The authors of two new books on the Columbine tragedy seem unaware of its genesis. Ann Rule missed the fact that Ted Bundy was an alcoholic, so what’s new. And some socialists defend an addicted cop killer.
Enablers of the month:
Vincent Carroll, who reviewed Jeff Kass’s Columbine: A True Crime Story and Dave Cullen’s Columbine for The Wall Street Journal. Carroll doesn’t mention Eric Harris’s drug use, including the fact that his favorite drugs were vodka and whiskey. The implication is that neither book Carroll reviewed identified alcoholism as the root of the tragedy. I’d like to hope that someone who has read either of these books will prove me wrong. (Had TAR been in existence at the time, Harris and his apparently codependent friend Dylan Klebold would have been the Top Story of the Year. They were mentioned in the April-May 2007 issue of TAR in the Top Story on the mass murderer Seung-Hui Cho, who murdered 32 students and faculty at Virginia Tech.)
The International People’s Democratic Uhuru Movement, a group of organizations led by the African People’s Socialist Party, which organized a march of 60 people in support of Lovelle Mixon, 26, who murdered four Oakland, California police officers after a routine traffic stop by two motorcycle cops. As Mixon exited his vehicle, he grabbed a handgun from his car and not only shot the two cops, who fell to the ground, but then approached and—get this—shot them in the head execution-style before fleeing on foot. He ended up at his sister’s apartment building, where he had apparently stored an SKS rifle, which he used to ambush the SWAT team as it entered the apartment, killing two SWAT team officers before he was shot and killed. Mixon was no stranger to the criminal justice system: beginning at age 13 he was arrested multiple times for battery. The day prior to the police shootings, Mixon was linked by DNA to the February 2009 rape of a 12-year-old girl. Investigators said he may have committed as many as five other rapes in the same neighborhood during recent months. Those 60 marchers who supported this monster obviously suffer from distortions of perception and confabulated thinking, which are usually rooted in psychotropic drug addiction.