David Vann, author of Last Day on Earth, a portrait of Feb. 14, 2008 gunman Steven Kazmierczak, believes in the value of truth.

In the aftermath of the NIU shooting that left six dead and more than 20 injured, the media got the story wrong, Vann said. And an NIU Police report released more than two years later didn’t get it right enough.

So Vann, who said he at one point had nearly memorized a 1,500-page file about the shooting to which he had exclusive access, answered questions in front of about 50 members of the NIU and DeKalb community Tuesday night at Barnes and Noble, 2439 Sycamore Road in DeKalb.

‘Of All People, Why…You?’

Several audience members wanted to know, “Why Vann?” Why did he write the story, and how did he gain access to information no one else could?

“I find it interesting this guy from 2,000 miles away is writing this book,” said Jennifer Cooper, a recent NIU graduate who was on campus Feb. 14, 2008.

Vann said he pitched a story to Esquire about the access suburban youth have to guns, and instead was assigned a profile of Kazmierczak.

Vann said because he wasn’t a reporter, he was able to talk to Kazmierczak’s friends and professors, who he came to realize “didn’t know anything” about Kazmierczak’s background.

“The Steve that they knew didn’t match with what he did at the end,” Vann said. His reporting took him back to Elk Grove Village, Kazmierczak’s home town, where he found a very different picture of the straight-A NIU student in interviews with his junior high and high school friends: a troubled family background, a long history of mental health issues, an obsession with guns.

Those insights, along with reading the books the Kazmierczak read and watching the movies he did, were what allowed him exclusive access to the 1,500-page file.

“I was just curious about that report, because of all people, why would you be able to see that before anyone else?” asked one NIU student.

Vann shared his information with several agencies also investigating the case, and they allowed him to see the file, which contained police reports, mental health records and emails from Kazmierczak.

Vann said he was also compelled to expand his Esquire article into Last Day on Earth to give the NIU and DeKalb communities information he felt they weren’t receiving.

“I think one thing that was very frustrating for a lot of people here was that NIU police, Chief [Donald] Grady, didn’t release any information for a long time,” Vann said.

A ‘Disappointing’ Report

NIU police released a 300-page report in March 2010, a report that Vann said contained inaccuracies and omissions.

“For a report, it was incredibly disappointing,” he said. “It was missing a lot of information; some information was wrong … That’s not very satisfying for an event that had such an extreme effect on the community.”

Vann said he found discrepancies in the timing of events as compared to a radio log of events, such as getting the injured to ambulances.

“It’s not like this was fiendishly done or something, but it was a little beyond just being lazy,” Vann said. “It did make it seem like the response was more coordinated and put-together.”

Vann said the media that descended on NIU’s campus after the shooting also misreported information; certain victims in Cole Hall that day were reported as dead when they, in fact, were not.

“Our media is just shamefully idiotic and unhelpful and sensationalist, and we should be taking them to task for that,” Vann said.

‘Hard to Swallow’

One NIU student, who was in the auditorium Feb. 14, 2008, told Vann Tuesday she read Last Day on Earth with an open mind, but it was difficult to do.

“It’s hard for me to put in words getting to know [Kazmierczak] because I don’t want to know him like that,” she said.

Vann said he had feared speaking in DeKalb because of the community’s closeness to the event.

Diana Sanderson, sophomore marketing major, and Kathleen Abell, sophomore OMIS major, said though they weren’t on campus during the shooting, it still hit close to home for them.

“Just the fact that it’s our home,” Sanderson said. “…I knew people that were here.”

Vann said he was sympathetic to Kazmierczak’s suffering in his early life.

“I also think that [in Kazmierczak’s] childhood, people around him should have been helping him, but there are no excuses, which has been said a million times, for what he did,” the student who had been in Cole Hall on Feb. 14 said during the event.

As Vann tried to recall details from the report, he apologized to her.

“I’m sorry; I understand that it bizarre to…”

“You don’t have to apologize, I understand,” the student replied. “I read your book … but it’s just kind of hard to swallow. And I think that’s why you may have been scared to come here.”

Vann said in a previous interview he had received messages from members of the DeKalb community telling him not to come, and NIU had not wanted him to speak on campus.

‘Effecting Change’

Vann said Kazmierczak’s story does not implicate NIU – it was actually the only place Kazmierczak had started to see success and turn his life around – but his story does implicate American society.

“What we get distracted by in school shootings is that we want to heal each other and be made whole again and reassure ourselves that we’re all good. And afterward but we don’t actually ever use a school shooting to try to effect change,” he said.

Vann said he is scared of America in a way he wasn’t before researching Last Day on Earth.

“The next [school shooting is] going to happen,” he said. “We’re going to have an endless series of these until we decided to wake up and make some kind of change.”

Vann also said American media can glamorize mass murderers.

“The truth is about these school shooters is there’s nothing cool or interesting or mythic or grand about what they do. It’s all small and shitty and stupid,” he said.

Identifying ‘A Life Perfectly Shaped for Mass Murder’

Vann said he first tried to understand the end of Kazmierczak’s life as a suicicde – Kazmierczak turned the gun on himself in Cole Hall after killing five others – instead of as a mass murder.

Vann said he wanted to understand how Kazmierczak’s shooting spree had been possible, but that he cannot understand how it was inevitable.

“I wanted to not make him a monster in this. I wanted to think of him as a suicide and someone suffering and get as close as possible to understanding his story. But by the end, when he plans it 11 days in advance and has these chirpy emails with his friends … at that point I hate him and I think he’s a monster … at that point, he just went off the map for me … it’s too much,” Vann said.

Vann identified common traits in mass murderers: male, libertarian, a mental health history, an affinity for guns and for using them and, if they are old enough, to have served in the military.

“He had a perfect storm of all these factors that came together that made the shooting possible,” Vann said.

There were no warning signs anyone at NIU could have seen or known about, though, Vann said; Kazmierczak’s time at NIU was a “five-year gap” in which he started to turn his life around.

“It’s kind of reassuring to know that there was that gap. Because otherwise you wonder, ‘God, can you trust your perceptions of anyone?'” he said.

‘A Dark and Depressing Time’

The writing of the Last Day on Earth was personal to Vann – not only because he included parts of his own life in memoir, but because of the emotional toll it took on him.

He said he would never write a story similar to Last Day on Earth again.

“It was really a dark and depressing time writing this book,” he said. “…It was a very grim story, and I wrote it quicker than I’ve written any book before because I wanted it out of my head. I honestly just wanted it out of my life, like the people who didn’t want me to come here to town.”

Vann spent several years in his youth shooting out street lamps and aiming his guns at his neighbors. He wondered how he had come so close to hurting people, why he ultimately didn’t as Kazmierczak had.

“To me, it’s an interesting question because it’s the darkest part of my life and myself,” he said “And I think that it can be helpful to understand the darkest parts of ourselves.”

Another reason the story was personal to Vann was that he had inherited those guns from his father after his father’s suicide. Vann said he tried to understand his father’s suicide better by writing Last Day on Earth.

“That’s been my experience: Whenever something has a huge impact on your life, you want to understand it.”