Columbine's Dark Legacy Haunts Teens

May 5, 2008 — -- Last week authorities in South Bend, Ind., accused a 16-year-old of planning a Columbine-style attack on his high school in Mishawaka.

Police said they obtained e-mails that pointed to the teen seeking help to obtain a TEC-DC9 9mm pistol. Prosecutors quoted the teen as saying it would be "awesome" to carry out mass murder in two states on Sept. 11 using the same weapon as the Columbine killers.

Just a week earlier, an 18-year-old in South Carolina was arrested after his parents turned him in for allegedly buying ammonium nitrate, the same chemical used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

According to police, the troubled youth alluded to the Columbine massacre in some of his writings.

The two incidents were hundreds of miles apart, but they were bound by a common thread: Columbine.

"Columbine was the Pearl Harbor of education and school safety," said Kenneth Trump of National School Safety and Security Services. "Unfortunately we are still feeling the shock waves."

On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 classmates and a teacher in a five-hour rampage of gunfire and bombs at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo.

When the horror was over, the two students committed suicide.

Nearly a decade later, their dark legacy still haunts the nation. There is a growing list of young killers or would-be killers -- some barely old enough to remember Columbine -- who appear fascinated by the young murderers.

The connection is quite clear, with these troubled young people specifically writing or talking about their admiration for the Columbine killers or mimicking their actions by wearing black attire and their desire for fame.

A closer look by ABC News reveals a disturbing picture.