Columbine both symbol, obsession

The Finnish man and the Plymouth Meeting kid may have been separated by 4,100 miles, but they were drawn together by a shared obsession: Columbine.

More than eight years after the bloodiest high school massacre in U.S. history, Columbine has become a towering symbol of retribution and martyrdom among would-be imitators far beyond Littleton, Colo.

To some sympathizers, including 14-year-old Dillon Cossey, whose plan to attack Plymouth Whitemarsh High School was thwarted by police last month, Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have ascended to the status of folk heroes.

"I was shocked to find that there is this subculture of hero worship for Klebold and Harris," District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. said Tuesday, discussing Columbine-related Internet communications between Cossey and 18-year-old Pekka-Eric Auvinen.

On Nov. 7, Auvinen murdered six students, a nurse and the principal at Jokela High School in Tuusula, Finland, then killed himself.

Cossey's lawyer confirmed Monday that his client and Auvinen had communicated about their mutual interest in the Colorado shootings and several violent online videos. But Cossey knew nothing of Auvinen's plans, his attorney said.

There are reasons why Columbine continues to pipe its siren song to the outcast and the bullied, experts say. It has joined the short list of events whose enormity is conveyed in a single phrase:

Katrina. 9/11. D-Day. Columbine.

"It has become a kind of symbol - or a zenith - of an antihero explosion," said Princeton University sociologist Katherine Newman, coauthor of

Rampage: The Social Roots of School Shootings

.

On April 20, 1999, Klebold and Harris killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 23 other students before committing suicide.

They set the warped standard by which other shooters measure themselves. No one talks about trying to "outdo" the violence in Paducah, Ky. (site of a 1997 shooting at a school prayer service), or Jonesboro, Ark. (a 1998 ambush), but there have been numerous attempts to best Columbine.

In 2001, shortly before killing two and injuring 13 at Santana High School in Santee, Calif, Charles "Andy" Williams, 15, bragged that he would "pull a Columbine."

Montgomery County authorities seized Cossey's computer on Oct. 10, along with a semiautomatic carbine, knives, homemade grenades, swords and other weapons. The boy, who had been home-schooled by his mother after complaining of being bullied, is in custody awaiting a hearing that could keep him in a treatment program until he is 21.

Castor said a computer analysis confirmed Cossey and Auvinen had "sporadic" communication though YouTube, a popular site for posting amateur videos. He said their instant messages and postings directly to the site could not be accessed by investigators, however, because they were not preserved.

Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University and past president of the American Psychological Association, said he wasn't surprised the two found each other, given the magnetic pull of Columbine and the technological ease with which like-minded people can connect.

"It's totally logical," Farley said. "This is like a next step: direct communication between perpetrators, or potential perpetrators."

Web sites such as Facebook, YouTube and MySpace, benign entertainment to the vast majority of users, can be meeting places for those who share dark interests.

"Psychopaths and homicidal folks can link up. It's perfect for that," Farley said.

A MySpace representative said that the company had found no foreshadowing of the Auvinen shootings on the site, though "we are in contact with local law enforcement in Finland to provide any assistance."

The story of Harris and Klebold, told in their own words, offers tantalizing drama to many youths who make their way to chat rooms devoted to the topic. In the so-called "Basement Tapes," shot by the killers before their shooting spree and available on the Web in transcribed excerpts, disaffected teenagers find their own Zapruder film.

Other video fuels the obsession. Many school shootings end in minutes. Columbine went on for hours, allowing news crews to record searing images of children jumping from windows and the wounded being rushed away. School surveillance tapes and subsequent investigations revealed details that kept the story in the news for years.

Some identify with the Columbine story because it contains the tragic element of warnings missed, Newman said. Before the shooting, a parent alerted Colorado police to a Web site on which Harris had posted death threats. Investigators drafted an affidavit for a search warrant, but never acted on it.

Columbine continues to be referenced in mainstream culture, in music by stars like Eminem, on TV shows such as

Law & Order

, and in documentaries such as Michael Moore's

Bowling for Columbine.

It is grotesquely reenacted in violent video games, notably Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, which went online on April 20, 2005, the sixth anniversary of the shootings. In it, a player carries a Tec-9 semiautomatic as he or she moves through the school, deciding whom to kill.

Columbine stands as "one of those pop-cultural epochal events," said Carl Raschke, a professor of religious studies at the University of Denver and author of

Painted Black

, about occult subcultures. It's significance is in the eye of the beholder.

To Cossey and Auvinen, Castor said this week, Klebold and Harris were the "quintessential bully vigilantes."