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The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Each week, The Murder Book will present unsolved cases, missing persons, notorious crimes, controversial cases, and serial killers, exploring details of the crime scenes and the murderer's childhood. Some episodes are translated into Spanish as well. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kiara Coyle.
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Unraveling the Columbine Tragedy Part XII The Dark Mind of Eric Harris
In this thought-provoking episode, we delve deep into the psyche of Eric Harris, one of the perpetrators of the Columbine tragedy. By examining his journal entries and the chilling insights they contain, we aim to understand the motivations that drove him to commit such an atrocity. The episode highlights key themes like the influence of societal norms on young minds and the characteristics of psychopathy, painting a picture of a disturbed individual who felt disconnected from humanity.
Listeners will encounter a raw and honest exploration of the attitudes, beliefs, and philosophies that permeated Eric's thoughts, drawing on his perception of the world as a robotic assembly line stifling individuality and natural instincts. We juxtapose Eric’s dark narrative with an examination of how families of victims faced their grief amid public scrutiny.
This episode not only scrutinizes the actions of Eric Harris but also invites reflection on broader societal implications surrounding violence and mental health. With expert insights and heartfelt stories from those directly impacted by the tragedy, the discussion is both engrossing and haunting. Join us as we unravel the complex layers of this dark moment in history while exploring how we can learn from the past to foster a safer future. Tune in and immerse yourself in this gripping narrative, and don’t forget to leave your thoughts with us!
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part 12 of Unraveling the Columbine Tragedy. Let's begin. In the previous episode we talked about how Eric and Dylan convinced Andrea Sanchez that they qualified for the diversion program. For the diversion program. And Eric met with Andrea Sanchez to receive his diversion contract and he told her that he was looking ahead to senior year. And he also discussed with her about writing an apology letter providing restitution, working off fines, meeting with a diversion counselor twice a month, besides seeing his own mental health provider, attending classes like mother-second-struck driving, maintaining good grades, problem-free employment, 45 hours of community service, and they would periodically hand him a Dexacup and direct him to a urinal. So that means no more alcohol, no more freedom.
Speaker 1:Eric's first counseling session and his first drug screening would commence in eight days. So he met with Sanchez on a Wednesday, thursday he stood Friday, april 10th 1998, he opened a letter size spiral notebook and he scribbled I hate this effing world. In one year and ten days he would attack. Eric wrote furiously, filling two vicious pages. People are stupid. I'm not respected. Everyone has their own darn opinions on everything and at first glance the journal sounds like the website. But Agent Fusilier, when he was looking at this notebook, he found answers in it. The website was pure rage, no explanation. The journal was explicit.
Speaker 1:Eric fleshed out on paper his ideas as well as his personality. Eric had a grand superiority complex, a revulsion for authority, an excruciating need for control, and he even wrote I feel like God, I am higher than almost anyone in the world in terms of universal intelligence. And in the interim, eric dubbed his journal the Book of God. So the breadth of his hostility was equally melodramatic. Humans were pathetic, too dense to perceive their lifeless existence. He also said Ever wonder why we go to school, he asked. It's not too obvious to most of you stupid people, but for those who think a little more and deeper, you should realize it is society's way of turning all the young people into good little robots. Human nature was smothered by society. Healthy instincts were smothered by laws. They were training us to be assembly line robots. That's why they lined the school desk up in rows and trained kids to respond to opening and closing bells.
Speaker 1:Philosophically, the robotic conception was a rare point of agreement between the killers, because Dylan referred often to zombies and both boys described their uniqueness as self-awareness. They could see through human haste. But Dylan saw his distinction as a lonely curse. And he looked on the zombies, even with compassion. Dylan yearned for the little poor creatures to break out of their boxes.
Speaker 1:The problem, as Eric saw it, was natural selection. He had alluded to the concept on his website. Here he explained relentlessly that natural selection had failed. Man had intervened. Medicines, vaccines, special ed programs had conspired to keep the rejects in the human herd. So Eric was surrounded by inferiors who would not shut the freaking mouth. How should he tolerate all the miserable chatter? And he had lots of ideas Nuclear holocaust, biological warfare, imprisoning the species in a giant ultimate doom game. But Eric was also realistic. He knew that he couldn't restore the natural order, but he could impose some selection of his own. He would sacrifice himself to accomplish it, he said well, he wrote in his notebook I know I will die soon, so will you and everyone else. By soon he meant a year. Eric had a remarkably long time horizon for a 17-year-old contemplating his own death.
Speaker 1:The lies jumped out at Fusilier. Eric took giddy pleasure in his deceptions and he even wrote I lie a lot, almost constant, and to everybody, just to keep my own ass out of the water. Let's see what are some big lies I have told. Did I stop smoking? For doing it, not for getting caught. No, I haven't been making more bombs.
Speaker 1:Eric did not believe in God, but he enjoyed comparing himself to him. Believe in God, but he enjoyed comparing himself to him. Like Dylan, he did so frequently, but not delusionally. They were, like God, superior in insight, intelligence and awareness. Like Zeus, eric created new rules, angered, easily punished people in unusual ways. Eric had conviction. Anyways, eric had a plan. Eric would get the guns and build the explosives and maim and kill and so much more. They would terrify way beyond the gun blast. The ultimate weapon was TV. Eric saw past the Columbine Commons. He might kill hundreds, but the dead and dismembered meant nothing to him. The performance was not about them. Eric's one-day-only production was about the audience. The irony was his attack was too good for his victims. It would sail right over their heads. Too bad because they would feel the power of his hand. If we have figured out the art of time bombs Beforehand, we would set hundreds of them around houses, roads, bridges, buildings, gas stations. It would be like the LA riots, the Oklahoma bombing, world War II, vietnam, duke and Doom all mixed together. Maybe we will even start a little rebellion or revolution to screw things up as much as we can. I want to leave a lasting impression on the world.
Speaker 1:Dr Fusilier set down the journal. It had taken him about an hour to read the first time that he read it. I guess he read it more than once in that noisy Columbine band room two or three days after the murders. Now he had a pretty good hunch about what he was dealing with. A psychopath, eric wrote. I would choose to kill.
Speaker 1:His explanation didn't add up because we were morons. How would that make a kid kill? To most readers Eric's friends just sounded nuts. But Dr Fusilier had the opposite reaction. Insanity was marked by mental confusion. Eric Harris expressed cold, rational calculation. Fusilier ticked off Eric's personality traits. Or calculation Fusilier ticked off Eric's personality traits charming, callous, cunning, manipulative, comically grandiose, egocentric, with an appalling failure of empathy. It was like reciting the psychopathy checklist.
Speaker 1:Fusilier spent the next 12 weeks contesting his theory. Fusilier spent the next 12 weeks contesting his theory. That's how he approached a problem Develop a hypothesis and then search for every scrap of evidence to refute it. Test it against alternate explanations, build the strongest possible case to support them and see if the hypothesis fails. If it withstands that, then it's solid. Psychopathy. Held Diagnosis didn't solve the crime, but it laid the foundation.
Speaker 1:Ten years afterward, eric still baffled the public, which insisted on assessing his motives through a normal lens. Eric was neither normal nor insane. Psychopathy represents a third category. Psychopathic brains don't function like those in either of the other groups, but they are consistently similar to one another. Eric killed for two reasons To demonstrate his superiority and to enjoy it To a psychopath. Both motives make sense. Psychopaths are capable of behavior that normal people find not only horrific but baffling, and this is a quote from Dr Robert Heer, who is a leading authority on psychopaths. He also says psychopaths can torture and mutilate their victims with about the same sense of concern that we feel when we carve a turkey for Thanksgiving dinner. In other words, eric saw humans as chemical compounds with an inflated sense of their own words. It's just all nature, chemistry, math. He wrote in his diary you die, burn, melt, evaporate, decay.
Speaker 1:Psychopaths have likely plagued mankind since the beginning, but they're still poorly misunderstood. Psychopaths are distinguished by two characteristics. The first is a ruthless disregard for others. They will defraud, maim or kill for the most trivial personal gain. The second is an astonishing gift for disguising the first. It's the deception that makes them so dangerous. You never see him coming. It's usually a him. More than 80% are male. Don't look for an oddball creeping you out, because psychopaths don't act like Hannibal Lecter or Dormo Bates. Psychopaths take great personal pride in their or normal baits. Psychopaths take great personal pride in their deceptions, extract tremendous joys from them. Lies become the psychopath's occupation and when the truth will work, they lie for sport. Lying for amusement is so profound in psychopaths it stands out as the signature, characteristic duping delight.
Speaker 1:Now the terminology got a little muckier because sociopath there was the term sociopath and this term was introduced in the 1930s, initially as a broader term for antisocial behavior. Eventually, psychopath and sociopath became virtually synonymous. The primary reason for the competing terms is that each was adopted in different fields. Criminologists and law enforcement personnel prefer psychopath. Sociologists tend toward sociopath. Psychologists and psychiatrists are split, but most experts on the condition use psychopath and the bulk of the research is based on a checklist made by, a checklist made by a psychologist with last name Hare. A third term antisocial personality disorder or APD, that was introduced in the 1970s and remains the only diagnosis included in the DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manner of Mental Disorders. However, it covers a much broader range of disorders that does psychopath, and it has been roundly rejected by leading researchers. So where do psychopaths come from? Well, researchers are divided, with the majority suggesting a mixed road.
Speaker 1:Nature leading nurture following Dr Hare believes psychopaths are born with a powerful predisposition, which can be exacerbated by abuse or neglect. A correlation exists between psychopaths and unstable homes and violent upbringing seem to turn fledging psychopaths more vicious, but current data suggests those conditions do not cause the psychopathy. They only made a bad situation worse. It also appears that even the best parenting may be no match for a child born to be bad. Shame did not register. Neither does fear. Psychopaths are not individuals losing touch with those emotions. They never develop them from the start.
Speaker 1:Dr Hare created also a separate screening device for juveniles and identified hallmarks that appeared during the school years Lying, grudgesious, lying, indifference to the pain of others, defiance of authority, figures, responsiveness to reprimands or threatened punishment, petty theft, persistent aggression, cutting classes, breaking curfew, cruelty to animals, early experimentation with sex, vandalism, setting fires. Eric, for example, he broke about 9 of the 10 hallmarks in his journal and on his website, for most of them relentlessly. The only thing that was missing was animal cruelty of them relentlessly. The only thing that was missing was animal cruelty At some point as either a cause or an effect of psychopathy. The psychopath's brain begins processing emotional responses differently, dr Hare, early in his career he did some research career. He did some research and he recognized the anatomical difference. He submitted a paper analyzing the unusual brainwaves of psychopaths to a scientific journal, which rejected it with a dismissive letter and says those EEGs couldn't have come from real people. And this is what the message he received from the editor and Hare thought exactly. Psychopaths are that different. Eric Harris baffled the public because we could not conceive of a human with his motives. His brain, unfortunately, was never scanned, but it probably would have shown activity unrecognizable as human to most neurologists.
Speaker 1:The fundamental nature of a psychopath is a failure to feel. A psychopath's grasp of fear and suffering is particularly weak. Researchers often compare psychopaths to robots or rogue computers that are programmed only to satisfy their own objectives. That's the closest approximation of their behavior, but the metaphor lacks nuance. Psychopaths feel something. Eric seemed to show sadness when his dog was sick and he occasionally felt twinges of regret toward humans. But the signals come through dimly. They have what is described as a poverty of emotional range.
Speaker 1:Psychopaths develop a handful of primitive emotions closely related to their own welfare. Emotions closely related to their own welfare. Three had been identified anger, frustration and rage. Psychopath erupts with ferocious bouts of anger which can get them labeled emotional Psychopaths feel nothing deep, complex or sustained. The psychopath was prone to vexation, spite quick and labile flashes of quasi-affection, peevish resentment, shallow moods of self-pity, puerile attitudes of vanity, absurd and showy poses of indignation. Indignation runs strong in the psychopath because it springs from a staggering ego and sense of superiority. Psychopaths do not feel much, but when they lose patience with inferiors they can really let it rip. Psychopaths made it that far of the emotional ladder, but they fall far short of the average golden retriever which will demonstrate affection, joy, compassion, empathy for a human in pain. Researchers are still just beginning to understand psychopaths, but they believe psychopaths crave the emotional responses they lack.
Speaker 1:They are nearly always thrill-seekers. They love roller coasters, hand-gliding, seek out high anxiety occupations like ER, tech, bond trader or marine. Crime, danger, impoverishment, death any sort of risk will help. They chase new sources of excitement because it is so difficult for them to sustain. It is so difficult for them to sustain. They rarely stick with a career. They get bored, even as career criminals.
Speaker 1:Psychopaths underperform. They lack clear goals and objectives, getting involved in a wide variety of opportunistic offenses rather than specializing the way typical career criminals do. They perform spectacularly in short bursts, a few weeks, a few months, a year-long big con, then walk away. Eric spent his young life that way. He should have been a 4.0 student, but he collected A's, b's and C's. He was one of the smartest kids in his high school but apparently never bothered to apply to college. No job prospects either.
Speaker 1:Beyond blackjack, rare killer psychopaths nearly always get bored with murder too. When they slit a throat, their pulse raises, but it falls just as fast it stays down. No more joy from cutting throats for a while. That thrill has already been spent.
Speaker 1:A second, less common approach to the banality of murder seems to be the diet murderous pairs who feed off each other, and criminologists have been aware of this for decades. Take an example of Leopold and Lope, bonnie and Clyde, the Beltway Snipers of 2002. Because diets account for only a fraction of mass murderers, little research has been conducted on them. Partnerships tend to be asymmetrical. The psychopath is in control, of course, but the hot-headed psychic can sustain his excitement leading up to the big hill. One of the things that Dr Fusilier is fond of saying was that Eric craved heat, but he couldn't sustain it. Dylan was a volcano. You could never tell when he might erupt. Day after day, for more than a year, dylan juiced Eric with erratic jolts of excitement. They played the killing out again and again, the cries, the screams, the smell of burning flesh, and Eric savored the anticipation.
Speaker 1:Patient Now Dr Hare EG, suggested the psychopathic brain operates differently, but he could not be sure how or why. Dr Hare said that for psychopaths, horror is purely intellectual. The brain searches for words to describe what the rest of us would feel, and that fills the profile. Psychopaths react to pain or tragedy by assessing how they can use the situation to manipulate others. So what's the treatment for psychopathy? Dr Hare summarized the research on a century of attempts in two words Nothing works. It is the only major mental affliction to elude treatment, and therapy often makes it worse, and therapy often makes it worse. Unfortunately, programs of this sort merely provide the psychopath with better ways of manipulating, deceiving and using people, and this was something that Hare wrote in many of his papers. Now Eric was blessed with at least two unintentional coaches Bob Chrishauser in the juvenile diversion program and his psychiatrist, dr Albert. And Eric was a quick study. So the notes in his diversion file document a steady improvement, session by session.
Speaker 1:Oddly, a large number of psychopaths spontaneously improve around middle age. The phenomenon has been observed for decades but not explained Otherwise. Psychopaths appear to be lost causes Within the psychiatric community. That has drawn stiff resistance to diagnosing minors with the condition. But clearly many juveniles are well on their way.
Speaker 1:While Eric was devising his attack, dr Hare was working on a regimen to address this kind and he began by examining the data on those spontaneous improvers. From adolescence to their 50s, psychopaths showed virtually no change in emotional characteristics but improved dramatically in antisocial behavior. The inner drives did not change, but their behavior did. Dr Hare believes that this psychopath might simply be adapting. Fiercely rational, they figure out that prison was not working for them. So Hare proposed using their self-interest to the public advantage. The program he developed accepts that psychopaths will remain egocentric and uncaring for life but would adhere to rules if it's in their own interest. Psychopathy experts are cautiously optimistic about coming advances. Fusilier, the special agent working on the case, was sure that Eric was a psychopath. But the kid had been 16 when he hatched the plot, 17 for most of the planning and barely 18 when he opened fire. There would be resistance to writing Eric off at those ages.
Speaker 1:Three months after Columbine, the FBI organized a major summit on school shooters in Leesburg, virginia. The Bureau assembled some of the world's leading psychologists, including Dr Hare. Near the end of the conference, dr Fusilier stepped up to the microphone and gave a thorough briefing on the minds of the two killers and he concluded it looks like Eric Harris was a budding young psychopath. And the room stared. A renowned psychiatrist in the front row moved to speak and Fusilier thought uh-oh, here it comes, this guy is going to nitpick the assessment to death. But the psychiatrist said I don't think he was a budding young psychopath. And so he asked what's your objection? And he said no, no, I think that he was a full-blown psychopath and his colleagues agree eric harris was textbook. Several of the experts continue studying the columbine shooters. After the summit, mich Michigan State University psychiatrist Frank Upward flew in several times to help guide the mental health team and every trip doubled as a fact-finding mission. Dr Upward interviewed an assortment of people close to the killers and studied the boys' writings.
Speaker 1:The problem for the community, and ultimately for DEFCO officials too, was that Agent Fusilier was not permitted to talk to the public. Early on, both local and federal officials were concerned about DEFCO getting overshadowed by the FBI. The Bureau firmly prohibited any of its agents from discussing the case with the media. Jeffco commanders had decided the killer's motives should not be discussed and the FBI respected that decision. Failure to address the obvious intensified suspicion toward Jeffco exacerbated a credibility problem already hovering over the sheriff's department. In addition to why the public had to press in questions, should authorities have seen Columbine coming and should they have stopped it sooner once the gunfire began? On both those controversial questions Jeffco had obvious conflicts of interest and yet they charged ahead. It was a staggering lapse of judgment. Jeffco could have simply isolated the two explosive issues into an independent investigation and it would have been easy enough. They had nearly 100 detectives at their disposal, few of whom worked for DEFCO. The independent investigation didn't seem so obvious in 1999. Some good cops make really bad decisions.
Speaker 1:After April 20th, survivors were right to suspect a cover-up. Jeffco commanders were lying about the Browns, warning about Eric and Randy, and Judy made sure everyone knew Inside the department, someone was attempting to destroy the Browns' paper trail. To destroy the Browns' paper trail. Shortly after the massacre, investigator Mike Guerra noticed that the physical copy of the file he had put together on Eric a year earlier disappeared from his desk. A few days later it reappeared, just as it mysteriously disappeared. Later that summer he tried to call up the computer record and found that it had been purged. The physical file again disappeared and has never been recovered. Over the next several months, division Chief John Kicksbush, assistant, took part in several activities that she later found disturbing.
Speaker 1:Each day, patrick Ireland, the kid that had been in the hospital, the one that practically pushed himself out of the window when all this was happening he's still trying to recover at the hospital and he tried to lift his leg again. He was trying to concentrate, try to make his brain respond right to what he wanted to do. He was making steady progress once he reestablished contact with his limbs, and every morning he could feel some change. There was some strength that had returned to the center of his body, first beginning at his torso, and it was radiating out through his hips and his shoulders and down to his right elbow and knee. In a few more weeks they had him on his feet and knee. In a few more weeks they had him on his feet. Later he progressed to a walker and then a forearm crutch with a cuff that straps over the arm below the elbow. The wheelchair was always there for long trips or any time he grew tired. Dexterity with his fingers and his toes would be the hardest thing to regain completely, and it would take him months to hold a pen without shaking. His walk would be hindered by all sorts of fine adjustments we never notice our toes make.
Speaker 1:There was another of the victims, anne Marie Hochhalter, who also progressed slowly. She had barely made it through the attack because her spinal cord was ruptured, causing unbearable nerve pain. She spent weeks lying delirious on morphine. She was put on a ventilator. A feeding tube was keeping her alive. She couldn't talk with the tubes and through the fog she didn't understand what had happened or what was ahead. After six weeks she joined Patrick at Craig. Danny Roblox's friend, sean Graves, was there too. Partially paralyzed below the spine, he managed a few steps with braces. Over the summer, lance Kirkland's face was reconstructed with titanium implants, skin grafts. Scarring was severe but he made light of it. He said yeah, it's cool, I'm now 5% metal.
Speaker 1:In the weeks just after the murders, nearly all the families of the library victims walked the crime scene with investigators. They needed to see it and Don Anna. And Don Anna was Lauren Thompson's mom and she had been a teacher I believe a math teacher in Columbine until she got sick and she was a coach also. She stopped at the spot where her daughter, lauren Thompson, had been killed. It was the first table on the left and nothing had been changed, except for the removal of the backpacks and personal effects which had been photographed, inventoried and returned to the families. The thought of sending any school kid back inside was unthinkable. The library had to go Independently and collectively. Most of the 13 families came to that conclusion quickly.
Speaker 1:Students reached the opposite consensus. They spent the spring battling for the idea of Columbine as well as the proper noun, the name of a high school, not a tragedy. They were reposed by phrases bandied about since Columbine or prevent another Columbine. That was one day in the life of Columbine High School. That's what the students insisted. Then the tourists arrived Just weeks after the tragedy. Even before students returned, tour buses started rolling up to the school. Columbine High had leapt to second place behind the Rocky Mountains as Colorado's most famous landmark, and tour operators were quick to capitalize. The buses would pull in front of the school, tourists would pile out and start snapping pictures the school, the grounds, the kids practicing on the athletic fields or milling about the park. They captured a lot of angry expressions because the students were feeling like they were animals in the zoo. Everyone still needed to know constantly how do you feel? Brian Fusilier, agent Fusilier's son, was heading into his sophomore year in Columbine and weeks under the microscope had been miserable. The tourists were too much.
Speaker 1:On June 2nd, most of the student body finally reconnected with the physical Columbine, and it was an emotional day. Students had two hours to go back inside retrieve their backpacks and cell phones everything else they had abandoned when they ran for it. The parents were allowed in as well. It gave everyone a chance to face their fears. Hundreds of kids stumbled out in tears useful tears. Most found the experience stressful but cathartic. They were kicked out again for two months while construction crews renovated the interior. The students had mixed feelings about anything changing, but they were taking that one on faith.
Speaker 1:The district had open enrollment, so everyone expected a big drop in Columbine student body. The next fall Students reacted the opposite way. Transfers out were minimal. Fall enrollment actually went up. Fall enrollment actually went up. Students felt they had lost so much already that surrendering an inch of corridor or a single classroom would feel like defeat. They wanted their school back. All of it. Mr D and the faculty were focused on the kids, getting them into therapy, watching out for trauma symptoms.
Speaker 1:School officials formed a design review board to address the library. It included students, parents and faculty. Consensus came readily, got the room and rebuilt it. Redesigned the layout, replaced and reconciled the furniture, changed the wall color, the carpet, even the ceiling tiles. It was a drastic version of the plan put together for the entire school. Trauma experts advised the board to balance two objectives Make the kids feel their school had survived and surround them with changes too subtle to identify. The library was the exception. It would feel completely different. Renovation of the school would cost $1.2 million and would be tough to complete before school resumed in August. The design board moved quickly and the school board adopted its proposal in early June.
Speaker 1:The parents of the murdered kids were aghast Rearrange the furniture, slap in some paint and recarpet. The design team saw their plan as a complete overhaul. Their adversaries call it cosmetic. Initially, the students and the victim's family assumed they were all in this together and it took them several weeks to realize they were about to battle each other. Parents of the 13 saw that they were outnumbered. They formed the parents group to fight back.
Speaker 1:On May 27, just as they were organizing, a notorious lawyer and media hound flew to Denver for a big press conference. Geoffrey Feger had become a cable news staple via splashy media trials like that of Dr Kovorkian, the assistant suicide doctor and figure teamed with Asaya Shill's family to make an ostentatious demand, sure to return Columbine to national headlines in the worst possible light. A wrongful death suit against the killer's parents. And they were asking for a quarter of a billion dollars. And Asaya's stepfather declared this is not about money, this lawsuit is about change. But the public was skeptical about motives, the lawyer. He insisted that he would spend more money mounting the case than he could hope to recover. Colorado law limited awards from individuals to $250,000 and government entities were capped at $150,000. This lawsuit is a symbol, he said. There would be cynics who would chop the lawsuit up to greed.
Speaker 1:Lawsuits had been anticipated, but nobody had foreseen one so garish or so soon. Colorado law gave victims a year to file and six months to declare intent. It had only been five weeks. Families had been talking about lawsuits as being a leverage and a last resort. The lawsuits served as a trial balloon that sank. The survivors were particularly repulsed. Many of them had dedicated the next phase of their lives to some form of justice anti-bullying, gun control, prayer in schools, swat protocols, warning signs or just reclaiming their school or destroying the library. Lawsuits threatened to taint all that threatened to taint all that. They also shed a bad light on the next big battle, which was already developing when the choices conducted the press conference.
Speaker 1:The fight revolved around money too, and the public donations have been astonishing. But the good fortune came at a price. More than $2 million rolled in the first month. A month later the total was $3.5 million. 40 different funds brought it up. The local union way set up the healing fund to coordinate the distribution of monies. Robin Finnegan was a veteran therapist and victim's advocate who had worked closely with Oklahoma City survivors.
Speaker 1:Oklahoma City survivors when a pair of teachers were collectively granted $5,000 for anxiety treatment, brian Roebuck blew his stack. He said that's criminal. He wanted the money divided equally between the families of the injured and the dead. But was equality fair? Lance Kirkland's father estimated his medical bills at $1 to $2 million. The family was uninsured. Mark Taylor needed surgery for four gunshots to the chest. His mom couldn't afford groceries or pay the rent and she said that the process was humiliating because she felt like a beggar. She says my son is in the hospital, I cannot work, we're broke, and they have millions of dollars in donations. I'm disgusted.
Speaker 1:The attorney for the Taylors and Kirkling suggested that some families needed compensation more than others. Brian Roebuck erupted again. That implied that Danny's life had no value. For Brian the money was symbolic, the ultimate valuation of each life. For others it was purely practical.
Speaker 1:In early July the Healing Fund announced its distribution plan. 40% of the $3.8 million would go to direct victims. A clever compromise was reached for that money the four kids with critical injuries, $150,000 each. $50,000 went to each of the 13. That totaled $650,000 for the dead versus $600,000 for the critically injured, giving the 13 the fraction of the medical bills for many. Most of the remainder went to trauma counseling and tolerance programs. Roughly $750,000 was earmarked for contingencies a compromise to cover unpaid medical bills without appearing to favor the injured over the dead. Brian Robach backed off once he felt hurt. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Tom Klebold, dylan's dad, was dealing with a lot of anger. Who gave my son these guns? He asked Reverend Markshausen. He also felt betrayed by the school culture that pecked on kids outside the mainstream. Tom did his best to shut out the angry world. His job allowed him to hunker down at home home and he took full advantage. Sue was not wired that way. She needed to get out.
Speaker 1:May 28th Kathy Harris wrote condolence letters to the 13. Many of their addresses were unpublished so she sealed each one in an envelope with the family's name, put them all in a manila envelope and mailed it to an address the school district had set up as a clearinghouse for correspondence victims. A week later Kathy sent a second batch for the families of 23 injured. The school district turned them over to the Sheriff's Department as potential evidence. It sat on them. Officials decided not to read them and not to deliver them.
Speaker 1:In mid-July the media discovered the snafu and, when asked, sergeant Randy West said well, it's really not our job to distribute them. The letters had no postage or addresses, so commanders decided to return to sender. West complained about the family's refusal to meet without immunity and said his team had trouble reaching their attorneys. They have been busy, we are busy and we can't seem to connect with them. I guess, if you want to make things easier, we could just talk to us. So the Harris's broke the three-month silence to issue a statement disputing misstatements on the letters. Their attorney insisted Jeffco had never tried to contact him about them. The letters were eventually returned.
Speaker 1:Sue Klebold also wrote apologies in May and she mailed them directly to the 13. And this was Brad and Misty Bernard's handwritten card. It says Dear Bernard family, it is with great difficulty and humility that we write to express our profound sorrow over the loss of your beautiful daughter, cassie. She brought joy and love to the world and she was taken in a moment of madness. We wish we had had the opportunity to know her and be uplifted by her loving spirit. We will never understand why this tragedy happened or what we might have done to prevent it. We apologize for the role our son had in your Cassie's death. We never saw anger or hatred in Dylan until the last moments of his life when we watched in helpless horror, with the rest of the world, the reality that our son shared in the responsibility for this tragedy is still incredibly difficult for us to comprehend. May God comfort you and your loved ones. May he bring peace and understanding to all of our wounded hearts. Sincerely, sue and Tom Clevot.
Speaker 1:Misty was moved enough to publish the full text in the memoir she was drafting. Misty was moved enough to publish the full text in the memoir she was drafting. She generously described the act as courageous. Tom and Sue lost a son in the same disaster. She wrote At least Cassie had died. Nobly. What comfort did the Klebos have? Misty also addressed the charges against the killer's parents. Should they have known? Were they negligent? How do we know? Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
