Episode 42 - The Columbine High School Shooting

0:15 Welcome back to Crime Besties, to another episode of the show.

0:20 We first of all need to probably say sorry for the break, the

0:24 unplanned break. But you know, like it's like,

0:27 yeah, it's my fault, it's my fault.

0:28 I'll take full responsibility for it.

0:31 Too many holidays, not enough time, you know how things go.

0:34 So for you, yeah, for me, it's a hard life.

0:37 Went to South Australia with my family and it was lovely.

0:40 And then I did a bit of a three night cruise with some work

0:45 friends or ex work friends. So is it a booze?

0:47 Cruise. Oh, look, it ended up being a

0:50 little bit like that. I mean, when you've got a drinks

0:52 package on a cruise, why wouldn't you take full

0:55 advantage? Like I gotta pay for pay for

0:57 this. Somehow.

0:58 Oh, it's definitely. Yeah, yes, gotta make the most

1:01 of it, your drinks. Package.

1:02 It ain't free, you know, like no, that's.

1:04 Right. That's right.

1:04 I've already paid for this. I might as well get my money's

1:06 worth. That's right.

1:07 And some. Yeah, we had one of our party.

1:11 So there were, I think there were eight of us who went.

1:13 And the girl I was sharing a room with, Lana, she ended up

1:18 getting really, really seasick. Yeah.

1:21 And I mean, it was really rough. It was like, very even the crew

1:25 was saying how awful, awful it was.

1:29 So Paul, Lana didn't quite make the most of her drinks package.

1:32 And I don't think cruising's in her future.

1:34 But the rest of us, you know, we had a pretty good time.

1:38 So it was nice. Oh, that's not good at all.

1:40 I mean seasickness can be horrendous like.

1:44 Yeah, we ended up taking her to like the little medical facility

1:47 on board, which was it was. Oh God, it was funny.

1:50 Not for her. I.

1:52 Know, I bet. But she was saying even after

1:54 having the anti nausea medications and the injection

1:57 and everything, she didn't feel good until we were back on solid

2:00 land. Oh.

2:01 Yeah, so. And pretty much she'd get on

2:04 solid land and it goes. Yeah, that's what she said.

2:06 It was like straight away. It's.

2:07 Almost like you're pregnant, like you have that baby and oh,

2:09 I don't want coffee. And I do.

2:10 Yeah, it. Turns out I feel amazing.

2:14 It's not sucking the life out of here.

2:16 Exactly. And I've only been like seasick

2:18 once and it it was horrible. Like, yeah, I'm usually pretty

2:22 good, but it's gotta be pretty big seasick to get me.

2:24 Yeah, OK. Yeah.

2:26 Oh, yuck. Anyway, how were you?

2:28 How was? Your break.

2:29 Oh nice. It was good.

2:30 We had lots of fun with the kids doing lots of different things

2:33 like go karting and we went to this great farm down Mornington

2:37 Way where they get to be hands on with all the animals and

2:40 stuff. And so did that with with big

2:42 crew and of friends and family. And that was really good day

2:45 out. So now we had a really good

2:47 holiday. So I really enjoyed it.

2:48 It felt a bit longer with the Easter tacked on.

2:51 So I think we've got a lot out of the the weekend, the couple

2:54 of weeks. So yeah, I mean, back at it

2:56 though. Exactly.

2:58 It's like everything's back. Everything.

3:00 'S back and the new season of everything started, so we're

3:04 like trying to figure out the new schedule.

3:06 My last. Two nights.

3:07 I was saying to you, let me see you last night going Oh my God,

3:09 my Wednesday. Thursdays are just.

3:12 Yeah. So what time did you get home

3:13 last night Last? Night we didn't get home too bad

3:15 too. As in too late.

3:16 As in it was what time was about 6:30 OK.

3:19 And it still feed them dinner, you know, bed.

3:22 Routine stuff like it's late. It's late for that.

3:24 Like to do those things but the night before we didn't get home

3:27 till 8:00. Oh yeah.

3:29 So that's gonna be our regular on a Wednesday night.

3:31 Oh. That's yeah, yeah, yeah.

3:33 So. That's that's way past my

3:35 bedtime. Like kind of.

3:37 Oh yeah. Yeah.

3:39 Is that like just take away as you're moving around between

3:42 activities? So how are you gonna manage I?

3:44 Wouldn't be able to do anything in life, I think, without my

3:46 mum. All mums are the best.

3:48 Yeah. So I've we've worked it out.

3:50 I mean, she's gone away today herself on a cruise.

3:52 So I mean, the next few fortnights, a few weeks, I'm not

3:55 gonna use her, but we will. I'll basically go to the her

3:59 place after school. She's gonna have dinner for the

4:01 kids at like 4:00. Oh, that's for them.

4:03 To have so but we've I found though that they they they eat

4:07 like no worries because they then do 2 hours of sports

4:10 running around we've finished up training and like roving shoving

4:16 yeah so I still have to top them up again so thankfully the

4:19 canteen at this where we train is open at that time and I yeah

4:23 and I'll probably be able to shove something at them from

4:25 chips out there the. Chips from there are so.

4:27 Good. Yeah, they are.

4:28 So yeah, they they grab some of them on the way out.

4:31 Yeah, yeah. But you've still got to like,

4:32 then go there and order them and then you wait for them to cook

4:34 them and then so that's. All because they cook them to

4:37 order, don't they do. So which but that is easier than

4:41 me trying to get home and then prepare stuff.

4:44 Oh, so I just threw fruit at them as we walked in the door,

4:45 kind of going like right shell while you eat some fruit like

4:48 the other one like oh, it's just kill me.

4:53 Yeah, that's hard. So then back it up with not such

4:55 a late night the next night, but still.

4:58 But then like if you're getting home at 6:30, by the time you

5:01 cook dinner, it is still a late night for the.

5:03 Kids, it is a late night for them.

5:05 So yeah, yeah, it's gonna be, look, the beginning of our

5:07 week's nice and calm. So yeah, it'll take those days

5:10 to really chill out and have a few early nights.

5:13 It's pretty mental, but we will survive.

5:15 Yes, we will. Yep, they love it.

5:18 I have a very quick shout out before we get started with.

5:21 So many like the no joke with the two weeks we've been off.

5:25 Yeah. I mean, even like prior, like

5:26 the episode that we did release prior to that, our socials have

5:29 popped off like trying to keep up with.

5:31 It's been big. So I love it.

5:33 Thank you, everyone. That's all commenting and, you

5:35 know, inboxing us and it's amazing.

5:38 So good. So the person I picked to shout

5:41 out today, she actually had the most amazing suggestions and I

5:46 actually can't believe we didn't have this case on our list.

5:49 So Alex Rogers, thank you very much number one for your

5:52 gorgeous inbox message. It was lovely.

5:56 But her case suggestion was Jen Shah.

5:59 I'm like, how did we not have that on?

6:02 I think because. Like it's almost like that's not

6:03 a crime, it's just housewives. So I was saying to Meg, we will

6:10 slot that in after we've had like a really heavy week or

6:13 something that's been really hard for us.

6:14 We could. Do maybe there's a few within

6:17 housewives? Maybe we could do like a little

6:18 mini series series on that. Yeah, there's a few housewives

6:21 with some criminal history. Aren't there, though.

6:23 Oh, it's juicy and it's fun. Yeah, yeah.

6:27 I mean, at the end of time, there's always a victim you.

6:29 Know. Yeah, true.

6:29 Respectful, but absolutely at the same time like we can yeah,

6:33 we when I saw that I was like, oh, this is how have we not how

6:37 have we. No, like who are we anyway?

6:40 Thank you, Alex. That's it, that's it.

6:44 So what we decided to do is a series that we're going to do 3

6:50 of the US school shootings. We're going to try and keep

6:53 these episodes quite short and a bit.

6:57 Look, the themes are very similar going through them.

7:00 So today you're going to hear an episode on the Columbine school

7:05 shooting. I'm sure a lot of us, especially

7:07 of our Generation Meg, remember the bowling.

7:12 Yeah, Michael Moore documentary. Which documentary?

7:16 It is amazing. I actually watched it again in

7:18 preparation. I actually wanted to and I

7:19 didn't. I didn't do it and I really

7:21 should have. Yeah, I'm going to because.

7:23 Do watch it back because I actually got more from it, I

7:27 think watching it now than I did back then.

7:30 I reckon I absolutely, that's what I thought too.

7:32 Yeah. Because you've we've got a

7:33 different perspective on life I think these days for.

7:36 Sure, but also the fact that we now know how much has happened

7:39 since then and how many, how many times this is just being

7:42 replicated and how school shootings in the US are just for

7:45 the course. That's not if, it's when almost

7:47 I'm just. Saying researching this like,

7:48 you know, we've sort of researched 3 different ones over

7:50 this. We're gonna do three that are

7:51 like, you know, basically roughly 10 years apart.

7:53 Each of them like that's right. So 1 from 30 years ago, 20 years

7:56 ago and no, sorry, more recently, sort of 20 years ago,

7:59 10 years ago and yeah, more recent.

8:01 And. And it just so interesting that

8:02 you know, in the wrap up of like researching all of them, each of

8:05 the one each, each one you would read.

8:07 And in the aftermath, there was, you know, it sparked

8:10 conversations around, you know, gun and violence and law, law

8:15 and things like that that should be around guns.

8:16 And it was like, you know, that. But we talked with 20 years ago

8:19 that sparked that conversation. And, you know, 10 years ago

8:22 you'd sparked that conversation. And recently we've sparked that

8:24 conversation, but yet to see any major changes in the.

8:28 USI think that's something that we can talk.

8:30 About a lot, absolutely. Yeah, for sure.

8:32 During this. So yeah, as I said today, we're

8:34 doing Columbine, We're going to do another release on Friday.

8:37 So you get 2 episodes this week. Lucky people.

8:40 Oh. What do you want to do?

8:43 We'll do. Thursday.

8:44 Do Thursday, all right, fine. Thursday, you'll get another.

8:46 Episode Thursday, Yeah, and then you'll get.

8:48 And then Tuesday next week, and then from the week after that,

8:52 we'll be back to our normal episodes.

8:54 Well. I think we're going to do a

8:55 double. Double.

8:56 We are two. Party kids are big one we're

8:58 going to do. Yeah.

8:59 So stay tuned for that. Yes.

9:01 All right, should we get into? It let's get into Columbine.

9:04 Yeah. Oh.

9:05 My gosh. Yeah, right.

9:07 On the 20th of April in 1999, the Columbine High School

9:12 massacre took place. So like giving a bit of context

9:16 at the time, this was probably the first well known school

9:20 shooting that occurred in the US And it really has, it really did

9:26 kind of start a snowball effect of what we've now seen.

9:32 And what we now almost, I think there's almost a bit of a

9:36 complacency. Like you'll hear about a school

9:38 shooting in the US saying, Oh yeah, another one.

9:41 But these are the guys that, you know, really started it all.

9:45 With the school shooting, the. School shooting targeted The

9:48 massacre occurred at Columbine High School in Colorado in the

9:52 US and the perpetrators were 12th grade students.

9:55 Their names were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

9:59 They murdered 13 students and 1 teacher.

10:03 Ten were killed in the library and the other students were

10:09 killed. I think there was hallway.

10:12 And then one of the teachers was actually killed in like his

10:14 office. And it was at the time the

10:18 deadliest mass shooting in a school in the US.

10:22 Yeah. It's currently ranked #6.

10:24 Yeah, isn't that. Disgusting.

10:26 These are like there is like a ranking of these, Yeah.

10:29 Just blows my mind. But yeah, currently ranked #6.

10:32 Yeah, it's, it's horrific. Absolutely horrific.

10:35 And the number of injured in this was huge.

10:37 It was 20 people just who were injured, let alone and then the

10:40 16 killed. So there was a lot going on.

10:44 Yeah, I just. Said.

10:46 I feel like how do we actually even get into it because.

10:50 Yeah, I think this one, this one really when this happened, I

10:53 have to say these guys were the exact same age as me at the

10:56 time. So like, I think when I know

10:59 that when this happened, IA lot of my friends and I were talking

11:02 about all this like, like the yeah, bullying and things in

11:05 school was definitely something that happened, you know, within

11:08 all schools. But how do you get to a point of

11:13 where you decide that I'm going to go and shoot all these

11:16 people, you know, we were all experiencing in high school and

11:20 still today? I mean, to be honest, I wouldn't

11:21 want to be a high school student.

11:23 I think it's far worse, but they there was so much talk around

11:26 the fact that the the motivation of this was bullying and things

11:30 which I don't know if that was really ultimately the motive.

11:34 Do you know what I mean? Like.

11:35 The thing that I think about this one is like when you read

11:38 anything about the Columbine High School shootings, there's a

11:42 lot of narrative around the fact that these two boys played a lot

11:47 of video games. Yes, that's the other thing that

11:49 gets mentioned. A lot too, and that like that's

11:51 the blame for it. But fuck off, I'm.

11:53 Sorry, research has sort of proven that that's not the case

11:56 exactly. And also how many millions?

12:00 And probably up to billions of people play these first person

12:05 shooter type games or any sort of semi violent or violent

12:09 games. Yeah who don't then go on to

12:11 commit a mass murder. No like to me I.

12:14 Think it's chemicals in the brain of that particular person.

12:17 Oh, for sure, you. Know it's a combination of those

12:19 things not just, you know, or we play video games or, or he was

12:23 bullied. You know, I think you're right.

12:24 I think that the the bullying and the video games are actually

12:29 more consequences of other chemical imbalances in the brain

12:32 and like what the effect those things have on that person.

12:34 Yeah, okay, that's an interesting take.

12:36 I mean, that absolutely is possibly true.

12:38 I mean, we don't know because The thing is these two

12:41 perpetrators died by suicide at, you know, at Columbine High

12:46 School on the day they shot themselves.

12:48 And I believe that was their plan all along.

12:52 Yeah. What they actually planned to do

12:54 was they drove their cars to the to Columbine High School, parked

13:00 them in the in the parking lot, and they actually put bombs in

13:03 the cars in the parking lot. And the cafeteria.

13:06 And, and in the cafeteria, they wanted them to go off at like

13:09 1117, which was like right when the.

13:14 Lunch. Lunch rush or whatever, the

13:16 first group of people were going to be in the cafeteria,

13:19 obviously maximum impact there. Yeah.

13:22 What they then hoped was going to happen is that would then

13:25 drive everyone out of the building and into the car park,

13:28 where those car bombs would then go off and inflict more harm.

13:32 Yeah. They planned on sort of also

13:34 like shooting people as they were coming, exiting the

13:38 building as well. Like that was sort of those sort

13:39 of. Yeah, that's where they were

13:40 aiming for. And I have to say these two

13:43 boys, so Eric Harris was sort of considered the leader of of

13:46 them. They were.

13:47 Called the Trench Coat Mafia. The Trench Coat Mafia.

13:50 Well, they, they weren't, that was actually a video they they

13:52 used to make. They were part of like the video

13:54 club, whatever. Yeah.

13:55 And they used to make these videos and they made a movie

13:57 around the Trench Coat Club or the Trench Coat Mafia.

14:00 Sorry. Now they were not part of this

14:02 group that were at school. They had friends who were in the

14:06 Trench Coat Mafia, right? But they weren't specifically in

14:09 it, but they chose specifically to wear those trench coats on

14:12 the day because they did a fair bit of research before doing

14:15 this. They took it was almost a year,

14:17 it was a year discussing this and planning this.

14:20 And they were actually decided purposefully to wear those

14:23 trench coats because of what they had researched and found

14:26 that that they appeared intimidating.

14:28 And because of this trench coat mafia stuff, they found that

14:30 they thought that would be the most scariest to the people to

14:34 come across. To be honest with you, that

14:36 works. They were.

14:37 Yeah, All right. They're all right.

14:39 And you'll find if you look TuneIn since then, like those

14:42 people sort of copycat this, that there are others who have

14:45 worn similar. And there's kind of like, if so,

14:47 if you you know, you when you think of a someone who's doing a

14:49 school massacre, unfortunately, that image does come to your

14:54 mind of the trench coat and things.

14:56 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's a good way, I

14:58 guess, for them to conceal weapons and that kind of thing.

15:01 Yes, Which is what they did. They had their weapons in their

15:04 trench coats. Well, I don't know.

15:05 I don't think if conceal is a way to is, I don't think they

15:08 were hiding the fact that they were carrying those weapons.

15:10 It was more just that they had somebody to carry them like you

15:12 know what I mean? Because they.

15:13 Think they have to be at the start.

15:15 They were, yes. Because they, you know, to to

15:17 get into school and to wait until, you know, the first bomb

15:20 went off. Yes, Yeah, yeah.

15:22 Yeah, unbelievable. Yeah.

15:25 So on the way out of sort of 6:00 AM-ish in the morning,

15:27 they're actually gone and purchased the, what do you call

15:31 it, propane. They haven't that gas tanks to

15:33 be able to set these bombs off. So they had done that first

15:37 thing in the morning and then driven off to the driven to the

15:39 school. And I just say it around,

15:40 they're expecting these bombs to be going off sort of 11:17-ish

15:43 at the school. When they didn't go off, they

15:45 failed. At 11:21 they just began to

15:49 shoot. People, yeah.

15:50 They were just like, oh fuck it. We might as well just, you know,

15:52 go for it. Go for it ourselves.

15:54 Yeah, they didn't. They just went in.

15:55 So they from the parking lot, they began shooting and they hit

15:59 their first victim in the in the parking lot and the school near

16:01 the school entrance at 11:24. So I mean, this is the thing

16:06 that's all very. Quick, quick.

16:07 But it's this is the thing. Guns have that ability, like

16:10 it's just it's open fire. Yeah.

16:13 They both entered the building via the cafeteria at that point,

16:15 1124, and they just began shooting.

16:19 So students were hit in the cafeteria, as we said, and then

16:23 on in the hallways, they started moving towards the hallways and

16:26 the the students like there was a 2000 students at this school.

16:29 Yeah, it was it's a massive school.

16:32 So there were like a rampage of students trying to exit as quick

16:36 as possible and find ways out. I can't even imagine how scared

16:39 they all would have been. And to do that, I mean, so there

16:41 were injuries that were sustained by students that

16:43 weren't gunshot because people were.

16:46 You know, they were multiple trampling in like injuries, like

16:50 crushed blunt force trauma type injuries because people were

16:54 crushed by being trodden on and that kind of thing.

16:56 Yeah, 1129 they reached the library where they continued to

17:02 target students. I believe that there were

17:05 certain students they were looking.

17:06 For as well. That's right.

17:08 They had a list of people on, on Yeah, of people that they wanted

17:13 to target and people they absolutely wanted to eliminate

17:16 during this murder, during all of this.

17:19 And the people on the list, you know, it might have been because

17:23 they said something wrong to the most or ignored them or there

17:28 was apparently a boy on the list who just because he was the

17:31 quarterback and he was popular and so they hated him.

17:35 And so they, yeah, they absolutely had people that they

17:38 wanted to target. And when the police, I mean,

17:42 this is going a little bit ahead now, but when the police found

17:44 this list, found the list and went through it, they actually

17:49 did achieve, I think they ended up killing like 70% of the

17:53 people who were actually on that list.

17:55 So they were definitely targeting certain people.

17:58 They obviously knew where they would be and when.

18:01 And then the people who were on the list who, who then weren't

18:07 killed. My God, Can you imagine?

18:09 Can you imagine? How you would feel after that?

18:12 Yeah. Like, I mean, I don't know, what

18:14 if you were, if you were sick that day, I don't know.

18:15 And you weren't at the school, but you knew you were on that

18:17 list. Like, I mean, you go buy a

18:19 lottery ticket, like, because you just lucked out.

18:21 But like, you'd feel sick that other people died as well for

18:26 the fact that, you know, he was, they were looking for you, you

18:29 know, like I just that the survivor's guilt of that would

18:31 be, I think, a bit really hard, really hard so.

18:34 Hard. Yeah, So, so hard.

18:37 So once they've got into the library, again, this was a major

18:40 central point of where many victims were killed.

18:44 So that was 11/29, 11:36 AM. The police began arriving on the

18:49 scene. Now, they didn't mean they

18:52 entered the buildings or anything, but they did.

18:54 They did arrive and they started securing the perimeter, but no

18:59 one, none of the police entered the building at this point.

19:01 They just were assessing the situation.

19:03 Now, if I do understand that from a point of view of like

19:05 this is not at this point, like with this shooting, this is not

19:09 something that's normal. They don't know how to maybe

19:11 deal with this situation, but they do learn a lot from this.

19:16 Where they learn a lot and then implement is a different story

19:19 because we'll get to that with other cases we look at.

19:21 I did hear an interview with one of the first police officers who

19:25 attended Columbine High School. And he said, you know, they went

19:29 in like, the SWAT team were there.

19:32 Yeah. And they went in sort of not

19:35 knowing. Do we still approach this like

19:37 we would an adult situation where there's, but I mean, they

19:43 at this stage, they didn't even know who the shooters were.

19:45 They didn't know that there were students or anything like that.

19:48 But they're like they, they, they're like, this is a school.

19:51 Like, do we have to change? Is there something different we

19:54 need to do? So there are questions about

19:55 that right from the get go. And yeah, as you said, it has

20:00 informed different procedures and protocols.

20:05 Into the future, but you can understand some hesitation from

20:10 these. Oh, absolutely.

20:11 And women who were the. First responders because.

20:13 It would have been a really tricky judgement call to make.

20:17 Like, what? What's the right thing to do?

20:18 No one actually knows. And you've got an active shooter

20:20 situation like, oh, God. And they didn't know how many

20:23 there were either at this point. I mean, I think that that was

20:26 established pretty quickly, Yeah.

20:28 Because obviously students were running out and they were able

20:32 to give first, you know, witness reports to the police, who was

20:37 sort of still standing outside trying to figure out what to do.

20:41 I think The thing is too, and it's really hard, like you've

20:43 got to protect the officers like, you know, sending someone

20:48 in, you know, blindly to an active shooter situation.

20:52 That's not smart either. That's not maybe.

20:55 I mean, you know, they get become victims themselves too.

20:57 So it's it's awful. But then this police officer

21:01 said in his interview, he's like, you know, I took an oath

21:03 to protect and serve. So I had I had to go in.

21:06 Yeah, I had to protect those children who were in there who

21:09 were innocent. Absolutely.

21:11 Oh, it's horrible. It's.

21:12 Absolutely awful. Yeah, So 1208 Harrison Klebold.

21:17 They moved through the school from the library to a separate

21:21 part of the building. I'm not sure what their their

21:23 goal here was in terms of whether they knew where they

21:25 were going at this point or not, but they was escalating more and

21:28 more. However, they did take their own

21:31 lives at this point. And so that's basically, but

21:33 still at this point, the police didn't know that they had taken

21:36 their own lives. They just I get I I would assume

21:39 you're kind of going there's not I haven't heard shooting in a

21:41 while, but you still don't know that person's not and they.

21:45 Didn't know that there were only two.

21:46 Yeah, like, you know, there could have been another 20 for

21:49 all they hiding, hiding somewhere.

21:51 That's right. So.

21:52 The police actually didn't enter and secure the building until at

21:55 1:00 PM, and which at which point they started evacuating

21:57 students and they went through. But they actually didn't clear

22:01 the building entirely to work out exactly who the shooters

22:03 were and who wasn't and who this is the thing.

22:05 You can't just evacuate people and let them go because you

22:09 don't know which one of them, like maybe one of them is the

22:11 killer. Like, you know, that's done

22:13 this. So there was a way of they have

22:15 process they had to do to keep everyone there, you know, to

22:17 keep witnesses and everything that's.

22:19 It, I mean, they had 2000 students, I think 600 staff,

22:23 something like that, a huge amount of people that they

22:26 needed to, yeah, you know, account for number 1 and #2

22:31 yeah, as you said, eliminate them as potential suspects.

22:33 Yeah. And so I mean, they, they did

22:36 try and set up a call coordinated effort to do that.

22:38 Yeah. And but as you said, that takes

22:40 time that you can't just process that.

22:42 And of course, people, so this is back before mobile phones.

22:47 Really. This is back before, you know,

22:49 so people are getting the news either by word of mouth, Yeah,

22:53 or they're hearing it on the radio.

22:55 They're hearing it like, you know, it was by the stages on

22:58 the midday or the afternoon news broadcast on TV.

23:01 Yeah. But that then drew a whole new

23:05 bunch of people to come to Columbine because, of course, if

23:07 you're a parent and you hear that you could not keep me away.

23:11 So it's just. Yeah, you can imagine the state

23:15 of chaos that surrounded that event at the time.

23:18 I just wanted to very quickly go back though, because one of the

23:21 things that especially Bowling for Columbine definitely touches

23:26 on this, the access to guns for these boys.

23:32 So in the months prior to these attacks, Harrison Klebold

23:39 acquired 29 millimetre shotguns and two, sorry, 29 millimetre

23:45 firearms and 212 gauge shotguns. I don't know anything about

23:50 guns, but they're big guns. Some of, well two of them were

23:53 big guns and two of them were like little like handgun type

23:55 guns. And he was 17. 17 These were

23:59 actually purchased by a friend of theirs named Robin Anderson,

24:05 and he bought them at a gun show.

24:08 They were supplied by two people by the name of Mark Maines and

24:12 Philip Duran. Yeah, these both, they were both

24:16 actually convicted as well. So they, they were convicted for

24:21 supplying handguns to minors because they were only 17.

24:25 Yeah. So they and they were legally in

24:28 possession of these weapons as well.

24:29 So it was old. OK Anderson was kind of a bit of

24:32 a middle man, right. To these guys.

24:34 Yeah. But so Mains received six years

24:37 in prison and and Duran received 4 1/2 years in prison, right.

24:42 But there were other lawsuits that also came, came out.

24:45 So there was a financial ones as well where they were held their

24:49 families. We're having to pay a lot of

24:52 money, their victims families, because as a consequence of

24:55 their actions in this, because otherwise 17 year olds, even in

24:59 America don't have legal rights to having possessing guns.

25:02 And so they the fact that they had these guns, they weren't

25:05 even like that. They got them from their parents

25:07 in their home. No stole them from them.

25:09 They had sourced these from people, so there was a whole.

25:12 Thing around yeah yeah I think they met those blokes through

25:16 their well like their part time job at.

25:18 Their part time job? Pizza parlor or something?

25:20 Like that? Yeah.

25:23 It's just absolutely crazy. They also just very quickly, the

25:27 way there was, they were looking up how to make bombs and all of

25:31 that kind of stuff. Yeah.

25:32 And putting bits and pieces together.

25:34 And a whole website about it. He's like, he.

25:37 He put together Exactly. Yeah.

25:39 It was on AOL. Yeah, yes, 90s, Yeah, that's

25:45 even bit of the Internet. Room back, bit of.

25:48 A throwback, Absolutely. But yeah, so his, his website

25:51 really went unnoticed basically for a long time until the thing

25:55 that really sparked what brought brought it to us some attention

25:58 was that he posted A blog post of saying that all I want to do

26:02 is kill and injure as many as of you as I can, especially a few

26:05 people like Brooke Brooke, Brooke Brown.

26:09 Brooke Brown's parents happened to see that on this website and

26:15 they contacted police. Police actually had investigated

26:20 the whole thing and had an affidavit put a request in to

26:24 have a search warrant of the household of Eric's household.

26:28 However, for some reason that just never got submitted to a

26:31 judge. Yeah, it never went.

26:32 Anywhere. And so I don't know what

26:34 happened this that could have potentially put a stop to all

26:37 this. Because the thing was, not only

26:38 was his webs, well, once his website got a bit sparked like

26:41 that, he really knew obviously, because it was investigated.

26:43 He knew that he'd been looked at.

26:44 He switched from using the computer to write his stuff to

26:47 writing in notebooks and the notebooks.

26:50 Holy crap. Oh my God.

26:52 Yeah, you can. You can actually see, like,

26:54 photographic images of things that he like of those notebooks

26:57 online. Oh my God.

26:59 So psychologists have thoroughly like gone through those and

27:03 looked at his writings and it's been put forward that they,

27:08 they, there's many psychologists like highly thought of thought.

27:10 Psychologists believe that he was, would be considered a

27:13 psychopath with many other underlying narcissistic

27:16 personality traits, borderline personality and social

27:19 personality, like it combined with all of that.

27:22 So there's, there's a lot going on for him as and that's, I

27:26 think before we're saying, before that that he's saying,

27:29 you know, the the well, society is saying that bullying is to

27:32 blame and that video games are to blame.

27:35 When actually ultimately he had a personality trait, psychopathy

27:39 and psychopathy that were underlying that probably then

27:43 led to, yeah, people, other people finding him strange and

27:46 odd and therefore bullying, which I'm not, I'm certainly.

27:49 So not defending that that is the way people should be dealt

27:51 with. But that's probably where that

27:53 came from. And the video games became an

27:55 interest because he was a psychopath.

27:58 Yeah. So it's not that those things

28:00 aren't necessarily what. Cause and effect exactly.

28:03 What went on? I think he would have gone down

28:05 those path, that path regardless.

28:08 Could there have been interventions potentially?

28:10 Yeah, like what were his parents seeing?

28:12 And. Well, they were they were a

28:14 military family who moved around a lot.

28:16 So I mean, that's and that's seems to be there's somewhat of

28:20 a pattern in I'm not saying again that everyone moves around

28:25 a lot becomes a psychopath or anything, but there's.

28:27 Socially, that's really difficult socially.

28:30 And if you're, if you maybe have some kind of mental illness that

28:36 would potentially make, you know, making friends more

28:38 difficult and putting down roots and that kind of thing, you know

28:42 that that would be more challenging.

28:45 Yeah, Yeah. The other thing that came out of

28:47 his writings that I found really interesting was that he had

28:52 quite a fetish for bondage and Oh yeah, foot fetish.

28:56 Oh yeah, he wrote, he wrote. My, my humanity has a foot

29:00 fetish and bondage extreme liking.

29:03 I try to thwart it. He also described his desire for

29:07 sex with women, especially for raping and torturing women.

29:13 He had a real negative opinion of women in his writings, things

29:17 like that. He also expressed an interest in

29:20 cannibalism. Oh.

29:22 Yuck. He stated that he would like to

29:25 dismember a woman with whom he could have animalistic sex and

29:30 eat her flesh. Oh yuck.

29:35 So I think that it was probably good that he said goodbye to

29:40 himself. Yeah, they saw some, He had some

29:44 very intense pornography as well in his possession when they

29:51 searched his home. And it was maybe not to the

29:55 point of cannibalism, but it was certainly sort of the torture of

29:59 women. Yeah.

30:00 Depicted in in that pornography. Yuck, yuck.

30:04 Yeah. So I think for Dylan,

30:07 unfortunately, I think he got caught up with him.

30:11 He was a bit more, he was easily influenced.

30:13 I don't, he didn't appear to have as many diagnosable

30:18 disorders or personality disorders and things like that,

30:20 that that was noticeable. But he did have writings as well

30:23 that he kept and was certainly a disturbed kid as well.

30:27 Yeah, but was led by Eric. Yeah.

30:30 I mean, yeah, he was the ringleader for sure.

30:33 Yeah. Whether or not he would have

30:35 done that if Eric hadn't come into his life, don't know.

30:40 Yeah. Oh, gosh, Very awful.

30:45 Very, very awful. But at the end of all of this, I

30:48 mean, as we were saying you, I mean, I just can't understand

30:52 the gun laws in America in this situation.

30:55 It was a little bit different that they accessed them

30:57 illegally entirely. So.

30:59 And I applaud that there were convictions around that, that

31:04 that's how that that should be the case that these people were

31:06 found. And police obviously did a good

31:09 job of their investigation after the fact to be able to do that.

31:12 Absolutely. What they were convicted of

31:14 though was supplying guns to a minor.

31:17 I don't know where their responsibility lies in terms of

31:20 the fatalities. I know legally they.

31:22 Weren't held legally responsible for it to a degree.

31:25 Yeah. No, I don't think they were.

31:27 I don't think they their sentence reflected that.

31:30 You know, not the sentencing, but there was civil action.

31:34 So there was a two and a half million dollar lawsuit awarded

31:37 to the victims and a portion of that was paid by.

31:42 But was those? Families look that that I

31:44 couldn't find and I know, and this is the thing I do find

31:47 those rulings. I guess you've got to go into

31:49 those with those civil suits in a respect of like you just want

31:52 it to be known that they were accountable.

31:56 Because whether or not these, I mean, I'm sorry, but many of

31:59 these families are not going to have two and a half, $1,000,000

32:01 in their back pocket to go and pay out these things.

32:03 So I don't know how that works, but I believe of the two and a

32:07 half 1,600,000 of that was was given to the two men that were

32:15 convicted of the gun, the the possession of the guns.

32:18 OK. So I mean, it's a fair Oh, no,

32:20 sorry. One of them more than that even

32:21 actually I think it was that was 600,000.

32:23 No, 600,000 was one of them. The the main main guy, main and

32:27 Duran I think was like, I want to say like 300,000 like yeah,

32:31 yeah. So in wrapping up, we just would

32:35 like to pay respect, obviously, to the victims of this.

32:38 As we said, there were 16 people who were killed.

32:42 One of those people I should just go back to actually one of

32:45 the 16 that were killed in this incident actually died, I want

32:53 to say, 26 years after. Yes, 26 years after the

32:56 shooting. Yeah.

32:57 So Anne Marie Hock Hockhalter. Yeah, Hockhalter, I'm hope I'm

33:02 saying that. Right.

33:02 I think it's Hockhalter. So she was shot in the chest and

33:06 back and confined to a wheelchair after the shootings.

33:11 She was actually, it was really sad.

33:13 Her mother actually committed suicide to in 2009.

33:17 And she used a gun. Yeah, to do that which I just

33:20 sort of feel like that's. Too much.

33:22 That poor girl. And like, just, yeah, she, she

33:25 actually was quite an advocate for gun law and all these

33:28 things, too. She was quite an activist, yeah,

33:30 which was really good on her. But apparently the doctors

33:34 actually said that her wounds were the worst they saw on that

33:38 day of those that survived, obviously.

33:41 And they couldn't believe she survived as long as she did.

33:43 Shocked that she survived. So on February 16th, 2025 S only

33:48 earlier this year, she died at the age of 43.

33:53 She died due to sepsis, which were complicated by the two

33:57 gunshot wounds that she had received.

33:58 Mm hmm. Which is just tragic.

34:00 So that's really sad. But it goes to show that these

34:04 shootings, they are not a one day event.

34:08 You know, this woman has lived, yes, 26 years and she would be

34:11 grateful for every one of those days, I am certain.

34:13 But it's impacted her life hugely, and not just hers.

34:17 Then everyone else is around all of this so.

34:20 There's a podcast called Confronting Columbine, and one

34:23 of it's, it's made by one of the survivors by the name of Amy

34:29 Evans. Yeah.

34:30 And it's a fairly recent podcast, but she talks about it.

34:36 She's an adult now, she's got her own children, but she talks

34:38 about it like it happened to her yesterday.

34:41 And she just says, I have to live with this every single day.

34:44 It's not something that will ever leave me.

34:47 And so I think this is one of those ripple effect type

34:51 situations where the actual toll of this is untold, that you

35:00 could never quantify it because so many people were affected by

35:04 it. Think about the first

35:04 responders. Think about, you know, all of

35:07 the staff and students and their families and even the community.

35:12 You know, it's just. The yeah, that that you would

35:15 have of going to school, which which keeps me scared of having

35:18 going to school. Well, every American child is

35:21 probably fearfully or at least has this in the back of their

35:24 mind. They do active shooter drills

35:26 and that kind of thing in schools these days.

35:28 Like, that's crazy. Yeah.

35:31 So the first fatality was Rachel Scott.

35:33 She was aged 17 and was killed on the grass outside the West

35:37 entrance by Harris. Yeah, Daniel.

35:40 Rob, Rob. Rob was 15.

35:45 Killed at the bottom of the stairs leading to West entrance

35:48 by Harris. And we had Anne Marie Holcutter,

35:52 which we've already spoken about.

35:54 Next we have William David Sanders.

35:56 So he was actually a sports coach.

35:59 He was the basketball coach for the school, apparently.

36:03 He was such a lovely man. Like he, you know, all of his

36:06 students really looked up to him.

36:08 And he was one of those people who had a heart of gold.

36:11 Students would go to him for so many different things, for

36:15 counselling and that kind of thing.

36:16 And he was just a really genuinely lovely teacher.

36:20 Yeah. And loved doing what he did.

36:23 Yeah. He was shot in the hallway

36:24 adjacent to the library by Harris, and he died of blood

36:28 loss in a science classroom. Awful Kyle Velasquez, 16, and

36:34 killed sitting in a chair near the middle of the North Computer

36:41 computer lab by. Dylan Then we have Stephen

36:47 Kerner, who was aged 14, killed in the West End of the South

36:51 computer table in the library by Harris.

36:55 And Kathy Bernal was aged 17 and killed under a library table and

37:01 by Harris and then. Isaiah Shoals, aged 18, killed

37:06 under the library table by Harris.

37:09 Matthew Kector, 16 and Killed under a Library Table by

37:13 Klebold. Lauren Townsend, aged 18, Killed

37:17 under the library table by Klebold.

37:21 And then John Tomlin, aged 16, killed under the library table

37:26 by Klebold after being also wounded by.

37:28 Harris, Kelly Fleming aged 16, killed next to the library table

37:34 by Harris. Daniel Mauser, aged 15, killed

37:38 under a library table by Harris. Corey de Puta, aged 17, killed

37:44 under the library table by Klebold.

37:46 And then the shooters killed themselves and that's this.

37:50 And they add up to the 16 that were killed.

37:54 I mean just. Absolutely horrific, heart goes.

37:59 Out to all their families and friends.

38:01 And the people who are still living with this day, you know,

38:04 day in and day out, there is a memorial to all of the victims

38:10 at the site, at the school. And apparently it's quite a

38:15 powerful, imposing almost, you know, remembrance to, to all of

38:23 those or tribute to all of those who died.

38:27 I, we can probably get into this in one of our one of the next

38:32 two episodes because I just noticed this one's already gone

38:34 way longer than what we thought. But what the fuck?

38:39 Oh yeah, yeah. What the fuck?

38:41 Yeah, absolutely. Two more sleeps, guys, and we'll

38:47 release the next one. Absolutely.

38:49 Till then, stay curious. Crime besties.

38:51 Bye.