The Basement Tapes: Dangerous or Important?

In the wake of the Oregon shooting this week my thoughts have once again been drawn back to Columbine. As we all know there was a lot of arguing between law enforcement and the families of the victims whether or not the BT should be released. The Judge didnt want to release them due to fear of copycats and idol worship of E and D. The families of victims and the general public believed the tapes could be useful in preventing future shootings. Of course they never were released and may have even been destroyed at this point.

Do you think releasing them could have really prevented more shootings? E and D became idols to some without anyone seeing them. Seung Hui Cho saw them as martyrs and wished to follow in their footsteps. If parents had seen the evidence would they have linked E and Ds behavior towards their children? Or would it have created more stereotypes towards kids seen as loners? It got pretty close to being a witch hunt as is (goths, Marilyn Manson, trenchcoats), but that was all based on hearsay in the media. I find it odd that not even psychologists are allowed to view them. Anything that could stop this shit from happening again should be used. At the same time though I could see how more kids might seek out the fame had E and Ds words been broadcast across the world. Its a very delicate situation indeed.

Basement Tapes: helpful or harmful?

I think they're helpful. People can learn a lot from their behavior on those tapes, behavior which may not have been seen by most people. I don't think they're dangerous. If someone is going to kill someone, they will regardless of whether they have access to the tapes.

To keep it short, no I don't think releasing the tapes are "dangerous". I don't think the basement tapes would up the amount of nutjobs who worship them. Look at all the shootings since, none of those killers saw the tapes. Of course there is a possibility someone might record a "goodbye" tape just like them before committing some sort of murder, but to say the tapes made them pull off a heinous act, and not the fact they are just mentally disturbed fucks would be kind of blasphemous. It wasn't a bad idea to keep the tapes private in the years after Columbine, as a "just in case" kind of thing. But 15+ years later, they should be public domain. I don't know CO law, but isn't stuff like the tapes considered public knowledge after a certain amount of time, regardless of what a judge says. Like who gives someone power to go above a law, (if their even is one in CO) and make private things that lawfully the pubic should have access too. Even if they were going to be released in say 2025, i'd still be happy knowing that i'd EVENTUALLY get to see them, even if I'm totally over the Columbine phase. Although I always seem to come back after awhile....still don't know what intrigues me about those two mofo's after all these years.

I think in some sense any information might be dangerous to the wrong people. Heh, "Stalking Laura" proved dangerous to Lanza - you know what I mean.

I do think it would have been decent for Jeffco to at least release the transcripts, with personal information (names etc) censored out, and also censor out any bomb tutorials in case E&D go into that.

I understand why they did it. It's giving them the fame they craved. You see people saying now that shooters should not be named for similar reasons (though of course, they always end up named).

I guess as most people on here are researchers there's bound to be outcry for them being released.

In my opinion, as much as I'd like to have seen them - I don't think there would be anything on there that would help prevent further shootings. If anything, I think it would encourage more madmen to go on a spree.

Radioactive_Clothing wrote:

I understand why they did it. It's giving them the fame they craved. You see people saying now that shooters should not be named for similar reasons (though of course, they always end up named).

(...) In my opinion, as much as I'd like to have seen them - I don't think there would be anything on there that would help prevent further shootings. If anything, I think it would encourage more madmen to go on a spree.

I disagree, I think 99.9% of the damage to the public was done by the media in 1999. TIME magazine and Brook's book deserve an additional dishonorable mention here.

Since then pretty much every researcher has been working to mitigate the damage done in the first few weeks after the shooting. Frankly the release of their journals and some additional information seems to have had a positive impact if anything on the space monkey fandom. Most of the copycat shooters that came after 4/20 were identifying with the E&D depicted by the media in 1999, not the E&D who wrote the journals.

Auvinen is a perfect example - copycat columbine space monkey, loner, outcast, little to none socials skills who was ostracized and bullied and then started to identify with "99 media E&D". Textbook NBK space monkey loser.

I don't think the tapes would have any impact now. I think they might have back in 2000, but that's still debatable. People are just to jaded now...

I don't think avoiding the names of the shooters will change anything either. They usually lust for vengeance, and then their own death by suicide or cop. If they're not here, they don't care if their name is in the news. Horrible people will always live in infamy if only for the sake of being a reference for how low humanity can go.

I think we should be as public as we can with future mass shooters. Show every mundane detail of their lives, so that researchers can compile some kind of early warning system for this kind of behavior.

Sabratha wrote:

I think in some sense any information might be dangerous to the wrong people. Heh, "Stalking Laura" proved dangerous to Lanza - you know what I mean.

I do think it would have been decent for Jeffco to at least release the transcripts, with personal information (names etc) censored out, and also censor out any bomb tutorials in case E&D go into that.

Why do you think the transcripts we got were cut down so much? There is no way those transcripts account for all 3-4 hours worth of recordings. I honestly think there is something big on there. It might not be considered BIG information now, but something that would have been big in the year or two after the massacre.

Randy Brown says that the tapes make the Harris's look really bad parents. The only reason I can think of that JeffCo would cover for the Harris's is if it effected their image them too. It has to be related to Eric's vandalism and criminal activity. Maybe Eric had made the move on to theft. I've never believed the January incident was pure impulse on the boys part. They may have stumbled upon the van, but it takes a lot of balls to break into a car. Especially if it was their first time stealing like that. Maybe Eric and Dylan were checking unlocked cars at night while on their mission? The sudden act of breaking into a vehicle makes sense if you consider that they'd done it before.

I always suspected that there may have been a mention on there from Eric about the calls the Browns made to the police.

Even if it was just a random one liner like "I know Brooks has been trying to get the cops on me - I'll blow his fucking head off" sort of thing - immediately putting Jeffco in a bad light.

Radioactive_Clothing wrote:

I always suspected that there may have been a mention on there from Eric about the calls the Browns made to the police.

Even if it was just a random one liner like "I know Brooks has been trying to get the cops on me - I'll blow his fucking head off" sort of thing - immediately putting Jeffco in a bad light.

Very improbable imho. If it was, we'd all would have heard about it by now. Lots of people seen the tape and something like naming a person by his surname with a threat - people would take note of that.

Remember how the pretty random "godly whores" comment got so much attention, even when no surnames were used?

Nirvana92 wrote:

Sabratha wrote:

I think in some sense any information might be dangerous to the wrong people. Heh, "Stalking Laura" proved dangerous to Lanza - you know what I mean.

I do think it would have been decent for Jeffco to at least release the transcripts, with personal information (names etc) censored out, and also censor out any bomb tutorials in case E&D go into that.

Why do you think the transcripts we got were cut down so much? There is no way those transcripts account for all 3-4 hours worth of recordings. I honestly think there is something big on there. It might not be considered BIG information now, but something that would have been big in the year or two after the massacre.

Randy Brown says that the tapes make the Harris's look really bad parents. The only reason I can think of that JeffCo would cover for the Harris's is if it effected their image them too.

Because its not a transcript. All we have are a few vctimims family members and journalists who seen the tapes and later on mentioned in their own words a few lines of E&D that they thought were relevant to the case.

I can see 3 reasons why it may make them look as bad parents:
1. Eric brags about how he duped them. I think this one is obvious.
2. The recording shows that the weapons etc were not well hidden. I think its unlikley.
3. Eric goes on how his dad found the pipebomb, but failed to press the matter and search his room for a longer period of time. Likely imho.

If it was just the vandalism, then Jeffco would supress the "night missions" text, not the BT.

Transcripts definitely do not reflect everything. Of course, these tapes are valuable information about the motives, about the personalities of the boys, show the interaction between them. Many would like to see it.
These tapes present the same hazard as movies, news or books. Unfortunately there will always be fans who will copy someone's actions. All the same, I think that the tapes was not withheld for fear of copycats, but because of the large number personal information that they contain.

Good points. I think the reason that we'll never see the tapes is more to the fact that there wasn't a really good medium for leaking footage back in 1999. The reason we have some of the photos that we do is only because of stuff being copied from JEFFCO's evidence library. If the shooting had happened a few years later, digital media would've made leaking the footage much more likely, not to mention that fact that there would've also been a lot of cell phone camera footage if that shooting had happened after 2005.

More to the point, I don't feel that the tapes are dangerous at all. A lot of the early perceptions about Eric and Dylan being martyrs for the disenfranchised teen masses have long since been dispelled. Given that there is nothing disturbing or gory in the tapes, it also wouldn't be distressing to anyone besides the victims and family. Also, much of the personal information is probably irrelevant as well, since web sleuths found out a lot just by doing diligent research in their own.