Columbine killing `facts' prove to be suburban legends

FIVE MONTHS after America's worst school shooting, nearly every early assumption about the two boys who went on a rampage with guns and pipe bombs at Columbine High School in Colorado is being undone by the detailed official investigation now nearing its conclusion.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not, as first reported, members of a marginal school clique known as the Trench Coat Mafia and had no particular affinity with Goths or other Satanic youth subcultures. If they wore trenchcoats on the day of the attack, investigators believe, it was out of a simple practical concern to conceal their weapons as they crossed the school car park.

Although they mounted their attack on Hitler's birthday, 20 April, and showed a certain morbid interest in Nazism, they were not neo-Nazis and demonstrated in their writings that they hated racists every bit as much as Jews or blacks.

Nor does it seem they harboured a particular grudge against "jocks", the sporty rich kids who rule the social roost in the affluent conformist atmosphere of suburban Denver. A widely circulated report that they shouted "All jocks stand up!" as they entered the school library, scene of the worst of the carnage, now appears untrue.

Intriguingly, the story of Cassie Bernall, a victim considered a religious martyr by her family, friends and local church, appears to be based on a crucial misattribution. A fast-growing legend, spread most notably by the girl's mother in a recent bestselling book, has the killers asking young Cassie whether she believed in God. When she replied yes, they blew her away.

Investigators now say that exchange took place with a different girl, Valeen Schnurr, who was shot but survived - a fact that raises serious questions about the honesty of the martyrdom drive.

Harris and Klebold, the investigators say, were not out to get Christians or any other specific group. Their plan was simply to kill as many people as possible.

"I f****** hate the world," is the first entry in Harris's occasional journal, say leaks published in the online magazine Salon.

Later, he writes: "After I mow down a whole area full of you snotty ass rich mother-f***** high strung God-like- attitude-having worthless pieces of sh**** whores, I don't care if I live or die." The journal rails against "niggers and spicks", but also against rich white people and racists who hate Asians or Mexicans "because they are different".

It also lambasts targets as varied as fitness freaks, Star Wars fans and viewers of the Warner Brothers television network. The hatred expressed by Harris and Klebold appears to be all-inclusive, not at all discriminatory.

The teenagers killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher before turning their weapons on themselves. They probably would have killed dozens or even hundreds more if two large propane bombs left in the cafeteria had exploded.

The episode, the most sensational in a string of school shootings over the past two years, triggered a frenzy of national soul-searching, fuelled by the media, in which pundits and self-appointed experts sought to establish a clear cause for the madness.

Liberals called for tighter gun control, conservatives for a halt to Hollywood-inspired violence. Right-wing Christians talked of religious persecution, and minority advocacy groups talked of racial hatred because one of the victims was black.

Among other initiatives, President Bill Clinton has supported the passage of "hate crimes" laws to underline the nation's disapproval of violence committed in the name of a reprehensible ideology.

It now appears no such ideology was in operation, apart perhaps from the ideology of blanket hatred.