The suicidal twins from Australia showed us that once again, it comes back to Columbine. Or, as columnist Mike Littwin in the Denver Post put it, "The enduring lesson of Columbine is, of course, that it never goes away."
The story of the 29-year-old sisters promised to be another crime with a bizarre twist. Then the Columbine angle got added in.
Kristin and Candice Hermeler attempted a double suicide at an Arapahoe County shooting range this past Monday, relatively close to Columbine High School (at least compared to Australia), where gunmen Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot themselves after shooting dead 13 others.
One of the Australian women, Kristin, is dead. The other, Candice, has survived.
Investigators found a photocopy of a May 1999 Time magazine cover with the images of Harris and Klebold "among the twins' belongings," the Denver Post reported. Kristin had also written at least two letters to Brooks Brown, the on again off again friend of Harris and Klebold, after the 1999 shootings.
Candice has denied any Columbine influence, but Columbine does seem part of the equation. Kristin wrote Brooks that she had identified with Harris and Klebold because she had been "rejected, victimized, ostracized."
When the Columbine connection to this story became known, I was waiting for media criticism along the lines of , "If Time magazine hadn't put Harris and Klebold on the cover, these women wouldn't have been influenced to commit suicide."
But suicide, and school shootings, (which are intertwined) are not that easy. People are not driven to such extreme acts because they read a story - or played a violent video game.
The Hermeler story is still developing, but preliminarily, victimization looks to be a root cause. Examining those types of issues, and promoting help for those who feel suicidal, are crucial. And the media can play a role by investigating problems and solutions rather than being blamed for them.