The videotapes made by Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were a “call to arms,” a blueprint for lethal school shootings and an exhortation for others to commit similar acts, FBI behavior analysts said Monday.
As a result, they concluded in an assessment for the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office that the release of the tapes would be “dangerous” and could influence vulnerable adolescents and others to act violently, said John Hess, assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime.
“We feel collectively here that it certainly posed the danger of copycats,” Hess said. “It’s like a recruitment tape. It’s a ‘how to.”‘
Hess stressed that the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit was approached by the sheriff and that it provided an “opinion.” Hess said it was Sheriff Ted Mink’s decision not to release the tapes, not the FBI’s.
FBI analysts Mary Ellen O’Toole and Ronald Tunkel, who have made in-depth studies of school shootings, noted in their report to Jefferson County officials that the massacre at Columbine is the most deadly school shooting in U.S. history and is the “benchmark for school shootings, and, as such, sets the bar for other potential school shooters.”
“It is the opinion of the BAU that ‘The Tapes’ provide instructional material for how to successfully plan and implement a similar or even more violent act,” they said. “In addition, they could serve as a strong motivating influence for emotionally troubled adolescents at risk for suicide and/or homicide.”
Release of the tapes, the FBI said, makes it inevitable that they would be immediately available to any person through the Internet or other forms of communications.
Hess said that brings about the possibility that one “lone wolf” who might not act could find another “lone wolf” on the Internet.
Their interaction could trigger a school shooting which they wouldn’t do without the additional support. Or there is the possibility that a “lone wolf,” spurred on by the tapes, might act by himself, Hess said.
“Some people don’t need much to push them over the edge,” Hess said. “We feel this could do that. You could argue that this video could provide that same support to a lone wolf as Klebold provided to Harris or Harris provided to Klebold.”
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-820-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
