Would Eric have killed John?

worm wrote:

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

I also think the only reason Eric didn't kill Brooks in the parking lot that morning was because it would have blown the whole plan.

That’s a good point, but if that were the only reason then why would Eric even bother telling Brooks to go home? Why not just stay silent?

Who knows? In my opinion Eric just said whatever he thought would get rid of Brooks the fastest without raising any alarms, or making him suspicious.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] So you agree with Cullen. You think he was pure evil and not human.

Ericishuman wrote:

You guys hate Eric.

Not an accurate assumption. But I do hate the cruel killer he became in the last moments of his life. Not so much the sad, lonely, lost, angry kid he was before he put his thoughts into action. Same goes for Dylan.

Ericishuman wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] So you agree with Cullen. You think he was pure evil and not human.

No, I don't agree in the least with Cullen's one sided take on Columbine.

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

I also think the only reason Eric didn't kill Brooks in the parking lot that morning was because it would have blown the whole plan.

That’s a good point, but if that were the only reason then why would Eric even bother telling Brooks to go home? Why not just stay silent?


Who knows? In my opinion Eric just said whatever he thought would get rid of Brooks the fastest without raising any alarms, or making him suspicious.

True, I suppose that makes sense

I feel empathy for both Eric and Dylan as they both tormented, lost, lonely souls that were pushed over the edge. But remember they still wanted and did kill people.

Although I don't like how Cullen portrays Eric as a evil cartoon villain who wasn't bullied at all, there are people here who are the opposite of Cullen in that they think Eric is this pure innocent angle while Dylan is the Devil incarnated.

Tommy QTR wrote:

I feel empathy for both Eric and Dylan as they both tormented, lost, lonely souls that were pushed over the edge. But remember they still wanted and did kill people.

Although I don't like how Cullen portrays Eric as a evil cartoon villain who wasn't bullied at all, there are people here who are the opposite of Cullen in that they think Eric is this pure innocent angle while Dylan is the Devil incarnated.

Yes! I have seen that too. There are people who think Dylan was this manipulative horrible human being who tricked everyone including Eric to do his bidding.

I don't believe that for either boys. As someone who researched from the beginning ( day one...) Dylan as always the "sweet one" BUT I think it is because of the area they were in. Dylan knew more people while Eric was the outsider. I contend if this happened in Plattsburgh and somehow the Klebolds moved there and Dylan was the kid with the earring, trench coat and long hair and this happened. Dylan would be the "Eric" and Eric would be the "Dylan" Dylan, this outsider from Colorado comes and ruins the sweet Eric's life who has never hurt a fly.

I don't think Columbine would have happened without one another. Maybe one of them would have committed violence or killed themselves.. but their friendship is always a source of great interest to me.

Ericishuman wrote:

You guys hate Eric.

Ericishuman wrote:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] So you agree with Cullen. You think he was pure evil and not human.

Man, you have a serious problem talking to people who don't agree 100% with you. You really need to calm down.

Tommy QTR wrote:

I feel empathy for both Eric and Dylan as they both tormented, lost, lonely souls that were pushed over the edge. But remember they still wanted and did kill people.

Although I don't like how Cullen portrays Eric as a evil cartoon villain who wasn't bullied at all, there are people here who are the opposite of Cullen in that they think Eric is this pure innocent angle while Dylan is the Devil incarnated.

As Screaming said there are a fair number of people who think Dylan was the mastermind behind it all. I don't fully agree with that, but I do believe NBK was originally Dylan's plan. He fantasized about a spree type killing done with a girl. Much like the movie Natural Born Killers, hence the plan was dubbed NBK. BUT when he realized that finding a girl willing to do this with him was never going to happen, he pitched the plan to Eric. Who then took it and adapted it to suit himself and ran with it.

By then Dylan just wanted to die, and let Eric take control of the planning. In my opinion Dylan likely thought "Who cares, cause at the end I'll get what I want" which was a reason big enough to not back down from killing himself, AND a partner that would die with him. Also Eric was a hands on, gets shit done type. Dylan was kinda lazy, and was known somewhat as a slacker. Either way it is clear that Eric did the additional planning, prep work, and mostly bankrolled NBK, with Dylan helping very little.

I will say that I find Dylan to be the more manipulative of the two. Dylan hid himself very well. All the anger and sadness was buried deep with possibly Eric as the only witness to it. Dylan's family/friends were all totally shocked and in complete disbelief of his involvement. While Eric could barely keep his shit together and was well known to have an explosive temper, mood swings, impulsive outbursts, and had mostly pushed all his friends away besides a very select few.  

Still to be fair, they both planned and participated in massacre.  They both hold an equal responsibility for killing 13 people and destroying countless more.

Screamingophelia wrote:

Dylan as always the "sweet one" BUT I think it is because of the area they were in. Dylan knew more people while Eric was the outsider. I contend if this happened in Plattsburgh and somehow the Klebolds moved there and Dylan was the kid with the earring, trench coat and long hair and this happened. Dylan would be the "Eric" and Eric would be the "Dylan" Dylan, this outsider from Colorado comes and ruins the sweet Eric's life who has never hurt a fly.  

Agreed. If this had happened in Plattsburgh the tables would have been turned. Eric would have been portrayed as the nice kid, who was forced to carry out the plan by that freakishly attired Klebold kid.

lol

[quote="Guest"]

rebootoX wrote:

So, Eric and John obviously knew each other a little, I don't think Eric would have killed him.

Interesting thread. I think in the 11k document, Dylan Klebold turned to Eric, who was probably pointing the gun at John Savage, and said, "Let him go." Eric might have shot him but had second thoughts when Klebold stepped in.

page 000470: Athena Lagos stated, "It was almost like an argument," making reference to whether or not John Savage should be allowed to leave the library.

interesting note related to what happened

sororityalpha wrote:

page 000470: Athena Lagos stated, "It was almost like an argument," making reference to whether or not John Savage should be allowed to leave the library.

interesting note related to what happened

That’s something new to me.

It seems like from what I’ve heard Dylan didn’t think twice... I wonder if that’s why Eric was heard saying “fine, we’re blowing up the school anyway”

It’s an interesting discussion on their dynamic

I think it being the only time Eric said anything like "identify yourself" is one of the more interesting bits. John said he moved out of the way of the gun once or twice and Eric had to reposition it, then asked him to identify himself. I think it's quite possible he just recognized him, but I have to wonder if it was because of "natural selection" and having John being the only one under the tables to dodge the gun.

Aside from the murders, I find them saying over and over that the library is going to explode the most interesting part of their time in the library. I think they wanted someone to tell their story, and they thought - as they said, so many times, that everybody in the library (including themselves, while in the library? I wonder) would die in the explosion. That's why they (or Dylan anyway) told John to run.  They could have easily not shot him. But if the library is about to explode, he better run if he wants to live. While John doesn't mention it, several mention them even saying it as they tell John to leave. Rebecca Parker's for instance, p. 515. I'm sure sorority may know some others.

I had a thought the other day. I know Sue talks about Dylan sparing people and his kindness before but I grapple with the fact that he still did shoot and kill kids he knew too.. so I wonder if it was a mind game to him. His way of playing God and no so much showing mercy?

Seems self evident to me that it had nothing to do with kindness and everything to do with cold calculation. He let John go because he thought everybody left alive in the library would die when the second bomb exploded and they wanted somebody to tell the story NBK style. Otherwise he would just not be shot rather than told to run. All references to their remorse and kindness, like when roaming the halls, seem like coping from those who find the crime too difficult to understand.

Eric letting Brooks go is a lot more likely to be kindness or remorse, and it seems it was only because he had 7-10 minutes until the bombs went off and needed to tell Brooks to fuck off. Eric let Bree live (though he thought she'd be dead from the bombs anyway) while Dylan told him to kill her. Before any "remorse", Dylan shot Lance point-blank in the face with a double barrel shotgun. Had the bombs gone off, I am convinced he would have kept walking and sprayed the exits with the TEC-9. So kind. He had the more powerful car bomb too, because kindness. His t-shirt did not read "remorse", Sue.

cakeman wrote:

He let John go because he thought everybody left alive in the library would die when the second bomb exploded and they wanted somebody to tell the story NBK style. Otherwise he would just not be shot rather than told to run.

Dylan knew John Savage better than Eric, who didn't know him that well. That's why he let John Savage go. One witness reported them as saying, "Oh, we like you, you can go." He also let Evan Todd live, apologized to Sean Graves, and let several people go outside. There's little evidence that he spared John for reasons you've mentioned.

cakeman wrote:

Eric letting Brooks go is a lot more likely to be kindness or remorse, and it seems it was only because he had 7-10 minutes until the bombs went off and needed to tell Brooks to fuck off.

No, not necessarily. If Eric killed Brooks before the bombs exploded that would have alerted the other students to his presence in the parking lot. Also, he wanted to check on the bombs, and Brooks' arrival was a disturbance. I doubt he had time for kindness.

jada887 wrote:

cakeman wrote:

He let John go because he thought everybody left alive in the library would die when the second bomb exploded and they wanted somebody to tell the story NBK style. Otherwise he would just not be shot rather than told to run.

Dylan knew John Savage better than Eric, who didn't know him that well. That's why he let John Savage go. One witness reported them as saying, "Oh, we like you, you can go." He also let Evan Todd live, apologized to Sean Graves, and let several people go outside. There's little evidence that he spared John for reasons you've mentioned.

cakeman wrote:

Eric letting Brooks go is a lot more likely to be kindness or remorse, and it seems it was only because he had 7-10 minutes until the bombs went off and needed to tell Brooks to fuck off.

No, not necessarily. If Eric killed Brooks before the bombs exploded that would have alerted the other students to his presence in the parking lot. Also, he wanted to check on the bombs, and Brooks' arrival was a disturbance. I doubt he had time for kindness.

Sorry but this is just a bad, hasty post showing no attempt at understanding.

"Dylan knew John Savage better than Eric, who didn't know him that well."
Show me where I argued otherwise. You are having an argument with yourself here, recalling a basic knowledge of the case which presumably all here have.

"That's why he let John Savage go. "
That doesn't even begin to explain it; again just relaying a basic fact of the case. The NBK interpretation explains why they made him leave. The bombs explain why they made him leave. You are only explaining why him. That doesn't cut it.

Also, I gave the evidence for my interpretation: he told him to RUN. Explain that other than the bombs. They didn't just avoid shooting him. They didn't say sit in the corner. They said run for your life after SCREAMING that the library was going to explode and kill everyone; after saying it doesn't matter if they don't shoot certain people (e. g. Bree) because they'll die in the explosion anyway.  It's either the bombs, which they said it was, several times, or they couldn't resist shooting everyone in there, which is obviously contradicted by the evidence.

There are also multiple witnesses reporting it was stated explicitly:

Lindsay Elmore reports it this way: "Hey, John Savage, what are you doing here? You better get out. We’re going to blow the Library up."

Brittany Bollerud reports it this way: "If you want to live, get out." (emphasis mine, she also says "One of them said they were going to blow up the fucking Library.")

"He also let Evan Todd live"
That's after 11:35, when they knew the second bomb had failed. Literally my whole first spark of inspiration for my interpretation of the massacre rests on the fact that once they got to Evan Todd, they didn't say 'lol we're blowing up the school anyway" or "run" like with everybody else before that, but said not shooting him was "letting him live". I think they give up on the bombs when Evan Todd is held at gunpoint, not when they begin shooting.

"apologized to Sean Graves"

What does this have to do with anything? Assuming he's remembering correctly (I've only seen him mention it in an interview), yes, for stepping on him after he was shot, and  it seems pretty tongue-in-cheek.  He also seconds before then shot Lance point blank in the face because he was so full of remorse and because he couldn't shoot people if they spoke to him (sarcasm).

"I doubt he had time for kindness."

You are misunderstanding me here. I said of all their interactions that day, the one between Eric and Brooks is the "most likely" to be kindness. Then I said what I thought it really was: telling Brooks to fuck off since he had 10 minutes tops until the bomb went off and had shit to do.

"If Eric killed Brooks before the bombs exploded that would have alerted the other students to his presence in the parking lot."

This is again just repeating what everybody else says. Yeah, I've heard this. This isn't in the slightest mutually exclusive with what I said. However, I don't know why "alerting other students to his presence" means anything. His mere presence isn't an issue surely, but being aware that he's murdering people is the issue, and why would murdering someone in the parking lot make them flee the cafeteria with the bombs?  Also according to the (silly) orthodox version, his presence is supposed to be in the parking lot until "the bombs fail".

I think it's simply "brooks, get out of my way, i have to gear up and get to the top of the stairs".  I don't think it's "Let Brooks live" (though, again like NBK, it might be) nor do I think it's "I would shoot Brooks but that would ruin the plan to have someone dead out here"; I think it's mostly "talking to brooks about nonsense for ten more minutes would ruin the plan by being late to the stairs when the bombs go off".  Assuming it happened and Brooks isn't lying, of course.

In other words, I don't think if Eric were drunk and without inhibitions or caring about looking suspicious, that he would have shot Brooks then; I think he would have screamed at him to shut the fuck up and walked to the stairs.

[quote="Screamingophelia"]

QuestionMark wrote:

I think Eric was considering it but thought that it would be better to spare a person who knew him and Dylan. That way their story can be told, Natural Born Killers style.

They left many others alive as well. But I just honestly think for whatever reason, they didn't want to kill John.  Maybe seeing him face to face, talking to him, etc. made them pause long enough to realize that he had never done anything to them.

Who knows. Either way I consider John to be a very lucky man.

No one that spoke to them in any meaningful way died that day. I don’t think they knew what to do when their “targets” started to become human again.

I think Johns calm and quiet saved him. How did Dylan and John know each other again?

Pure speculation of course, but a strong argument could be made here the justification of why they stopped shooting people, as well as aimlessly walking around the halls. There are witnesses who recount the boys looked in windows and saw students like sitting ducks.

Apparently one of the survivors in the library stated they heard one of the boys say “We should just start knifing people. That would be more fun.”

[quote="QuestionMark"]

QuestionMark wrote:

I think Eric was considering it but thought that it would be better to spare a person who knew him and Dylan. That way their story can be told, Natural Born Killers style.

They left many others alive as well. But I just honestly think for whatever reason, they didn't want to kill John.  Maybe seeing him face to face, talking to him, etc. made them pause long enough to realize that he had never done anything to them.

Who knows. Either way I consider John to be a very lucky man.

Eh, they killed plenty of people they never even knew. I think they just didn't want to kill someone who knew them.

That is one, if not the biggest, perplexities surrounding the massacre. Plan A was a mass bombing, not a mass shooting. The shooting was supposed to be directed towards those who survived the initial bombing. They had to know that some of their closest friends were going to be in the school, and even perhaps the cafeteria.

[quote="Guest"][quote="ShadowedGoddess"]

QuestionMark wrote:

I think Eric was considering it but thought that it would be better to spare a person who knew him and Dylan. That way their story can be told, Natural Born Killers style.

They left many others alive as well. But I just honestly think for whatever reason, they didn't want to kill John.  Maybe seeing him face to face, talking to him, etc. made them pause long enough to realize that he had never done anything to them.

Who knows. Either way I consider John to be a very lucky man.

Eh, they killed plenty of people they never even knew. I think they just didn't want to kill someone who knew them.


That is a possibility as well. I still think that John was lucky to have slightly known them, and even luckier still to have had no issues with them.

I would imagine it would be much easier to hurt a complete stranger than someone you knew, even as an acquaintance. It makes it less personal, fewer emotions. Eric even mentions as such in his journal/writings. He says imagining his potential victims as Doom characters.

true_crime wrote:

Plan A

QuestionMark wrote:

Ericishuman wrote:

You guys hate Eric.

Ericishuman wrote:

@ShadowedGoddess So you agree with Cullen. You think he was pure evil and not human.

Man, you have a serious problem talking to people who don't agree 100% with you. You really need to calm down.

This sounds like someone else on here too...

John seems like s super humble guy, also it seemed like he wasn't totally freaking out (at least on the outside) of what was going on. I could see people screaming and making a fuss making E&D easily irritated and shooting them just to shut them up.

joebox97 wrote:

John seems like s super humble guy, also it seemed like he wasn't totally freaking out (at least on the outside) of what was going on. I could see people screaming and making a fuss making E&D easily irritated and shooting them just to shut them up.

One said John was "in his own little world" under the table, and he mentioned how he would have simply said "make it quick" if he got a 'yes' to killing him. It seems to me it was either that stoicism in the face of death, or moving out of the way of the gun when it was pointed at him (nobody else is mentioned as doing this in the library, as far as I know) which made Eric ask him and only him who he was. Could have been he recognized him, but it seems to me Dylan and not Eric recognized him.

cakeman wrote:

Show me where I argued otherwise.

I never claimed otherwise. That's why I can't.

cakeman wrote:

That doesn't even begin to explain it; again just relaying a basic fact of the case. The NBK interpretation explains why they made him leave. The bombs explain why they made him leave. You are only explaining why him. That doesn't cut it.

That's why this thread contains the words "John Savage." I assume we're talking about Savage, and not what Dylan was thinking after he heard his voice in the library. I was attempting to explain why I thought Dylan spared people during the massacre, not why he told Savage to leave. I should have made myself clearer in my former message.

jada887 wrote:

cakeman wrote:

Show me where I argued otherwise.

I never claimed otherwise. That's why I can't.

....uh, yeah, I agree that you didn't claim other than what you claimed; about Dylan knowing John. The problem is I didn't either, and you said it in response to me.

Quote :

That's why this thread contains the words "John Savage." I assume we're talking about Savage.

We are. This is some kind of gaslighting damage control. I said there's at least three elements of John Savage leaving that need explanation, and you overlooked two of them.

Quote :

I assume we're talking about Savage, and not what Dylan was thinking after he heard his voice in the library. I was attempting to explain why I thought Dylan...

Looks like a contradiction to me.

Quote :

spared people during the massacre, not why he told Savage to leave. I should have made myself clearer in my former message.

No, as you said, the thread is about John, and you said specifically he didn't let John go for the reasons I stated, with no supporting reasoning except the irrelevant fact that he knew John and spared other people. It'd be as annoying as if I said you are wrong because Littleton is in Colorado.

People here are humanizing Eric and Dylan far too much on what they did that day. They did not kill those who they knew, because they "knew" them. It was because they were playing God that day, and they wanted to choose on who had the right to live and the right to die, so they can go out and spread the story. They wanted survivors to tell the tale so their infamy can live on.

Also people are forgetting that Eric and Dylan planned to take down Columbine High School with their crappy made propane bombs. They knew for a fact that if these bombs succeeded their friends would have been killed. That is why in the Basement Tapes they said that if Chris Morris and Nate Dykeman lived they can take all their stuff. That key word: if

(Deleted)

Maybe not because in Eric's diary he says that there was a few people in school he wouldn't like to kill and John seems to always had been nice to them but who knows, Eric had so much rage

Eric could have killed John very easily but perhaps as he was alright to Dylan, Eric spared him.

I think that as previously stated, perhaps they wanted survivors to tell their story.  Also maybe he liked him for some reason .. it's a bit mysterious to me.