Rachel's Journals (from what has been publicly released)

There's always been a lot of talk about how obsessive the writings of Eric and Dylan are, but Rachel's writings aren't much better. She's so fixated on God, how did this girl find time for anything else? Did she ever talk about anything else? I can't imagine her having many friends if every other word out of her mouth was 'God'.

I find it nothing but a coincidence that Rachel wrote about dying and 1999 being her "last year". The 13 teardrops while interesting is nothing more than a coincidence. Rachel's parents took her writings and twisted them into this whole "she saw the future" type of thing and tried turning her into a martyr. Rachel seemed like a very good person but I believe she was conflicted in some of her beliefs. It seems like from a very young age she was sort of brainwashed into the whole God thing. I just get the feeling that some of it was forced, although I could be wrong.

Agreed, you are correct.

There is an excerpt from Lauren's journal on her memorial plaque that talks about Jesus and dying too. All the plaques except for Dan R, Corey, Kelly, Mr. Sanders and I think Dan Mausers are very religious.

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This is a cool drawing!

Screamingophelia wrote:

There is an excerpt from Lauren's journal on her memorial plaque that talks about Jesus and dying too. All the plaques except for Dan R, Corey, Kelly, Mr. Sanders and I think Dan Mausers are very religious.

It's pretty normal to think about death when your younger, it's almost taboo. I thought about dying when I was a teen and if I did I hope it was in a blaze of glory.

slippy123 wrote:

I find it nothing but a coincidence that Rachel wrote about dying and 1999 being her "last year". The 13 teardrops while interesting is nothing more than a coincidence. Rachel's parents took her writings and twisted them into this whole "she saw the future" type of thing and tried turning her into a martyr. Rachel seemed like a very good person but I believe she was conflicted in some of her beliefs. It seems like from a very young age she was sort of brainwashed into the whole God thing. I just get the feeling that some of it was forced, although I could be wrong.  

The ''last year'' journal entry is dated May 2, 1998. Obviously 1998 wasn't her last year. She wrote this when she was 16, but her 16th year wasn't her last year either, she turned 17 before the shooting. The only interpretation where this is a last year prophecy turned true is the one where the deadline is one year from writing that, and indeed she did not live to see May 2, 1999. As for her religious views, I think she was bona fide religious, she chose to be baptized in Louisiana after having some spiritual experience or something IIRC but I also think she found religion to be constricting and suffocating for her chirpy personality at times. When you mention brainwashing, I can't help but think that Cassie Bernall on the other hand was sort of brainwashed at some Christian camp due to her fondness for all sorts of things considered dark stuff by Christians.

Tuga wrote:

slippy123 wrote:

I find it nothing but a coincidence that Rachel wrote about dying and 1999 being her "last year". The 13 teardrops while interesting is nothing more than a coincidence. Rachel's parents took her writings and twisted them into this whole "she saw the future" type of thing and tried turning her into a martyr. Rachel seemed like a very good person but I believe she was conflicted in some of her beliefs. It seems like from a very young age she was sort of brainwashed into the whole God thing. I just get the feeling that some of it was forced, although I could be wrong.  

The ''last year'' journal entry is dated May 2, 1998. Obviously 1998 wasn't her last year. She wrote this when she was 16, but her 16th year wasn't her last year either, she turned 17 before the shooting. The only interpretation where this is a last year prophecy turned true is the one where the deadline is one year from writing that, and indeed she did not live to see May 2, 1999. As for her religious views, I think she was bona fide religious, she chose to be baptized in Louisiana after having some spiritual experience or something IIRC but I also think she found religion to be constricting and suffocating for her chirpy personality at times. When you mention brainwashing, I can't help but think that Cassie Bernall on the other hand was sort of brainwashed at some Christian camp due to her fondness for all sorts of things considered dark stuff by Christians.

Regardless you get my point. Just the fact that their family still openly says the whole "Eric grabbed Rachel by the hair and said "Go be with God" then shot her execution style shows they are still living in their own world. They will skew the facts to make her look like this martyr. They've been told many times that nothing of the sort happened. Nothing against Rachel but I can see where the "brainwashing" comes from. I believe there was something posted about her saying she wanted to drink or party like her friends but her parents put it into her mind that she would be a bad person or something along those lines. I completely agree with Cassie though. From reading about her it sounds like she was a little screwy in the head.

Rachel didn't even have hair long enough to grab on 4/20. She had just cut it really short for a part in a play.

Littlelo wrote:

Rachel didn't even have hair long enough to grab on 4/20. She had just cut it really short for a part in a play.

exactly.

I love how close she was with God. I wish I could have known her

Sent from Topic'it App

Lavenderloom wrote:

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This is a cool drawing!

that symbol in the upper middle looks like dylans earring

Lavenderloom wrote:

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This is a cool drawing!

What is depicted in this picture? Can someone explain to me? Why does she paint this rose so often?

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I think Rachel was into symbolism and red roses symbolize many things. In Christianity specifically, they represent the Virgin Mary, this is how rosaries came to be. But the much more common symbolism is the one of love and passion. They also represent hope and new beginnings.

I'm new to the forum. Just asking ab Rachel, is SHE the one who was asked about God? Or was it Cassie? or both?

sadboyzzzzzzz wrote:

I'm new to the forum. Just asking ab Rachel, is SHE the one who was asked about God? Or was it Cassie? or both?

It was Valeen Schnurr and she's alive and hopefully well and kicking ass.

Rachel being asked if she believed in God was debunked I believe through ballistics. She wasn't shot that close in range. Also Richard Castaldo (sp) changed his story several times. Dylan also knew Rachel casually but they were never in any classes together. They shared a good friend, Devon and were involved in a few theatre productions together, notably Smoke in the Room which Rachel starred in (and cut her hair for "I'm Not Ashamed" I don't care if it was nearly 20 years ago you HAVE PICTURES) Dylan did lights.

Craig Scott, Rachel's brother was in the library and thought it was Cassie who was asked about God, but the investigators saw holes in his story and realized he was mistaken. Before Cassie died Eric knocked on the table 3 times and said "peek a boo' and shot her

The God exchange was between Val and Dylan who knew each other casually through class. There is an extended 911 call where you hear Val screaming for Lauren and Dylan yelling at Val to shut the eff up. Val keeps yelling "oh my god" etc and Dylan asks why she believes in God and Val says because that is how she was brought up. Dylan goes "God is gay" and stops attacking the table.

Tuga wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] I think Rachel was into symbolism and red roses symbolize many things. In Christianity specifically, they represent the Virgin Mary, this is how rosaries came to be. But the much more common symbolism is the one of love and passion. They also represent hope and new beginnings.

Maybe she painted something like that?
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Here she draws a ring in the form of a rose, which wraps her heart and hurts it with thorns. Apparently it symbolizes some spiritual or love wounds ...
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I know this is an old post (I've been at home taking care of my dad so I go from not having any time to go online to tons ha ha) but Rachel wasn't Catholic. She went to Mass with my sister a couple of times when they were younger, but she was definitely raised evangelical/protestant. She liked the idea of mixing religions and faith which is very very contrary to her upbringings, my sister said. Which is why she'd go to Church with friends and they'd go to Church with her. But really my sister said she drew roses on everything because they were what she liked drawing the best. When they were in middle school Rachel showed my sister how to draw roses the same way on some of their notes that she still has they wrote back and forth through the years.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] My sister has always described Rachel's personal journalling talking about God all the time as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. She didn't talk about God non stop. Never. She was always questioning. She was raised in a super religious household with a lot of hypocrisy and she was always trying to understand that. She told my sister when they talked about journaling that it was hard for her too but then her auntie told her to write "letters to God" as a way to journal when she was younger so she started doing that. My sister said she journaled the same way before the shooting and after because of what Rachel shared with her. So you mix her trying to work out the hypocrisy of her family, of the Columbine community, where everyone is supposed to be this one type of conservative Christian but parties and is very obsessed with popularity and material goods. Then you have how her mom raised her daughters, get married young and be good housewives like she was, but look how that didn't pan out for her. Her mom was a good girl and a virgin until she got married at like 18 and her perfect pastor hubby dumped her on her butt hand they went hungry many times because her mom didn't have enough education to work and support her family and her dad who was supposed to said "God led him a different way". She always hated that and a lot of that was what led to her angst as a teenager. Her sisters married pretty young. She had a lot of complicated thoughts to her. She was very feeling and very spiritual but not religious she just, with her upbringing and at the time, didn't have the words to describe it differently.

My sister truly believes if she was a teenager today she'd consider herself a feminist, she'd be able to question things a little more. Littleton in the 80s and 90s was very stiffling. She wouldn't have said she wanted to go join a Christian acting troop to her mother just as a way to cover how miserable she was at school and in Littleton. She would have left. If she hadn't been killed my sister thinks she'd either be in Boulder/NYC/some major city part of some new age spiritual type thing as well as theater, or she'd be one of those very liberal hip Christian pro LGBT types who work in the inner city. Littleton's religious tightly enclosed boxes are what raised her, but really she was trying to break out from them.

It's just super sad that she tried so hard, with the tools she had, to break out of the oppressive lip service hypocritical conservative suburban "Christianity" that Littleton was seeped in, but in her death, her parents who barely knew her by this point have made her eternal memory associated with the very thing she wasn't.

milennialrebelette wrote:

I know this is an old post (I've been at home taking care of my dad so I go from not having any time to go online to tons ha ha) but Rachel wasn't Catholic. She went to Mass with my sister a couple of times when they were younger, but she was definitely raised evangelical/protestant. She liked the idea of mixing religions and faith which is very very contrary to her upbringings, my sister said. Which is why she'd go to Church with friends and they'd go to Church with her. But really my sister said she drew roses on everything because they were what she liked drawing the best. When they were in middle school Rachel showed my sister how to draw roses the same way on some of their notes that she still has they wrote back and forth through the years.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] My sister has always described Rachel's personal journalling talking about God all the time as trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. She didn't talk about God non stop. Never. She was always questioning. She was raised in a super religious household with a lot of hypocrisy and she was always trying to understand that. She told my sister when they talked about journaling that it was hard for her too but then her auntie told her to write "letters to God" as a way to journal when she was younger so she started doing that. My sister said she journaled the same way before the shooting and after because of what Rachel shared with her. So you mix her trying to work out the hypocrisy of her family, of the Columbine community, where everyone is supposed to be this one type of conservative Christian but parties and is very obsessed with popularity and material goods. Then you have how her mom raised her daughters, get married young and be good housewives like she was, but look how that didn't pan out for her. Her mom was a good girl and a virgin until she got married at like 18 and her perfect pastor hubby dumped her on her butt hand they went hungry many times because her mom didn't have enough education to work and support her family and her dad who was supposed to said "God led him a different way". She always hated that and a lot of that was what led to her angst as a teenager. Her sisters married pretty young. She had a lot of complicated thoughts to her. She was very feeling and very spiritual but not religious she just, with her upbringing and at the time, didn't have the words to describe it differently.

My sister truly believes if she was a teenager today she'd consider herself a feminist, she'd be able to question things a little more. Littleton in the 80s and 90s was very stiffling. She wouldn't have said she wanted to go join a Christian acting troop to her mother just as a way to cover how miserable she was at school and in Littleton. She would have left. If she hadn't been killed my sister thinks she'd either be in Boulder/NYC/some major city part of some new age spiritual type thing as well as theater, or she'd be one of those very liberal hip Christian pro LGBT types who work in the inner city. Littleton's religious tightly enclosed boxes are what raised her, but really she was trying to break out from them.

It's just super sad that she tried so hard, with the tools she had, to break out of the oppressive lip service hypocritical conservative suburban "Christianity" that Littleton was seeped in, but in her death, her parents who barely knew her by this point have made her eternal memory associated with the very thing she wasn't.

Thank you for sharing with us!

She seemed like a really nice girl. She was good at drawing and writing too. Thanks for sharing [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]. She really did seem like an accepting kind person

I know I’m well out the loop at the minute, but to the girl who is saying that her sister was good friends with Rachel - what was the sisters name?

Also, I read in another thread you have beef with Randy Brown. Why so?

Draw_It_White wrote:

I know I’m well out the loop at the minute, but to the girl who is saying that her sister was good friends with Rachel - what was the sisters name?

Also, I read in another thread you have beef with Randy Brown. Why so?

The mods know her name. Or I can PM it to you. She just doesn't want it floating around for a google search.

The thing with the Brown family goes back since I was little. Judy isn't well liked in the neighborhood and was nasty to my mom and her friends and my sister who graduated in 2000, hasn't liked Brooks since they were little. My own personal stuff with them has to do with when I was in high school, I graduated in 2010. My mom was really sick and died just after I graduated. Judy was awful, refused to help but was always involving herself in our business, and saying really horrible stuff about me personally, having to work, having a hard time catching up with classes to graduate, etc. I eventually had to help my mom sell her house and move all while I was working and trying to graduate. The other neighbors were all wonderful and the Browns were awful.

milennialrebelette wrote:

Draw_It_White wrote:

I know I’m well out the loop at the minute, but to the girl who is saying that her sister was good friends with Rachel - what was the sisters name?

Also, I read in another thread you have beef with Randy Brown. Why so?

The mods know her name. Or I can PM it to you. She just doesn't want it floating around for a google search.

The thing with the Brown family goes back since I was little. Judy isn't well liked in the neighborhood and was nasty to my mom and her friends and my sister who graduated in 2000, hasn't liked Brooks since they were little. My own personal stuff with them has to do with when I was in high school, I graduated in 2010. My mom was really sick and died just after I graduated. Judy was awful, refused to help but was always involving herself in our business, and saying really horrible stuff about me personally, having to work, having a hard time catching up with classes to graduate, etc. I eventually had to help my mom sell her house and move all while I was working and trying to graduate. The other neighbors were all wonderful and the Browns were awful.

DM then please.

i found her April 20, '98 entry interesting because she mentions that she lost all her friends at school (i know that has nothing to do w. the shooting), but it's sort of like an ironic foreshadowing

I mean... She is fixated on God but the first poem is depressing as hell and is nearly a cry out for help. Rope, pills,gun,tree;wtf? She was clearly using religion to fill a void; she seems like she was in a lot of pain. I am sorry her friends abandoned her; I am sure they feel terrible now.

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She wrote that she felt she was losing her friends because of the way she was standing up for and living out her own faith. Her parents have interpreted this as she was outwardly standing up for the conservative Christian beliefs and values she was raised with and her friends who she partied with didn't like this.

My sister said that's not what happened. At this time Rachel was growing further and further from the version of Christianity she was raised with, endoctrinated, really, and towards her own version of faith and spirituality that was more open and liberal. She didn't even go to church with her family, her parents showed their lack of understanding of this when her funeral was not held at the church she went to but her family's that she stopped attending and didn't agree with, led by a pastor who she specifically had ideological issues with. She went to a church over in the DTC (Denver Tech Center) at I-25 and Orchard Road. She also would go to Church in the City which was downtown Denver on Colfax as a church where the homeless, addicts, etc. Were welcome and helped.

She was becoming more vocal about these things which further separated her from her already more distant family as well as caused some dissent from people she knew from conservative Christianity. My sister said in her last year, she was becoming more outspoken about her values, of kindness, of care for those in need. Her dad especially misinterpreted this as her standing up for his version of conservative Christianity, like purity and that crap, but its been widely publicized by her school friends that she didn't talk about her Christianity. Her values in her mind were associated with her belief in God and spirituality which she was constantly questioning and learning and evolving with.

My sister says she's not saying this is the definitive explanation for that part of her journal, but to my sister and her other close friends this is what they heard from Rachel directly and saw her in action not the made up misinterpretation by her dad that's been spread around everywhere since her death.

Oh and about her friends. She was one of those girls who was friends with a bunch of different groups. In middle school and early high school she and my sister had a group of girl friends that were considered popular in their own grade. That's when they went to parties, went shopping (my sister and her shopped at Goodwill because of both their families financial situations) and spent time coming up with creative ways to dress on only a few dollars. All the girls went to church with their families but it was during this period they being part of the popular crowd were sometimes accused of being cliqueish and sometimes even mean

In high school this core group started getting involved in different extra curriculars. Rachel was involved in drama and debate and became part of the theater crowd, and it was in high school she started going to her own church. My sister did cheer then poms since she had danced when she was younger and hung out with the jocks. The groups weren't concrete, so people would bounce around from hanging out with the kids they'd been friends with in elementary school, the kids on the sports team they were on or the marching band or choir, etc. Then sometimes kids they had a bunch of classes with. Like my sister hung out with the poms squad, the jock upperclassmen, some of the athletes who weren't jocks, her long time group of friends with Rachel who all had different interests, some of the kids she was in LifeTeen with (Catholic youth group) etc

Rachel did not like the bullying. She started opening her eyes to it more toward the end of sophomore year right around when she wrote the journal entry about living her faith. She'd make a point to eat with the special needs kids sometimes, and reach out to people she saw alone or being bullied. Craig tried super hard to be part of the jock/popular group and Rachel was really disappointed by his behavior especially considered how he was the first to support the conservative Christianity of their parents, but then acted like a bully and crude etc. at school, she found it very hypocritical. My brother said sometimes she'd call out Craig or some of the other guys who would bully him and his friends.

She wasn't militant about it, she didn't get in bullies faces and lecture them about how wrong they were. Thats not who she was about anything she believed in. She stood up with her actions not words, by befriending loners, if she stood up to the bullies she was still nice, asking them to stop and go do something else. That's why she was well liked, people respected her for those values. She was afraid she'd lose friends doing this but she actually didn't she gained lots of respect.

The way her dad has cherry picked through her journals to support complete misinterpretation and falsehoods that make up a fake version of Rachel has been spread so much and so far the amazing person who Rachel really was only lives on in her friends memories, those who actually knew her. Not her parents who weren't close to her at all by the time she died, especially not her dad who had walked out on her mom and the 5 young kids leaving them with literally nothing 10 years before and never once gave them a penny since.

Absolutely on the last point! I don't want to seem like all I'm doing is talking shit about Beth, Darrell and the rest of Rachel's family. I'm still good friends and talk regularly with Darrell and his second wife Sandy. My sister has a good relationship with Beth and after not liking Craig pre shooting or especially in the immediate years following, she's reconnected with him after he's showed some real in depth change and maturity.

Rachel also loved her family. She was angry at her dad and what he did to their family but she didn't hate him. She was frustrated that her mom just accepted what her dad did when he walked out and defended him as the head of the house and male who's in charge, and never took him to court for badly needed child support, and after those hellish years where they would have been homeless and penniless if not for family members and others feeling bad for them, she encouraged her daughter's to marry young to a good Christian boy just like she did. But that just solidified her desire not to marry, she deeply respected her mom on the other side for working her fingers to the bone to provide for her kids. Craig drove her crazy and was the first to imitative her family mocking her, for her new red hair for the play, for her desire to be an actress, for going to a different church and ministering to addicts and the homeless but not as sinners but as valuable human beings, etc. etc. But she still loved her brother.

However my sister says she'll never forget when Rachel called her sobbing a few weeks before she died because of how her family was mocking her for her hair for the play. She said for Rachel it was just a combination of all the slights, all the laughing and mocking for her not following her family blindly... thats why she was set on moving out on her 18th birthday with Alisha. It wasn't just talk they had the apartment selected and had even gone to New Mexico for Spring Break to buy furniture and other supplies for the apartment. That would be right before senior year started, so she planned that thought she would still be in high school she would be living away from family and they had no problem with that.

There's no villains or heroes really, its just a complicated mess of good and bad and balancing her love for her family with what had become awful for her living g situation. The Scott's also manipulated her memory into someone she wasn't but I don't think it was done maliciously it was just a product of grief, personal blinders and the sad fact the last fee years of her life Rachel had changed, for the better my sister and many of her friends believed, but in ways her family were too distant from and really didn't know. Facing that fact after their daughter/sisters death had to be heart breaking.

milennialrebelette wrote:

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She wrote that she felt she was losing her friends because of the way she was standing up for and living out her own faith. Her parents have interpreted this as she was outwardly standing up for the conservative Christian beliefs and values she was raised with and her friends who she partied with didn't like this.

My sister said that's not what happened. At this time Rachel was growing further and further from the version of Christianity she was raised with, endoctrinated, really, and towards her own version of faith and spirituality that was more open and liberal. She didn't even go to church with her family, her parents showed their lack of understanding of this when her funeral was not held at the church she went to but her family's that she stopped attending and didn't agree with, led by a pastor who she specifically had ideological issues with. She went to a church over in the DTC (Denver Tech Center) at I-25 and Orchard Road. She also would go to Church in the City which was downtown Denver on Colfax as a church where the homeless, addicts, etc. Were welcome and helped.

She was becoming more vocal about these things which further separated her from her already more distant family as well as caused some dissent from people she knew from conservative Christianity. My sister said in her last year, she was becoming more outspoken about her values, of kindness, of care for those in need. Her dad especially misinterpreted this as her standing up for his version of conservative Christianity, like purity and that crap, but its been widely publicized by her school friends that she didn't talk about her Christianity. Her values in her mind were associated with her belief in God and spirituality which she was constantly questioning and learning and evolving with.

My sister says she's not saying this is the definitive explanation for that part of her journal, but to my sister and her other close friends this is what they heard from Rachel directly and saw her in action not the made up misinterpretation by her dad that's been spread around everywhere since her death.

Oh and about her friends. She was one of those girls who was friends with a bunch of different groups. In middle school and early high school she and my sister had a group of girl friends that were considered popular in their own grade. That's when they went to parties, went shopping (my sister and her shopped at Goodwill because of both their families financial situations) and spent time coming up with creative ways to dress on only a few dollars. All the girls went to church with their families but it was during this period they being part of the popular crowd were sometimes accused of being cliqueish and sometimes even mean

In high school this core group started getting involved in different extra curriculars. Rachel was involved in drama and debate and became part of the theater crowd, and it was in high school she started going to her own church. My sister did cheer then poms since she had danced when she was younger and hung out with the jocks. The groups weren't concrete, so people would bounce around from hanging out with the kids they'd been friends with in elementary school, the kids on the sports team they were on or the marching band or choir, etc. Then sometimes kids they had a bunch of classes with. Like my sister hung out with the poms squad, the jock upperclassmen, some of the athletes who weren't jocks, her long time group of friends with Rachel who all had different interests, some of the kids she was in LifeTeen with (Catholic youth group) etc

Rachel did not like the bullying. She started opening her eyes to it more toward the end of sophomore year right around when she wrote the journal entry about living her faith. She'd make a point to eat with the special needs kids sometimes, and reach out to people she saw alone or being bullied. Craig tried super hard to be part of the jock/popular group and Rachel was really disappointed by his behavior especially considered how he was the first to support the conservative Christianity of their parents, but then acted like a bully and crude etc. at school, she found it very hypocritical. My brother said sometimes she'd call out Craig or some of the other guys who would bully him and his friends.

She wasn't militant about it, she didn't get in bullies faces and lecture them about how wrong they were. Thats not who she was about anything she believed in. She stood up with her actions not words, by befriending loners, if she stood up to the bullies she was still nice, asking them to stop and go do something else. That's why she was well liked, people respected her for those values. She was afraid she'd lose friends doing this but she actually didn't she gained lots of respect.

The way her dad has cherry picked through her journals to support complete misinterpretation and falsehoods that make up a fake version of Rachel has been spread so much and so far the amazing person who Rachel really was only lives on in her friends memories, those who actually knew her. Not her parents who weren't close to her at all by the time she died, especially not her dad who had walked out on her mom and the 5 young kids leaving them with literally nothing 10 years before and never once gave them a penny since.

Absolutely on the last point! I don't want to seem like all I'm doing is talking shit about Beth, Darrell and the rest of Rachel's family.  I'm still good friends and talk regularly with Darrell and his second wife Sandy. My sister has a good relationship with Beth and after not liking Craig pre shooting or especially in the immediate years following, she's reconnected with him after he's showed some real in depth change and maturity.

Rachel also loved her family. She was angry at her dad and what he did to their family but she didn't hate him. She was frustrated that her mom just accepted what her dad did when he walked out and defended him as the head of the house and male who's in charge, and never took him to court for badly needed child support, and after those hellish years where they would have been homeless and penniless if not for family members and others feeling bad for them, she encouraged her daughter's to marry young to a good Christian boy just like she did. But that just solidified her desire not to marry, she deeply respected her mom on the other side for working her fingers to the bone to provide for her kids. Craig drove her crazy and was the first to imitative her family mocking her, for her new red hair for the play, for her desire to be an actress, for going to a different church and ministering to addicts and the homeless but not as sinners but as valuable human beings, etc. etc. But she still loved her brother.

However my sister says she'll never forget when Rachel called her sobbing a few weeks before she died because of how her family was mocking her for her hair for the play. She said for Rachel it was just a combination of all the slights, all the laughing and mocking for her not following her family blindly... thats why she was set on moving out on her 18th birthday with Alisha. It wasn't just talk they had the apartment selected and had even gone to New Mexico for Spring Break to buy furniture and other supplies for the apartment. That would be right before senior year started, so she planned that thought she would still be in high school she would be living away from family and they had no problem with that.

There's no villains or heroes really, its just a complicated mess of good and bad and balancing her love for her family with what had become awful for her living g situation. The Scott's also manipulated her memory into someone she wasn't but I don't think it was done maliciously it was just a product of grief, personal blinders and the sad fact the last fee years of her life Rachel had changed, for the better my sister and many of her friends believed, but in ways her family were too distant from and really didn't know. Facing that fact after their daughter/sisters death had to be heart breaking.

There's nothing wrong with being religious; but that poem to me shows she was in a whole heap of emotional anguish.

SandraSmit19 wrote:

There's always been a lot of talk about how obsessive the writings of Eric and Dylan are, but Rachel's writings aren't much better. She's so fixated on God, how did this girl find time for anything else? Did she ever talk about anything else? I can't imagine her having many friends if every other word out of her mouth was 'God'.

Like Eric and Dylan, I think Rachel wrote her deepest thoughts she normally wouldn’t share with others in her journal.

DF978 wrote:

SandraSmit19 wrote:

There's always been a lot of talk about how obsessive the writings of Eric and Dylan are, but Rachel's writings aren't much better. She's so fixated on God, how did this girl find time for anything else? Did she ever talk about anything else? I can't imagine her having many friends if every other word out of her mouth was 'God'.

Like Eric and Dylan, I think Rachel wrote her deepest thoughts she normally wouldn’t share with others in her journal.

You have to understand that the "journals" that were published are only cherry picked portions falsely presented as the entirety of her writings and thoughts, not as only small fraction of all her writings completely removed from her original content and intentions that they are. The reality is, other than the letter shared by Mark her friend from the downtown ministry and church she liked to go to,, every single word in her writing that the public has seen is only what her dad meticulously plucked out almost a year after her death, up until then he had no clue she wrote journals at all. He had already started to propagate the "St. Rachel of Littleton" or more correctly the evangelical martyr, everything he shared and said and presented was done to boost this image, so he copied and pasted and took out of context while adding his own to make her writings say something she had in no way shape or form intended.

Here's some of the background information. My sister still has a small box of items that are related to the shooting and who she lost that she keeps in her closet. She threw everything in it after the shooting that gave her painful memories, notes from Rachel, the 1999 prom memorabilia booklet, the developed prom pictures she hadn't looked at at all since she started to go through them in her friend's car on the drive back to school, she hadn't finished the stack when, trying to turn off Pierce into the student parking lot, they were stopped by a police officer. They got left in her friends car and when they were returned she apparently through them in the trash but my mom fished them out and later that summer gave them back but she still refused to go through them. There's also the program from opening night of 'Smoke in the Room' and a pack of Marlboro Lights with only one cigarette missing that Rachel gave to her begging my sister to never give back to her no matter how much she tried, how much she whined and made excuses. There's a super old expensive dark burgundy lipstick that they shoplifter at Southwest Plaza in 7th grade convinced they'd look soooo mature and hot if they wore it... apparently they looked like Gothic baby prostitutes and eventually my sister got caught wearing it to school bybher dad who banned her wearing it until she was 18 and lived in the back of a drawer in the bathroom until she found it when she moved out of her dad's completely sometime after the shooting.

There's a few other things, each with a story I had the honor of hearing when my sister came back to Littleton, Colorado too for that matter with her first baby and husband for the first time since she graduated from CU, it was also the first time she'd been through it in 5 or 6 years, as she was digging a few different things that reminded her of high school that she'd asked her dad to put in storage for her, like her letter jacket and some notebooks. Her senior and sophomore yearbooks went missing but she has her freshman and junior year ones.

Anyway like I said my sister has some of the countless notes Rachel wrote her over the decade of their friendship. She also has at least one notebook they passed back and forth starting in middle school. She says they'd gone through multiple notebooks and Rachel had most of them. My sister was far from the only one who she shared notes and even notebooks with. Then there's all her personal writing and notebooks.

All of this has been ignored to cherry pick everything that mentioned God.

If it sounds like she was obsessed with God and only talked about Him its because Darrell only chose portions of her thousands and thousands of pages of words that mentioned Him and ignored everything else, even if it put what she wrote about God in a different context or gave it some backstory, Darrell had a specific image of the daughter he wanted to create and ignored all that other stuff

After she died and her parents started the hardcore God thing like at her funeral, countless friends from school who weren't her super close friends but hung out wirhhl her regularly, saw her at school and talked to her, were all shocked that she was Christian because outside a few situations and to some of her best friends she had deep conversations with where faith was mentioned, because she never talked about God or church or religion at all.

That says more than cherry picked out of context snippets, the only mentions of God in the thousands of pages she wrote.

milennialrebelette wrote:

Draw_It_White wrote:

I know I’m well out the loop at the minute, but to the girl who is saying that her sister was good friends with Rachel - what was the sisters name?

Also, I read in another thread you have beef with Randy Brown. Why so?

The mods know her name. Or I can PM it to you. She just doesn't want it floating around for a google search.

The thing with the Brown family goes back since I was little. Judy isn't well liked in the neighborhood and was nasty to my mom and her friends and my sister who graduated in 2000, hasn't liked Brooks since they were little. My own personal stuff with them has to do with when I was in high school, I graduated in 2010. My mom was really sick and died just after I graduated. Judy was awful, refused to help but was always involving herself in our business, and saying really horrible stuff about me personally, having to work, having a hard time catching up with classes to graduate, etc. I eventually had to help my mom sell her house and move all while I was working and trying to graduate. The other neighbors were all wonderful and the Browns were awful.

I 100% believe it. Have you heard his book? I am half way through it, a good 60% off it he complains about the fact he wasn't included in the investigation and they weren't kept in the loop about it.