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Joshua Lapp, quoted in CT's cover story (Oct. 4, 1999, p. 32), told me he stands by his account that he heard the killer ask Cassie if she believed in God, that she paused and then said a decisive yes, and that the gunman asked her why and then shot her. He also maintains he heard the same question posed a second time, to Val Schnurr."I heard a voice from a part of the room where I later heard Cassie was," says Evan Todd, another witness in the library. "She was talking to the gunmen. She was praying out loud and they asked her if she believed in God and she said yes. Then they shot her. "I did hear another young lady that I later found out was Val Schnurr," Todd says, "because she was on the opposite side of the room. She was shot or wounded and she was screaming, 'Oh my God, oh my God.' I didn't ever hear them ask her if she believed in God."There are distinct differences between these two encounters: Cassie was shot aftersaying "yes," after the killer asked her "why?"; Schnurr was shot before the question, not after. Moreover, Schnurr and Bernall were on opposite sides of the library, which militates against confusing one with the other, especially amid all the chaos. The account that circulated immediately after the event attests to Cassie's confession, and early testimony is generally accepted as being more reliable than later, revised versions.

As Jefferson County Sheriff's department investigator Gary Muse told me, "Any time you have a traumatic situation, even if only one person gets killed, every testimony is different." Steve Davis insists that these contradictions are "no different than any other aspect of this investigation." Still, one is compelled to ask why Emily Wyant, who was right next to Cassie, does not remember an encounter so clearly recalled by others. How could Craig Scott be so sure he heard Cassie's encounter, then point in the wrong direction? Dee Dee McDermott, director of Eagle View Counseling Centers in Wheat Ridge and Littleton, is trained in trauma recovery and has worked with more than half a dozen of the students who were in the Columbine library during the rampage. "Some people have a great capacity for processing the trauma as it's happening and are able to stay what we call 'fully present,' " she said in an interview. "They have a high level of recall. Other students are so traumatized they do not have the capacity to process all the information. Those students would be the ones who would have what we would call memory blocks. A diagnosis for this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (ptsd)." It could be argued that ptsd would similarly preclude the trustworthiness of witnesses who claim they heard the encounter between Cassie and the killer. This makes the accounts of what multiple witnesses heard independently (as opposed to what others did not hear and therefore cannot verify) all the more relevant. As for Craig Scott's confusion when he was taken back to the library, McDermott says: "People who are interviewing these kids need to understand what trauma does and how they process it. Kids that were in the library associate the trauma with anyone in uniform. They can see a police officer or FBI agent and there [will be] some new wave of trauma. That interferes with accuracy and their feeling safe and just talking. If he is firm on what he heard, I don't think it's [significant] what direction it was coming from. That's highly traumatic to walk into the library. That's not the time to be interviewing a child."There was smoke, which was disorienting, and they were in study carrels with hard wood sides that could have caused echoes," McDermott adds. "They were curled in fetal position upside down, or on their backs, or looking through their legs or knees or under their arms. The poor kid probably can't remember what direction he was facing."

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November (Web-only) 1999, Vol. 43