Timeline/arrest/journals

It may be that the caffeine hasn’t kicked in from my morning coffee yet but I checked back in with A Mother’s Reckoning and in the chapter “Pathway to Suicide” something is not making sense to me. The boys were arrested at the end of January and started diversion in March. Judy Brown claims she thought the boys were arrested for Eric’s website threats but then they claim before diversion started Dylan gave brooks Eric’s website with the threats on it and his family went to the police... we know I think with a good amount of certainty that Dylan didn’t give Brooks the site plus if Judy assumed Eric and Dylan were arrested for the site why would Brooks have needed the web address in March?


Also I wanted to look at the dates of their journals and compare it to when they started getting into trouble.

I wonder too if they started thinking of NBK before the break in to kind of test the waters. Dylan blatantly just breaking the law and being lackadaisical with the law seemed out of character for him.

Screamingophelia wrote:

we know I think with a good amount of certainty that Dylan didn’t give Brooks the site plus if Judy assumed Eric and Dylan were arrested for the site why would Brooks have needed the web address in March?

Wait, it's not Dylan who told Brooks about Eric's website? I always thought it was him. Or do you mean he only didn't give him the website address? How did Brooks know without Dylan?

Neah wrote:

Screamingophelia wrote:

we know I think with a good amount of certainty that Dylan didn’t give Brooks the site plus if Judy assumed Eric and Dylan were arrested for the site why would Brooks have needed the web address in March?

Wait, it's not Dylan who told Brooks about Eric's website? I always thought it was him. Or do you mean he only didn't give him the website address? How did Brooks know without Dylan?

This has been speculated to death, and back. Some say that Dylan did give Brooks the address trying to rat on Eric and also stopping the attack, some say it was possibly Brooks's little brother who happened to somehow find it. There are many scenarios, sadly which is the truth isn't really 100% known.

What I don’t understand is if brooks didn’t know about the website until diversion started how could Judy think they were arrested for the website?

Also Dylan wouldn’t have been arrested. If it was for the missions , Zach would have been too

Screamingophelia wrote:

What I don’t understand is if brooks didn’t know about the website until diversion started how could Judy think they were arrested for the website?

Also Dylan wouldn’t have been arrested. If it was for the missions , Zach would have been too

They were not arrested for the missions, just for the van theft.

Sabratha wrote:

Screamingophelia wrote:

What I don’t understand is if brooks didn’t know about the website until diversion started how could Judy think they were arrested for the website?

Also Dylan wouldn’t have been arrested. If it was for the missions , Zach would have been too

They were not arrested for the missions, just for the van theft.

I know that.

What I’m asking is, in a Mother’s Reckoning Sue writes that Judy thought the boys were arrested because of the website. Which doesn’t make sense because Sue then claims Dylan showed Brooks the website address in March.

So what is Judy talking about?

If it was just for the website Dylan wouldn’t have been in trouble UNLESS it was for the mission but then Zach would have been arrested too.


The timeline makes no sense to me

Screamingophelia wrote:

we know I think with a good amount of certainty that Dylan didn’t give Brooks the site plus if Judy assumed Eric and Dylan were arrested for the site why would Brooks have needed the web address in March?


Also I wanted to look at the dates of their journals and compare it to when they started getting into trouble.

We don't know anything with certainty. The entire timeline for these issues is a mess. The website was supposedly reported twice. The Browns claim that they had nothing to do with the "concerned citizen" report and that their first report was in March even though they were supposedly visited hours after the concerned citizen report. Later on, Brooks claimed that Dylan told him about the website but he never disclosed who told him about it until after Eric and Dylan were dead.

I wrote about this. The report concerning this investigation is in the first link.
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There really is no clear answer as to what occurred but someone (or multiple parties are outright lying).

No one corrected me but I'm still not sure if I've just made a mistake with the facts somewhere.

In terms of comparing journal dates to real life issues, I sort of did that with Dylan a little while ago. I was trying to understand better what may have sparked the NBK thoughts and when NBK came real (and whether Eric should be blamed in any way for Dylan's participation).
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Thank you!!

That’s why I was so confused

It is a confusing issue. I've read Brown's book and I do find some details to be sketchy.

Now I'm not a very trusting person and if I find info from someone that doesn't add up (and cannot be easily blamed on trauma or faulty memories of thing sthat happened years ago), then I begin to view with suspicion everything said person wrote. I confronted what Brooks he wrote with various other independant sources (especially CHS student interviews by Larkin and student iunterview in 11k) and I was not impressed.

This is my personal opinion on Brooks - I believe he is exaggerating his role, making himself appear closer to E&D than he was. He is trying to present his own view and opinions about the school as objective and as one shared by almost all kids there, which is certainly not the case if you read what other students said themselves (CHS had various cliques and groups with very different perspectives, certainly no consensus opinion can be found).
I feel the Brown's are also trying to pose hard for the camera's, appear on as many TV shows as possible and sell as many books as they can. If they can spin the story a bit to make this happen - they do so.

Brooks is probably one of only two eye-witnesses that I believe is trying to actively manipulate the narrative and come up with "exclusive" info that fails to mesh with all the other information we have.


And as for the "97' concerned citizen", its very likely that it was one of the Browns. Why they would not admitt to that is not clear to me.
The alternative explanation would be that the Browns tell the truth. Perhaps many people knew about Eric's website and the "concerned citizen" is some other kid who saw the site and felt threatened by Eric calling him out by name. We cannot entirely dismiss this alternative explanation.