Slate magazine publishes author Dave Cullen’s fascinating portrait of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide at Columbine High School, five years ago today. “At last,” writes Cullen, “we know why the Columbine killers did it.”
Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the “worst school shooting in American history.” They set their sights on eclipsing the world’s greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in the wrong direction.
Employing the work of University of British Columbia psychology professor Robert Hare — who was consulted by the FBI about Columbine, as well as by Cullen for his Slate story — Harris was deemed to be a psychopath. “Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why,” writes Hare. Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath was not a simple matter. But once the diagnosis was made, new light was shed on the thought process that drove him to mass murder.
You can read more over at Cullen’s blog, Conclusive Evidence.
Reminds me of the Huenneman killings in Tsawassen in 1990 (?). A book came out called Such a Good Boy which basically blamed the killings of the mother and grandmother on the teenagers’ involvement with Dungeons and Dragons – living in a fantasy world.
That kind of book really helped no one; although it did mention a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Also reminds me of the Rena Virk murder and a similar murder in Sidney.