The Ketchup Incident

I didn't know if I could find this in the 11k, but I was curious where the Ketchup incident falls in the timeline relating to NBK. I am referring to the event in the cafeteria where Eric and Dylan either had ketchup squirted on them, or had ketchup coated tampons tossed at them. There seems to be two versions of the story. But, I was curious if it happened before the van break in.

There is no solid evidence that it happened in January of 1998.

The only eyewitness account of this incident is from Chad Laughlin, who only told Alan Predergast that it happened junior year. Laughlin says he "caught the tail end of it" and did not see the whole thing. According to Laughlin it was just Dylan, not Eric, and it was ketchup-covered tampons.

Brooks Brown later stated that this incident happened in January. He says it is both Dylan and Eric, but he does not say he saw it, just that it happened. He says it was packets.

Later Susan Klebold repeated it to Andrew Solomon, using Brooks Brown's story that it was both Dylan and Eric, but she does not give a date. She says it was packets.

Got it. I'm trying to form a timeline of traumatic events that might have happened to one or both of them from junior to senior year. The ketchup thing struck me as one of the big ones.

Was this event at the hand of Rocky and his crew? It makes me wonder if they did other similar things to other students. I recall the baby oil stunt that Brooks mentions. They all seem to be in the same vein.

radaddio wrote:

Got it. I'm trying to form a timeline of traumatic events that might have happened to one or both of them from junior to senior year.

You may have already seen this list but this is very informative and may assist you with making such a list:
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RE The Ketchup Incident:

From Far From The Tree

Quote :

Unbeknownst to the Klebolds, Dylan had experienced significant humiliation at school, though he was six feet four and not easy to push around. He had come home one day with ketchup spots all over his shirt, and when his mother asked what had happened, he said he’d had the worst day of his life and didn’t want to talk about it. Months after his death, she learned of an incident in which Dylan and Eric had apparently been shoved and squirted with ketchup by kids calling them fags. “It hurt so much that I’d seen the remnants of that day and hadn’t helped him,” she said.

From here:http://www.westword.com/news/the-missing-motive-5063685

Quote :

Brown believes that the "January incident" was one of two events at Columbine that month rather than the van break-in. The first was an unfounded accusation that Harris and Klebold had brought marijuana to school, prompting a search of their property that enraged them. The second was even more humiliating, exactly the kind of thing that would focus their hatred on the "commons," the school cafeteria.

"People surrounded them in the commons and squirted ketchup packets all over them, laughing at them, calling them faggots," Brown says. "That happened while teachers watched. They couldn't fight back. They wore the ketchup all day and went home covered with it."

Sometime in 1998 I think. Probably just before the end of 11th grade.

In my opinion, the ketchup squirting was Eric and Dylan and the tampon one was another incident all together when Dylan went home early and cried and only Dylan was the target. It seems to be quite a common thing these jocks did to people. I am guessing it started as a food fight where someone through food at Dylan and he retaliated and it escalated, I guess that is why he wanted war with the commons and in the Eric in the cafeteria video, Dylan would be up in the class room for the lunch period refusing to go to the cafeteria.

queenfarooq wrote:

radaddio wrote:

Got it. I'm trying to form a timeline of traumatic events that might have happened to one or both of them from junior to senior year.

You may have already seen this list but this is very informative and may assist you with making such a list:
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

I skimmed it awhile back, but giving it a closer look shows alot more detail. thanks for the reminder : )

I never realized that they could be separate events. I always thought that it was one event where the ketchup packets were exchanged for tampons.

That does explain why you don't see Dylan in the cafeteria video.

Didn't the jocks put ketchup on the tampons and say, "You faggots are having your periods"?

I thought I read that somewhere. Maybe not.

Comment from Chad Laughlin where he references the incident:

Quote :

"A lot of the tension in the school came from the class above us," Laughlin insists. "There were people fearful of walking by a table where you knew you didn't belong, stuff like that. Certain groups certainly got preferential treatment across the board. I caught the tail end of one really horrible incident, and I know Dylan told his mother that it was the worst day of his life."
That incident, according to Laughlin, involved seniors pelting Klebold with "ketchup-covered tampons" in the commons.

From:
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It's funny how all of this gets revised by Dave Cullen. The testimony is right there! I'm disliking his book more and more everyday...

another student talked about a cup of fecal matter (probably from an animal) thrown at either Eric and Dylan or members of the TCM in the school too which has never been picked up on, you've probably all seen the documentary 'Finding out Why' already where he talks about it, and I doubt he would lie to the FBI and detectives. My guess is this happened off campus, and whoever the victim was was probably too humiliated to come forward about it.

The guy who owned Blackjack mentioned something to that extent, that the kids who Eric and Dylan hung out with were always getting stuff thrown at them.

radaddio wrote:

It's funny how all of this gets revised by Dave Cullen. The testimony is right there! I'm disliking his book more and more everyday...

There really is no testimony though. Chad Laughlin says he only "caught the tail end" of an incident involving Dylan and ketchup, but there are no eye-witnesses of anyone throwing ketchup at Dylan and Eric in the commons in January 1998 (Brooks Brown was not an eye-witness). If it was really that dramatic one of the other hundreds of people interviewed about E&D would've told Jeff Co. about it.

But people have taken Chad Laughlin's simple statement and turned it into all kinds of things. They say that Rocky Hoffschneider did it (there is no evidence of that). That people called Eric and Dylan fags while doing it (no evidence of that). That Dylan came home and started crying on his bed (this is a separate story told by his mom about when he was in middle school).

Now people are saying that the reason Dylan was upstairs in the Eric in the cafeteria video is because he was scared to go in the commons! Dylan was in class at the time.

There is no evidence of a ketchup incident involving Dylan and Eric in January 1998.

Dylan's Mother has come out and said that she saw Dylan come home once with Ketchup on his clothes.
Unless, you believe she is not being truthful, that seems to me to be a confirmation that this incident really occurred.

That is true, that she observed him with ketchup on his clothing after the altercation. However, I think lasttrain is referring to a different incident in middle school, where Dylan came home very upset and cried on his bed surrounded by stuffed animals.

I just realized it's hard to hate killers when they're so human...

PaintItBlack wrote:

Dylan's Mother has come out and said that she saw Dylan come home once with Ketchup on his clothes.
Unless, you believe she is not being truthful, that seems to me to be a confirmation that this incident really occurred.

Susan Klebold said she saw Dylan come home with ketchup on his shirt one day.

But that does not prove that Eric and Dylan got ketchup thrown at them, or that it was "the January incident" referred to in their journals, or that this incident inspired the shooting.

This is a great example of people taking one piece of testimony and blowing up into a whole story that is supposed to be fact.

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I suppose that you have somewhat of a point in that there is no absolute, irrefutable proof that this incident occurred but under the circumstances there's not going to be.
Eric and Dylan didn't have a camera everyday at school, and even if they had one that day, it is doubtful they would have filmed such a humiliating incident.
I feel that the testimony of both Chad Laughlin and Sue Klebold provides an adequate base of belief for this having occurred.

PaintItBlack wrote:

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I suppose that you have somewhat of a point in that there is no absolute, irrefutable proof that this incident occurred but under the circumstances there's not going to be.
Eric and Dylan didn't have a camera everyday at school, and even if they had one that day, it is doubtful they would have filmed such a humiliating incident.
I feel that the testimony of both Chad Laughlin and Sue Klebold provides an adequate base of belief for this having occurred.

I believe that someone threw ketchup on Dylan at some point--but I think that is a long way from people surrounding Dylan and Eric and throwing ketchup on the two of them in the cafeteria in 1998. It's a long way from showing that this incident inspired them to want to kill everyone in the school.

I think the January incident was the arrest.

PaintItBlack wrote:

I think the January incident was the arrest.

and 'Revenge in the commons' is what Dylan write, probably meaning revenge in the cafeteria, where incidents like these happened, it shows it was probably on more than one occasion, I doubt he'd want revenge if it was just one incident, it's also why he was so eager to blow it up, even after all the people had fled, because that room was where he has bad memories.

CharlesWhitman wrote:

PaintItBlack wrote:

I think the January incident was the arrest.

and 'Revenge in the commons' is what Dylan write, probably meaning revenge in the cafeteria, where incidents like these happened, it shows it was probably on more than one occasion, I doubt he'd want revenge if it was just one incident, it's also why he was so eager to blow it up, even after all the people had fled, because that room was where he has bad memories.

It is clear from the wording that the revenge in the commons is separate from the January incident.

killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January's incident will be godlike. Not to mention our revenge in the commons

In the way it's worded, it does seem like two separate incidents.

I agree also, that there were likely numerous instances where things like this happened to either Eric and Dylan, or their other TCM cohorts. The recollection of witnesses probably only caught a couple of the instances where humiliating things happened to them.

Only Sources that Im aware off are these two:

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Norwegian wrote:

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I hadn't read this one before. While she mentions being against the release of the Basement Tapes to prevent copy cats, I think that this quote also plays into her reluctance to having them seen:

"I think one of the things that was most frightening to me when I saw those tapes, was the thought that if and when these become available to the public, how the public couldn't possibly believe that the other child that I knew existed and was so different from the one on the tape. I knew that trying to illustrate that would be impossible, if they had seen this image of this hate-filled person."

I interpret that quote as Sue trying to protect Dylan's image in a way. No one would believe Dylan wasn't like this in his day to day life. This person would have raised red flags? This person wouldn't have ate dinner with them, laughed at movies and gotten invited to parties and proms?

I believe MR in another thread touches on the ketchup incident and the story kind of gets jumbled with a few other incidents that happened in the cafeteria area with various people being bullied.

I think the ketchup covered tampons sound a bit pre-meditated. You have to get tampons, open them, open the ketchup, squirt it on... I mean it seems like something you couldn't do on an impulse. I believe a group of people probably did surround them and say those things to them and throw things. Back in the 90's people through around homophobic slurs like they were nothing, and it was a conservative area. Eric and Dylan did hang out pretty much with only each other towards the end it seems... so it is not implausible that a bunch of jerks did that. There were probably plenty of people who got the shit end of the stick.

It was bad enough for Dylan, who never asked for help and kept everything to himself to tell his mom it was the "worst day of my life" which doesn't seem like just a food fight ensued.

Just a disclaimer too, nothing justifies what Eric and Dylan did but I like to look at different factors of these cases. I think it was a perfect storm.

Im not really sure to what extent its actually true. One side of me thinks that it seems a bit too good to be true, but than both Sue says she believes its true because she saw spots of ketchup on hes shirt and Dylans friend/classmate claims to have seen this. So maybe its true or maybe its an overrated Version of the events. I also know that they were supposedly called 'faggots', but than I also know that the two have been mixed up with the TCM. TCM did actually have a couple of gay men, and they frequently had run ins with the jocks. As far I remember, both of these two groups did a lot of extreme stuff towards each other, getting into fights, etc. I believe they got a cup of fecal matter thrown at them once. Im not trying to downplay anything, Im Just saying that its a possible explanation.

I believe Chad. And let me find the post where millennial rebelette mentioned it

I guess also when they’re yelling about revenge and this is for what you put us through and revenge in the commons. Things must’ve happened to them to make them talk about it. It didn’t come from nowhere.

Not to distract from the current conversation, but this stuck out to me in the NPR article:

"When I saw that one of those scenes was actually shot in our home one night, and it was a night when Eric had spent the night, it was jaw-dropping. All I can tell you is I gasped out loud and I said, "That's his room!" It was just a complete shock that something could happen like that in my own home — that I didn't know the two of them had weapons and that Eric had brought weapons to our house.

We went back and thought about that evening, and we remembered when Eric spent the night and he had brought a big duffel bag in and we had just assumed it was, I don't know, perhaps a video camera or a computer — we weren't in the habit of asking guests what they were bringing over — and we had to sort of put these pieces together of what the boys had been doing that night, and it was a complete shock." Quote from Sue, of course.

Was this in her book? I don't recall her mentioning that in her book, but it has been awhile since I read it.
I understand her pain surrounding these tapes and memories, but these are the stories I wish she'd share more of.

They rage on about Just about about anything in that video. Ive read the transcript. Taking everything that a potential mass murderer says litterary is a bad idea, imo. But yeah, I believe that they May have been, or felt alienated. Allthough Im not so sure weather they were they were bullied more or less than any other, I definately think that the feelings of being alienated played a role. Some of it, self imposed, because off how they treated other students, some of it not. What is true to say is that some accounts during the events at Columbine is inaccurate so its hard to say what is correct and what is not. Peter Langman says that they were bullied, but that the media exaggareted the bullying directed towards Eric, and the two boys were bullies themselves. So far, I believe that this Version makes sense. That they were bullied, but some accounts May have been falsely attributed to them, considering there was a mix up with the TCM. So quite possibly some accounts May be true, whereas other May be incorrect. And there is some evidence to suggest that they bullied other students, as far as I know.
Do a bit of reseach on it, and you Will find that some Kids were Just as alienated by Eric and Dylans behaviour. It was not a one way street.

As for the alienation, imo, some of it seems self imposed, some of it does not. If you have a history of being an asshole, like Eric Harris had, of course, People are not going to like you or want to be around you. Says itself.
Its pretty much the same way People have blamed the victims of Parkland, when we know for a fact that the shooter had a Long history of animal cruelty and violent behaviour towards others. People did not avoid this person out of spite, but because he had a troubled behaviour, and the Police had been called in 17 times. Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes otherwise known as narssissism or psychopathy is what it is. Some People Just dont have what it takes to feel empathy for others. I believe that to reduce these People to kids bullied into retaliation is to deny some Basic facts in some cases. In the case of Columbine and Parkland its to deny what ASP really looks like.

I havent read it. My economy is limited for the time being, and where I Come from its hard to get a hold onto. As you can probably tell Im not from the US. Im saving money for concert tickets.

I got a hold on Dave Cullens book through e- book, and Brooks Browns book and that of Larkins Comprehending Columbine is in full text online. Some of these books are unawailable here, so you have to order online