78 pages • 2 hours read
Dave CullenColumbine
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 3, Chapters 36-39Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 36 Summary: “Conspiracy”
Detectives investigating the massacre “had three possible crimes to uncover: participation in the attack, participation in the planning, or guilty knowledge” (203). Friends of Eric and Dylan are questioned and released. Sheriff Stone continues to talk of a conspiracy, while Agent Fusilier, by the end of the second week after the shooting, believes the legitimacy of such a theory to be “remote.”
Cullen writes, “Rumors of a third shooter have continued right up to present day,” and again brings up the fact that both Eric and Dylan removed their jackets at various points during their attack led witnesses to believe that there were four shooters, not two (204). Memory, Cullen notes, “is notoriously unreliable” (205), and this is illustrated here by Principal DeAngelis having two utterly different versions of the moments and actions leading up to him encountering Dylan holding a shotgun.
The FBI interviews Kristi Epling, a friend of both Dylan and Eric, and someone who was especially close to Eric. Epling and Eric wrote notes to one another in German class and Epling, after the shooting, mailed these notes to a friend, whom she imagined would effectively hide them. The friend went to the police. Epling says another friend, Nate Dykeman, is in Florida, to avoid media attention. When the FBI pushes harder, Epling admits Dykeman is residing with her. The German class notes reveal Eric as cold-blooded and yearning for power.
By the end of April, the media focuses on the fact that Eric had been talking to a Marine recruiter shortly before the attack and was also on the antidepressant Luvox. Eric’s recruiter learned he was on the medication and rejected his application. Rumors begin that Eric quit taking Luvox (which is also an anger suppressant) days before the attack. This would prove to wrong.
Around this time, the National Rifle Association (NRA), by coincidence, has a convention in Denver. Denver Mayor Wellington Webb “begged the group to cancel its annual convention” but the NRA refuses (211). Four thousand people attend. Three thousand people protest them. One of the protest attendees, Tom Mauser, is the father of Daniel Mauser, one of the Columbine victims. Rock star Marilyn Manson cancels his show at nearby Red Rocks and then cancels the rest of his tour.
The conspiracy theory begins to crumble not just for law enforcement but also for families looking for answers as to why Harris and Klebold carried out their attack. Because both of the killers had killed themselves, leaving noone to try for the crimes save those involved in providing firearms to the two attackers, Cullen writes, “Displaced anger would riddle the community for years” (212).
At the end of April, deadly tornadoes sweep throughOklahoma, and “the national press corps left town in a single afternoon” (213).
Chapter 37 Summary: “Betrayed”
Chapter 37 focuses on the time following Eric’s arrest in 1998. Eric, at his father’s behest, begins seeing therapist Kevin Albert on February 16, 1998. Eric meets with him biweekly and Albert puts Eric on the antidepressant Zoloft. The day beforeEric’s first meeting with Albert, a neighbor finds one of Eric’s pipe bombs in a park. The bomb squad diffuses the bomb and a report is filed.
While Eric gets angrier over this period, Cullen notes that in the year before the attacks, Dylan’s journal is actually more optimistic. Dylan speaks of love in his journal whereas Eric, writes on his website,“All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you pricks as I can!” (216). Both Eric and Dylan take a Diversion class, in order to keep their arrest off their respective permanent records. Both pass the class. The only name in the book that is changed is Dylan’s love interest—in the time before the attack, Klebold grows obsessed with a female student, but we are not made aware of her identity.
Chapter 38 Summary: “Martyr”
Chapter 38 shifts focus back to victim Cassie Bernall, and opens with Cassie’s evangelical pastor saying, at her funeral, that Cassie will be “‘in the martyr’s hall of fame’” (222).
In 1996, Cassie and an unnamed friend wrote letters filled with “hard-core sex talk, occult imagery, and magic spells,” and showed a picture of a teacher “stabbed with butcher’s knives, lying in her own blood.” Cassie’s mother finds these letters and refuses to let her leave the house alone;she sends her to a private school. Cassie is “sullen,” and “cut her wrists and bludgeoned her skull” (223). Roughly three months later, Cassie converts to evangelicalism.
After her death, Cassie’s fame continues to grow. Cullen mentions the narrative of another student, Valeen Schurr, who had a similar story to Cassie; after she was shot by Klebold, Schurr said she believed in God, and when Dylan heard this, he left. Schurr’s story, however, fails to get the media attention of Bernall’s.
Cassie’s former pastor goes on a national speaking tour, and her youth organization spawns chapters in all fifty states. However, the story of Cassie’s martyrdom—of revealing her belief in God and being killed for it—is scrutinized by Columbine survivor Emily Wyant, who had “been hiding under the table with Cassie” (226). Wyant, along with another student survivor, Bree Pasquale, both contend that Cassie never got a chance to have a conversation regarding God with either killer; Eric Harris killed her before she could say anything.
Wyant wants to tell the truth about what happened but both she and her parents are concerned that Emily will be vilified nationally for debunking the story about Cassie.
The Rocky Mountain News, by this point, is aware of Emily’s story. The parents of Bernall strike a deal with Plough Publishing to publish a book about Cassie, entitled She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall. Plough’s first printing run is 100,000 copies.
Police let families and victims back into Columbine, so “victims could face the crime scene with their loved ones” and in the hope of survivors remembering something they hadn’t to that point. Craig Scott’s earlier story about Cassie is proven wrong. Cassie’s mom, Misty, is told that the version of events that made Cassie a martyr is incorrect, and that the book should be pulled or that, at the least, the martyr story should be omitted. Misty Bernall and her editor choose to keep the story in the book.
In July of 1999, the same PR firm that handled Monica Lewinsky’s memoir is called upon to handle the book about Cassie. Film rights are sold, though no movie was made.
Chapter 39 Summary: “The Book of God”
Eric Harris begins his journal on April 10, 1998, one year and ten days before the Columbine massacre. Cullen says that Eric’s writing showed that he “had a preposterously grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority, and an excruciating need for control” (234). For Eric, “Human nature was smothered by society; healthy instincts were smothered by laws,” Eric writes in his journal, “I know I will die soon … so will you and everyone else” (235). Eric says in his journals that he lies a lot and enjoys doing so; he does not believe in a God but enjoys comparing himself to such figures. After reading Eric’s journal, Agent Fusilier identifies Eric Harris as a psychopath.
Chapters 36-39 Analysis
These chapters provide more detail about both the reality of Cassie Bernall’s final minutes in Columbine High and the psychological profile of Eric Harris. Investigators continue their interviews, and while more is uncovered about just how angry Eric Harris was, no co-conspirators are located. This is important to note, in that many members of the Columbine community and beyond refused to let go of the notion that either more students helped in planning the attack or that Eric and Dylan were somehow aligned with a state or national group (most commonly, these groups have been white national or white supremacist organizations).
The NRA’s presence in Denver, some ten miles away from Columbine High, mere weeks after the attack, is important to note. While there are four thousand attendees, there also three thousand protestors. A parent of one of the Columbine victims will go on, after protesting, to lead an organization seeking to get more gun-restriction legislation on the books in Colorado. His organization’s attempts will stall in Congress and ultimately fail. Some ten days after the attack, national press coverage locates a new tragedy and pulls up shop from Columbine. While coverage will spike again, around certain anniversaries, Columbine begins to fade from the national spotlight.
