The affidavit contains the following bullet-pointed summaries of items from Higgins's purple journal:
• 10-15-16: Brooke Higgins said she had been using Cocaine for the past few months, didn't know why she was so sad and was hoping neurofeedback with her counselor would create a new chapter in her life.
• 11-12-15: Brooke Higgins wrote she didn't know why she was so deeply unhappy, was sickened by the world and its materialistic inhabitants and said nothing was better after starting her neurofeedback treatments.
• 12-01-15: Brooke Higgins wrote she was recently in an accident and had wished she had died, nothing mattered to her and wanted to shoot people around her before killing herself. Brooke Higgins wrote about hating life, destroying mankind and was tired of [being] the only one suffering. Brooke Higgins also used a distinct date of January 12th as a date she would kill herself, wanted to kill everyone and said no one else deserved to be alive in the world.
• 12-05-15: Brooke Higgins wrote that things were weird inside of her because she was sad, but incredibly angry at the world. She wrote a day did not go by that she did not think about killing herself or the people around her. Brooke Higgins wrote she had wished she had done Columbine with Eric and Dylan, they were incredibly smart and everything in Eric's journal made sense to her. Brooke Higgins wrote she had very similar thoughts to Eric and wanted to be in charge, destroy and be impossible to kill. Brooke Higgins indicated she wanted to die, advised she died long ago and she was an empty shell.
• 12-07-15: Brooke Higgins wrote no one knows what she is capable of and her mind is insanely sick. Brooke Higgins wrote she hated [deleted] and hoped he killed himself so she didn't have to. Brooke Higgins wrote that many people deserve to be shot, needed to get a gun and then stated it was good she didn't have one because she'd be dead and others would be. Brooke Higgins indicated she was tired of everything and the only path with hope is one with evil, chaos and destruction.
• 12-10-15: Brooke Higgins wrote she didn't want to be alive anymore, she didn't know who she was anymore and wanted to die. Brooke Higgins indicated she hated the world, hated herself and wouldn't be on Earth much longer.
Following this rundown, the affidavit features an interview with an individual whose name is blacked out in the document but is clearly Sienna Johnson, the other person charged in the case. In this section, Johnson maintains that she made a map of the school after Higgins talked to her about shooting up the school and emphasizing "she was not kidding."
Another friend of Higgins's told authorities (who'd first been alerted to the possible scheme via a text-a-tip service system set up post-Columbine) that Higgins Snapchatted comments such as "I'm gonna kill everyone here lol" and "I'm gonna shoot up the school." The friend also maintained that Higgins communicated with her twice in one day on the topic of contacting a third person in order to get a gun.
At yesterday's hearing, Higgins reportedly sobbed as she accepted her sentence, but in her apology for her actions, she said she was sorry she "joked and talked about" violent actions. Likewise, her defense attorneys and family members characterized her writings and musings as expressions of teenage pain that she never planned to turn into reality.
DA Brauchler has a very different view. In a statement following the sentencing, he said, "This agreement provided us the greatest opportunity to get the most public safety and justice for the community. What this defendant did was not just idle chatter. At the same time, the agreement offers the best chance for rehabilitation for this defendant, who has accepted responsibility and has earned that chance.”
The 411 days Higgins has been in custody since her arrest will be credited toward her juvenile sentence. Johnson is next due in court for a status conference on February 27.
Here's the arrest affidavit, followed by two previous reports.
Update, 7:03 a.m. December 21, 2016: In our report earlier this week about the plea deal accepted by Brooke Higgins in regard to an alleged plot to launch a Columbine-style attack at Mountain Vista High School, we reported that the teen was prosecuted under the juvenile system. That assertion turns out to have been accurate but incomplete.
According to 18th Judicial District DA George Brauchler, the deal offered to Higgins is a first of its kind for his office; the conspiracy to commit murder charge went through adult court, while the solicitation to commit murder count was processed under the juvenile system.
Brauchler says the adult-court component insures that details about what happened will be publicly available; had both accusations been adjudicated in juvenile court, the case would have been sealed. In addition, the agreement guarantees that Higgins will receive four years of supervised probation as an adult after she serves her three-year Division of Youth Corrections sentence. "We wanted the public to have the information," he maintains, "but we also wanted to maximize the amount of time that the community would be protected from her. So we used the tools that we have in a way we've never done before."
We've made minor alterations in the text below to reflect this new prosecutorial approach. Continue to read our previous report.
Update: Brooke Higgins has pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and solicitation to commit murder as part of a Columbine-style attack plan that allegedly targeted Mountain Vista High School last December, when she and accused co-conspirator Sienna Johnson were sixteen-year-old students at the Douglas County institution.
As noted in an October 4 post that we've incorporated into this update, both Johnson and Higgins were charged as adults by the office of 18th Judicial District DA George Brauchler. Attorneys for the teens objected to this move, which prompted separate rulings by the Colorado Supreme Court just over two months ago.
Thus far, as we've reported, prosecutors have shared only a few details about the alleged plot. They say Johnson made maps of the school that showed student movement and the schedule of a police officer assigned to the facility, among other things. Also mentioned were claims that she'd previously harmed pets and had attempted to fake her mental progress during post-arrest treatment at Children's Hospital.
The DA's office also maintains that Johnson referred to Higgins as "someone who's got what it takes" in her journal, adding that the two of them were capable of teaming up to become an "unstoppable" force that would "prove what we are capable of" by turning Mountain Vista into "a living fucking nightmare."
Higgins, for her part, allegedly had a fascination with the 1999 attack on Columbine High School and expressed a wish to have taken part in the massacre. Mentioned by the DA's office was a photo of her taken in front of Columbine.
Even before Higgins was publicly named as a suspect, her attorney, Dagny Van Der Jagt, attempted to distance her from Johnson, releasing a statement that reads in part:
It is important for the public to understand that the case involving Sienna Johnson and the case involving my client are two separate cases involving two very different individuals and very different facts and circumstances. The girls were casual school acquaintances who had associated with each other for a brief time. They have different backgrounds, personalities, motivations and behaviors. Ms. Johnson has been charged as an adult based on the facts of her case. She is represented by a public defender. My client is being held without charge pending a hearing on Thursday in which prosecutors will decide whether to charge her and, if so, whether to try her as an adult or as a juvenile.Additionally, Higgins's family signed up with GBSM, a powerful Denver-based management consulting, strategic communications and public-affairs firm. The company's image rehabilitation efforts included the release of a Higgins portrait that is considerably more staid than the Facebook images that had surfaced earlier.
My client and her family have cooperated fully with the investigation. They voluntarily consented to a search of their home for weapons (none were found) when contacted by law enforcement in December and consented to a voluntary psychiatric screening while investigators gathered facts in both cases. They will continue to cooperate with the District Attorney’s office as the investigation proceeds.
Since January, representatives of Johnson and Higgins have fought attempts to prosecute them as adults — efforts the October Colorado Supreme Court rulings addressed.
A Johnson document at the bottom of this post identifies "two questions involving what a trial court may order when a juvenile seeks a reverse-transfer of her criminal case from trial court to juvenile court."
The first asks, "When a juvenile requests a reverse-transfer hearing, does she waive her psychotherapist-patient privilege, thereby authorizing a trial court to order her to produce privileged mental-health records?" The second considers whether a specific Colorado statute gives "a trial court the power to order a juvenile to submit to a state mental-health assessment."
Here's a summary of the court's ruling:
The Supreme Court holds that, because nothing in the statute states that a juvenile waives her psychotherapist-patient privilege by requesting a reverse-transfer hearing, a trial court cannot order the juvenile to produce privileged mental-health records. As to the second question, the Supreme Court holds that, because nothing in the statute explicitly grants a trial court the power to order a mental-health assessment, a trial court cannot order such an assessment. The reverse-transfer statute only requires that the trial court consider mental-health records "made available."Higgins's attorneys also asked if she could be required by a trial court to undergo a state-administered mental-health exam prior to a reverse-transfer proceeding. "The Supreme Court answered that question in the negative in 'Johnson,' but does not answer that question here because it is hypothetical — the question is not based on the facts of this case," notes the decision in the Higgins case, also shared here.
In addition, the lawyers asked if a trial court must "provide a juvenile with warnings based on the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination" before a mental-health assessment is conducted. The court declined to address this matter because "Higgins consented to the evaluation while represented by counsel" and "any claims that ineffective assistance of counsel vitiated Higgins's consent are premature."
The 18th Judicial District DA's office reacted to these moves with the following statement: “Because these matters are subject to further and ongoing litigation, and taking into consideration ethical rules governing attorneys, it would be inappropriate for us to comment at this time.”
The decision by Brauchler's office to let Higgins enter guilty pleas (after canceling a reverse-transfer hearing set for last week) is expected to lead to a sentence of three years in a juvenile facility, followed by four years' worth of supervised probation.
As for Johnson, her next hearing remains scheduled for January. The Higgins move could either portend a switch to juvenile court for Johnson or a move by Brauchler to double down in adult court, perhaps with testimony by Higgins to bolster the case.
Look below to see the rulings issued by the Colorado Supreme Court in October.
Johnson v. People Colorado Supreme Court Ruling
Higgins v. People Colorado Supreme Court Ruling
