I got this as an audiobook, and had to ask myself “what is a person who hates serial killers doing reading a book about a famous massacre?” But this is much more than just a gruesome true-crime story. It has so many different angles to it that there’s something for…well, maybe not something for everyone, but something for more than just morbid rubberneckers.
The storytelling begins by discussing some of the victims the day of the massacre, along with the events of that day from the point of view of the students and bystanders. I found the events of the massacre fascinating for the same reason why I love reading about disasters; they can happen to anyone, at any time, and require heroism from ordinary people.
The framing of the story takes an interesting pattern. After the description of the shooting, Cullen goes in two different directions. He deals with the victims’ story beginning right after the shooting, and continues until 2009. He starts telling the shooters’ story from a little over a year before the shooting, delving into their motivations, and culminates with their suicide on the day of the shooting.
I was out of the country when this happened, and missed much of the media blitz around it, so I was shielded from a lot of the fabrications perpetrated by the media. Cullen talks about how poor investigative reporting (including journalists talking on kids trapped in the school on their cell phones) influenced the media stories and perpetrated lies well beyond the time when the truth should have extinguished them. For example, there was the pervasive rumor that the killers were gay goths who targeted jocks as retribution for being bullied. Spoiler: Nope. The killers were fairly popular, seemingly well-adjusted kids with loving parents and good friends. Just that one was suicidally depressed and the other was a fully-bloomed psychopath.
Cullen also deals with the journalism aspect of it. He explains how the stories spiraled out of control due to an unprofessional media and an investigative team that got ridiculously secretive about its findings.
Cullen also delves into the survivor’s tales. Most were profoundly affected by the events on that April afternoon in 1998; some were able to move past it, while others remained embittered and depressed even up unto the next decade. I appreciated how sympathetically he treated the survivors in his book, including the parents of the deranged young men who did this crime. He seems to have had rare access to the killers’ parents, including a journal that Harris Sr. kept regarding Eric’s punishment.
I appreciate especially how he didn’t glorify the killers. The last thing that the world needs is idolizing selfish, angry, broken boys who had everything in the world handed to them and threw it away.
Audible’s version was very well read and acted. My only complaint was that on occasion the track skipped a half-second. I don’t think it’s my player because I haven’t had this happen with other books.
