Rachel's Funeral

Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I was reading Brooks' book and he mentions after Rachel's family had left the church Rachel's coffin was opened. Does anyone know who would have allowed that? Why didn't they choose an open casket funeral if the coffin got opened after the service? Did her family not know it was going to happen? What was the point of opening it? According to Brooks, she had an awful look on her face, understandable considering how she died. Surely it would have been better to have left it closed.

Maybe they voted on it

I think her family was there? And it's not unusual for a casket to be opened at the end even if it was a closed casket service. Alot of times it is opened at the end and family and friends file past the body to pay respects one last time as they exit. We did that at my grandpa's funeral

Ah I didn't realise that. Thank you for explaining it to me HanShotFirst. I'm from the UK and have never been to an open casket funeral or even one where they open it at the end.

No prob

Why do people make the deaths of Rachel and Cassie almost like martyrs?

@Ziamber because of all the confusion surrounding the shooting. It's like a he said she said situation but no one can verify 100% the accounts of what happened before they died. Other than Cassie, I'm sure that was debunked as being someone else being asked about their beliefs in God.

Ziamber II wrote:

Why do people make the deaths of Rachel and Cassie almost like martyrs?

Because they were both members of Evangelical Christian communities, i.e., fundamentalists, i.e., those Christians who place an emphasis on a strict, literal reading and following of the Bible.
These people are American right-wingers and are, in general, opposed to government intrusions into the lives of American citizens, feeling that the government is part of a Satanic worldwide conspiracy to bring about the end of days and the takeover of the Antichrist.
They always look for proof that American life is something that Christians must fight, and that others are out to persecute and destroy Christians for their beliefs.
Columbine plays right into that--it took place in a public school (i.e., a profane place due to the separation of church and state where one cannot pray freely) and the victims were killed by two boys immersed in modern, godless, nihilistic, hedonistic, heavy-metal pop culture.

The defining incident for these people was the 1992 Ruby Ridge standoff in which a fundamentalist, separatist Christian family got involved in a firefight with government agents; the family wife/mother was shot dead by an FBI agent while she was holding their baby. Ruby Ridge and the 1993 Waco siege led to the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, an attack on the government by terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who in turn influenced the Columbine massacre itself, with Eric and Dylan wanting to top Timothy McVeigh's body count.