Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui apparently took some inspiration from Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. That’s a truly depressing way to mark today, the eighth anniversary of their attack.
Cho mentioned the Columbine High killers as martyrs in correspondence he sent to NBC. The letter was part of a “manifesto” that also included pictures and a DVD. Before his manifesto surfaced, Cho murdered 32 innocent people before killing himself. He mimicked Harris and Klebold. They murdered 12 students and a teacher at Columbine on April 20, 1999, then killed themselves.
The poses with weapons and the paranoid rant that Cho sent to NBC looked and sounded sickeningly like the writings and images of Harris and Klebold.
It seemed like enough to qualify Cho as a copycat. Or at least a kindred spirit.
Cho’s invocation of the Columbine killers let the pair once more kick their community from the grave. By showing Cho vamping with pistols and knives, NBC gave the Virginia Tech killer the same notoriety Harris and Klebold craved and got. It was all there – the blame-placing, the narcissism, the rage, the savagery.
Publicizing and modeling madness is a sad byproduct of the Internet age.
“That’s the reality of the world,” said University of Pittsburgh psychiatry professor Ed Mulvey. “Now, we have to figure out how to deal with it.”
Mulvey, a leading researcher on violence, knows the world is not safer because Cho’s photos and video have been plastered on newspaper covers, television screens and computer monitors around the world. But Mulvey is not sure the publicity has made the world less safe, either.
Bill Woodward of the University of Colorado’s Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence said the point is moot.
“Once anybody knew (Cho’s correspondence) was there, I’m not sure NBC could have held it,” said Woodward, an ex-cop. “I think it’s better to get it out there and get it over with.”
Cho never saw the “basement tapes” Harris and Klebold recorded before their rampage. A judge sealed those tapes from public view. Yet Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis, one of the few allowed to see the basement tapes, said there are “amazing similarities” between the rants of Harris and Klebold and the rant Cho sent to NBC.
Images, said Mulvey, don’t plant the seeds of homicide. Shared emotions might. Those who believe that they have nothing to lose by losing their lives “spend a lot of time thinking about how to do it,” Mulvey said. “When there’s a vivid image in the culture, like Columbine, they gravitate to it. They think: ‘Here’s someone who took care of their problem’ … Those sorts of models can move people from thinking about it to doing it.”
Finding the angry, alienated potential mass murderers and getting them into treatment is the challenge.
“It’s hard to get people hospitalized before they reach a very dangerous stage,” said Dr. Phil Weintraub, a psychiatry professor at the University of Colorado.
From his own research, Mulvey knows that fluctuations in anger – not depression or anxiety – predict violence in people who are mentally ill. He and Weintraub also know that among those with mental health problems, folks like Harris, Klebold and Cho occupy a lunatic fringe.
“The vast majority of people are horrified” by the Columbine and Virginia Tech killings, Weintraub emphasized. After Columbine, he added, more people recognized and reported behavior that hinted at violence.
After Virginia Tech, predicted Mulvey, the debate will be about “what small proportion of people should have to be placed in mandated community care.”
That didn’t happen with Cho, despite the fact that his teachers and classmates reported dangerous behavior.
In the end, nothing may be enough.
“Nobody wants to think about this,” said Mulvey. “But there will always be people you’re never going to find who do horrible things.”
On the anniversary of Columbine’s infamy – with the blood at Virginia Tech barely dry – there could hardly be worse news.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-954-1771, jspencer@denverpost.com or blogs.denverpost.com/spencer.
