Columbine (28 page)

S
unday morning, April 25, the Columbine churches were packed. Afterward, the crowds trekked down to the Bowles Crossing Shopping Center, across from Clement Park. Organizers had planned for up to thirty thousand mourners in the sprawling parking lot. Seventy thousand showed up. Vice President Al Gore was on the platform, along with the governor, most of Colorado's congressional delegation, and a whole lot of clergy. The TV networks broadcast the ceremony live.

"Put your faith and trust in the living son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ," Reverend Billy Graham's son Franklin instructed the crowd. "We must be willing to receive His son Jesus Christ."

"Genuine lasting comfort comes only through Jesus Christ," local pastor Jerry Nelson proclaimed. "We, your pastors, urge you: Seek Jesus!"

Jesus Jesus Jesus. There was a whole lot of Him that day. Reverend Graham dominated the ceremony with a long, impassioned appeal for returning prayer to public schools. He invoked the name of his personal savior seven times in a single forty-five-second flurry. "Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?" he asked. He called upon God and Jesus nearly fifty times in course of the speech. Cassie had been ready, he said. She'd stood before a gunman who'd transported her immediately into the presence of Almighty God. "Are you ready?" he asked.

Christian pop star Amy Grant sang twice; a drum and bugle corps performed a stirring rendition of "Amazing Grace"; and a succession of thirteen white doves were released as Governor Bill Owens recited the names of the victims. Toward the end, it began to rain. A slow, steady shower. Nobody moved. Thousands of umbrellas went up, but tens of thousands of mourners just got wet.

For many, Cassie Bernall was the heroine of Columbine. Word spread quickly that her killer had held her at gunpoint and asked if she believed in God. "Yes," she'd answered. She'd professed her faith and had promptly been shot in the head. Vice President Gore recounted her story to the crowd and the cameras. He quoted liberally from Scripture throughout his speech.

"To the families of the victims, may you feel the embrace of the literally hundreds of millions of Americans who grieve with you," Vice President Gore said. "We hold your agony in the center of our prayers. You are not alone."

____

The country was transfixed. In the first ten days, newsmagazines on the four main broadcast networks devoted forty-three pieces to the attack. The shows dominated the ratings that week. CNN and Fox News charted the highest ratings in their history. A week afterward,
USA Today
was still running ten separate Columbine stories in a single edition. It would be nearly two weeks before the
New York Times
would print an issue without Columbine on page 1.

And Cassie Bernall's martyrdom was showing the most legs. "Millions have been touched by a martyr," Pastor Kirsten proclaimed to his congregation. He shared a vision his youth pastor had received while ministering to the Bernalls: "I saw Cassie, and I saw Jesus, hand in hand. And they had just gotten married. They had just celebrated their marriage ceremony. And Cassie kind of winked over at me, like, 'I'd like to talk, but I'm so much in love.' Her greatest prayer was to find the right guy. Don't you think she did?"

Kirsten consoled his grieving congregation, but he saw opportunity in the tragedy to unabashedly save more souls. "Pack that ark with as many people as possible," he said.

Down the road at the Foothills Bible Church, Pastor Oudemolen was sharing a similar enthusiasm. "Men and women, open your eyes!" he declared. "The kids are turning to God! They're going to churches!"

Much of the Denver clergy was appalled. The opportunism at the public service drew an outcry, particularly from mainline Protestant pastors. Reverend Marxhausen, the pastor who'd performed Dylan's funeral, told the
Denver Post
he'd felt "hit over the head with Jesus" at the service.

Evangelicals faced a profound moral dilemma: respect for others' beliefs versus an obligation to stand up for Jesus as the only way, every day. Eric and Dylan had terrorized the country, but they offered an invaluable opportunity as well. Evangelical clergy would answer to God if they wasted it. One thoughtful Evangelical pastor said he approved of using the massacre for recruitment, as long it was truly done for God. He bristled at "spiritual headhunters, just racking up another scalp. The Bible was never meant to be a club," he said. "If I'm using it as a weapon, that's really sad."

____

Craig Scott was a sophomore, sixteen years old, and exceptionally good looking, like his sister Rachel. He had hidden under a library table with Matthew Kechter and Isaiah Shoels. While he was down there, one of the gunmen yelled, "Get anyone with white hats!" Craig was wearing one. He yanked it off and stuffed it under his shirt. Both killers passed his table several times. They stopped there, eventually, and both of them fired. Matt slumped; so did Isaiah. Craig was spared. The shots were so loud Craig thought his ears were going to bleed. He spent much of his time in the fetal position, with his head down, silently praying for courage and strength. When he looked up to assess the damage, Matt and Isaiah had collapsed leaning against each other and moaning. Their blood had pooled around Scott--he couldn't tell whose it was that had soaked into his pants. Smoke or steam was rising up from the rupture in Matt's side.

Then the killers moved into the hallway. "I think they're gone," Craig called out. "Let's get out of here." Other kids were getting up slowly, heading for a side exit. Craig dropped his white hat on the floor by his table. On his way out, a girl under the computer desk said, "Please help me." Kacey Ruegsegger had a big hole in her right shoulder. Scott helped her up. He draped her good arm over his shoulder and led her out.

Outside, they ran for a police car parked on the side of the hill. Cops were there, pointing their guns at the library windows. Craig continued to pray. He asked other kids to join him. Craig had accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, and they needed Him badly now. He led a small prayer group.

The cops shuttled the wounded out first. When Craig's turn came, he heard more gunfire behind him. "They're shooting at us," one of the cops said.

The officers dropped the kids off at a cul-de-sac just off the school grounds. Craig joined hands with others in a group to pray. Then he got to a phone, called his mom, and asked her to pray for his sister. He had a bad feeling about her. He prayed that Rachel was not injured. Within an hour or two, he began accepting that she might be dead. She was. Rachel had been the first one killed, on the lawn outside. Matt and Isaiah were dead too. Kacey lived.

Craig took it hard. He had seen horrible things, but he'd heard something wonderful. In the worst of it in the library, he'd heard a girl profess her faith. Amazing. Craig began telling the story early that first afternoon. It spread like brushfire. Among Evangelicals, e-mails, faxes, and phone calls whipped across the country.

On Friday it hit the mainstream media. Both Denver papers featured it. The
Rocky
's piece, "Martyr for Her Faith," opened with a play-by-play:

A Columbine killer pointed his gun at Cassie Bernall and asked her the life-or-death question: "Do you believe in God?"

She paused. The gun was still there. "Yes, I believe in God," she said.

That was the last thing this 17-year-old Christian would ever say.

The gunman asked her "Why?" She had no time to answer before she was shot to death.

Bernall entered the Columbine High School library to study during lunch. She left a martyr.

The
Post
ran a similar account. The national press quickly jumped aboard. On Saturday, an Evangelical Teen Mania rally in Michigan "turned into a Cassie Bernall festival," according to
Weekly Standard
writer J. Bottum. He described 73,000 teens in the Silverdome "weeping along with sermon after sermon about her death." On Sunday morning, it was proclaimed from countless pulpits.

At first, her mother was unsure what to make of Cassie's martyrdom. But soon Misty was bursting with pride, and her husband, Brad, was, too. "This tragic incident has been thrown back into the face of Satan," Brad said in a statement. He called on teens to step forward while The Enemy was in retreat: "To all young people who hear this: Don't let my daughter's death be for nothing. Make your stand. If you're not in the local church's youth group, try it. They want you and will help support you."

On Monday, Brad and Misty were featured on a
20/20
segment titled "Portrait of an Angel." Stories were circulating that the killers had targeted Evangelicals as well as jocks and minorities. Brad's community presumed that Cassie's response had provoked the killer to shoot. "She knew where he was coming from," Brad said. "And she was saying that, 'You can't defeat me. You can't really kill me. You can take my body away, but you can't kill me. I'm going to live in heaven forever.'"

Initially, Brad seemed to draw a bit more strength from Cassie's bravery than Misty did. "You wake up crying," she said. "I hope one day I can wake up in the morning and not cry. But I said to Brad, I wondered how they could do this. Why did they kill our baby girl? Why did they do that? Why?"

A few days after the
20/20
segment, Brad and Misty appeared on
Oprah
. "Do you wish she had said 'No'?" Oprah asked.

"Knowing that a girl begged for her life and was released" made a big difference, Misty said. Eric had taunted Bree Pasquale for several minutes, repeatedly forcing her to beg, then finally dismissed her. "As a mom, you would have wanted her to beg," Misty said. "So on the one hand, you're like, 'Yeah, I'd have wanted her to beg.' But I can't think of a more honorable way to die than to profess your faith in God."

33. Good-bye

T
wo years before Cassie's murder, Dylan laid out his case for God. He enumerated the pros and cons of his existence. Good: a nice family, a beautiful house, food in the fridge, a few close good friends, and some decent possessions. The bad list went on and on: no girls--not even platonic, no other friends, nobody accepting him, doing badly in sports, looking ugly and acting shy, getting bad grades, having no ambition in life.

Dylan understood what God had chosen for him. Dylan was to be a seeker: "one man in search of answers, never finding them, yet in hopelessness understands things. He seeks knowledge of the unthinkable, of the undefinable, of the unknown. He explores the everything--using his mind, the most powerful tool known to him."

Dylan thrashed about madly, but clarity sometimes emerged: "death is passing through the doors," he wrote. "the ever-existant compulsion of everything is the curiosity to keep moving down the hall." Down the hall, exploring the rooms, finding the answers, raising new questions--at long last, Dylan the seeker would achieve the state he was searching for.

____

Dylan took to referring to humans as zombies. That was a rare similarity to Eric. But pitiful as we zombies were, Dylan didn't want to harm us. He found us interesting, like new toys. "I am GOD compared to some of these un-existable brainless zombies," he wrote.

That was Dylan's first brush with blasphemy. He immediately qualified it: he wasn't claiming godhood, just that he was
like
God compared to humans. It would be months before he'd try it again. Each time, he would push the idea further, but he never quite seemed to believe. As spring 1997 progressed, he filled page after page with aborted attempts.

He saw history as good vs. bad, love vs. hate, God vs. Satan--"The Everlasting Contrast." And he saw himself on the good side.

Eric had more practical concerns. Two months of heat from his dad taught Eric to cover his tracks better. The vandalism missions continued through spring and early summer, with no record of further detection. By mission 5 the boys were drinking again. Wayne appeared to have watched Eric closely for a while, then resumed trusting him. According to Eric, only one outing went alcohol-free.