Jennifer hawes reports on the 2015 shooting in charleston, south carolina. Grace will lead us home. Republican representative Steve Scalise describes being wounded the 2017 shooting. Eric and dylan were the two killers in the columbine. Eric was a psychopath and dylan was not. I spent ten years on this book. Why did they do it . Was the most common question. Theres eric, why he did it and then theres dylan, they are completely different people. Eric was a psychopath. He was the mastermind. He spent a couple of years trying to figure out how he could destroy the entire world. Wipe out humanity, psychopaths dwell on life as well as death. A god can deflect and take it away. They are as important as god. In keeping with a psychopath, no compassion, no empathy, no regard for the welfare of others. Its just about meeting their own needs. Conmen, crooked politicians, you might think of a few recent ones that come to mind. Someone who would destroy other peoples lives or a straight or a country. Typically non violent. But when they have a sadistic streak, too, then you get ted bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer or eric. Then dylan, dylan is completely different. Polar opposite. Dylan went along with the plan but he was not driving it. When you look at their journal, eric was hate, hate all the way through. The opening line was i hate the effingham world. He started on a line to kill and he ended up killing. With dylan, completely different. He spent two years writing his journal and the most common word he used was love. Completely unexpected. He was a loving, sensitive boy with a whole lot of anger but his anger was directed inward, angry at himself for being a loser, an outcast. It was objectively untrue but thats what he thought. Dylan tried so hard loving the world but the world wasnt loving him back. Gradually, he takes a really slow evolution. Hes diagnosed with a classic diagnosis. The interesting thing is watching how this kid, he looks like he would never kill, gradually turns the inward anger onto the rest of the world. Instead of blaming me, im going to take a lot of you with me. He still committed suicide but took a lot of people with him. In your book columbine, you wrote dylans mind raced day and night. He was 15, he was erics number one go to guy and none of that mattered. What were the missions . The missions were early symptoms of going awry. Their sophomore year, they were just doing pranks. He called them missions because he was grandiose about everything. He saw them as big things of showing how big we are. Some nastier things like super glowing mailboxes shut and so forth. Whats interesting is that with eric, going from petty vandal to petty thief to felony theft to murder. He didnt start out a mass murderer. He had his own criminal progression. Its clear he would have become a career criminal of some sort if it werent for columbine. If you wanted to kill people for simple reasons, for his own grand wiseman and he enjoyed it. He wanted to have fun and show it. Understanding a psychopath, it doesnt take a whole lot to understand, its a simple complex. Its hard to believe its true. Well do that for the most petty game. April 20, 1999 was the day of columbine. Eric started planning this in 1997. How did you discover that . They kept record. Eventually after a seven year legal battle, they released nearly 1000 pages of writing the killers left. They left School Assignments and eric will on his website what he wanted to do. The fbi are a major character in the book, the unwinding of the story. He said was his name . Doing. Very famous hostage negotiator. He said in his entire career, hed never seen a killer who died, believed this much material explaining himself. We had an extraordinary amount of information. Talking with various psychologists in the case to understand them, its very clear cut once you got to the information. Its hard to make out their handwriting. Once you understand their psychological condition, its easier to understand them, too. You have to understand what a psychopath is to understand how to interpret their writings. Duane, did he recognize what was happening . He got in trouble, they had no idea the extent of trouble. Almost nobody recognizes a psychopath. You have to throw out the hollywood version, psychopath is going never going to tell you they would eat your liver. Youd be the last person to know. A book published in the 30s, the mask of sanity book, there are two clusters of characteristics. One is the lack of empathy. For anyone. But the more important characteristic was the ability to disguise the backup empathy and wearing a mask. They are nearly always charming. They are the people we turn to to trust. They are the person you turn to for help. Parents never recognize they have a psychopath in the house. They knew he was acting out, they saw a psychiatrist and he was put on zoloft. That wasnt strong enough, they disciplined him strongly. They had no idea what was going on with him. Eric was gobbling up shakespea shakespeare, putting papers on king lear and mcbeth. He would write the most amazing apologies. Sometimes he got in trouble and when he explains himself with utter remorse, he quote shakespeare and he learned a similar thinker, you would give a kid a lot of latitude. He seems to be doing well, sometimes he gets in trouble and ask up but what kind of parent things, i wonder if hes considering mass murder . They recognized depression, they knew dylan was depressed, they had no idea how bad it was, that it was that extreme. They didnt know he was suicidal. The also new they had a shy kid and he was shy, painfully shy since he was little. In high school, he felt like a fish out of water. He went to high school and he felt awkward there, he didnt talk to people until he got to know them. They knew he was struggling but had no idea it was that bad. Thats the scary thing about columbine, dylan was a Typical High School kids. You write in your book that eric was very, well typical, i guess. He had girlfriends, friends, he was smart. He led a difficult life but psychopaths live a double life. Whether they plan to rip you off or kill you, they lead a life as their cover. Think of ted bundy, he was working on the hotline, helping suicide people. He was not actually interested in helping people but thats what they do. Eric was leading normal life. Who was kathy . We believe she was the christian martyr. One of the biggest stories in columbine and for biggest redemption story. There are not a lot of redemption stories and columbine. This particular one didnt happen, it was a misunderstanding. The story went that kathy was hiding under a table and the killer asked her if she believed in god and she said yes and fence was killed. Worldwide, there was a following of her. It turns out there were two girls. What was happening, she was hiding under the table, praying for her life and eric walked up to the table and said peekaboo but shot her in the head. She died instantly, never had a chance to say anything. The second girl, who dylan shot, she was hit with a lot of the blast. She was bleeding, crawling away, dylan started taunting her, asked if she believed in god and she said yes. Then he got distracted by something eric was doing. He didnt care who lived or died, he just let her go. She lived. A girl professes her face faith and fence she lives. But there was another boy overheard this, didnt know either of them and somehow mistakingly thought it was kathy who said it. He told people, it was an honest mistake. We didnt do our job in asking the grieving victims, do you recognize her voice . Those are tough questions. They allowed that to become one of the biggest stories. Speaking of myths, there was a headline, a day or two after this is the actual post from that day, healing begins, april 22, 1999. Why is this a myth in your view . That was an unfortunate thing that they regretted that everyone involved with columbine regret because if i could give one piece of advice to communities who go through these tragedies, when you talk to any Mental Health workers or even pastors will have done funerals, it takes months and years for people to deal with grief. A day and a half, thats russian. You got a couple of weeks and then back on it. People do in understanding their grief until a year or more out. They didnt reach their peak realization until six months out and then stayed at that peak level for a year end a half. So take a grieving person a day and a half later, tell them to get better, they are not ready. Just back off and give them space. They felt bitter for so long after that. How did you approach the writing of the book . It took several tries. I had a book out year after columbine, it was going to be i small ebook and i approached it that way. Just based on the killers and also unraveling the myth. There were so many myths. Most of what we think about columbine is wrong. I was trying to unravel those myths. I wrote the first time as myself as the protagonist. Kind of a detective story of what happened. Meanwhile, i was trying to understand the killers better and understand what happened to them. That took a couple of years and the story was just not really ready. It was really after five years, where the fbi diagnosed the killers and i started over at that time. I wanted the before story and the after. How they evolved into killers, its interesting to see how they developed and then i wanted the after story, the victims and survivors. The killers did to them. You get both stories simultaneously but i wrote them separately. I wrote all of the eric story and then all the dylan story and when i was working on eric, all i did was read his journal, listened to the music he listened to, watched the films he liked, immersed myself in his days, wrote about him and talked to the psychiatrist about him. This complete eric immersion for five months. Then the same thing with dylan. I actually got depressed writing the dylan story. I wasnt able to convey dylans depression and his loneliness until i got that way myself. What i tried to do was not sit here and say i was describing you, what i tried to do was turn the camera around and be inside you and project what the world looks like to you. What you are thinking and feeling as if from the inside. You say you got depressed. How serious . Well, not serious. That wasnt actually the worst, the more serious was writing about the victims. I had a secondary posttraumatic stress disorder, emts workers and other emergency workers deal with, i thought i was fine with it. I got a relapse, seven and a half years and when i wrote two of the most difficult chapters, that was the hardest. The heroic teacher who died saving children and bled to death tragically. Hes one of the main characters in the book. Theres a lot of uplifting stuff about him but that was the hardest to write. Then the chapter about dylans funeral and his parents and their grief hit me. Shortly after that, there were four and ten days, the amish shooting in pennsylvania and one very close to columbine in colorado and i couldnt take that. For about a month, i couldnt work and was in pretty bad shape but it helped to have studied ptsd for the book and understand it. I was still naively slow to understand my own situation that i needed help. But once i did, i separated from what ive been fighting about. Do the same things as these people, get help. It helped i spent time with authorities. I almost never do this but i got to know him and i called him. He talked to me for about an hour. Frank really helped me. He was also an expert on columbine, had been through it so he understood me and that got me through it. I also loved writing the book, i love writing. I dont want to complain about the job, above what i do. Talk to us a bit about some of the survivors and victims families. The survivors and victims, one of the myths that i wanted to dispel, the universal response. One of the things that bothers me, whenever i see when theres a plane crash or other tragedy that gets news coverage, when they are interviewing victims, they will slip into a second person and start saying when you first hear the thud, you panic and i think a lot of us have internalized this universal response. Now i think, i bet there was somebody behind you who didnt panic at all. I bet somebody got exhilarated. Everybody deals with these things differently. With a tragedy like this, columbine, it was all over the map. I chose ten major characters to follow. I had to get a boy and a girl, an adult, people who were injured and families and people with different responses. Linda was the widow who fell apart. He was her rock. She was put in a horrible situation and without the person who supported her. Kathy, her family who had this amazing uplifting experience of having a daughter of who they thought was a martyr and got so much gratification and that was pulled out. Then i think about the boy in the window, he went out the window on live tv, millions of people saw him. Most people didnt know he had a bullet in his brain. He was half paralyzed, he dragged himself to the window. It was never expected to walk or talk again. He had an amazing recovery. The first week or two, extraordinary. These people were all over the map and how they dealt with their grief. The principal who led the kids out of this, ; , they are all very different. This person feels it with like this and this one like that. Each one of these people had interesting personalities and had a fascinating story. I wanted to make it interesting for the reader, i didnt want this to be a book that you had to read to learn something. Like eating your vegetables. I wanted it to be an engrossing tale and luckily for me, as a journalist and writer, thousands of people were involved in this story. Many thousands of people were involved in different ways. I picked ten people who had fascinating experiences so it gives you this story of columbine in one place. Did the victims families and survivors willingly talk with you . Most of them did talk to me. I met all of them at different points along the way for different reasons. Some were resistant to talking and some were more open but over time, nearly all of them needed to talk to the press for their own reasons. There was a huge controversy over the library. The families of the 13th dead wanted the library torn down so no one would step foot in there again. They did meetings with the press before we got to meet them. A lot of them wanted to tell their stories. Once i selected the people i would focus on, all of them except for the arnold family, kathy, agreed to participate. Her mom had written a memoir, there is a great deal of information there. One journalist gave me or fieldnotes. The few characters who were not willing to participate, there was a great deal of material to draw from. Are most of the families still in the littleton, colorado area . Most of them are. Most of the families i dealt with are. A couple of families left early on because they felt the need to get out of that kind of Pressure Cooker and some regretted that because of the friends and support base were there. So some of them came back. A lot of kids went to college, too. What about the harrises and cleveland . The boats are still in the same house they lived in. The harrises lived there for many years and then sold their house. They have kept a low profile, im not sure where they are. Those families had a difficult time. I spoke to many people are much closer to them. Five years out, i spoke to him once and never again. I spoke to others, they had a rough time. They lost a son, too. They also had a mass murderer in their house. Of course thats terrible for them. They were grieving into different ways. Their pastor referred to them as the two loneliest people in the world early on. If you think of the parents of Charles Manson or Jeffrey Dahmer, they dont have anyone who understands what theyre going through. They had a lot of great friends, their pastor was a wonderful m man. Everyone in the area looked up to him. He lost his job because he was supportive of that family. Tell us about dylans funeral. It was very private, the family was afraid to have a funeral. They did it in secrecy. They had not been going to a church regularly but they attended a Lutheran Church at one time in a friend got word that they needed somebody. They didnt have a pastor and they needed somebody to bury their son. So he agreed and there were fewer than a dozen people there. He prepared something but when he got there, he realized he needed to throw it out and just talk. So he had everybody talk about dylan and the brother didnt know what to make of it. So then the pastor quoted a passage of scripture, which was just perfect. Absalom, forgive me, i dont know how to pronounce it. King davids son who tried to overthrow king david as king but he tried to overthrow david. David had to put it down. Davids instructions were to not allow his son to be killed. Word came back that they saved the kingdom but solomon had died and he melted down and cried out, i cant remember the exact quote. The lord of lord, why have you taken my son . He realized that in the entire bible, that was a passage that most the common most empathized with could understand, but he had them taken away. His son had done a terrible thing but they wished they could have their son back. Thats the kind of guy don is and to have that compassion. To him, yes, dylan was a mass murderer but he was a pastor to the parents and that was the best way he could help them. They were still humans who needed help. The victims families and the survivors moved on, or some holding onto this . Theyre all over the map. I think most of them have moved on. I went through the tenth your commemoration and it was surprising, it was a little different than the other, there were so many different gatherings over time. A lot of them based on crises, evidence released in some, the one, two, five and ten years were a big thing. Then the memorial. Over all these events, where everyone came back together, early on we never knew how many more of these there would be. There could be five or ten, nobody knew. At the opening of the memorial, i believe eight years out, the crisis had passed, that one was different. Everyone had a feeling that we are almost done memorializing this. You prepare speakers and so many of them spoke about closure and angry at the concept of closure. Angry and frustrated with people trying to impose this. They hear closure as, are you still complaining about that . Youve had eight years to grieve, move on. Thats the pressure they are feeling and then there was a push back. It was the main theme that day. Everyone knew it was the second to last one and then we wouldnt see everyone again. I think they got over the hump at that one because with the ten here, it was much more tranquil. There was no talk about closure or pushback. They didnt feel they needed to push back. Most of the people were at peace now. The girl who really did believe in god, she spoke on behalf of the victims. She quoted robert, hopefully i can get this right, she quoted him saying, all i need to know about the rest of my life can be summarized in three words. It goes on. She also told me on facebook that there is no eric and dylan anymore. She had to