Paper short abstract:

The spontaneous shrines erected at the site of the Columbine High School shootings on 20 April, 1999 became the focus of controversy regarding whether the killers could or should also be memorialised. This event raises questions about the ownership of spontaneous shrines and whom they memorialise.

Paper long abstract:

On April 20, 1999, Hitler's birthday, the fatal shooting of twelve students and one teacher at Colorado's Columbine High School was the most deadly of a spate of similar school shootings which swept the United States beginning in 1996. The two assailants, who were also students at Columbine High School, committed suicide before they could be apprehended by authorities. Locally they are never referred to as "murderers," always as "The Shooters."

The elaborate spontaneous shrines which developed on the school parking lot and at an adjacent park were among the first such shrines in the United States to receive national and international media coverage. (The shrine at the site of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995-also timed to coincide with Hitler's birthday-preceded Columbine.)

The Columbine shrines spurred controversy because community members were bitterly divided over the issue of memorializing The Shooters as well as their victims. A minority in the community regarded The Shooters as victims, but others saw them as cold-blooded murderers. The controversy erupted into violence when an outsider from Illinois, Greg Zanis, erected 15 crosses on a rise in the park (13 for the dead students and their teacher, 2 for The Shooters). The two crosses for The Shooters were destroyed in protest. Various other cross assemblages were erected on the site during the next several months, resulting in additional protests from American atheist organizations.

This series of events raises questions about the "ownership" of spontaneous shrines; the memorialisation of not only those who are killed in mass murders but also the killers; and the cross as a focus of protest.