Speaker 1: On April twentieth, nineteen ninety nine. What happened inside Columbine
High School was quickly labeled a tragedy, but the official
story left behind timelines that don't quite line up, warnings
that were ignored, and questions that were never fully answered.
As the years passed, sealed evidence, shifting narratives and the
media myths only deepened the mystery of what really happened
that day. Follow me down the rabbit Hole about the
Columbine massacre. Hello, friends, and welcome back to the rabbit Hole.
I'm your host Stanny, and today we are talking about
the Columbine shooting. Thank you Meghan for requesting this episode,
and I love to thank our sponsors, So thank you
Wise with Gold for sponsoring my podcast. Guys, if you
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for as little as fifty dollars a month, go to
rabbit Hole doc Gold right now. When we talk about
school shootings, people reference Columbine, Sandy Hook, and Virginia Tech.
Most people believe that Columbine was the first school shooting
in America. That is not true. It is the one
most people remember. And point two when talking about school
or mass shootings, and it left behind the lasting impression
and it is often referenced when another school shooting happens.
Most people do call it the deadliest school shooting to
happen up until that point, but again not true. The
first recorded school shooting to happen in our country happened
before we were a country. On July twenty sixth, seventeen
sixty four, in south central Pennsylvania, a group of four
Native American Indians attacked a schoolhouse, killing the school master,
Enoch Brown, and nine children. They then took two children
with them as hostages, one of whom later died. This
was during the Pontiac War, which was a Native American
uprising against British rule in the Great Lakes and Ohio
Valley region shortly after Britain defeated France in the French
Indian War. After the Brits took control over the former
French territories, they raised trade prices, restricted ammunition, and pushed
westward into Native lands, all of which the French weren't doing.
This broke the long standing agreement that the French had maintained,
and then pissed off the Native Americans in that area,
so they started to push back this shooting was collateral
damage in that war. They primarily used firearms and edged
weapons in the attack and proved that nothing was spared
during times of war or political upheaval. This shooting is
typically excluded from school shooting statistics because they classify it
as an act of war instead of a criminal act.
But that's where they are wrong. This shooting is as
politically motivated as most of the shootings are in more
recent history. But also this shooting doesn't fit their agenda.
It is not un uniquely a post Columbine or post
AR fifteen phenomenon that brings us to the next school
shooting that they loved to exclude from the statistics. Firstly,
most school shooting statistics start in nineteen sixty six, nineteen seventy,
or nineteen ninety nine with Columbine. With this, they are
trying to push a narrative that school shootings are uniquely
modern and tied to the twentieth and twenty first century
cultural factors, which is not the case. Also, in eighteen
fifty three, when this next shooting happened, guns were very
commonplace and solving issues with guns was pretty normal, Although
not a mass shooting On November two, eighteen fifty three,
in Louisville, Kentucky, a thirteen year old student named Matthew
Ward shot and killed schoolmaster William H. F. Butler. He
did this because Butler was mistreating his younger brother. Even
though Ward shot Butler in front of his classmates, he
was actually acquitted of all charges. Eighteen ninety one was
a big year for school shootings in the US. On
March twenty eighth, eighteen ninety one, a man with a
double barreled shotgun fired upon a crowd of students and
faculty attending a school expedition in Parson Hall Schoolhouse in Liberty, Mississippi.
He wounded over fourteen people, most of whom were children.
A few weeks after that, in April eighteen ninety one,
a man opened fire inside Saint Mary's Parochial School in
New York. This was probably not a copycat shooting because
news didn't travel as quickly or as far back then
as it does now. The first mass shooting in our
history is normally awarded to the University of Texas Tower shooting.
The other labels that are put on This shooting, in particular,
is the first violent school shooting the first military connected
shooting or the first violent killing spree in the US.
On August first, nineteen sixty six, a twenty five year
old Marine veteran, Charles Whitman, opened fire on the campus
of the University of Texas Austin. Whitman had attended the
school where he studied mechanical engineering. Charles Whitman grew up
in a house with a father that was both physically
and emotionally abusive. Despite that, he was a very intelligent child,
with testing at age six revealing that his IQ was
one hundred and thirty nine. He was also a boy
Scout and attained the rank of Eagle Scout when he
was only twelve. He graduated seventh in his class, and
after graduation, he attended a party where, like most teenagers,
he got too drunk. He then returned home in this
drunk state and his dad beat him because of it.
This was the final straw for Charles. He joined the
Marine Corps three days after his eighteenth birthday and was gone.
While in the Marines, he deployed to Guantanamo Bay. He
was sent to the University of Texas at Austin in
nineteen sixty one on a scholarship from the Naval Enlisted
Science Education program, so he was still in the military,
but basically like his service was on pause while he
finished his degree. His roommate would point out after the
shooting that Whitman stood at his window looking at the
ut tower, stating, quote, a person could stand off an
army from the top of it before they got to
him end quote. Now to most this sounds like a
damning statement. However, you have to remember that he had
just gotten out of the military, or at least just
gotten out of Guantanagua Bay, where his job was to
think about these things constantly, so something like that doesn't
seem totally out of the ordinary when you put it
in context. The following year, he married his wife, whom
he had met at university, and his grades were not
up to par for the scholarship anymore, and in nineteen
sixty three he was ordered to return to active duty
at Camp Lea June. He was honorarly discharged in nineteen
sixty four, and he and his wife returned to Austin
because they liked it there. In early March nineteen sixty six,
Charles's mother called him to tell him that she had
finally had enough and she was also leaving his father.
He was not upset by this news, and in fact,
he drove all night long to get to his mother,
who was in Florida, to help her move out of
the house. Packed all the things, he called a deputy
to come and stand outside the house. That way, if
his father did show back up, he wouldn't try to
stop him and his mother from leaving. He then moved
his mom back to Austin with him. Leading up to
the shooting, he had visited a psychiatrist. This was in
a couple of months leading up to the shooting, and
he discussed some pressure that he was under in frustration
and distress that he was having. He also talked about
headaches he would frequently have and self loathing he had
after hitting his own wife twice throughout their entire marriage,
and that was mostly because his father was abusive and
he didn't want to be anything like his father. On
July thirty first, nineteen sixty six, Whitman sat down to
write the first of the two suicide notes that he
would write. He was visited in the middle of writing
this note by two of his friends. It was like
a husband and wife pair, who said that he seemed
quote particularly relieved about something, you know, as if he
solved a problem. Later, he left to get his wife
from work because they had one car and he had
to go pick her up. She worked nights, and when
they returned home, she went straight to bed because it
was late. Shortly after midnight, he left to go to
his mother's apartment. Once there, he stabbed his mother to
death with a bayonet before placing her body on the
bed and covering her up, which shows a morse. He
then wrote a second suicide note and left it beside
her bed. He returned home around three am, where he
stabbed his wife to death repeatedly through the heart. In
both of his notes, he stated that he loved his
wife and mother and he did this to save them
from the humiliation of what he was about to do. Later,
on the morning of August first, he rented a hand
truck before driving to his bank, where two hundred and
fifty dollars worth of bad checks that's about twenty five
hundred dollars today. Some of those checks were from his
account and the others were from his mother's account. He
then drove to the hardware store, where he purchased a
thirty caliber rifle and two additional magazines and eight boxes
of ammo, and then about thirty minutes after that, he
bought four more magazines and six more boxes of ammo.
Then he went to sears and bought a twelve gage
semi automatic shotgun, and then he went home to get ready.
He sawed off the button barrel of the shotgun and
put the things he had purchased into his foot locker
that he had kept from his military days, along with
a Rimington Model seven hundred six millimeter bolt action rifle,
a nine millimeter pistol, a twenty five caliber pistol, and
a three fifty seven magnum revolver, and over seven hundred
rounds of ammunition, so he was prepared. He then put
on a blue khaki like overall suit in an attempt
to look like a janitor or repairman, and headed to
the University of Tech. And that actually worked, and we'll
get there into a second. Once he was at the university,
he wheeled his stuff to the main building of the university,
took the elevator to the twenty seventh floor, and then
climbed the final flight of stairs to the hallway before
finally reaching the observation deck. There was a receptionist inside
the room that led to the observation deck, and Charles
knocked her out with the butt of his rifle when
he got there. After hiding the body, he barricaded the door.
As he was about to go out to the observation deck.
A family was attempting to get past that barricade, so
he shot at them, killing a sixteen year old boy
and the aunt, and seriously injuring the nineteen year old
brother and mother. The dad and uncle were uninjured, and
they went for help after realizing they couldn't help their
family members themselves. After that, he shot the receptionist who
he had previously knocked out. At about eleven forty eight am,
Charles began shooting from the observation deck. His targets were
ran them, although most of them were shot on or
near a section of Guadalupe Street known as the Drag,
but I think that's also where he had the best
vantage point. Two fifteen people were killed, including one unborn
child because the first woman he shot was actually pregnant.
Thirty one others were injured in the shooting. Four minutes
after the first shots rang out, the police were called.
The police, with the help of a retired Air Force tailgunner,
Alan Crumb, ascended the stairs to the observation deck and
were able to shoot and kill Charles Whitman. Now I'm
sure you're thinking I thought this episode was supposed to
be about Columbine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're getting there, I promise.
But in this shooting specifically, which was arguably worse than
the Columbine shooting in the number of tragedies, the shooter
seemed to be programmed. He was already a prime subject
because he grew up an an abusive household, and he
had like trauma in his background, meaning that he would
dissociate faster, and he was a boy scout and in
the military, both of which are known to program participants.
He had ticks right before and during the shooting that
seemed to be evidence of his programming. Firstly, he loved
both his mother and his wife like a lot. The
fact that he would kill them just seems like odd
to me, although not completely unlikely if he was going
to carry out this plan of his own free will,
like he was trying to save them the humiliation. I
get that he might have killed them because he knew
there was no way to break the programming. In the
months leading up to the shooting, he was visiting a psychiatrist.
This gives me major red flags because it could have
been a couple things. For one, he was having terrible headaches,
which is a side effect of programming, especially if you're
trying to beat it. They put this failsafe in your
brain so you can't uncover the altars that they want
to cover up. But also this told the psychiatrist that
something was happening with his programming. So like, what if
the psychiatrists he was going to was a programmer and
knew he needed to trigger soon, otherwise he would defeat
his own programming. But then there's also the possibility that
they triggered him because he was going to a psychiatrist.
There's so many options. He also would start sentences and
then not finish them, or like repeat parts, almost like
a glitch. So the night before the shooting, while he
was writing that first suicide note, and his friends dropped
by his house just like hang out. Charles's wife was
still at work, so it was only him in these friends.
They stated that on two separate occasions, he would say
something like it's a shame that Kathleen, his wife, should
have to work all day then come home to dot
dot dot dot dot. He would like trail off and
he would just never finish his sentence. He would not
elaborate on it, he would just move on. The Next day,
when he was entering the main building, he found that
the elevator wasn't working. So an employee, believing that Charles
was a repair man because he was wearing the blue khakis,
informed him that the elevator had been turned off and
then activated it for him so he could take it up.
In reply to that, he said, quote, you don't know
how happy that makes me, how happy that makes me?
End quote. They did learn during Charles's autopsy that he
had a brain tumor and blamed the entire shooting on
the side effects of that tumor. After this shooting, there
was no policy change and it wasn't really heavily publicized
because it would prove to the world that America was
unstable and we just could not have that during the
Cold War. But also twenty four to seven news media
coverage was not a thing yet. So this brings us
to Columbine, although not the next school shooting, nor the
next mass shooting. It is the one that has referenced most.
When these types of shootings happen, they call it the
Columbine effect. Also, most people market the Columbine shooting as
the deadliest school shooting in American history at that time,
like nineteen ninety nine, We just learned that it wasn't,
So it makes you wonder why they're pushing that narrative
so hard. On April twentieth, nineteen ninety nine, Eric Harris
and Dylan Cleebold murdered thirteen students at Columbine High School
in Littleton, Colorado. Eric David Harris was born on April ninth,
nineteen eighty one, in Wichita, Kansas. His father was an
Air Force pilot and his mother was a homemaker. Because
his father was in the Air Force, the family moved
around a few times before finally settling in Littleton, Colorado,
in nineteen ninety two after his father retired from the
Air Force. Both his parents were born and raised in Colorado,
so they decided to just come home. It is of
note that after retirement, Wayne Eric's father went on to
work for Flight Safety Services Corporation, which is a military
contractor so just because he left the military doesn't mean
he ever actually left the military. Dylan Cleebold was born
on September eleventh, nineteen eighty one, in Lakewood, Colorado. Both
his parents studied art at Ohio State University, although his
dad moved from sculpting to engineering to be more financially
stable for his family, while his mom worked with disabled children.
Dylan was in the Gifted and Talented program in elementary
school as well as being in the Cub Scouts. Eric
and Dylan became really good friends in middle school because
Eric didn't actually move to Colorado until seventh grade, and
then he met Dylan shortly after. The pair were also
friends with Brooks Brown, whom had been friends with Dylan
since the first grade, and Nathan Dykman, whom they attended
middle school with as well. At his schools prior to
moving to Colorado, Eric was described as like a normal kid,
very charismatic, but this move was hard on him. However,
he didn't lose his likability or charisma, although he did
start using it for bad instead of good, bragging that
he could make anybody believe anything. By his junior year
in high school, he had this reputation of being quick
to anger and would often threaten people with bombs. Dylan
was the opposite. He was quiet and shy. He too
had a hard transition, but it was from elementary school
to middle school that his transition was kind of hard,
and he would hardly open up to people and was
especially nervous in front of women. He became short tempered
and was prone to sudden outbursts of anger. Starting at
the beginning of his senior year, the pair were very close.
They had other friends, but none as close to them
as each other were. Unfortunately, because of their closeness, rumors
started circulating that they were gay and romantically involved, and
in fact, after the massacre, a lot of conspiracy theorists
and then the Westboro Baptist Church also started spreading this
rumor that they were gay when there's no evidence to
suggest that, and in fact, just a couple nights before
the shooting, Dylan went to prom with a girl. Their relationship,
whatever manner it was, was definitely codependent. Some people describe
Eric as being more dependent on Dylan, while in Dylan's
journals he wrote that he felt alone and not accepted,
leading some to believe that it was Dylan looking for
validation from Eric, and in later interviews after the shooting,
Brooks Brown would state that Dylan just followed Eric's lead
and he was very controlled by Eric. Dylan's mother, who
has gone on to write books about the signs she
missed as a mother of a school shooter, said she
believed Eric's rage was intimidating to Dylan's self destructive personality.
They were basically just like feeding off each other. Contrary
to popular beliefs, they were not total outcasts. Yes, they
were bullied, but they had other friends outside of each
other and were active in school play productions, operated video productions,
and maintained the school's computer server. Dylan, like I said,
even went to prom with a girl three days prior
to the shooting. However, they were bullied because this is
the nineteen nineties and clicks were a lot more aggressive
then than they are now. If you've seen any high
school movie or like rom com from the nineties or
early two thousands, that's exactly how people acted in high school.
In nineteen ninety six, Eric had created this private website
on AOL used to host video games. On the website,
he also started a blog where he would document the
mischievous things he was getting up to, like vandalism and
lighting fireworks with his friends. He referred to these acts
as rebel missions, although like they kind of seem like
normal kid thinks to me because I was doing very
similar things, although not writing it on a blog when
I was a sage. I would like spray paint and
tunnels and light fireworks where I wasn't supposed to, Like,
these are things that kids kind of do. But the
blog got a little more intense as the time went on.
In nineteen ninety seven, there were signs that Eric was
getting angrier at society, and by the end of that
year he posted instructions on how to make explosives on
the blog. He also had posted threats like how he
wanted to kill an injure as many of you I'm
assuming his classmates as possible, specifically Brooks Brown. The Brown
family reported this to the Jefferson County Sheriff's office, but
nothing ever came of it, and in fact, we'll talk
about the search warrant that they did create for this
situation and then never used. In January nineteen ninety eight,
the pair was arrested for breaking into a van and
stealing tools and computer equipment out of it. They pled
guilty to felony theft because of this break in, both
boys kept journals. In Eric's he wrote about a plan
to hijack an airplane and crash it into a building
in New York City, which is very weird because that
happened two years later. And for school, Eric had written
a paper about Nazi Germany, while Dylan wrote about Charles Manson.
The boys made five videotapes detailing their plans and reasons
for the massacre. These videos included how they hid their
weapons and deceived their parents, and the months leading up
to the shooting. The boys acquired a number of guns,
but they were only seventeen, so they asked their friends
for help buying them or bought them illegally off people
they know. In one instance, like Dylan's girlfriend, I'm assuming
girlfriend she went to prom with him, she actually went
to the Tanner Gun Show in Denver and bought three
of the weapons for them, whereas Dylan bought a Tech
nine pistol off of their boss from the pizza joint
that they both worked at. Eric had a nine millimeter
semi automatic rifle and a SOWD off shotgun, while Dylan
had a nine milimeter pistol and a double barreled sawd
off shotgun. Outside of the guns, they constructed a total
of ninety nine bombs. They had pipe bombs, crickets which
were like carbon dioxide cartridges filled with gunpowder, molotov cocktails,
and propane tanks converted to bombs. They made most of
the bombs in the weeks leading up to the shooting.
The weekend prior to the shooting, they purchased two propane tanks,
and then the morning of the shooting they bought at
least one more, but some sources say that they bought
the other six propane tanks that morning as well. On
the morning of April twentieth, Eric and Dylan completed their
final preparations. This included recording home videos and leaving behind
written materials. They had also left two backpacks full of
pipe bombs, aerosol canisters, and small propane tanks in this
grassy open space about three miles southwest of the school.
They did this on purpose because they wanted to divert
attention away from what they were about to do at
the school, hoping that this would cause a really big
fire in this grassy area. Only the pipe bombs and
one aerosol canister actually ignited, which did cause a small fire,
but it was quickly extinguished by the fire department. Plus,
it had been snowy in the week leading up to
the twentieth, so the ground was wet, so it wasn't
like it had a lot to burn. Eric stopped at
a Texico gas station around nine twelve am and bought
a propane tank. The pair drove separately and both arrived
at school between like eleven and eleven ten am. The
timeline shifts depending on which source, but also who you're
talking to. The timeline is a huge point of contention
in this entire massacre. They were seen moving around campus
very calmly. In fact, Eric had run into Brooks Brown,
whom he had previously threatened, although apparently they had patched
to their relationship by then, because Brooke asked Eric where
he had been, noting that Eric had missed a test
that had happened earlier that day, which was unlike him.
After exchanging a few words back and forth about this test,
Eric told Brooks Brooks, I like you now get out
of here, go home. Brooks, seeming to noticed that something
was off, decided to listen to Eric and just took
off walking down the road, went home, and then watched
the entire masacre unfold on TV. Sometime between eleven ten
and eleven fourteen, Eric entered the school through the west entrance.
Not long after Eric entered the school, Dylan had a
ride to the school and entered through the library. Both
boys had bombs in their cars, which they parked on
opposite sides of the school. They dropped two Duffel bags
in the school cafeteria also called the commons, and the
two boys met up outside the school. In the duffels
were propane bombs. They had planned for this attack to
be mainly a bombing, with the firearms as like a
second dairy to the bombing, which is also why they
were only armed with a nine millimeter and a shotgun each,
because they didn't plan on shooting a bunch of people.
They planned on bombing the school and then shooting whoever
came out, which is why they dropped the bombs in
the cafeteria and then went back outside the closest entrance
to the cafeteria to shoot the people that came out.
It is of note that no witnesses remember seeing the
Duffel bags among the other student backpacks in the cafeteria. However,
most people don't really pay attention, and the witnesses had
just experienced this huge trauma, so they might not have
even noticed that those Duffel bags were there. But what
is interesting is that the custodian was replacing the videotape
for the camera system at the exact time the boys
were allegedly putting the Duffel bags in the cafeteria, so
it wasn't recorded on tape. The school Resource officer or
SRO usually ate lunch in the cafeteria, but that day
he just happened to eat lunch in his car. After
placing the bombs in the cafeteria, the pair went back
outside and waited for the bombs to detonate, but they didn't.
Had they gone off as planned, they would have killed
or seriously wounded over four hundred students and compromised the
structure of the building, meaning that the library, which was
above the cafeteria would have collapsed down into the cafeteria.
Their plan, had the bombs gone off, would have been
to just like shoot and stab survivors while detonating other
bombs they brought with them outside. They had moved to
the top of the staircase on the hill at the
southwest side of the school. The attack began at eleven
nineteen am with Dylan throwing a pipe bomb, which only
partially detonated at a couple having lunch outside. This couple,
although I don't know if they were together, they were
just like physically sitting next to each other, was Rachel
Scott and her friend Richard. At first, they thought that
this was kind of like a like a senior prank
because they were only seventeen days away from graduation. So
people kind of like saw this happening and they're like, oh,
these guys are just being silly. But then Rachel was shot.
She was actually shot four times, one of which was
in the left temple, which killed her instantly. Her friend Richard,
who was sitting with her, was shot eight times and
left paralyzed from the chest down. And then there were
three kids that are kind of like walking up the
staircase towards Eric and Dylan, one of which Lance Kirkland,
was shot four times and was calling out for help
while lying on the ground. The other students thought that
they were just paintball guns and even continued to walk
toward Eric and Dylan. Dylan heard Lance calling for help,
went over to him and said, sure, man, I'll help you,
and then shot him in the face. Somehow, by a miracle,
Lance survived that attack. One of the other boys, Daniel Rohbaugh,
was not so lucky. He was shot and killed. They
shot at a group of five other students that were
also having lunch outside, two of which were shot, but
luckily were not killed. Hearing the gun shots outside, a
teacher had the cafeteria evacuated. Dylan then made his way
into the cafeteria, likely to check on the bombs, but
didn't shoot any of the remaining students in there. Eric
had stayed outside shooting at the students that were in
the soccer field. They didn't hit anyone in that direction.
That's about the time they started walking towards the west
entrance to go inside the school, throwing pipe bombs along
their way. However, if we learned anything so far, they
weren't the best at making bombs think goodness, so only
a few of the pipe bombs actually detonated. One did
set the school on fire. They were causing quite a
bit of Ruckus, but most people still had no idea
what was actually happening. Again, they thought, like, it's the
end of the school year, right like Prom was three
days ago. These kids are probably doing a senior prank.
These kids, actually some of them. There's a teacher, Patty Nielsen.
She thought that they were like out making some school video,
like a video for class or something. And she went
down to tell them to like be quiet because they're
disrupting other people's classes. And then because she was on
her way like out the door, they were on their
way in the door, they saw her and the student
that she was with, Brian Anderson, and they shot at
them through the doors. So her and the student took
off towards the library. When you walk through the door
on left sides of the cafeteria on the right side
of the hall, and then you go up the stairs
and it's a big staircase and you're at the library.
So she got in the library. She told all the
students to get on their desks and to keep quiet,
and then she called nine one one. There were fifty
two students in the library, along with two teachers and
two librarians at eleven twenty three am. The police arrived
and even exchanged gunfire with the boys before the boys
finally retreated into the building. So this was all happening
so fast. So they're walking towards the entrance. Patty Nielsen's
coming out to tell them to be quiet. They shoot
at her. Then the police show up. While they're doing that.
They turn around, exchanged gunfire with the police, and then
get into the building. Luckily, during that exchange with the police,
no one was hit. This is when they actually entered
the school together through the west entrance. They were walking
down the main hallway throwing more pipe bombs and shooting
at anyone they encountered. This was when they shot Stephanie
Munson in the ankle, but she was able to escape,
and in fact, she was a family friend of mine
years ago. I reached out to her for this podcast.
She did not reply. However, when she was shot in
the ankle, she was actually shot right between the ankle
bone and the achilles. It went straight through that fleshy part,
so she was able to still walk and she escaped.
I remember her telling me the story when I was
just a kid, and I was blown away by this.
They then shot out the doors to the east entrance
of the school before shooting at and missing other students
on their way to the library. On their way to
the library, they did encounter teacher Dave Sanders and another student.
Dave was motioning for the students that were in the
library to stay there when he and the student saw
Eric and Dylan, and then they turned around to run.
So Dave was one of the teachers in the cafeteria
evacuating it, and then he was trying to get the
students away before he encountered Eric and Dylan. When he
turned to run, Dave was shot twice in the back
and neck before Dylan tossed a pipe at him, and
actually the pipe bomb landed at him, but Dave escaped
and made it into a science classroom, and the student
he was with also made it into the science classroom unharmed.
I think. Then a student that was in the classroom
who was well versed and first aid administered first aid
to Dave Sanders for the next three hours until he
would ultimately bleed to death. At about eleven twenty nine am,
the pair entered the library, where they killed the most people.
They walked in, and almost instantly Dylan shot and killed
disabled student Kyle Velaska's they shot him through the top
of his head. They then announced that anyone with a
white hat or sports emblem on it was dead. Several
students then tried to hide their white hats because they
didn't want to be targets. Dylan then shot his shotgun
injuring three more students, one of which was Patrick Ireland,
while Eric fired a shotgun under a desk, killing Stephen Kernow.
When Eric shot Stephen, he wasn't even aiming. He literally
just nailed down and just shot under a desk. Patrick
Ireland would eventually be the boy in the window. That
is like the famous picture of this boy who had
made his way to the window and tried to fall
on to the swat vehicle from the window just to escape.
He didn't know at the time because he had passed
out he had become unconscious during the deaths of Eric
and Dylan that they were already dead anyway. While they
were still in the library, they were kind of taunting everyone.
Every time they would shoot, they yelled and cheered about it,
and in one instance hit the top of a table,
then knelt down and said peek aboo before shooting and
killing Cassie Barnall after being shot. Patrick Ireland was trying
to help his friend who had also been shot. He
was like trying to be a good Samaritan and in
the process his head came a bit above the table.
Then Dylan shot him again. Patrick was knocked unconscious from
that blast, but again he did live. Dylan then found
a group of three hiding under another table and announced
that he found an inward meaning like a black man.
They made racial comments toward Isaiah Shoals before Eric shot
and killed him, while at the same time, Dylan shot
and killed Matthew Ketcher. Next to Isaiah and Matthew was
Craig Scott. Craig didn't know it at the time, but
his sister, Rachel Scott, was the first to be killed
in this massacre. The pair continued walking around the library
and they shot a couple more tables, injuring more kids
and then killing Lauren Townsend. Moving to another table, Eric
shot and killed John Tomlin while injuring another student. Eric,
returning to the table Lauren was sitting under, shot and
killed Kelly Fleming, who had been hiding with Lauren. All
the while, several of the students were playing dead covering
themselves in either their own blood or other people's blood,
trying not to be murdered themselves. Dylan came across an
acquaintance of his John on Savage. Savage asked Dylan, hey man,
what are you doing twich Dylan said, oh, just killing people.
John asked him if he was going to kill him,
and Dylan said no, you should run. John then of
course took off running, escaping through the cafeteria. After that,
Dylan shot at Daniel Mauser, but Daniel fought back before
being fatally shot in the face. Daniel is the only
one that we have evidence that actually fought back, and
he was only fourteen years old. They fired a couple
more shots, injuring a few more students. At eleven thirty
five am, Dylan shot Corey to Pooter, fatally wounding him,
and he was the last of the thirteen victims to
die that day. The gunman then taunted a few more times,
threw a chair onto the library desk, and walked out
of the library, making their way back to the cafeteria.
They shot a couple rounds and started a fire on
their way, but didn't injure anybody and just kind of
were shooting randomly. At that point in the cafeteria, they
tried to detonate the propane bombs again by throwing a
Maltov cocktail at them. The gallon of fuel attached to
the bomb ignited, causing a fire, but it was extinguished
by the fire sprinklers not long after that, because earlier
in their massacre they had started the school on fire,
so the sprinklers had gone off and the fire alarm
was going off. They left the cafeteria at about eleven
forty six am. For the next ten minutes or so,
they seemed to wander the school randomly, shooting at walls
in the ceiling. They returned to the cafeteria again and
injured the kitchen before leaving once more and returning to
the library. At about twelve oh two pm, the police
were shot at through the library windows. They returned gunfire.
No one was injured in that exchange. Now the police
had been there since eleven twenty three, so for forty
minutes the police had been outside, not one person had
injured the school, which they get a lot of shit
for because into the school they were worried that they
were out gunned by the people in the school. Which
we'll get into it just a little while. By twelve
oh eight pm, both gunmen had killed themselves. It was
reported that Patty Nilsen, the teacher that had been hiding
in the library and that had called nine to one earlier,
said she heard them count to three before both pulling
the trigger at the same time. Yet she says she
never actually spoke to anyone regarding that statement. The massacre
was over in less than an hour, leaving fifteen dead
to include the shooters, and twenty three injured. No telling
how many students and teachers were left traumatized by the events,
especially because there were over nineteen hundred students enrolled at
the school that year, and that does not include the teachers.
And yes, not every single student was at school that day,
but even those students that weren't there, I have it
on good authority that many of them had survivor's guilt
because they weren't there. So even if they weren't there,
that's still their friends and their family they watched potentially die.
Families were told to gather at a nearby elementary school
and wait for information, wait for their student to be
brought to them, wait to hear if their child or
children were still alive. Now, this was a time before
cell phones. Well that's not necessarily true. There were cell phones,
but texting wasn't really a thing, and not everybody had
cell phones, so it wasn't like students were calling their
parents to let them know if they were in Clement Park,
which was adjacent to the school, or if they had
been brought to the elementary school, or if they were
even okay, and that waiting. I know firsthand. I got
the notification that the school my sisters were in had
an active shooter, and I couldn't get through to them
and didn't want to call my mom because her phone
needed to be free to get their phone calls. My
sisters texted each other when they heard gunshots at their
school and texted my mom that they thought that there
was a shooter in their school and that they were hiding.
And they texted my mom that they loved her each individually,
and then and they stopped texting her altogether. My sisters
were taken to two separate places because their school shooting.
They took some kids to the elementary school, some kids
to the church around the corner. They were all separated,
and my parents just had to wait in line at
each location and wait to see if my sisters were
even there, if they were even alive, and if they
were there, they then had to wait for the children
to be signed out to them. I can't imagine. I
cannot imagine being a parent of the kids at Columbine.
And in fact, one of my really good friends went
to Columbine. His brother was there the day of the shooting.
He remembers his parents feeling guilty for being relieved that
their child got off the bus when other parents were
still waiting, and in fact, his brother was the last
bus to arrive that day, but the other parents that
were there waiting they were told there's another bus coming,
and another bus never showed up. The families didn't get
officially notified that their child was dead until the following day,
and the families of the kids that Columbine learned of
the active shooter on TV. They didn't even get a
phone call about the events, because things like this just
didn't happen. The SWAT team finally arrived and stationed outside
the school at about noon, and a call for additional
police went out about twelve twenty pm. The SWAT teams
entered the school at one oh nine pm, two hours
after the shooting started. Unfortunately, the masses they had were
old and outdated, because there had been a new wing
added onto the school that the SWAT team was completely
unaware of. At about two forty pm, SWAT evacuated the
science room where Dave Sanders was being cared for by students.
The students who were keeping Dave alive were told to leave.
They said, leave him there, you guys go, Paramedics will
be right behind. Well. Then after the kids left, SWAT
moved Dave Sanders' body and the paramedics didn't arrive there
until twenty minutes later. The these students that had been
keeping Dave Sanders alive for three hours and were reluctant
to leave. They did not want to leave, but they
were told by SWAT, don't worry, he's gonna be taken
care of. Nobody performed any first aid or any life
saving measures in those twenty minutes, and Dave Sanders died.
He was found by paramedics at three pm with no pulse.
At three twenty two pm, the rooms adjacent to the
library were evacuated and they found the bodies in the
library at three point thirty. By four pm, the initial
estimate was announced of twenty five dead and fifty wounded.
Officials were worried that the bodies of the shooters had
been booby trapped, or that they had booby trapped other corpses,
but they found that that was not the case luckily,
and by four thirty PM the school was officially declared safe,
but the investigation was just beginning. They found explosives in
the parking lot and on the roof. They also found
Dylan's car in the parking lot was rigged up with
a bomb attached to the gas tank. The families of
the dead, like I said, were notified the next day,
but they left all the bodies in the school so
investigators could come in and photograph the entire building. They
just left them there. Like I said, I can't imagine
not knowing my child's whereabouts in an entire day after
there had been a shooting at their school. How cruel
is that? But of course at that point they probably
just assumed that their child is one of the victims
of the shooting. Memorials were held in the days and
weeks following the shooting. Every time someone erected fifteen of
something to commemorate those that died during the shooting. Daniel
Roeba's father would come and cut down the two mint
for the shooters. This happened on two separate occasions, once
with crosses and once with trees meant to commemorate those
that died that day, thirteen of which were left standing.
But as with anything of this magnitude, the conspiracy started
circulating immediately. Let's start with the shoes. The number of
shooters was different, according to witness accounts. The investigators all
agreed on the third shooter's identity, and there was even
a guy led away from the scene in handcuffs, while
a student noted he was one of the guys that
shot at them. Maybe you could chalk it up to
misremembering if it was just one person, stating this third
gunman was shooting at them, But it wasn't just one person.
The mother of a student gave a description of the
shooter their child had seen, stating, quote, she looked up
and saw a gunman in a black trench coat with
a very huge gun. He had dark brown hair, thick,
bushy eyebrows, and was very ugly end quote, which didn't
really describe Eric or Dylan. Plus, their pictures were all
over the news at this point, so if it were
them that this girl had seen, she probably would have
pointed them out. In that same interview, the mother was
asked if the gunman was a student, and she replied
that her daughter did not recognize him as a student.
In her report, I found at least ten students saw
two guys carrying shotguns and wearing black trench coats and
a third guy wearing a white T shirt and jeans,
throwing bombs onto the roof. In the most well known
security picture from the shooting, one of the boys is
wearing a white T shirt while the other is wearing
a black T shirt. Neither of them are wearing trench coats.
This is also confirmed by a leaked photo of the
pair dead on the floor in the library. Neither of them,
like I said, we're wearing trench coats. One is in
a black T shirt, one's in a white T shirt.
Dozens of witnesses actually claimed they saw five to eight
shooters that day, many of them stating that Eric and
Dylan were among the shooters, but which were not alone.
One student even claimed that Eric and Dylan along with
four other guys showed her a map of where they
would bomb the school in the days leading up to it. Now,
we do have to take into account that trauma like
this can cause memories to be unreliable. But when we're
taught talking about the difference between two gunmen and eight gunmen,
that's a huge significant discrepancy. You're not gonna misremember two
to eight. You might misremember seven to eight or even
six to eight, but two is a pretty distinct number.
But it makes sense that there would have been more
shooters because when the police called for backup, they stated
that they were outgunned. The reason they didn't go into
the school is because they thought that they were gonna
lose in a gunfight. They said they were so outgunned
that they needed backup. They waited for swat. They didn't
go into that school because they were outnumbered. You're not
out numbered with two guys with two guns. That's four
guns total, Like, that's not outnumbering the police. But eight
gunmen with two guns each. That could be a different story.
And there are reports after Eric and Dylan died, the
two shooters were dead and at least two more were
still active in the school, and then some students actually
reported hearing gunshots and explosions in other parts of the
school while the attack in the library was happening. It's
been suggested that the other shooters, however many there were,
were part of the trench Coat Mafia as well. In fact,
Nathan Dyckman, who was a trench Coat Mafia associate which
meant that he didn't actually wear a trench coat but
was friends with the group, said there were two more
shooters in the school with Dylan and Eric and that
quote they decided to bail end quote seeing that Eric
and Dylan went through with it while the others did not.
He was suggesting that the other two were also there shooters,
but left before it was time to kill themselves. The
other two suspected shooters were actually named by another student
to be Chris Morris and Robert Perry. Chris worked at
Blackjack Pizza with Eric and Dylan and was confirmed to
be part of the trench Coat Mafia. He was also
present during the making of many of the bombs, and
he and Nathan were on Eric and Dylan's bowling team
in their bowling class. Yes, they had a bowling class.
Chris and another Guy Tad Bowles were the first two
to start wearing trench coats around the school their freshman year,
and then the name trench Coat Mafia was actually meant
to tease them, but just stuck and they really went
with it. Chris was allegedly not at the school at
the time of the shooting, stating that he was playing
video games with another trench Coat Mafia member, Corey Freesan.
Corey had not been a student at Columbine for at
least two years. I'm not sure if he dropped out
or if he graduated, but he had not been to
the school for at least two years. Robert Perry was
also a member of the mafia. He had dropped out
of school a few months prior to the shooting and
allegedly stopped talking to Eric at that time, and according
to him, he hardly knew Dylan at all, like he
only knew him as Eric's friend and only knew his
first name. However, Robert was named specifically by a dozen
students as the person they saw shooting. Chris was named
by at least three people. Robert said he was at
home sleeping when the shooting happened because he had an
overnight shift at a local grocery store the night before,
and then when a lot of the witnesses were saying,
I swear I saw Robert Perry most of the time,
the police were like, are you sure you didn't actually
see Dylan Claibold because the two look similar. But one
of the girls, specifically, she was like, no, I know
the difference between Robert and Dylan, and I did not
see Dylan. I saw Robert. But every single time they
were discredited, thrown out, not believed. There were other shooters
described by students that didn't fit the description of Eric, Dylan,
Robert or Chris. What we know for sure is Dylan
and Eric stuck together during the massacre. If there were others,
they may have paired off as well. What's crazy is
that Chris Morris gave interviews after the shooting, acting calm
and blaming the whole thing on Eric and Dylan. There
is another possibility. Some witnesses claim they saw a middle
aged man with this chiseled face during the shooting, and
this guy seems to be calming Dylan down as if
like a parent figure or maybe like a handler. Just
seemed odd, But again, any reports of any other shooter
were completely dismissed by the police. But this all can
be cleared up with forensics. Right, not quite. It is
possible to match a bullet to a specific gun, even
if it's the same caliber. This was common practice in
nineteen ninety nine. I checked, because I didn't know when
it started becoming common practice. They could have said that
this nine millimeters shot came from Dylan's gun, while this
other one came from Air's gun. That is something that
they absolutely could have told. But if the bullet was
too damaged, didn't retain clear rifling marks, or the barrels
were either new, heavily worn, or deliberately altered, then it
was not necessarily possible to determine that Columbine generated an
extraordinary volume of ballistic evidence for its time. They recovered
spent shell casings, bullet fragments from walls, furniture, and victims,
and live rounds. What they found was interesting, for sure.
Three different calibers were used nine millimeter, forty caliber and
twelve gage shotgun rounds. If you remember, Eric and Dylan
were each with two guns. Each of them had a
sowd Off twelve gage shotgun and a nine millimeter one
had a pistol, one had a rifle, but they were
both nine millimeter, so who was shooting the forty caliber.
They did conclusively match some bullets and casings to the
known guns, which is to be expected. The guns were
found right there next to the gunmen, but many were
deemed inconclusive due to fragmentation, damage from impacts, and because
of the fire and explosions in the building. But this
only half helps when it comes to the autopsies. In
several cases, medical examiners could determine the caliber which killed
the victim, but not necessarily which firearm, so they don't
say absolutely which gun was responsible for each death. But
the autopsies in general are a bit interesting. They were
sealed a little over a month after the shooting, probably
because of the high profile nature of the case, the
sensitivity of it, and the fact that most of the
victims were minors, which are all reasons that they might
seal autopsies. However, they have been unsealed. The victim's autopsies,
outside of what I've already mentioned, is as you would expect,
they got shot and they died from their gunshot wounds,
depending on who was shotwear What's interesting is Dylan Kleebold's autopsy.
He was shot in the left temple with the large
caliper bullet. I have heard in other instances that it's
odd that someone who is right handed would shoot themselves
in the left temple, and that is correct, it is weird,
But Dylan was left handed, so to shoot himself in
the left temple actually makes perfect sense. What doesn't make
sense is that he was shot with a large caliber.
A nine millimeter is not considered large caliber, and there
was no powder stippling. Powder stippling is usually present in
self inflicted gun wounds and would be present if the
gun was six inches or closer to the head, and
at about six inches away, your arm starts to turn
a bit, especially while like pulling a trigger. So the
exit wound, which came out almost directly across from where
he would have been shot, wouldn't make sense for being
six inches away. If he shot himself. This makes me
think that he didn't pull the trigger. But it gets
weirder so later in the wound summary, it says that
powder is a associated with the wound and that it's
consistent with a nine milimeter ammunition, and this isn't the
only discrepancy. The cover page of this autopsy says Eric Harris,
but at the top of each page it says Dylan
Cleebold and it's consistent with the story that we know
of Dylan's death. Plus, there is this hand written page
that briefly explains three of the autopsies done, one of
which was Dylan. This page says, quote one near contact
small caliber POW nine milimeter meaning powder nine milimeter bullet
left temple exit, right temple end quote. It makes me
wonder if they were told what they needed the autopsy
to say after they had already begun, because the first
three pages says that it's a large caliber with no powder,
and then the last three pages it changes to say
that it was a nine milimeter and that powder was found.
This autopsy is about eight pages long and it goes
through each of the different body parts of Dylan. He
had no drugs or alcohol in his system, but Eric
did have an antidepressant in his system. He had three
hundred and ninety nanograms per milli leader of fluvoxamine in
his system. That could have been his dose because they
do note in his autopsy that therapeutic levels range from
fifty to nine hundred nanograms per mili leader, so he
was right in that range, and fluvoxamine is also used
for like an obsessive compulsive disorder as well as an antidepressant.
But this disputes the theories that he had gone off
his antidepressant that had been spouted by the media for years.
Some people believe that Eric shot Dylan before shooting himself. However,
I have seen the photo of the boys dead on
the floor in the library and even I don't think
that's true, and I'm not an expert. So Eric was
said to lean against the bookshelf and then shoot himself
with his shotgun in his mouth, which is consistent with
where he is in the picture. Where he was it
seemed like he was leaning against the bookshelf and had
fallen over just to the side. Dylan was said to
be kneeling down when he shot himself in the head.
Now I'm not sure if he was kneeling because obviously
he fell over, but it looks like blood and brain
matter are on the lower half of Eric's pants. Dylan
when he landed his head was actually right next to
Eric's shn and if Eric had shot Dylan, the blood
and like brain matter would not have been on his pants.
So to me, it does not look like Eric's shot
Dylan before shooting himself. But again I'm no expert. Look
up the picture yourself. I'm not putting it in the
video because I don't want this video get taken down.
There may have been signs that this attack was going
to happen. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Department had a drafted
AFFI David for a search warrant of Eric's house more
than a year before for the shooting because of some
things that he had put on his web page, specifically
about Brooks Brown, and yet they never executed it. We
talked about this a while ago. So just ten days
after the shooting, several high ranking officials all got together
to discuss the search warrant that was never executed, and
they decided just not to disclose it. They didn't need
to be disclosed. We're just gonna hide that away. Eventually,
the drafted Affi David and the entire investigation file was
just lost. No one knows where it's at, which is
not true. They destroyed it on purpose. Of course, everything
has a way of coming out in the end, and
then We've got a few other things that are kind
of small but significant enough that I wanted to bring
them up. You have the bomb placement in the cafeteria.
Many people dispute the narrative of the placement of the
bombs in the cafeteria that morning. It was the first
thing Eric and Dylan did, and it possibly disrupts the
entire time line of events. It was assumed that they
placed the bombs during the videotape change of the security system,
because they didn't have the exact placement on videotape, so
they assume that that's when it happened. However, authorities also
speculate about the bombs being placed in the cafeteria the
Saturday night prior during the after prom party that was
held in the high school. I know in other places
you guys hold after prom parties, like in houses, but
in Colorado, it's pretty common that they have an after
prom at the school that goes from like midnight or
like eleven PM until five am the next morning. This
is to like minimize drunk driving incidences. So they were
having an after prom party. It could have been dropped
during that party, But then wouldn't somebody have seen it.
They have to clean up after after prom. But there's
also some people, some like internet sleuths, that claim that
they watched the video footage, that they watched it so
in depth and you can actually see before the tape change,
the bombs were being placed around ten fifty eight am.
This is important because it disrupts the entire timeline of
events by fifteen minutes, which gives possible other shooters a
window to get out of there. The victims' families have
been disputing the timeline for years, but are also told
they're just wrong, that they don't know because they're just
trying to make sense of their family member's death. But
dozens of witnesses said they saw another guy, a third guy,
Robert Perry, placed those stuffel bags, not Eric and Dylan.
Not only that, but the school resource officer usually ate
lunch in the cafeteria with the students, but that day
he just happened to decide to eat lunch in his
car in the parking lot, Like did he know what
was gonna happen or was it just like a happy
little accident. I don't know. Some people point to the
weird education that students had received as to giving the
boys the push in this direction, not the idea, but
the final nudge that they needed to execute this plan.
Death education was implemented in Columbine High School in nineteen
eighty four. This education, similar to how sex education explains
a bit about sex, involves discussions on mortality. The students
would visit mortuaries and cadaver labs on field trips, and
the idea of this education was to teach kids about
the consequences of risky behavior. However, the way they went
about some of the teaching is leading us down the
rabbit hole back to Project Monarch. In the classroom, the
students are told to close their eyes and are guided
into a trance state while they focus on a dead
loved one or a place where they have experienced a
significant loss. This would basically re traumatize the students, many
of which reacted very poorly to this state, bringing the
trauma to the surface and caused several students to cry.
Psychologists warned teachers against this because it could cause unnecessary
trauma when done by a non professional like a teacher
not trained in psychology, and in fact, most teachers teaching
death ed only attended a one day training on it.
A psychologist speaking on this training said the training was
not powerful enough to keep troubled kids out of trouble,
but it was powerful enough to draw the untroubled kids
into trouble, which is dangerous. And there are kids that
attended this death ed class that claim that they were
seduced into suicide attempts. So twenty twenty did an expose
on this type of education, and one of those students
that said that they wanted to commit suicide after this
class was actually from none other than Columbine High School.
The teacher teaching this class at Columbine was weaving their
own belo leave of reincarnation into the teaching. We know
from the Project Monarch episode that it's believed people turn
into butterflies when they're looking for the reincarnation. We also
know from that project that kids of military officials are
usually chosen to be programmed. Eric's father was in the
military and Dylan was in the Gifted and Talented and
Boy Scouts as a kid. Both are primed for programming. Anyway,
the teacher was telling these kids that when they died,
they would get to learn all the knowledge that God knows,
and then they get to be reincarnated with some of
that knowledge. They were packaging death as this exciting thing. Tara,
the girl from Columbine, was planning her suicide because of
how appealing they made it seem. She literally went out
she found a suitable cliff because she was going to
drive her car off this cliff, but she decided to
go back home one last time before actually committing the acts.
She wanted to see her family. She wanted to say
goodbye without them really knowing that it was goodbye. But
she said that her dad actually met her at the
door and could tell that something was off. She was
saying things like it's not really me, it's not really me,
and her parents knew something was really wrong, so instead
of letting her out of their sight, they just took
her straight to the hospital for help. But if that's
what effect this class can have on this like good student,
because she said that she was already very academically inclined
and she enjoyed learning a lot. That's why she wanted
to die so she could learn all the knowledge of God.
Then what effect did it have on the kids that
potentially were already programmed or at least went through the
beginning stages of programming, because we know that not every
kid that goes through the Gifted and Talented program gets
fully programmed. Actually most kids fail out right. And of course,
the school denied all allegation that they were involved in
any of Terra's problems. She said she had thought about
suicide but would never have gone through with it, but
the things that they learned in that class taught them
to be brave enough to face death. To top it
all off, the schools were teaching death education without letting
the parents know what their student was learning about, which
seems to be the problem with public education. They think
that they can do whatever they want, they don't have
to be accountable with the parents. It's also unclear as
if this class was optional or if it was mandatory
for all kids. But this isn't the only thing that
points to some kind of programming. Looking at this massacre
as a whole, it seems like they wanted people to
be able to recreate it, which I know sounds crazy.
They were trying to push an agenda with this massacre.
This wasn't the first school shooting, nor was it the
deadliest school shooting up until this point, Yet the narrative
follows this shooting with very few questioning it. The FBI
had come onto the scene right away. This is to
be expected, especially when something of this magnitude happens right
although the FBI is only supposed to help the local
government if asked, and the local government was so thankful
to have them there because they didn't really know what
to do. They didn't really know what they were dealing with,
and they were hoping that the FBI did. And boy
did they almost as if they knew exactly what was happening.
In nineteen ninety seven, two years before the massacre, there
was a video made that depicted trench coat wearing, gun
toting students making their way through the halls of Columbine
High School. This video ends with a special effects explosion
of the school, but of course it was just a video.
It was just for fun. Interestingly, this video was co
produced by the son of the FBI's lead agent on
the case. Yep, you heard that right. Plus that means
there was a conflict of interest for the FBI's lead
agent because his son went to Columbine. But it goes deeper.
His younger son was actually in the cafeteria the morning
of the massacre was an eyewitness to the entire event,
like to make sure it went smoothly, or to spread
the narrative that the FBI was trying to push. I
don't know. Luckily, for the boy, he escaped after seeing
one of the bombs explode. Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Feusler
later explained that his son's film was meant to be
a comedy and does not impede his ability to work
the case, especially because everyone's child makes films that depict
the exact way a school shooting will inevitably happen in
the future. Oh, by the way, Brooks Brown was the
other producer on the film, because remember that the son
was the co producer, Brooks Brown was the co producer
with him. If you remember Brooks's friends with Dylan since
elementary school, Eric threatened his life, which is actually what
led to the search warrant that was never executed. Then,
in the morning of the shooting, Eric saw Brooks in
the parking lot and told him to go home, and
Brooks later granted everyone that would ask interviews about the
incident enthusiastically, might I add, and then he stated that
Dylan got taken by Eric and that he was a follower,
and that the pair was never liked by anyone. But
by connecting Feusler's son to Brooks Brown, we can assume
he was at least associated to the Trench comafia. Yet
they still decided that there was no conflict of interest
for Dwayne Fussler, the FBI agent, which I think is
crazy because at the very least his children going to
that school is a conflict of interest, and at the
most his son knew what was happening, or maybe the
FBI did and they planned it all along. In fact,
Attorney General Janet Reno, who was heavily criticized for both
Waco and the Oklahoma City bombing, stated, quote, it was
a text bookcase of how an investigation should be run
end quote. But of course she would say that, isn't
it odd that all three of these horrific events happened
under the presidency of Bill Clinton. I thought that interesting.
I thought i'd include that because this also happened right
after he was acquitted for the impeachment charges he was facing,
almost as if the massacre were twofold one. They take
more control of our children and their schools slowly by
making parents beg for more government oversight, and two people
are not talking about his impeachment anymore. Now that's what
Clinton calls a win win. What was the goal of
this whole thing, right, Because I keep saying that there's
a goal, I keep saying they wanted this, but why.
Of course people will talk about gun control as the reason,
and it absolutely could be one of the reasons. However,
no major gun control laws were passed directly in response
to the Columbine massacre, so I'm not so sure that
that was actually the goal of this. The other more
plausible reason is that they wanted to continue to instill
fear in the American people. This started well before Columbine.
I just mentioned at least two other major massacres that
happened in the nineteen nineties alone, and they weren't the
only two. I mean, in nineteen ninety three, there was
a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centers, the first
one before the two thousand and one collapse of the
trade centers. These types of events, although they seem to
bring a community together, temporarily, ultimately rip communities apart, and
that was the goal. Shooting after shooting, massacre after massacre,
These will rip the fabrics of our country to shreds,
and we can see how blatantly it has worked because
after every tragedy, people are fighting now instead of coming
together like they used to. I mean, we could see
that with the situation that just happened in Minnesota with
the girl being shot by ice. People instantly started fighting.
Nobody even came together to be sad about it. The
fighting started instantly, and of course social media just fuels
that fire. This massacre was a blueprint to continue the
ripping of that fabric. That's why they made it so repeatable.
You have two alienated young males who were outcasts and
bullied that committed this heinous act, but it easily could
just be one alienated young male. This happened at a school,
which is repeatable because eighty four percent of US children
go to public school, although since then shootings have also
occurred at private schools as well, so that increases your percentage.
But it also has a huge shock factor because it's
a school and it's kids that are targeted. It's innocent,
and it feels like you're taking away their innocence, and
it makes people pay attention. People are quicker to call
for change and vote change in in the wake of
an event like this, It also gives kids the media
sensation notoriety. They may be looking for some way to
make a statement. Since this massacre, it seems like every
shooting refers to Columbine, like they want to inspire copycats,
like they're trying to push the copycat narrative. But why
did Columbine get the notoriety when there has been so
many school or mass shootings prior to this. Because of
the timing, it was the beginning of the Internet era
and cable news had expanded to twenty four to seven coverage.
It created a fear around Internet and what kids could
be learning on it, and also gave access to everyone
wanting to learn more about the shooting, which created more fear.
It was the first mass casualty event fully processed by
modern media psychology. This massacre changed so much. The response
was studied, the narrative was highly controlled, and the emotional
impact was fully leveraged. It conditioned the public to not
only except, but allow armed police and schools, have zero
tolerance policies, established lockdowns and drills, and have a permanent
anxiety of school. All of those things cause a permanent
anxiety of school Because of Columbine, we now have active
shooter response protocols, which unfortunately is necessary. Before officers had
to wait for SWAT teams, but now they receive active
shooter training themselves, which in turn means quick the responses
during shootings, which reduces casualties. Now schools also practice lockdown
and emergency drills. There are action plans in place, although
some schools take it way too far and do active
shooter simulations where they actually have actors come in and
play shooters, using fake guns and using like fake blood
but like a real noise, which has been proven to
cause just as much trauma as a real active shooter situation,
so it's highly discouraged. There's also building security and access control,
which is stricter now. Most schools have one or two
entrances that are monitored at all times and all the
others are locked. They also have visitors signed and ID checks,
and most schools have cameras, electronic locks, and surveillance systems,
and in some cases this includes metal detectors. Not all
schools have metal detectors. Most schools have school resource officers
in their school that are dedicated to their school. This
is loved by some and hated by others. The people
that love it feel like it will deter violence, and
in my experience, once the shooter saw the rso he
actually quit his rampage and went into the library and
in his life, which saved Lord knows how many students
that day. But other people don't like the idea of
an armed guard at school at all times. They think
it will encourage violence and contribute to the school to
prison pipeline because of disproportionate enforcement against minority students. There
are similar concerns about teachers carrying guns. Some people love
it because they think that teachers should be allowed and
encouraged to protect themselves and their students, while other people
think it's insane to expect teachers to carry guns because
if they don't know how to use them, they are
more of a danger, which I do agree with. But
there are amazing organizations like Bullets both Ways who offer
scholarships for school and worship center staff who are willing
to be the first layer of defense. So if a
teacher doesn't know how to handle a fire arm but
wants to protect themselves and their students, they don't actually
have to pay for the training out of pocket. This episode,
of course, is not sponsored by them, and I think
that they're only supporting Colorado at this time. But I'm
sure there are other organizations other places that do something similar,
and I know in Colorado because this is where I
learned about this organization. There are twenty three school districts
that allow teachers to carry, so this could be good again.
Some people love it, some people hate it. But all
these things add to the fear that we have surrounding
sending our kids to school. But they also desensitize us
more and more each time something like this happens. And
under these conditions, with the people so far divided, it
becomes harder for us to fight back because we are
so busy fighting each other over the division that they
created that we don't even see the real enemy, which
is the people creating the division in the first place.
Would school shootings be so prevalent if it wasn't broadcasts
all over the media. Maybe that's why they broadcast it.
They want more school shootings, They want more cobbycats so
they can continue to crack down on public places and
assert more control, assert more fear. If people are already
used to the military like presence at their school, they
will eventually accept it at their job. This leads to
more reliance on the government for protection, and eventually we
won't know how to protect ourselves at all, which means
we won't know how to fight back if we need to.
It seems like a stretch talking about it right now,
but it could lead to a slippery slope, and it
could lead there really fast. Now, don't get me wrong,
I was very happy about those interventions when my sister's
lives were at risk. But if Columbine wasn't publicized, if
Sandy Hook wasn't publicized, which was the anniversary the shooter
at my school was trying to use, would this be
a problem we have. I understand that people want to
know if event like this happens, and blood and death cells,
but at what cost are we selling our children to
the next school shooter. It's easy to say that Eric
Harris and Dylan Cleebold committed this act by themselves. That
narrative is pointed to and creates this clean picture with
a nice little bow on top. However, there is too
much evidence to the contrary. So what do you believe?
Even if it's not a conspiracy, It's important to see
the warning signs and report it. So many times people
brought up something weird that either Eric or Dylan had done,
yet nothing was done to stop them. They had written
papers for school that were clear warning signs. Eric had
written a paper about school shooting and a poem from
the perspective of a bullet, while Dylan had written a
short story about a man killing students. It worried his
teachers so much they actually called his parents. Of course,
we have the search warrant of Eric's house a year
prior to the shooting that was never executed, and on
at least one occasion, Eric's father actually found a pipe
bomb in his room, and instead of him getting in trouble,
his dad just like took him up into the mountains.
They detonated it together. People are scared to send their
kids to school, but most people don't have any other options.
So were they acting of their own accord or was
this a bigger plan in play. I'd love to hear
your thoughts, but until next week, my friends, stay skeptical
and we will see you all then. Hey, friends. The
rabbit Hole is an independent podcast, written, hosted, and produced
by me Danny Mercy. Special thanks to Lindsay for research
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