Alone in his Vermont prison cell in 2008 and accused of kidnapping, drugging, raping, and murdering his 12-year old niece, child-sexual abuse victim and serial sexual predator Michael Jacques wrote letters to his friend plotting a scheme to pin the blame on a concocted international child abduction ring.
But Jacques’ letters, released by prosecutors to the media last week, also show Jacques intoxicated about the prospect of his becoming rich and famous.
“Being a celebrity of sorts appears to have some [serious] financial potential,” wrote Jacques. “So far I have gotten requests from Larry King, Dr. Phil and Dateline. Dude, we are talking like $50,000 for an appearance! … When I win this case I should be able to rake in over a million between the talk show circuits, book deals, speaking engagements, etc. I will definitely be buying you that boat you’ve always wanted.” (Valley News, November 13, 2010)
Now flash back to the Columbine High School massacre of April 20, 1999.
Some say that the killings could have been prevented if the parents of one of the perpetrators, Dylan Klebold, had been alert to the firearms poorly concealed in their son’s room and clothing. Or if police had investigated reports that the second killer, Eric Harris, had made death threats and openly fantasized about building bombs. Or if Harris had not been taking Luvox, an anti-depression drug reported by its manufacturer to induce mania in four percent of children and young people who take it. Or if the pair had not been superbly trained to hit moving targets with firearms by the then-popular videogame Doom. Or if they had not been subject to their peers’ incessant and vicious taunting.
In a set of five home videos, carefully left behind for discovery in Harris’ bedroom, the two teens offered their own explanations for why they murdered thirteen people and then killed themselves. Klebold vents his rage against “stuck up” kids who put him down ever since his years in daycare. Harris, the mastermind, expressed bitterness toward his military family and their constant moves, each new school forcing him to start out “at the bottom of the ladder … [where peers constantly mocked] my face, my hair, my shirts.”
But all these potential explanations miss another that compels us to contemplate the role models that come at us via screen-based entertainment. Klebold and Harris’s T-shirts bore the acronym NBK, referring to the film, Natural Born Killers. Lead Columbine investigator Kate Battan spent months reviewing the evidence, including Harris’ journal and the never-made-public bedroom videos. Battan concludes that Klebold and Harris were motivated primarily by a desire to achieve fame in avenging their loser status. “All the rest of the justifications are just smoke,” she concluded. Deputy District Attorney Steve Jensen seconded, “It is obvious that these guys wanted to become cult heroes of some kind.”
“We’re going to kickstart a revolution,” said Harris, seeking to upend a school status hierarchy with them at the bottom. Klebold bragged to his video camera that Hollywood would engage in a bidding war to tell his tale: “Directors will be fighting over this story.”
What connects Jacques to Klebold is the gutter into which American commercial culture has fallen so deeply. Larry King, did you offer $50,000 to Jacques?
