A Big Disturbing Mess

I was reading up on the Columbine high school shooting (spawned from a run into this article on YahooNews this morning) and learned some interesting things about the shooters in that horrible massacre. It's really quite a bit of detail, and you can learn all about it from my trusted source, wikipedia.

But here is my main interest: the boys had a website they created for gaming, which one of the shooters (Eric Harris) turned into a sort-of blog, containing his thoughts on friends, family, school, life. According to wikipedia:

"By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to cause mischief, as well as instructions on how to make explosives and logs in which he described all the trouble he and Klebold were causing. Beginning in early 1997, the blog postings began to show the first signs of Harris's ever-growing anger against society." 

This anger manifested itself in posts about his desire to kill people who annoyed him, violent threats against people at his school, and a hit list of targets. Eventually police started looking into the website; during this time, the boys committed theft and were convicted to a juvenile diversion program. They attended their mandated classes, as well as therapy. Harris continued to meet with his psychologist until a few months before the shooting.

After an early release from diversion based on good behavior, Harris took down the blog portion of the website and it reverted back to its original purpose of gaming. However, he reserved a small portion of the site for continued updates on he and Klebold's progress with gathering weapons and creating bombs. In his journal, he boasted of faking the "good behavior" and leading authorities to believe he was not a threat. The website wasn't taken down until it was made public after the shootings.

The whole thing brings up a ton of what if questions. What if authorities had taken the website more seriously? What if they had actually investigated the information the boys were posting about? What if their parents had read the posts, or personal journal entries? What if they boys hadn't been let off for their admittedly feigned good behavior? What if they hadn't been bullied and teased by their peers at school?

Where do you draw the line in regards to privacy?

Here are the boys:

And I would warn you not to Google search pictures. Some pretty graphic ones that pop up. AND...I came across a tumblr thread about them, with tons of questionable people and posts here. What do you do with stuff like this?? The whole thing is just a big disturbing mess.