10 years later, the real story behind Columbine

A decade after Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold made Columbine a synonym for rage, new information indicates that much of what the public has been told about the shootings is wrong, USA Today reports. The two teenagers who killed 13 people and themselves at suburban Denver's Columbine High School 10 years ago next week weren't in the "Trenchcoat Mafia," disaffected video gamers who wore cowboy dusters. The killings ignited a national debate over bullying, but the record now shows Harris and Klebold hadn't been bullied--in fact, they had bragged in diaries about picking on freshmen and "fags." Their rampage put schools on alert for "enemies lists" made by troubled students, but the enemies on their list had graduated from Columbine a year earlier. In fact, the pair's suicidal attack was planned as a grand--if badly implemented--terrorist bombing that quickly devolved into a 49-minute shooting rampage when the bombs Harris built fizzled. So whom did they hope to kill? Everyone--including friends. What's left, after peeling away a decade of myths, is perhaps more comforting than the "good kids harassed into retaliation" narrative--or perhaps not. It's a portrait of Harris and Klebold as a sort of In Cold Blood criminal duo: a deeply disturbed, suicidal pair who over more than a year psyched each other up for an Oklahoma City-style terrorist bombing...

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