Murder With Friends: Columbine Shooting

In Membership, Murder With Friends - On Demand by Gigi Manukyan40 Comments

Grace Baldridge and Jay Light discuss the infamous 1999 Columbine High School shooting.

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  1. I was in high school when Columbine happened. My district was actually heading towards the end of Spring Break when it occurred; I was slated to go to the “bad kids school” because the way school was handled where I grew up was utterly terrible for anyone who was highly intellectual (they basically stopped teaching anything new around 8th grade for the majority of subjects, and just started reteaching it all, and that isn’t good learning for someone who was already on college levels for reading, sciences, and general comprehension), and they were making a last ditch effort to help me graduate (spoilers: I got two semesters of work at 4.0 done while I was there, because it was just grabbing packets, going over them yourself, and then doing the work, which was way better for me).

    While the event itself was highly disturbing, as at the very least Dylan was in the same sort of social caste as I was in school so there were always thoughts of “Could one of my friends – the outcasts who aren’t entirely outcasts – end up doing the same”. The narrative immediately following Columbine was the *worst* thing for anyone who wasn’t a yuppy preppy, as all over the nation poor Goth and Punk kids like myself and my friends were being persecuted for something the vast majority of them would *never even consider doing*, largely because of the sudden blame on Marilyn Manson (who was inaccurately considered Goth music, when he’s actually more like European Death Metal) and simple black trenchcoats.

    There was a girl at my school who was super poor, and well before Columbine, her parents managed to get her a really decent black trechcoat from a charity store, and she got beat up and bullied in the aftermath to the point where she dropped out of school – and she wasn’t even a Goth or Punk kid, she was a good little Catholic girl.

    One of my friends who was already out of high school, who wore a black trenchcoat since the style was what was comfortable with him, and he wore black and white with bright coloured accessories or metallic accessories, so his coat was black with silver accents – he got jumped when he was walking through downtown one night, trying to get to a friend’s house that was located on the other side. He was a high ranking hopkido student, so he managed to not get beat down like these thugs (yeah, they’re thugs – beating someone up over a trenchcoat is super thuggish) as they had intended. The way the were speaking to him as they approached, and as the fight started, they signalled they had every intent to send him to the hospital.

    I myself had to deal with the officials from my former high school – primarily the principle – calling up my new high schools officials and fretting over whether or not I would commit such a crime over being sent there. My principle was hella classy and responded with, “They could build an atomic bomb on their own, but that doesn’t mean they would. No, they’re not going to gun down the school. Stop it.”

    One of the largely unaddressed legacies of Columbine was how shitty Goth and Punk kids, along with anyone in a black trenchcoat, were treated afterwards – and that continued for years, largely until other school shootings/mass shootings occurred and the gunmen *weren’t* Goth or Punk or wearing black trenchcoats and listening to Marilyn Manson. People slowly started waking up to the fact that *anyone* could have the kind of mental issues that lead to a mass shooting.

    Columbine also birthed the bollocks ideal that violent video games – and video games in general – make people more violent, and turns them into murderers, something that still lingers even today, despite the fact that peer reviewed study after study has proven that to be patently false, and proven that quite the opposite is occurring: by being given an outlet for pent up anger and stress, society has decreased the level of violence that was formerly innate in the population. Some psychologists believe it helped decrease the number of serial killers, as the numbers that were going around in the crazy 60s/70s dropped dramatically; while numerous factors have contributed to that, the ability to vent one’s frustrations *safely* is likely one of the larger factors. Given that I was working in tech, and then eventually in the video game industry itself, that narrative pissed me right off – I had been playing video games since the Commodore64, and even more heavily after the Atari was made, so I felt this huge resentment towards the narrative that video games made people murderers.

    Sadly, the clip that you played from Bowling for Columbine, with Marilyn Manson speaking, hit things pretty squarely on the head – no one listens when children (or even adults) are speaking about things that society likes to shove aside, and that’s part of what causes things like this and things like suicide; people ignoring the pain and suffering that someone is trying to express how they’re feeling, society still largely doesn’t know how to handle the ever increasing mental illness cases (that’s a whole different rant from me, btw), and so we end up with people missing the signs that would have stopped horrific death from occurring. I may have little love for Manson’s music, or what happened to the Goth/Punk community because of it, but I totally respect the man’s uncanny insight and amazing intelligence. He was so right about everything he spoke about in that clip, and then some.

    Anyway, thank you for giving us space to speak about this incident. It still really unsettles me, because of everything that happened the spring of 1999 because of it. It’s hard to watch most things related to Columbine, but Murder with Friends handled it really well. I’m not sure if part of that has to do with the fact we had two different perspectives – one of someone who wasn’t American, and one of someone who lived through the time – but I think that helped a lot. It also helps that in more recent years, there’s been a more objective focus when people pour over the information from Harris and Klebold’s life, rather than simply writing them off as monsters without any objective thought and reflection.

    Give Jay a hug for me, Grace. He was awesome on this one.

  2. So I grew up in Colorado, but I was born in ’98 the year before this. I actually don’t even remember learning about Columbine it just an event I’ve always known about. I’ve been to the park near Columbine high school, my next door neighbor growing up was a counselor there during the shooting, and my dad was in law enforcement and was actually on the scene. A lot of people in Colorado know someone or know someone who knows someone that was at columbine (or at least it feels that way to me). Colorado has this kinda weird thing where we’re pretty liberal but still have a decent amount of guns. I feel like lock down and lock out drills became a lot more common in schools after the this because we did multiple drills a year every year I was in school, they taught us to get out of view of any of the windows so we all generally crammed into 1 corner of the classroom the teacher would lock the door and turn the lights off and we’d have to wait for an administrator to come to our class to give the all clear (they couldn’t do it over the speaker system), from kindergarten to 12th grade

  3. I’m the same age as you guys, so I was also quite young when this happened. I had no idea how misinformed I was and how influenced I became by the spin the media put on the story until now. Wow. Thanks for the show!

  8. I was a senior in high school when this happened, so I was the same age as them. I remember feeling pretty shocked about it. It made everyone feel like, geez this could have happened at our school.

    It was very frustrating to see the media blame it on violent video games and Marilyn Manson. Everyone my age knew that it was so obvious that just playing certain games or listening to certain music was not enough to make you shoot up your school. So it was sad and disheartening to see them use those things as scapegoats and gloss over the real issues.

    At the same time, I was very similar to them – not popular but not an outright outcast, and with a bad enough family life that I could empathize with their situation. I never would have considered trying to harm anyone, but I could see how they ended up where they did. So yes, we obviously have to keep guns out of schools, but we also need to help the people in our society that are struggling.

  10. Very interesting take. I’d like to add to it a little and say that Dylan was originally terrified of Eric when they first became friends, because he was part jewish and he Eric was really anti-semetic, and he went along with a lot of Eric’s suggestions out of both massive depression and fear of Eric.

    Columbine also wasn’t the first modern school shooting that was sensationalized nationally. The ones that got the most amount of attention in the years prior to Columbine were Jonesboro, AR, and West Paducah, KY. My school already had metal detectors and zero tolerance policies in place because of these. In the 1980s there was the Greenwood, SC shooting that got major media coverage as well, I remember that happening when I was only 4 years old.

    Here’s a list of school shootings in the US, its ridiculous to see how many there have been in the recent decades.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_the_United_States#1990s

    Columbine was the first one that I remember the media attacking and putting the blame on others. But school shootings were definitely a big part of the collective consciousness before then.

  11. Hi Grace and Emir. You HAVE to check this out!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CuQynlDwGo&t=1022s

    When I watch the show and read the comment sections I often come across crimes I either haven’t heard about (what with being English in England), or that I vaguely know but not quite, so I go on a YouTube search. Anyway people have been mentioning BTK, so I looked him up. I found this, and it blew my mind. It’s about how they found him or to be specific the advance of DNA testing into policing. It started right here in England! Wow, something to be proud of for a change! Anyway, I watched a couple on BTK and I agree with other members that it would make a really good Murder With Friends Episode. Please?

    1. i agree about BTK. he has fascinated me ever since he was caught and delivered that remarkable, chilling confession in court. you could tell he was enjoying himself immensely. the psychological angels of his nature are heavy in his story and deserve their place in digital history.

  12. I didnt live in the area or the state but i was 11 at the time , i remember coming home to my mom sitting on the sofa and crying about what happened . At age 11 i had grown up listening to MM music ( i have young parents ) and it annoyed me that they place a lot of blame on MM the other of i think Dylan did a ted talk it was pretty good but again like some have sad absent parenting could be a lot also if the teens were known to be troubled with depression why did they not get extensive counseling?

  15. This might just be my fave MWF thus far. I was 12 when Columbine happened and I remember reading all my dad’s TIME magazines. They covered the story extensively, and it was nice to have this sober look back to see what sort of facts have emerged, and what stories have turned out to either be skewed or untrue.

    As a young Christian, I really struggled with the myth of the “Do you believe in God?” question that Dylan supposedly asked of Cassie Bernall. The story has been debunked (https://newrepublic.com/article/122832/why-does-columbine-myth-about-martyr-cassie-bernall-persist) but it really stuck with me when it happened, how the media was so focused on the Christian aspect of the shooting. A lot of MWF episodes focuses on the media’s telling of horrible events, and I’m always shocked at the things I’ve believed for so long.

    It’s that kind of political aspect that really puts Murder with Friends right at home on the TYT Network.

  16. Grace seemed very disturbed during this episode. I think a little of the fact that this show continues the glory and fame of killing started to set in a little.

    1. I think it’s more about how bloody sad this is for absolutely everyone involved. It was so close to graduation and those two boys discovering there was more to life than what was said at school. So many lives lost or traumatized but if you don’t look at these cases, people never think through the ages old question, where was society and what role does it unconsciously play in these things? Here in Britain we’ve had a few of these over the years, minus the guns, and no one wants to look at it at the time, they just put it off til the next one an repeat!

    2. I agree about glorifying the murderers. I don’t remember but there was one guest that used out-of-place comments about a serial killer. While I really like the show, I turn off my morality meter when I watch. I support TYT only for AP, but this is the only other show I watch. Sadly, the main panel has sunken into playing the political game. I cannot stomach any discussion about the 49.5% of people that voted for Tiny Hands, since you don’t use PAPER BALLOTS and PENCILS, hand counted in public. Until you do that, someone is manipulating the election. And why not use pencils made from strong RUSSIAN WOOD. It is the best. And easier to hack. Russian Sex Workers pleasure themselves with Russian wood pencils. Not that cheap American Wood. And they are the best.

  17. After watching More “Murder with Friends” I have noticed”noticed that BTK gets some mentions so you might have already done an episode of him or at least mentioned him. I still think he is crazy enough to get an episode but I’m probably just biased since I’m from Wichita. Also, BTK seems to have stolen some of his action from the zodiac killer and john Wayne gacye. He taunted the police like the zodiac and he was seen as a contributor to his community like JWG so he lacks originality.

  18. So I’m a new member from Wichita Ks and this little web series is rather interesting to watch when I’m not watching the main show. One interesting fact about Kansas is that from the 1970s to about 1991 Wichita was terrorized by a serial killer named Dennis Rader who would send letters to the police and the local news basically bragging about his murders by signing with three letters BTK (BIND TORTURE KILL). This went on for some many years and he would leave a signature every time he killed. The BTK killer was another one of those killers that hid in plain sight. He was the pastor at his local church, he volunteered year round, and generally never gave any indication of his sick behavior. He used this fake persona to lure children and eventually kidnap them and carry out his act exactly as his signature dictates. The sadist killed 10 people over a 20ish year period until his arrest in 1991. As of today he still rots in prison in Wichita but many are still trying to get him executed to this day. He’s no mason or zodiac killer but even small towns like Wichita in flyover states can be haunted by truly sadistic men and I advocate for an episode on Dennis Rader the BTK serial killer.

  19. I grew up in the same school district. My brother was called in to work Columbine two hours after it started since he just got off his shift. He can’t talk about it but he said it was worse than people thought. Maybe police didn’t secure the library for 4 hours since they didn’t want to get blown up, nor blow up the survivors. I was called my brothers wife since I was in Europe and we were watching the same images on TV. I think my Dad was a victim, since he was sitting in his home 3 days after the attack (I won’t say it was a terrorist attack since it was not brown muslims that did it) he had a major health crisis. He had been in complete shock for the days after the incident. I met several of the kids that went to the school, lots of therapy to try to cope. I also went to Arapaho High School, where there was another shooting about 5 years ago. I was taking a Portuguese class and I printed out the news feed in Portuguese. My teacher just said, Just another shooting! And he was right. You have too many guns.
    There was a shooting in a mountain village in Switzerland in early 2013. One of the victims was a good friend, I had visited her village of Deillon. She lived next door from a crazy Swiss military fanatic that was kicked out of the Army. He held off police and killed 3 people. Since he was a sharpshooter, he held police off for several hours. There was a lot of polemic here since they talked about putting some restrictions on military weapons after.
    By the way, I am mocking the media about the terrorist comment. Every attack is a terrorist attack. Trump is continuing the Bush and Obama terrorist policies with the drone wars and supporting the crazed Military-Industrial Complex. (MIC). That is something you didn’t talk about but many people worked at Lockheed Martin, which build missiles in Littleton. Another factor was that there were many instances of kids in this area who were left alone by their parents for weeks at a time as they were traveling in Europe. They would give the kids a couple hundred dollars and say to find food. Absent parenting should have been discussed, not Marilyn Manson.

    1. Larry, you make a great point in your first paragraph. The police thought there were bombs and booby traps all over the place (and there were bombs, obviously), they had no idea how any bombs would be or could be rigged. Honestly, I don’t want it to be the responsibility of your everyday officer to combat a terrorist attack (which this was), that just leads to more militarization of the police force. Unfortunately, we have that now, and I think if this happened today the reaction of police would be different, for better or worse.

      1. You are so right about the police. This is the reason I haven’t gone back to visit the US since my Mom’s funeral in 2008, despite family. I have been aggressed twice on my trips to told New Country, once in Littleton by two Gasholes in a big pick-up with a gun rack. I was running on the road, hadn’t been back for 20 years, and one leaned out of the truck waving the gun yelling at me to get a job. My daughter and her friend renounced visiting the US on a road trip since they thought they wouldn’t be safe. I was so happy!
        Living in Europe I will give you the biggest difference. I live on a busy street in Germany. I might see one police car each hour out of the thousands of cars. Except when the refugee center across the street has a domestic dispute, when they roll up with 6 squads of SWAT police. (By the way, no incidents.) In America, I don’t think I would be wrong if I thought every twentieth car was a police car. Am I wrong?

  20. Also another suggestion is the Story of Nicholas Barclay. Nicholas Barclay disappeared June 13th 1994, walking home from a hang out with friends, he was 14 years old. Having “disappeared” before Law Enforcement was slow to respond, however when they finally did investigate no trace of him could be found. 3 Years later, Police in San Antonio receive a call from a youth shelter in Linares, Spain that Nicholas Barclay was found alive, and that he had escaped a child sex ring operation. Nicholas’ Sister flies over to Spain to identify him. He is brought home to America. but Nicholas remains quite and distant, which is understandable, the only problem is the kid they brought back was not Nicholas Barclay. The family was thrown off that his eye color, hair color and complexion had changed. Finally after a long struggle DNA test is done and he is found to not be Nicholas Barclay but instead a 23 year old French born Frederic Bourdin. Sorry it took a while to get to the good part but here is where it get SUPER STRANGE!!!! Despite being told by the court that he was an imposter the family tried to keep Frederic in their family as Nicholas. WHY? Why did Nicholas sister say this man was her brother when he clearly wasn’t, why did the family think it was Nicholas despite looking like a completely different person. Why did even after authorities tell the family the Frederic was an imposter that they try and keep him in the family. The main theory is that the family knew immediately that Frederic was not Nicholas, and the reason that the tried to play Frederic as Nicholas was because the family or at least some of the family MURDERED Nicholas and that they did not want to get caught when Frederic poses as Nicholas. An investigation into the family ensues and Frederic runs away telling Nicholas brother Jason ‘Good luck’. Before Jason is questioned he dies from a drug overdose which may have been intentional. Frederic Bourdin when questioned by police about the family said “They killed him. Some of them did it, some of them knew about it, and some of them choose to ignore it. I wasn’t worried about Nicholas coming back no more.” also “They knew I was not Nicholas,”, ” “They didn’t believe a word that I said. But they were good at not showing it”. Honestly this is one of the most chilling unsolved cases I have ever heard about. and we may never know what happened to Nicholas Barclay, especially since the main suspect Jason is now dead, but even if Jason killed his brother the rest of the family either knew about it or participated and helped cover the crime, or did Nicholas actually disappeared? Would love to see an episode for this sorry for the super long comment.

  21. Hey just got into your show, I’m pretty sure I binge-watched all your episodes in like 3 days keep up the good work! One suggestion I have is to do an episode on Robert Pickton: he was a Canadian multi-millionaire pig farmer who turned Serial Killer. He was convicted of the murders of six women, and charged for the killing of an additional 20 women. However, he later confessed he claimed to have killed 49 women and that his only regret was that he couldn’t make it an even 50.

  23. I think I disagree with that Mom, as bad as I feel for her, that her son only “wanted to die” rather than “wanted to kill.” There are many people who commit suicide without killing other people first. I believe that he wanted to die but I think he wanted to kill too. You don’t go through with what they did without wanting to kill.

    There is one clear way to prevent school shootings and that is gun control. Look at Australia as an example. Unfortunately, elections are influenced by money and gun manufacturers have money and can buy the type of gun policy they want.

  24. I would be recommend the story of the bike path rapist that happen in western new York around ended about 10 years is a very sad story But a intresting case none a less

    1. Also we had a the Rachel challenge in our middle school & hell i even won the first rachel scott award in my 8th grade class & in my opinion it did shit to reduce the amount of bullying in my school or to me even hell like 2 years later in our high school we had a kid almost do the samething in which he made a list of all the kids who bullied him & was going to shoot luckily i was on that list but my best friend was the good news was the cops stopped it before something happened. It was crazy though & that moment changed my thinking on alot of things like guns religion the value of the people etc.

  25. Dave Cullen is the author. I read the book a few years after it came out and I highly recommend it.

  26. I was pretty young when this happened. I remember it and the news coverage and I was HIGHLY misinformed about a lot of it. I stayed away from ever looking into this because as a gamer the fact that they blamed DOOM and games just ticked me off so much. I actually almost even skipped this episode. So glad I didn’t really curious to learn more and get some of my misinformation corrected. I want to read the book recommended but I keep missing the author’s name not sure which one it is…

  27. I was a sophomore when it happened. A week before the shootings there was a pipe bomb found on our nature trail. When this happened our school was in lock down. Every classroom was locked and out purses/bookbags were taken. We were shaking and I remember how quiet everyone was. Last period bell rang and we boarded our buses one room at a time. Each hallway had a male teacher in it (not sure why it was only male teachers but I remember that). The next day we had an assembly about mental health.

    Unlike Jay’s school that was it for us. There was no added protection. We were still able to skip school and get in through the side door. We were able to sneak into the courtyard and smoke. There were NO added precautions. It wasn’t until Sandy Hook that the school district I went to actually added security officers at the doors.

    My senior year though a kid going hunting cut through the parking lot to get into the woods and immediately the cops were called. He was expelled even though he was wearing bright orange coveralls and hunting boots.

    My own paranoia though since this happened has gotten to me. People wearing trenchcoats still make me uneasy.

  29. Really fantastic episode today!! I enjoyed seeing Jay again; I think he keeps a good balance of understanding the gravity of the situation while keeping it light (no pun intended).

    Interestingly, I think there’s something about Rachel Scott’s story being slightly incorrect as it’s been portrayed… I remember learning in school (much to the chagrin of my very evangelical friends at the time) that she wasn’t exactly killed because she said she believed in Jesus, but that that was a narrative that arose later. Not that her death wasn’t horrible, but it had been sort of exaggerated to fit a narrative and I think that’s a shame.

    Also throughout school (I was in public school in rural western NC from ~2001-2014) we had a dress code/policy that seemed to reflect Columbine – no trench coats, no violent imagery on clothes, no hats. Violence was absolutely not tolerated, and the sorts of videos the two guys produced never would have been allowed. Also, throughout high school we were highly monitored and not allowed to wander the halls unattended, even to go to the library, during lunch or other breaks. Even more security measures were put into place after Sandy Hook.

  30. I only remember the Virginia Tech massacre back in 2007 I remember watching it with my grandfather and watching the coverage. I’m hearing my grandmother my grandfather talking about it of course I was only nine and 10 in the fourth grade. But I still remember it vividly now that I am 19 it still baffles me well not really knowing about the NRA The gun-control hasn’t been implemented

  32. I was a sophomore in high school when this happened. It was very traumatic to go from feeling completely safe at school one day to scanning the classroom for exits or places to hide from gunfire the next. The possibility of a school shooting had never occurred to my friends and I until then. I can’t believe it’s been nearly 20 years and we haven’t done anything about guns in this country.

    As for art, one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen is the season 2 premiere episode of 19-2, which was inspired by the Columbine incident. I didn’t breathe for most of the episode. Here’s the link, if anyone wants to see it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duOFYx-Dgho.

    Also, I’ve suggested it a couple times before, but it’s been a while so I’ll put in another recommendation for the East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker (EAR/ONS) as a subject for the show. The guy is creepy as fuck. Also, Bob Berdella could be very interesting from the horror perspective. I think he’s worse than Jeffrey Dahmer.

    Good show, guys. I look forward to it every week.

  33. I think one thing with bullies is that you can’t just tell them “don’t do it”. If you want to stop these things, you need to understand why they do what they do, and work on that. But no one wants to do that, because they don’t want to look like they’re sympathetic to them.
    Same with Dylan and Eric, it’s easy to edit their videos to make them look crazy, it’s easy to say they were angels corrupted by “evil” video games. It’s hard to examine mental issues and understand what leads people to these violent ends. They did want to die, but in a “blaze of glory” so to speak, or to take everyone with them, because they hate them all.
    I think if we spent more time trying to understand why people do violence, that we would be more effective in preventing it. And you can’t just say “mental illness” like so many conservatives do. I suffer from depression, I have a collection of swords… I have no intention of murdering anyone.
    Gun control is another huge factor, and I’m one of the non-Americans who has to look in from outside and shake my head at the lack of action on the part of politicians.
    There are a lot of things that have to be fixed to prevent these events. Bullying, access to weapons, mental illness… but all anyone wants is to find one bad guy and point the finger.
    I likely seem all over the place with this, but it’s because it’s a very complex issue.

    On a completely unrelated note, you should bring Jay on more often!

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