This is another update to my previous posts about the Evergreen High School shooting report. I still haven’t read the whole 644 pages cover to cover yet. So this time I’m leaning on the latest reporting out of The Denver Post, which is pulling even more details from the report that the public technically has access to, if you’re willing to jump through enough hoops.
One of the more disturbing details is what investigators found carved into one of Desmond Holly’s shoes. The phrase “ER SENDS HIS REGARDS” was etched into the sole. That’s a direct nod to Elliot Rodger, who has basically become the patron saint of the incel movement.
The report also doubles down on what we were already seeing before. The use of terms like “femoid,” the Rodger profile picture, the obsession with violence, and the racist garbage were no coincidences. Experts are now calling it part of a broader “nihilistic violent extremist” network, which is just a cleaner way of saying he was stewing in the worst parts of the internet until it became who he was.
What I still find confusing is how this lines up with the other parts of his life. We’re told he was involved with the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance and that he may have had a same-sex relationship. Then you have him shouting anti-LGBTQ slurs during the attack and carving incel slogans into his shoes. It’s completely contradictory to the incel ethos. To those hateful little cretins, being gay or bi is the same as giving up.
What it points to is something supposedly called “fringe fluidity,” where people bounce between different extremist ideologies and pick up whatever feeds their anger at the moment. That lines up with what I’ve been saying about the so-called True Crime Community. Those spaces don’t just observe violence; they celebrate it. It’s the same way the Columbine cowards became legends in those circles, and it’s the same way figures like Rodger get elevated. You don’t need ideological consistency when the common thread is obsession with violence and notoriety.
The details coming out of the report only reinforce that. He had videos of school shootings set to music on his phone. He fixated on other students in ways that made people uncomfortable. His sister saw warning signs. Friends saw warning signs. The FBI even got tipped off about his online activity months before the attack.
And still, nothing stopped him.
Without question, that failure needs to be addressed. The FBI missing the clues and tips are big, systemic problems.
But am I crazy wondering why no one is talking about where the parents were in all of this?
You’ve got a kid who is deep into incel culture and the kind of communities that idolize mass shooters who accesses a firearm that was supposed to be locked in a safe. We keep hearing about how the parents’ DNA wasn’t on the gun and about how the safe was ‘secure.’ That still doesn’t explain how a 16-year-old walks into a school with a ‘family heirloom’ revolver.
It feels like everyone is comfortable talking about federal failures, abstract systems, and online extremism, but it gets real quiet when it comes to what was going on inside the house.
Meanwhile, another Colorado news outlet, The Denver Post, is out there giving another kiss on the ass to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office for releasing the report. Sure, it’s more than what we used to get. I’ve already said that. That doesn’t mean it deserves a standing ovation.
They’ve also made it clear they’re still holding things back. Details about the shooter’s movements through the school have been redacted, and surveillance footage hasn’t been released. Their reasoning is the same old story we’ve heard before. They don’t want to create a ‘blueprint for copycats.’
Those horses have already left the stable. Which brings us right back to Columbine and everything that followed it. The so-called Basement Tapes were never released for that exact reason. JeffCo Sheriffs withheld records for years before destroying them. The idea was that keeping that material out of the public eye would stop future shooters from being inspired.
How did that work out?
Columbine didn’t fade away because the tapes stayed locked up. It became mythology anyway. It spread through forums, message boards, and eventually social media. People filled in the gaps themselves, and in some cases made it even worse. Copycats didn’t need an official release to latch onto it. They already had everything they needed.
There’s an argument to be made that if more information had been available earlier, we might have been better equipped to recognize the warning signs in later cases. Instead, we got decades of partial information, speculation, and a growing subculture that thrived on exactly that kind of mystery.
Now we’re seeing the same approach again, decades later. Hold some things back to prevent copycats, release just enough to say you’re being transparent, and hope the public buys it.
What we do know is that even with hundreds of pages released, even with clearer insight into the shooter’s ideology and online behavior, the most basic question is still hanging out there.
A teenager radicalized online, surrounded by warning signs, still managed to get a gun from inside his home and bring it into a school.
Everything else is getting explained in detail.
That part still isn’t.
(Source)
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