Suicide Pact Twins Had Picture of Columbine Killers

(Nov. 20) -- The twin sisters who shot themselves in an apparent suicide pact outside of Denver had a picture of the Columbine High School killers among their possessions, but police said there were no indications that the women planned to harm anyone but themselves.

The discovery poses more questions in the mystery of why Candice and Kristin Hermeler, 29, of Melbourne, Australia, turned their guns on themselves at a shooting range in Cherry Creek State Park on Monday. Kristin died at the scene and Candice is hospitalized in serious condition.

Candice told police that the sisters planned to take their own lives, Arapahoe County Sheriff's Capt. Louie Perea said. Police are struggling to find a motive.

Police searching their possessions said they found a photocopy of a magazine cover showing the Columbine killers, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, along with their victims, Reuters reported.

Klebold and Harris killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in April 1999. The pair went on a killing spree throughout the school, using guns, knives and explosives. Both teenagers killed themselves before authorities arrived.

Authorities said there's no reason to believe that the sisters were planning a Columbine-style massacre.

"There was nothing else in their possessions that indicated that they were going to do anything to anyone else but themselves," Perea told Reuters.

The sisters' hotel room in Denver gave little indication as to what they were thinking. There was no suicide note and they had suitcases, shopping bags and purses in the room, The Australian reported.

When the pair arrived at the shooting range, they appeared "jovial, chatty, back-and-forth," said Doug Hamilton, owner of the Family Shooting Center, where the girls took some shots at paper targets before shooting themselves.

Kristin and Candice's parents, Ernest and Kelsay Hermeler, arrived in the United States on Friday to be with Candice in the hospital.

"This is an extremely difficult time for our family," the couple said in a statement, according to ABC Melbourne.

Reports in the Australian press described Candice and Kristin, neither of whom is married, as a close and quiet pair from a middle-class family.

Ernest Hermler was a bank manager and is active in his local Rotary Club. The girls had been diligent students at a number of schools, including Methodist Ladies College, one of Melbourne's most prestigious private schools.

"They were nice girls, there was nothing about them that was extraordinary," said Brooke Lyons, a classmate from Tintern Girls Grammar School. "I don't think either of them had a best friend at school that I can recall."

Candice and Kristin came to the United States on 90-day cultural exchange visas and had been in the Denver area for about five weeks. One arrived Sept. 7 and the other on Aug. 19.

Their visas expired on Tuesday.