Columbine: Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

On Thursday morning—two days after the shooting—the Denver Post runs a headline which reads: HEALING BEGINS. The “rush to closure” is not well-received in Jeffco, and in the weeks to follow, the survivors will find it difficult to move on despite “grumble[s]” that it is time for healing to indeed begin in earnest.

On Thursday, the families of the victims have their loved ones’ bodies returned to them. Heroic but false tales of the victims’ bravery begin to spread—Brian Rohrbough is “irritated” by the narratives, believing that his son’s death was “tragic enough.”

In Clement Park, next to Columbine, students gather in a “prayer mosh.” One young girl invokes the presence of The Enemy—Satan is in their midst, she says. Another official gathering is organized at another nearby megachurch, and again Frank DeAngelis is called upon to speak. Counselors advise him that he is “the key” to letting students know that it is okay to show emotion. As Mr. D takes to the stage, his students chant “We are Columbine,” and he begins to cry. He assures them “keeping [emotion] inside doesn’t mean you’re strong.”

The school considers how they will finish out the year. The building will not be opened for months, and so administrators decide to follow a split-day schedule with Chatfield, a nearby rival high school. Figuring out a “long-term solution [proves] trickier.” Some want the school to be demolished, while some worry that losing the school will traumatize some students even more deeply.

Victims’ funerals become a chance for Evangelical ministers to decry the presence of “Satan” and urge communities not to let “hatred be repaid by hatred.” The “boys with bombs” are not the enemies, these preachers claim. Satan is the only Enemy. One such preacher, Reverent Kirsten, believes—and passes on to his congregation the belief—that the “Great signs of the Apocalypse” are under way.

Reverend Don Marxhausen disagrees with the Evangelicals—he recognizes that Eric and Dylan are the symptom of a larger societal ill. Marxhausen and other non-Evangelical members of the clergy begin to realize that all the new “members” of their congregations are not coming to church to be saved, but rather to be comforted. Kids continue to “pour into churches,” many of which offer free snacks and warm drinks. In nearby parks and at makeshift memories, Evangelicals distribute pocket-sized Bibles and Scientologists hand out pamphlets.

Detectives work the angle of the “physical evidence”: primarily the ordnance the killers left behind. They find that the propane bombs were a “mess,” constructed by someone who didn’t understand anything about how bombs worked. Detectives attempt to track the boys’ guns to their origins, but the shotguns do not have serial numbers and are “impossible to trace.”

Robyn Anderson confesses her role in acquiring the guns to the cops, who press her heavily for even more incriminating information. She insists that she had no idea that Eric and Dylan were planning an attack, and that they even “assured her they would never hurt anyone.” The investigators press her about the pipe bombs, but she “holds her ground” and insists that the boys never told her about their experiments. She maintains that their actions never aroused her suspicions that they were planning something violent.

Bomb squads, after combing the crime scene, find almost one hundred explosive devices. The unexploded propane bombs would have killed “five hundred people” in a few seconds, and the discovery of those devices “changed everything” for investigators as they began to realize the nature of the attack—it was a failed bombing, not ever planned as a shooting. Though officials announce the discover of the bombs, the media does not “grasp the implications,” and continues to filter all new developments through the lens of the shooting as “outcasts targeting jocks.”