Suicide Pact Twin Wrote Letters to Columbine Alum

The Australian twins who shot themselves at a Colorado firing range may have been obsessed with the Columbine school shootings, which happened just 20 miles from the shooting range where one sister died. Investigators found that Kristin Hermeler, the twin who died, wrote letters to a former Columbine student in 1999, and they found a magazine cover related to the tragedy in the twins’ belongings, CBS 4 reports. Investigators determined that no crime was committed since each twin shot herself.

Kristin’s letters were to Brooks Brown, a student who received so many threats from Columbine gunman Eric Harris a year before the shooting that his parents contacted the police—but who then forgave and befriended Harris, telling his parents just weeks before the shooting he was "a new Eric." “As someone who has been rejected, victimized, and ostracized in their life, I would like to thank you for giving [Eric] that chance,” she wrote. Brown tells the Denver Post he and Kristin went on to talk via phone and email, but hadn’t spoken in years. Surviving sister Candice was “somewhat defensive” while being questioned, a police officer says; she reportedly said, “I don’t give a [expletive]. It happened a long time ago,” when asked about Columbine.
(More Kristin Hermeler stories.)