their voices, but it was really sick and chilling. They would cheer and ask, `Who is next?' ''

Division Chief John Kiekbusch of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office said he would not talk about specific details of the investigation.

However, he acknowledged that survivors have indicated that Klebold had a ``greater role'' in carrying out the attack than some people think.

That should not surprise anybody, said John Douglas, a former federal agent who helped develop the art of personality profiling and was the inspiration for the character Jack Crawford, an FBI agent, in the book and movie The Silence of the Lambs.

``I've seen this in other types of cases, from kidnappings to murders,'' he said. ``Oftentimes you do have an opposite - opposites attract. You do find one person more dominant, more of a leader, and the other is more passive, more of a follower. . . . But once you get this person to take the first step, they're just as culpable as the other one.''

Douglas, whose latest book is The Anatomy of Motive, said both Harris and Klebold had the ability to make choices.

``There's nobody putting a gun up to either one of their heads making them do anything,'' he said. ``What you have here is that one person is easier to read than the other.

``One person may carry his personality on his sleeve. The other person you may not know - he's quiet.''

But, he said, one common denominator must have existed in Harris and Klebold: an antisocial personality.

``It shouldn't surprise anyone that one guy goes way beyond what anyone would expect,'' Douglas said.

Funny you should mention "emo" here. This past week I saw a post on my Facebook feed in which someone said it was unfair that people were upset over the Confederate flag and taking it down because of the Charleston shooting, since "schools didn't ban skinny jeans, Fall Out Boy shirts, or eyeliner on guys after Columbine." Face. Palm.

I do not believe that Dylan was in the slightest bit a follower. They both had it in them to kill people with guns at close range, they both had it in them to set bombs (even though they failed). Most people don't like what they can't figure out, maybe that is why they pegged Dylan as a follower - because he kept his real feelings and motives to himself, but he still had them as much as Eric had his.

I think calling him a follower is incorrect, because he was a verya ctive participant in the massacre and he was writing about a killing spree before Eric did.

However, we need to also acknowledge what their friends said: "Duylan would jumpo off a cliff if Eric told him to "(D.Adams). Dylan certainly was trying very hard to conform to Eric, much more than the other way around. I think we need to state clearly that Dylan was feeling dependant on Eric (just as before he felt dependant on Zach), while Eric (despite having much less friends) did not and did not conform to Dylan's ideas the same way as Dylan did to his.

Sue Klebold told Andrew Solomon that Dylan was scared of Eric. Heidi Johnson, Nick Baumgart, Tyler Chenoweth, Terry Lawson, Katelyn Place, Steve Trujillo, Dominick Duran, Michael Bierman, Leslie Burns, Jason Cornelius, Brett O'Neill, Roison McEwen, and finally and most importantly Devon Adams all say Dylan was a follower of Eric.

I trust their testimony over any statement on here.

lasttrain wrote:

Sue Klebold told Andrew Solomon that Dylan was scared of Eric. Heidi Johnson, Nick Baumgart, Tyler Chenoweth, Terry Lawson, Katelyn Place, Steve Trujillo, Dominick Duran, Michael Bierman, Leslie Burns, Jason Cornelius, Brett O'Neill, Roison McEwen, and finally and most importantly Devon Adams all say Dylan was a follower of Eric.

I trust their testimony over any statement on here.

But none of these people knew that Dylan was capable of shooting up a school, and that he was the first one to have the idea. I'm not necessarily disagreeing, but I just think that there is a chance these people didn't know the real/whole truth. They obviously weren't always knowing, and Dylan did well to hide his true self.

WendlaBergman wrote:

Funny you should mention "emo" here. This past week I saw a post on my Facebook feed in which someone said it was unfair that people were upset over the Confederate flag and taking it down because of the Charleston shooting, since "schools didn't ban skinny jeans, Fall Out Boy shirts, or eyeliner on guys after Columbine." Face. Palm.

you gotta be shittin' me? people are so stupid sometimes

lasttrain wrote:

Sue Klebold told Andrew Solomon that Dylan was scared of Eric. Heidi Johnson, Nick Baumgart, Tyler Chenoweth, Terry Lawson, Katelyn Place, Steve Trujillo, Dominick Duran, Michael Bierman, Leslie Burns, Jason Cornelius, Brett O'Neill, Roison McEwen, and finally and most importantly Devon Adams all say Dylan was a follower of Eric.

I trust their testimony over any statement on here.

Is this in the 11k or from television interviews?

browneyes11 wrote:

WendlaBergman wrote:

Funny you should mention "emo" here. This past week I saw a post on my Facebook feed in which someone said it was unfair that people were upset over the Confederate flag and taking it down because of the Charleston shooting, since "schools didn't ban skinny jeans, Fall Out Boy shirts, or eyeliner on guys after Columbine." Face. Palm.

you gotta be shittin' me?  people are so stupid sometimes

Right? Granted, I feel like Dylan would have liked Fall Out Boy because of their lyrics, but they weren't even together until 2001, didn't release anything until 2003, and weren't mainstream until 2005. It surprises me that someone would be too lazy to even Google any of this so that at least if they're going to make a stupid comparison all the info is right.

WendlaBergman wrote:

browneyes11 wrote:

WendlaBergman wrote:

Funny you should mention "emo" here. This past week I saw a post on my Facebook feed in which someone said it was unfair that people were upset over the Confederate flag and taking it down because of the Charleston shooting, since "schools didn't ban skinny jeans, Fall Out Boy shirts, or eyeliner on guys after Columbine." Face. Palm.

you gotta be shittin' me?  people are so stupid sometimes

Right? Granted, I feel like Dylan would have liked Fall Out Boy because of their lyrics, but they weren't even together until 2001, didn't release anything until 2003, and weren't mainstream until 2005. It surprises me that someone would be too lazy to even Google any of this so that at least if they're going to make a stupid comparison all the info is right.

Everything is in the 11K except for Sue Klebold, which is from Andrew Solomon's book.

Devon Adams actually mentions multiple times in a few books that Dylan was no follower, and it was ERIC who was the follower of Dylan. Eric tried copying Dylan's style. Eric got the Trench Coat after Dylan. Dylan was the one who also put a huge bumper sticker in the back of his car with his favorite band (I believe Rammstein?), and Eric then followed. She even said that everything Dylan did, Eric would go ahead and do it right behind him. Also, Eric barely had any friends. Most of his friends were his friends because he was associated with Dylan . Dylan was the one who first went on Rebel Missions, and started it along with Zack. Eric did not come along till later. Eric was the third wheel between Dylan and Zack.

Oh, and while people are quick to say that Dylan was there to comfort Eric, is that why he used Eric as a back up? Is that why he thought of other people to go on a shooting spree besides Eric? Is that why he finally acknowledges to go on a shooting spree with Eric only a few months before the shooting, while the entire time Eric thought Dylan was right behind him 100%? Is that why he barely ever mentions Eric in his journal? Is that why he only called Eric his "good friend" and not his 'best friend'? Is that why Eric constantly referred to him AND Dylan in his journal multiple times? Better yet Eric always called him Vodka or V, while Dylan just referred to Eric in the journal as "Eric".

Eric needed Dylan way more than Dylan needed Eric. I will stand by this statement until there is more evidence to suggest otherwise.

There is evidence of both boys copying each other. That's what (best) friends do, they like the same things, they do things together, they copy each other. Doesn't make them followers. They both played equal parts in the shooting, they both played equal parts in the friendship.

Both conformed to one anotehr in some ways.

However Dylan gave up more of his identity for Eric. Eric's journals are not as different from everyday Eric and from BT Eric. Dylan's journals are very different.

Dylan went as far as to conform to Eric's nazi fascination and made nazi salutes, despite himself being half-jewish. He even tried to hide this fact from people, including Eric.

Dylan was much mroe of a conformist than Eric in such respect. I'd ssay Dylan also had a greater fear of abandonment, as seen in his rant about Zach. Eric cared abotu his social status, but its not the same at all.