Like Dylan, Eric kept journals—private writings where he reveals his innermost thoughts and feelings. They are almost unreadably dark, filled with sadistic images and drawings, fantasies of rape, dismemberment, and scenes of massive destruction, including, in more than one place, the wholesale extinction of the human race. Dr. Langman writes, “[Dylan’s] journal is markedly different from Eric’s in both content and style. Whereas Eric’s is full of narcissistic condescension and bloodthirsty rage, Dylan’s is focused on loneliness, depression, ruminations, and preoccupation with finding love. Eric drew pictures of weapons, swastikas, and soldiers; Dylan drew hearts. Eric lusted after sex and fantasized about rape; Dylan longed for true love.”
Based on his journals, many of the experts I’ve spoken to feel comfortable saying that Eric displayed the traits and characteristics of a psychopath. As with Dylan, a true posthumous diagnosis is, of course, not possible. (In any case, because the adolescent brain is still developing, a formal diagnosis of psychopathy is only possible after the subject turns eighteen.) Even so, Eric certainly satisfies a great number of the diagnostic markers associated with this personality disorder.
Psychopathy is characterized by diminished empathy and provocative behavior. Most important, psychopaths (also called sociopaths; some experts differentiate between the two, the majority do not) don’t have a conscience, the part of the mind that enables us to feel guilt. They lie without compunction and are often highly skilled manipulators. There are some psychologists and psychiatrists who believe that psychopaths can be successfully treated. The ones I spoke to are not convinced. Not every psychopath is a criminal or a sadist, but if they do move in that direction, as Eric did, they can become highly dangerous.
A 2001 study of adolescent school shooters, prompted in part by the massacre at Columbine High School, resulted in two interesting findings. The first is that 25 percent of the thirty-four teenage shooters they looked at participated in pairs. This is different from adult rampage killers, who most often act alone. Dr. Reid Meloy, a forensic psychologist and expert on targeted violence and threat assessment, authored the study. He told me that these deadly dyads mean it’s absolutely critical for parents to pay attention to the dynamics between kids and their friends. The second finding from his study: typically, one of the two kids was a psychopath, and the other one suggestible, dependent, and depressed.
This appears to have been the dynamic between Dylan and Eric. In Eric’s yearbook, Dylan gloats about bullying kids, but in the privacy of his journals, he reveals his shame and guilt, and promises himself he won’t do it again. It’s very like the posturing on the Basement Tapes. There were distinct gaps between what Dylan felt, how he behaved around Eric, and what he did.
Dr. Langman believes Dylan’s ambivalence may have extended up to the massacre itself. On at least four occasions at the school—always out of Eric’s earshot and line of sight—Dylan let people go. The physical evidence suggests two incidents during the rampage when Eric went to retrieve Dylan, perhaps to make sure he was still on board. I take no comfort from this—Dylan committed atrocities, end of story. But learning about his ambivalence devastated me. In my notes after a conversation with Dr. Langman, I wrote:
Crying too hard to take any more notes….I had made myself accept Dylan as a sadistic killer, but I had not yet come to grips with a Dylan who was trying to counteract his own “evil” with moments of goodness. I think I met this Dylan for the first time when Langman talked about it, so it gave me a different Dylan to grieve for.
Dylan’s ambivalence also made me feel even more culpable than I did already. Dr. Marisa Randazzo directed the Secret Service’s research on school shootings, and (as Marisa Reddy) was one of the authors of the landmark federal study of school shootings conducted jointly by the US Secret Service and the Department of Education. Dr. Randazzo and Dr. Meloy both told me that when troubled kids learn they have other options besides homicide and suicide to solve the problems plaguing them, they generally take advantage of those other options.
Dylan did make efforts to extricate himself from the relationship with Eric. My guilt about this, in particular, fills me with despair. After the two boys got into trouble in their junior year, Dylan made an attempt to distance himself, and he asked for my help. We developed an internal shorthand: If Eric called to ask Dylan to do something, he’d say, “Let me ask my mom,” and shake his head at me. I’d say, loudly enough to be heard on the other end of the line, “I’m sorry, but you can’t go out tonight, Dylan. You promised you’d clean your room/do your homework/join us for dinner.”
At the time, I was simply happy that Dylan wanted distance. I had told both my sons they could always use me as an excuse in an emergency. I was thinking particularly of drinking and driving, but I meant any unsafe situation. So I was pleased, not only that Dylan had taken me up on my long-standing offer, but that he’d found a way to separate from his friend without hurting Eric’s feelings.
After I saw the dynamic between Eric and Dylan on the Basement Tapes, I found myself revisiting this episode in a new light. If Dylan didn’t want to go out with Zack or Nate or Robyn or any of his other friends, he simply told them so: “Nah, I can’t this weekend. I need to write this paper.” Only with Eric did he need me to bail him out. I never wondered about that or thought to ask Dylan: “Why can’t you just say no?” Asking for my help seemed like a sign of his good judgment, but afterward I realized that it was a portent of something much more disturbing. It was a sign I had missed until it was too late.
During one of our conversations, Frank Ochberg said, “Dylan did not have the profile of a killer, but he had vulnerability to become enmeshed with one.” FBI investigators found that Eric had tried to interest other boys in a plan of mass destruction, including Zack and Mark Manes.
They didn’t bite. Dylan did.
? ? ?
Randazzo: “There is often a fine line between people who are suicidal and homicidal. Most suicides are not homicidal, but many who are homicidal are there because of suicidality.”
I believe this is what happened to Dyl.
—Annotated note from interview with Dr. Marisa Randazzo, February 2015
Criminal justice specialist Dr. Adam Lankford, author of The Myth of Martyrdom, studies the suicidality of suicide bombers and mass shooters. He writes that rampage shooters, like suicide bombers, share three main characteristics: mental health issues that have produced a desire to die, a deep sense of victimization, and the desire to earn fame and glory through killing.
In one study, he looked at almost two hundred rampage shooters involved in events from 1966 to 2010. Almost half of them died by suicide as part of their attacks. Others may have intended to die, but were restrained or taken into custody before they had the chance. Truly suicidal or not, rampage shooters have less than a 1 percent chance of escaping the consequences of their actions. To plan an event with such a disastrously low chance of escape or survival implies what Lankford calls “life indifference.”
According to threat assessment experts, mass shooters almost always follow a discernible path to the shootings they commit. Recognizing the signposts on that path is the key to preventing these events. The pathway often begins with the desire to die.
For a long time, murder-suicide was viewed as a subset of murder, not of suicide. Some murder-suicides do correspond to the murder model, where suicide is a “plan B” turned to only when other escape options have failed. But a shifting understanding of suicide and a closer look at the data have revealed that many murder-suicides, if not the vast majority, have their genesis in suicidal thoughts. In other words, as Dr. Joiner writes, “If it can be shown that suicide is fundamental in murder-suicide, then suicide prevention is also murder-suicide prevention.”
In the case of Columbine, at least, I believe that is true. For years I searched for the missing integer, the piece of Dylan’s character that allowed him to do what he did. From what I’ve learned, I now believe the third segment of Dr. Joiner’s Venn diagram—the capability to die by suicide—provides part of the answer.