LITTLETON, Colorado, isn’t famous for pizza. Even if it was, Blackjack Pizza probably isn’t the sort of place you’d cross state lines to visit. But that’s exactly what Jeremy and Eliza did, and Jeremy was ecstatic. It was, for him, the perfect end to the perfect mother-and-son vacation.
It was at this restaurant that the two boys who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in 1999 had worked as cooks. And they were Jeremy’s heroes.
In the early Noughties, Jeremy – not his real name – had spent months trying to convince his mother to take him to the scene of the most notorious mass shooting in US history. Now he led her on a unique tour. He wanted to buy a trench coat, he wanted to try a pepperoni slice and he wanted to see the school itself.
The teenager recorded their whole trip on his camcorder, monologuing breathlessly throughout: “This is the neighbourhood where [one of the killers] used to live,” he gushed. “Just look at this place. It’s beautiful.” In the driver’s seat beside him, Eliza smiled unenthusiastically.
Four months later, her gambit – hoping that the ghoulish trip may temper her son’s interest in school shootings – would prove to be a very bad bet.
Jeremy had suffered from depression and paranoia since he was a teenager. He had tried to kill himself multiple times and was placed in psychiatric care after sending a schoolmate a video of himself with a gun. But despite the obvious danger to himself and others, he was free within weeks and assigned to a social worker, who immediately realised something was very wrong.
She tried to enrol him in an inpatient psychosis treatment programme,
