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Did Cassie Bernall confess her faith in God moments before Dylan Klebold shot her? Did he, in fact, even pose the question "Do you believe in God?" that allowed Cassie's "yes"?

Ever since the online site Salon.com ran an article subtitled "Everything You Know About the Littleton Killings Is Wrong" (Sept. 23) in which Dave Cullen attempted to debunk popular perceptions of the Columbine massacre, skepticism has mounted about the veracity of the alleged exchange between Cassie and her killer.

But the larger question is this: Why has Cullen's dubious assertion, based on incomplete reporting, so captured the imaginations of the media?

According to Cullen, investigators from the Jefferson County Sheriff's department encountered conflicting testimony about Cassie's last minutes. As a result, they have publicly stated doubts about whether the question was ever posed to Bernall. "A far more likely" scenario, Cullen wrote, has the story of Columbine survivor Val Schnurr "apparently misattributed to Cassie." The media seized upon Cullen's speculations, and the controversy took off.

In a Washington Postarticle (Oct. 14), Hanna Rosin took the controversy to new levels when she dismissed the encounter as a myth and then made the leap that "myth" alone is sufficient to animate the religious fervor of evangelicals, regardless of whether it is true. "It's the power of the story that counts," she wrote. "The truth is a trifle . Should believers accept the literal truth, they'd be left with a hopeless equation."Mary Schmich and Eric Zorn echoed these thoughts in the Chicago Tribune(Oct. 20). "I suspect history will ultimately favor the Bernall myth over the Schnurr facts," Zorn wrote. "I'm not surprised," Schmich replied conceding that Cassie's biography, She Said Yes, is "an interesting little book, even if the title is wrong."

Leave aside, for the moment, the disparaging and demeaning implications behind these assumptions about believers how are they different from Jesse Ventura saying "organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people"? Neither Rosin nor Zorn nor Schmich, let alone Cullen, has proven the debunking case. The writers settle for the Jefferson County Sheriff Office's opinions about something that the investigators themselves claim to have no stake in. In two separate interviews, information officer Steve Davis told me, "We are not in a position to say it didn't happen" and "We have no reason or desire to prove or disprove this story."

Legitimate questions have caused these doubts. Emily Wyant, a friend of Cassie's who was with her in the library, has said that she cannot recall the exchange between Klebold and Bernall. Craig Scott, who was also in the library during the shooting, attested to hearing the exchange between Bernall and her killer, but later pointed to the table of Val Schnurr when he was taken into the library and asked to point to the location of the voices. There has never been any dispute about Schnurr being asked the question and answering yes. She survived. Many are now presuming, as Cullen indicated, that people must have confused the alleged Bernall encounter with Schnurr's.But there are equally compelling reasons for handling these doubts circumspectly. Several independent witnesses remain convinced that they heard the exchange between Cassie and her killer, including Craig Scott, despite his subsequent disorientation in the library. These dissenting voices have remained unreported by the writers disputing Cassie's final moments. "The whole world could say Cassie never said yes to the gunman," says Craig Scott, "and I'd still stand by my knowledge that she did. They can throw this all around, but I was there. Reporters or investigators can't tell me how it went. I was there. I heard what I heard."

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November (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43