>> reporter: kevin cullin is a columnist for the boston globe. back in the 1980s, he helped break a story for the fbi about a mob boss. this case set not on the gritty back streets of hal ston but in the open hallways of hadley high was in some ways just a different type of mob story. >> what i found remarkable was when i started talking to the kids in the school, the story was incredibly consistent, that everybody kind of knew this was going on. >> reporter: everybody knew phoebe was being harassed. >> yeah. >> reporter: not only that, he said every kid seemed to know exactly who at school had bullied phoebe. her tore mmetormentors were sti roaming the hall. >> the other kids were afraid to come forward and say what they knew, because, as they saw it, nothing was going to happen to the bullies because some of them were the most popular kids in that school. >> reporter: but what board cullin most was when he heard that phoebe's classmates had held their annual school dance just two days after her death. even phoebe's fling was there. phoe phoebe'