Interview With ‘Columbine’ Author Dave Cullen

We (journalists) started covering this story before we had any reliable data. So there was a lack of evidence and a lack of people who could evaluate the evidence we had [while journalists were working on deadline]. And you put those things together, and you’ve really got a mess. You’ve got bad analysis, and you’ve got bad data.

For example, the jocks. Eric had a complete list of people he didn’t like. Jocks and preps were just some of them.

Eric disliked just about everybody. And he made comments in the library about a fat kid; he made fun of one kid for having big ostentatious glasses. He made fun of basically anyone he walked up to in that library and Dylan joined in. They walked up to a kid who was black, and they called him racial slurs.

He was tormenting his prey.

Exactly. Anything he could find to make fun of them. Yeah, he wanted to torment them.

In a recent Slate article, you talked about recent school shootings. Have we seen the same kind of planning and tactics as Columbine?

There have been quite a few that I would call just as diabolical and just as grandiose, just as horrifying, as Columbine was intended to be.

I’ve read studies that say that 1-2 percent of the American population has psychopathic tendencies. That means tens of thousands of kids going through high school. So why haven’t we seen more Harrises?

A tiny, tiny percent of psychopaths are violent. They know that violence and murder brings the cops. And their whole lives are geared toward getting away with the things they do. They like to win.

There is a convention in American journalism not to print the names of most rape victims. Maybe we shouldn’t be printing the names of school shooters.

I think that is the one sort of reasonable solution I’ve heard. I’m not 100 percent sure it would work, but I think that’s one I would be willing to get behind trying personally. Readers and viewers demand that we cover these events so we’re going to do it. But leave a name out, we could do that.

Eric says in his journal, I want to give people flashbacks. I’m going to terrorize you. You’re going to remember me. What if we left the name of school shooters out of the papers? Would Eric have done this if he’d known his name wouldn’t have been publicized?

I think part of him would be like: “I don’t care if you squelched my name, I still screwed you people, and I still made you suffer every bit as much.” I think a part of him would have said that. I don’t know if the stronger part of him would be like: “Dammit, I want my name in the credits.”

With somebody like Dylan-and I think Dylan is much more common, the angry and depressive guy who wants to lash out…He was like a suicide who also took people with him; he was a vengeful suicide. (Story continues below.)

What are some of the most effective measures that we now have in place to prevent another Columbine?

More than 80 percent of school shooters tell someone that they’re going to do it, which is an astounding figure. If we listen to those people who tell us they’re going to do it and act on that, we’ve wiped out 80 percent of the problem.

Another thing we’ve learned is that we need to communicate much better. Of course that’s very easy conceptually, but it’s hard to do, especially if we discourage kids from telling on their friends with “zero tolerance” policies.

Look at Columbine as a case study. If certain people had known everything about Eric, if any one person had known all of that, he or she would have stopped Columbine immediately.

Several groups have to communicate more. Cops and school officials, certainly, but in many cases mental health professionals have to be in there, too. I think you saw that with Seung-Hui Cho at Virginia Tech.

And right now, a lot of schools won’t pass on detailed information on kids to other schools in the chain. Don’t get me wrong, a kid should be able to leave some of his past behind him. But we can allow elementary schools or high schools who believe they have a high-risk student to forward that information on to the next school in the chain. Schools should also be able to request backwards into the chain and ask for records on a particular student who may be dangerous.

It’s easy with 20-20 hindsight to see that Eric Harris was a murderer waiting to happen, but can we really expect our educators and law enforcement officers to see these things coming?

We can expect them to see some of them coming. I think Eric Harris would be a particularly tough one to find. If there are future Erics out there they probably learned from Columbine, too. Luckily this kind of psychopath is fairly rare and most future threats are not going to come from psychopaths. And that’s good because psychopaths have been eluding us forever.

Dylan and Eric talked a lot about wanting their lives to be a movie. Has your book been optioned? And if so, do you fear copycats?

No it hasn’t been optioned, and I am hoping it will be. Still, I do worry about copycats. With the book I thought about it a long time, but I felt that worrying about making Columbine famous was kind of silly.

But a movie is a different kind of dilemma. Still, I don’t think that Eric and Dylan come off very heroically in this story, especially in the end. It doesn’t end well for them. Eric’s statement “I want to leave a lasting impression on the world.” I had that as the working title of the book for awhile. I interpreted it ironically. I can argue both ways whether Eric left a lasting impression. He left a profound impression, but how long lasting it will be I’m not sure. I don’t think 100 years from now most people will know the name Columbine.

That means Eric won’t have gotten this wish. I think he died knowing that he did not accomplish what he wanted to and most of his plan was a huge failure. The school was not burning down. He was not happy with the way this ended.

To purchase a copy of the book, click here.

David Griffith is the editor of Police magazine. He can be reached at [email protected].