Columbine: Chapter 21 Summary & Analysis

Eric exhibited “telltale signs of a particular breed of killer” even before adolescence, and as a teen he “settled into a live of petty crime.” The symptoms of what was to come, Cullen writes, were “stark [only] in retrospect.”

In the journals he left behind, Eric wrote “frequently and fondly” of his childhood. He especially loved fireworks and explosions, and shared in his notebook a happy memory of one particular Fourth of July celebration.

Eric was a military brat, and lived in five states over a period of fifteen years. His friends “came and went,” and his parents Wayne and Kathy tried as hard as they could to “smooth over the disruptions.” Wayne—a military man—had no tolerance for misbehavior, and took a carefully-considered approach to each of his children’s punishments. As detectives delve into Eric’s past, they discover “contradictions.” He had been friends with minorities, and an “enthusiast” when it came to sports—a dissonance in his Nazi-obsessed, jock-hating recent profile.

As an eleven-year-old, Eric discovered the video game Doom, and became obsessed. Behind the screen of a computer, “he could triumph over thousands of strangers he had never met.” In 1993, when Eric was in seventh grade, the Harrises moved to Jeffco, to a nice neighborhood just two miles south of Columbine High.