Columbine

"More important now than ever."

— Esquire

"The tragedies keep coming. As we reel from the latest horror . . ."  That's how I began the epilogue to this expanded edition, grappling with this scourge of spectacle murders. After 18 years covering the tragedy that ignited this ghastly phenom, it's now clear why they continue.

In 2025, Anne Marie Hochhalter, who was paralyzed in the attack, died. She had suffered greatly from her wounds for 26 years, and they played such a major role in her death, that the coroner ruled it a homicide. So the number of murders has risen to 14, and the total death count to 16. And for the survivors I've come to know so dearly, from Columbine, Parkland, Las Vegas and so many others, the trauma of every new tragedy hits them harder than any of us can comprehend.  It never ends.

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The first edition of Columbine took me ten years, and I thought I was done. That was naive. I step back now to address how Columbine created a new template for these frustrated kids — and how we can prevent school shootings. Columbine is so misunderstood that these copycats are following a false script. The Columbine myths were seized upon by a generation of new killers, looking to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold as heroic champions of the downtrodden.

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Nonsense. Eric cared only about self-aggrandizement, and Dylan was focused on ending his own despair. 

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In the wake of Newtown, Las Vegas, the Pulse nightclub and so many horrors whose names are sadly forgotten, the imperative to understand the attack that initiated this blight grows more urgent. Only by understanding this tragedy can we prevent more.​​