Suicide Pact Twin Wrote Letters to Columbine Alum

She talked with Brooks Brown in 1999
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 21, 2010 12:40 PM CST
Suicide Pact Twin Wrote Letters to Columbine Alum
The Arapahoe County Sheriff's Department released this photo of Kristin A. Hermeler, 29, of Australia who died in the double suicide attempt at the shooting range south of Denver on Nov. 15, 2010.   (AP Photo/Arapahoe County Sheriff)

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.)

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