78 pages • 2 hours read
Dave CullenColumbine
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2009A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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BetaPart 4, Chapters 45-47Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 45 Summary: “Aftershocks”
Around the six-month anniversary of Columbine, CBS gets its hands on surveillance footage from the school of “the killers roaming the cafeteria” (281). With the anniversary, and with many Columbine students and parents seeing video footage for the first time, conspiracy theory rumors start anew. “On October 18, a fresh rumor surfaced: a friend of Eric and Dylan’s who had worked on their school videos told someone he was going ‘to finish the job’” (282). The boy is arrested, charged with a felony, and kept on suicide watch. On October 20, 450 students call in sick to Columbine High. The following day, fourteen percent of the students remain out; the “normal absentee rate was five percent,” notes Cullen. This same week, the mother of Anne Marie Hochhalter, the shooting victim with the ruptured spinal cord, walked into a Denver pawn shop and killed herself. By the mandatory, six-month deadline, twenty families file notice to sue law enforcement and/or governmental agencies, including the parents of Dylan Klebold. Wayne and Kathy Harris, parents of Eric, meet Sheriff Stone on October 25, but there is no paper report of the meeting.
The only two people ever officially charged with a crime tied to the Columbine massacre are Mark Manes, “who’d sold the TEC-9,” and Phil Duran, “who’d brokered the deal” (285). At the Manes hearing, nine victims’ families speak. He receives nine years in prison—down from eighteen years, due to a plea deal.
Meanwhile, the memoir about the life of shooting victim and “martyr” Cassie Bernall hits the New York Times bestseller list. Editors at the Rocky Mountain News are aware that Cassie’s conversation with one of the killers—the conversation that made her a so-called martyr—was false. Cassie’s story is disproven by another publication, but the book continues to sell well. This is followed by more leaks of various pieces of evidence related to the attack. Further, Columbine High continues to receive bomb threats, and the school is again closed, with finals cancelled.
The following calendar year brings more tumult: “A young boy was found dead in a dumpster a few blocks Columbine High. On Valentine’s Day, two students were shot dead in a Subway shop two blocks from the school. The star of the basketball team committed suicide” (288). Many become convinced that the school and community are cursed. Mental health appointments spike. The football team wins the state championship.
Chapter 46 Summary: “Guns”
Eric and Dylan attend the Tanner Gun Show on November 22, 1998. Eric names his shotgun Arlene. Cullen asserts, “Psychopaths generally turn to murder only when their callousness combines with a powerful sadistic streak.” He cites psychologist Theodore Millen, who “identified ten basic subtypes of the psychopath,” adding, “Only two are characterized by brutality or murder: the malevolent psychopath and the tyrannical. In these rare subtypes, the psychopath is driven less by a greed for material gain than by desire for his own aggrandizement and the brutal punishment of inferiors. Eric fit both categories” (294).
Chapter 47 Summary: “Lawsuits”
Columbine’s one-year anniversary draws near. This year mark is also the statute of limitations for families to sue law enforcement or governmental entities for wrongful death or negligence. Those deciding whether or not to sue wait on the final report from Jefferson County investigators. In a last-ditch effort to avoid a lawsuit and see the report, two families file open-records requests demanding to see the report ten days before the deadline. This request includes access to “everything, including the Basement Tapes, the killers’ journals, the 911 calls, and surveillance videos” (297-98). A district judge says, yes, to the request, and “Fifteen families filed suits against the sheriff’s department that week” (298).
However, Cullen notes, “The lawsuits were expected to fail. The legal thresholds were too high. In federal court, negligence was insufficient; families needed to prove officers had made the students worse off” (298). The real goal of the suits was to “flush out information” (298) and find out what Jefferson County law enforcement officials might be withholding.
The exception to this batch of suits, and the one Cullen identifies as having a good chance of success, was filed by the daughter of Dave Sanders; it “charged that Jeffco officials went beyond neglecting Dave Sanders for three hours: they impeded his movement and prohibited others from getting him out of there … By doing so, the suit argued, Jeffco accepted responsibility for Dave and then let him die” (298).
Days after the anniversary, a “‘training video’ created by the Littleton Fire Department” is released that includes “grisly crime scene footage [of the massacre] set to pop music, Sarah McLachlan’s ‘I Will Remember You’” (299). Copies of the tape are sold for $25.
The report is released on May 15. Cullen affirms,“As expected, the report ducked the central question of why. Instead, it provided seven hundred pages of what, how, and when” (299-300).
Tom Mauser, the father of one of the victims who had attended the NRA protests in Denver, takes on the chief lobbyist role for SAFE Colorado (Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic). Cullen adds, “No significant gun-control legislation was enacted in response to Columbine” (301).
Patrick Ireland, along with eight other Columbine survivors, graduates that spring. Ireland gives the valedictory address.
Chapters 45-47 Analysis
These chapters’ main thrust is to look at the continued fallout from the Columbine attack. Secondarily, they provide more information on how Harris and Klebold were able to obtain some of the firearms for the attack. Lawsuits continue to roll in, though Cullen notes that nearly none seem as though they’ll be successful. An exception, as noted earlier, is Angela Sanders’ lawsuit alleging that law enforcement officials were at fault for not saving Dave Sanders. Rumors continue to swirl around other parties being conspirators in the attack, and the year 2000 starts poorly, with more murders and a body found near campus. Added to this is the egregious creation of a training tape by the fire department that uses footage from the attack and is set to pop music.
Formally, these chapters, and much of the last third of the book, see Cullen subdivide his book’s chapters into smaller, fractious parts; if the attack is the central event of the book, and certainly the central event of the Columbine community in the immediate aftermath thereof, here, at the year-anniversary point of the attack, we see victims, families, and investigators broken off and sequestered from one another on the page. This formal presentation runs counter to earlier chapters, such as Chapter 8, “Maximum Human Density,” which illustrates plans for the attack.
