How do you suppose the conversation went?

I know this is just your own theories and what not, but I'm curious to see what all of your thoughts are. How do you think they approached the topic of going NBK? Who do you think presented the idea and how do you think it was presented?

I tend to think that it may have started out as a joke between them "Hey we should kill [insert person/group they hated that day]" had a good laugh, and then one day one of them was like "You know we could, if you think about it, it wouldn't be that difficult"

Also I've read in Cullenbine, and others that Eric allegedly fished for Chris and others to potentially help with NBK, do you guys think that was what he was actually doing? I keep going back and forth on it - part of me says that Eric and Dylan would have loved more people, because it meant more destruction and mayhem, and it would shake the world probably more than it had, but at the same time I don't see either of them being pro-anyone else. They were already being exceptionally careful not to be discovered despite how many close calls, and adding an additional person(s), could have complicated it that much further.

Also, Happy Holidays everyone!

N/A

Duluth wrote:

I heard that Dylan was the one who, at first, floated the idea.

But, as I always say, I haven't been interested in the Columbine shooting for years, so I may be wrong.

Dylan being the first of the two to come up with the idea has been around for a while, really. It's not without evidence, either; In Dylan's journal he first mentions wanting to go "NBK" with a person whose name had been redacted, in 1997. Basically anyone other than Cullen* can agree that this person was most likely a girl, but definitely not Eric. Someone would have to get the dates for it but I believe this entry is before any of Eric's rants about blowing up Denver or shooting people.

*I remember reading in Cullen's book that he legitimately thought the redacted name was Eric's. This despite the fact that Eric's name shows up unredacted in the entire rest of the fucking journal. This alone makes me understand why he's gotten such a horrible reputation in the researcher community.

QuestionMark wrote:

Dylan being the first of the two to come up with the idea has been around for a while, really. It's not without evidence, either; In Dylan's journal he first mentions wanting to go "NBK" with a person whose name had been redacted, in 1997. Basically anyone other than Cullen* can agree that this person was most likely a girl, but definitely not Eric. Someone would have to get the dates for it but I believe this entry is before any of Eric's rants about blowing up Denver or shooting people.

Dylan wrote of going on his own killing spree in November 1997 and on February 2, 1998 he wrote "Soon... either i'll commit suicide or i'll get w. (name redacted) and it will be NBK for us. My hapiness, her hapiness, NOTHING else matters."
It's pretty clear that he was talking about a girl, a la Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers.
Eric didn't write about NBK until April 21, 1998. The blog posts that the Brown's brought to police in August 1997 talked about making bombs and the You Know What I Hate rants, some of which talked about bombing or killing people who did things Eric didn't like.
It was the second set of documents the Brown's brought to police in March of 1998 where Eric really wrote about orchestrating a large scale attack "I will rig up explosives all over a town and detonate each one of them at will after I mow down a whole fucking area full of you snotty ass rich mother fucking high strung godlike attitude having worthless pieces of shit whores. i don’t care if I live or die in the shootout, all I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown.”

liamunavailable wrote:

I tend to think that it may have started out as a joke between them "Hey we should kill [insert person/group they hated that day]" had a good laugh, and then one day one of them was like "You know we could, if you think about it, it wouldn't be that difficult"

That's the way I've envisioned it, as well. One of them was pissed off about something and made an offhand comment about killing people. The other responded with some level of agreement and the affirmation emboldened them both to continue to explore the idea over time. Eventually it became a concrete plan.
 

liamunavailable wrote:

Also I've read in Cullenbine, and others that Eric allegedly fished for Chris and others to potentially help with NBK, do you guys think that was what he was actually doing?  I keep going back and forth on it - part of me says that Eric and Dylan would have loved more people, because it meant more destruction and mayhem, and it would shake the world probably more than it had, but at the same time I don't see either of them being pro-anyone else.  They were already being exceptionally careful not to be discovered despite how many close calls, and adding an additional person(s), could have complicated it that much further.

I don't think he was fishing. I follow author Rita Gleason on Facebook and she wrote this a couple weeks ago. I think it's spot on as I never believed they'd need risk the plan by trying to get someone to join up.

Quote :

Chapter 8 of Evidence Ignored is entitled "Foreshadowing" and it outlines all the ways in which Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold hinted at, or blatantly announced, their plans to attack Columbine High School. I used the term foreshadowing in reference to a comment made by Eric Harris in his journal "sure is a ton of symbolism, double meanings, themes, appearances vs reality shit going on here."

But what Harris and Klebold were actually doing is something called "leaking." Studies have shown that nearly all mass murderers have several traits in common. One of these is leaking, which refers to "shared verbal, written, visual, or video communications that referenced their intent to carry out an attack, threatened the target, and/or threatened others." US Secret Service Analysis of Targeted School Violence discovered that >75% of attackers leaked their plans to others beforehand.

Some who push the "Harris as a psychopath" theory claim that Eric Harris's written and verbal comments about killing and destruction are evidence of his psychopathy and assert that just two weeks before the attack, Eric even tried to recruit his friend, Chris Morris, to participate by asking, "Wouldn't it be fun to kill all the jocks?" and talking about blowing up the school. It should, however, be obvious that these are actually instances of leakage and, in fact, Harris's conversation with Morris took place in the middle of bowling class in a crowded bowling alley not during some clandestine meeting in a deserted back alley.
This is one of the reasons why the current, accepted narrative is so dangerous. Leaking is a MAJOR trait of those planning a violent assault. We need to talk about it in its proper perspective, we need to teach our kids about it so they can learn to recognize it if they hear or see such statements online or in school. Not everyone who commits school violence is a psychopath, but nearly everyone who does leaks. THAT is what we should be focusing on.

thelmar wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

Dylan being the first of the two to come up with the idea has been around for a while, really. It's not without evidence, either; In Dylan's journal he first mentions wanting to go "NBK" with a person whose name had been redacted, in 1997. Basically anyone other than Cullen* can agree that this person was most likely a girl, but definitely not Eric. Someone would have to get the dates for it but I believe this entry is before any of Eric's rants about blowing up Denver or shooting people.

Dylan wrote of going on his own killing spree in November 1997 and on February 2, 1998 he wrote "Soon... either i'll commit suicide or i'll get w. (name redacted) and it will be NBK for us. My hapiness, her hapiness, NOTHING else matters."
It's pretty clear that he was talking about a girl, a la Mickey and Mallory from Natural Born Killers.
Eric didn't write about NBK until April 21, 1998. The blog posts that the Brown's brought to police in August 1997 talked about making bombs and the You Know What I Hate rants, some of which talked about bombing or killing people who did things Eric didn't like.
It was the second set of documents the Brown's brought to police in March of 1998 where Eric really wrote about orchestrating a large scale attack "I will rig up explosives all over a town and detonate each one of them at will after I mow down a whole fucking area full of you snotty ass rich mother fucking high strung godlike attitude having worthless pieces of shit whores. i don’t care if I live or die in the shootout, all I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown.”

Thank you, I was wondering about that quite a bit.

Thank you [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], leaking was the phrase I was looking for and could not for the life of me remember it last night.

Is there any evidence that Dylan leaked to friends or trying to recruit them similarly how Eric had?

liamunavailable wrote:

Thank you [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], leaking was the phrase I was looking for and could not for the life of me remember it last night.  

Is there any evidence that Dylan leaked to friends or trying to recruit them similarly how Eric had?

I think his creative writing essay about the guy shooting preps at the bar was a major leak.

Zach Heckler said that in February 1999, Dylan let slip that he had gotten something really cool, something like what was in the movie Desperado by Quentin Tarantino. Dylan didn't say it outright but Heckler suspected that it was a gun and when Zach asked Dylan told him that both he and Eric had gotten shotguns and that Dylan told Zach that he had fired his gun.

Friends like Dustin Harrison, Kristen Long, Joe Stair, Corey Friesen and Blackjack co-worker, Michelle Hartsough, all said that they heard both Dylan and Eric making comments about killing jocks, killing people, and blowing up the school. I know there are a few others but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

[Edited to add: on pg. 10696,
Nate Dykeman talks about something he saw in Dylan's garage and tells police that Dylan told him something (presumably about what was in the garage). But whatever he saw and whatever he was told was redacted by police. My assumption is that this was some sort of explosive because the sentences before and after it are referencing pipe bombs].

I don't think Eric or Dylan ever tried to recruit anybody else. I think they considered it their two man war against society. Eric said as much in the Basement Tapes

Quote :

There is nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this. No one is to blame except me and Vodka [Klebold’s nickname]. Our actions are a two man war against everyone else.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thank you thelmar, leaking was the phrase I was looking for and could not for the life of me remember it last night.  

Is there any evidence that Dylan leaked to friends or trying to recruit them similarly how Eric had?

I think his creative writing essay about the guy shooting preps at the bar was a major leak.

Zach Heckler said that in February 1999, Dylan let slip that he had gotten something really cool, something like what was in the movie Desperado by Quentin Tarantino. Dylan didn't say it outright but Heckler suspected that it was a gun and when Zach asked Dylan told him that both he and Eric had gotten shotguns and that Dylan told Zach that he had fired his gun.

Friends like Dustin Harrison, Kristen Long, Joe Stair, Corey Friesen and Blackjack co-worker, Michelle Hartsough, all said that they heard both Dylan and Eric making comments about killing jocks, killing people, and blowing up the school. I know there are a few others but I can't think of them off the top of my head.

[Edited to add: on pg. 10696,
Nate Dykeman talks about something he saw in Dylan's garage and tells police that Dylan told him something (presumably about what was in the garage). But whatever he saw and whatever he was told was redacted by police. My assumption is that this was some sort of explosive because the sentences before and after it are referencing pipe bombs].

I don't think Eric or Dylan ever tried to recruit anybody else. I think they considered it their two man war against society. Eric said as much in the Basement Tapes
There is nothing that anyone could have done to prevent this. No one is to blame except me and Vodka [Klebold’s nickname]. Our actions are a two man war against everyone else.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]


Could you also sort of consider Dylan handing the small piece of scrap paper that contained the URL of Eric’s website to Brooks Brown a kind of leak, especially considering that they were both in the diversion program and it could very well likely mean jail time for Eric and the possibility of Columbine happening slim?

As for the original question, I truly believe it was a situation where both kind of joked about it and brought it up pretty often, not just with each other, but with a lot of the people in their circle. Even several of their friends said that the group would say such things a lot. I believe they both secretly had fantasies of it, thought it was cool, and seriously thought about it, but neither boy had a concrete plan (ie their journal entries). Then I think something happened one day, one incident that REALLY pissed one of them off (which I majorly think was Eric), and both of them were sitting around and it went from fantasy to reality. I think it was Dylan’s idea, but an incident with Eric, and Eric using his anger to get Dylan “on board” with him- although it took very little convincing on Eric’s part. I also believe that Eric put in a lot more of the work/effort, Dylan appeared lazy (take the diversion program) but in reality he had become so depressed and dead inside that he just stopped giving two shits.

true_crime wrote:

Could you also sort of consider Dylan handing the small piece of scrap paper that contained the URL of Eric’s website to Brooks Brown a kind of leak, especially considering that they were both in the diversion program and it could very well likely mean jail time for Eric and the possibility of Columbine happening slim?

Yes, I'd consider this leaking IF I was sure that Dylan is the one that told Brooks about the website.
The handwriting on the two little scraps of paper that everyone always attributes to Dylan were actually written by Brooks and his little brother, Aaron. This is documented in the Attorney General's Investigation into the 1997 Directed Report (pg. 12)
The scraps of paper were attached to the Directed Report that was made in August of 1997; so they were given to police at that time and NOT in March of 1998. The investigation showed that a handwriting expert concluded that Aaron Brown had written part of the web address on the paper and Aaron confirmed that it was his handwriting. It was also determined that Brooks wrote the other part, and Brooks confirmed this, as well.
The Browns did report that they thought Brooks had come home with the torn scrap of paper in March 1998, but they reported this in November of 2003 when they were re-interviewed by police, so likely they just didn't remember. I think this is how the story got twisted that it was Dylan's handwriting on those pieces of paper- it was not.

This Directed Report got filed into a binder and police never contacted Eric in August of 1997. The Browns then went to police again on March 17, 1998 with MORE web postings by Eric.
On pg 45 of the Investigation into the Directed Report are the scraps of paper with the URLs from August of 1997. These are all variations of aol.com/rebdoomer These are the same websites that Eric had at the time of his death. If you look at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] you will see Eric's different website domains and a brief summary of the contents of each. The ones on which he posted his You Know What I Hate Rants, stuff about the missions, and his philosophies and hate for Brooks were all the rebdoomer ones.
So, Aaron and Brooks ALREADY had those URLs in March of 1998.
Now, it's possible that Dylan nudged Brooks verbally and said, "Hey, go check Eric's website, he's threatening you." But, he didn't give Brooks any scraps of paper with the web addresses.

true_crime wrote:

As for the original question, I truly believe it was a situation where both kind of joked about it and brought it up pretty often, not just with each other, but with a lot of the people in their circle. Even several of their friends said that the group would say such things a lot. I believe they both secretly had fantasies of it, thought it was cool, and seriously thought about it, but neither boy had a concrete plan (ie their journal entries). Then I think something happened one day, one incident that REALLY pissed one of them off (which I majorly think was Eric), and both of them were sitting around and it went from fantasy to reality. I think it was Dylan’s idea, but an incident with Eric, and Eric using his anger to get Dylan “on board” with him- although it took very little convincing on Eric’s part. I also believe that Eric put in a lot more of the work/effort, Dylan appeared lazy (take the diversion program) but in reality he had become so depressed and dead inside that he just stopped giving two shits.

I'm in the camp that Dylan is the one that tipped the scale from fantasy to planning and I think that for both of them the turning point was when they got arrested. The arrest was on January 31, 1998; and 2 days later on February 2, 1998 is when Dylan wrote about going NBK with his crush. I think that in his overly dramatic fashion Dylan thought that his life was ruined and coupled with everything else going on in his head he thought NBK was the way to go. He had no one else, and Eric was game, so instead of the girl he settled for Eric. Dylan is also the one who wrote in Eric's yearbook at the end of 1998 about "our wrath for January's incident" which I've always believed was the arrest. It's only my theory, of course.