Who said "Yes"?

Local reporters have known for months that eyewitnesses disputed the account of Cassie Bernall's "martyrdom." So why did the truth take so long to see print?

By Dave Cullen

Sep 30, 1999 | Emily Wyant knew from the beginning: Columbine "martyr" Cassie Bernall never said "Yes."

Wyant, who survived the Columbine massacre April 20, told the FBI months ago that the famous "unlikely martyrdom of Cassie Bernall," immortalized in a best-selling book by Cassie's mom, Misty, never happened. She told Misty and Brad Bernall, Cassie's parents, the same account, and she also told the Rocky Mountain News.

But it wasn't until Sept. 24, one day after Salon News broke the story that investigators doubted Bernall's famous gunpoint declaration of faith, that the News printed a long story detailing Wyant's account.

How did the paper react so quickly, with a detailed, never-before-public account of Bernall's death, a day after the new revelations? Sources at the paper confirm that the details weren't actually new at all: They'd been sitting on the story for quite some time. The News ran the article nearly five months after obtaining the true story from Wyant, and two weeks after running news stories promoting the release of "She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall" -- news stories that presented the account of Bernall's martyrdom as fact.

The Denver Post didn't get its new Bernall stories into print until Saturday. It followed up on Tuesday, after the paper was able to interview Valeen Schnurr, the young Columbine student who was asked by one of the killers if she believed in God -- after she'd been shot. But the Post had been aware of rumors that the Bernall story was not true earlier than that, though it had not confirmed them, according to assistant city editor Evan Dreyer. "We had heard it; we were working on it," he said.

The belated media outing of the truth about Cassie Bernall raises questions about why the story took so long to find its way into print. Misty Bernall's book landed on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list at No. 14 this week, with 350,000 copies in print and more than 250,000 already sold, according to the publisher. In the past three weeks, the Bernalls have appeared on Today, 20/20 and Larry King Live, among others. The story has inspired a massive surge in Christian youth groups' recruitment around the country and overseas.

Emily Wyant watched with disbelief as the Bernall myth mushroomed. "Once she started hearing all that, she said, 'That didn't happen. Why are they saying that?'" her mother recalls. The girl kept waiting for investigators or news reporters to refute the myth, so she would not have to come forward herself.

"She never wanted to ever, ever say anything against it," says her mother, who did not want her first name used because of community sensitivity about the Bernall controversy. "She just was real frustrated with it, and she just kept saying, 'But that never happened. Why are they saying that?' That's the thing that bothered her."

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