Fatal Friendship
How two suburban boys
traded baseball and bowling for murder and madness
By Lynn
Bartels and Carla
Crowder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff
Writers
© Copyright 1999 Denver Rocky Mountain
News
Their names will be intertwined forever.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold.
So many things made them different:
Eric aced his classes. Dylan was an unrepentant
slacker.
Eric lied about his age to woo an older woman he met
at the mall. Dylan shyly waited for the right girl.
Eric got into flour fights at the pizza joint where
they worked. Dylan watched.
"They weren't joined at the hip by any means," said
Nate Dykeman, the classmate who probably knew them best.
But Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold will be remembered
for what they shared:
A secret sickness and a hatred for their high school,
a place where their teen-age angst spiraled into
murderous rage.
Dylan and Eric forged their fatal friendship at
Columbine.
Four months after they unleashed the deadliest school
shooting in U.S. history, killing 12 classmates and a
teacher before killing themselves, their families and
friends still struggle to understand what went wrong.
Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Dylan Klebold and Eric
Harris.
How did goofy little kids who played baseball, loved
their pets and wanted to please their mothers turn into
killing machines?
In the months since the killings, a clearer picture
has emerged of Dylan and Eric's bond, although there are
questions that will never be answered.
This much is known.
Out of a nerdy misery, Eric and Dylan found
acceptance in each other, then excitement in concocting
bizarre and destructive schemes and finally deadly
fulfillment, proving their twisted loyalty with a death
pact that horrified the world.
Each was the other's reinforcement.
If either had doubts about killing a classmate, then
another and another and another, all he had to do was
glance over at his soulmate, see the approving smile and
feel the reassuring sting of the high five.
It was mob mentality. A mob of two.
Dylan Klebold & Eric Harris. Eric Harris &
Dylan Klebold.
Something neither would have done alone, they did
together.
In the beginning
When did their friendship begin?
No one remembers exactly, although Eric and Dylan met
sometime in seventh or eighth grade at Ken Caryl Middle
School.
The school sits in the heart of Columbine, an
unincorporated swath of Jefferson County where an
endless maze of cul de sacs, bike paths and chain stores
melts into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
Nate Dykeman swears they were already best friends
when he moved to Colorado in middle school.
"I met Eric in Spanish class, and I met Dylan at
Eric's house one day," he said.
But Brad Jenkins, who is pictured clowning around
with Eric in the middle school yearbook, said Dylan was
never part of their group.
"We hung out during school and Eric never mentioned
his name or anything," Brad said.
Dylan was the local boy. He had gone to elementary
school in Littleton, and was in a gifted program at
Governor's Ranch Elementary School from third through
sixth grades. Even though he was surrounded by smart
kids, Dylan wowed them with his math skills.
Dylan's parents, Tom and Sue, hosted the graduation
party for the gifted students.
|
Dylan
Klebold, left, gets hugged by Brooks Brown,
center, as they clown around as Cub Scouts in
1989.
|
Ken Caryl yearbook pictures show a pudgy boy, soft,
with baby fat that would melt in high school as he grew
into what Rolling Stone called "a gawky
kid with a big beak and a Jay Leno chin."
"He played football and stuff with us every day,"
classmate Jake Cram said. "He loved baseball and he
played baseball a lot. He was a little bit clumsy."
As for Eric, time and again he was the new kid in
town, forced to start over to make friends, a military
brat hopscotching the country until his father retired
in 1993 and moved his family back to his native
Colorado.
He, too, played baseball. But he was a timid player
who wouldn't swing when it was his turn to bat, said
Terry Condo, his Little League coach in Plattsburgh,
N.Y.
"He was afraid to strike out and let his teammates
down," Condo said. "It struck me as him really wanting
to fit in."
After their move from upstate New York to Colorado,
Wayne and Kathy Harris rented a house a few blocks
stoplights south of Columbine. The girl next door, Sarah
Pollock, walked with Eric to school.
She told her mother that Eric was "preppy and a
dork," but otherwise nice. Polite, too.
New school; new friends
Ninth grade. High school. And a remodeled one at
that.
Eric and Dylan were part of the Class of 1999, the
first students who would spend all four years in a
bigger and better Columbine, which had undergone a $15
million makeover, its first major renovation since
opening in 1973.
A ceremony that first day in August 1995 welcomed
students to the new Columbine.
A new cafeteria, where four years later Eric and
Dylan would plant a bomb. A new student entrance, where
hundreds of panicked kids would run from Dylan and
Eric's gunfire. A new auditorium where SWAT officers
would train their weapons on shell-shocked students
wading through the flooded room to safety.
Soon, Eric had a new friend, Brooks Brown, who lived
nearby. They met on the school bus. Brooks had known
Dylan since first grade. Eric, Dylan and Brooks began
hanging out.
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Dylan
Klebold, 8, left, and Brooks Brown, 9, visit
Denver's landmarks, including the City-County
Building, during a school field trip in May 1990.
|
On cool fall nights they did what many high school
freshmen do: They cheered on their football team. Eric's
big brother Kevin, a senior, played tight end and was a
kicker for the Columbine Rebels.
"Eric's dad would drive us," Brooks said.
Dylan drifted away from some of his middle school
friends. Christopher Beets was one of them.
"I remember picking up Christopher from high school
in ninth grade and Dylan was walking down the street,"
said his mom, Gail Beets. "I said, 'Gee, you don't seem
to be buddy-buddy with Dylan anymore.' And he said,
'Well, he's got new buddies and I'm not into what
they're doing."'
What Dylan's new friends were into was computer
games.
They played for hours, sometimes together, sometimes
at their own houses, connected by modems, technology and
a fascination with games where warriors mowed down
enemies with pipe bombs and fire power, where victims
never cried and their families never suffered.
They shared a wild, dark and disdainful intelligence.
They made fun of teachers and students behind their
backs and even to their faces, especially those who were
computer illiterate. They rolled their eyes at
classmates' stupid questions.
When Brooks had to write an essay about his
childhood, he didn't choose Disneyland or camping. He
wrote about reading Atlas Shrugged by
philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand because he considered it
"life altering."
When Dylan wanted to put a nasty note in someone's
locker, he hacked into the school's computer system to
learn the combination.
Yet for all their smarts, they were too lazy, too
uninterested, to make the honor roll.
None pursued sports either, though they were tall
enough for a starting lineup that would've made any high
school coach proud.
Brooks grew to be 6 feet 5; Nate, 6 feet 4 and Dylan,
6 feet 3. Two other friends, Ryan Whisenhut and Chris
Morris, were 6 feet 4 and 6 feet 2, respectively.
Eric was the shortest of the group. He barely topped
5 feet 8.
Still, by all accounts, Eric and Dylan enjoyed their
first year at Columbine.
And, at 14, they still fit in, at least from a
distance.
"That's back when they were just like everybody
else," classmate Katie Rutledge said. "They dressed
normal, I'd even say preppie."
A look 'like he could kill'
The unraveling began in their sophomore year.
Whether they had problems at home isn't known. Their
families aren't talking.
But Eric, especially, felt mistreated at school by a
small group of jocks, and ignored by teachers and
administrators he believed looked the other way.
Eric and Dylan gravitated toward a small circle of
students united by their differences. Combat boots and
thrift-store grunge adrift in an Abercrombie & Fitch
sea. This angry, rebellious group would become known as
the Trench Coat Mafia.
Even then, Dylan and Eric were on the fringes of the
outcast clique.
Classmate Kevin Hofstra said he's sure Eric and Dylan
could have fit in with other groups, perhaps the
super-academic kids.
"Both didn't have a whole lot of friends, but people
liked them," he said.
Eric's anger began to emerge. He even turned it
against his friends.
Classmate Ryan Whisenhut could never figure out why
Eric liked him when they were freshmen, then wouldn't
talk to him when sophomore year started.
"He just sort of changed," Ryan said. "He wouldn't
say why. He would just sort of give you this look like
he could kill you."
It was a pattern Eric would repeat. He hated his
friend Brooks Brown for a while. He argued with Nate
Dykeman over a girl. And he had a falling out with
classmate Zack Heckler, who thought Eric's pranks were
getting out of hand.
"You had to follow him (Eric) or get away from him,"
Zach's mother, Veronica Heckler, would later tell her
pastor.
But Eric had one friend he never turned on: Dylan.
Dylan, the consummate follower. Dylan, who had a much
broader circle of friends, but who remained loyal to
Eric.
"Dylan," Ryan said, "was the least violent person
I've ever known."
A silent theater soundman
Dylan rebelled in quieter, more artistic ways.
He was always the boy in the control booth.
Early in his sophomore year Dylan joined a quirky,
nonconformist crowd that chose theater to express
themselves.
"The people that were in the plays, he didn't mind
hanging around," said Sam Granillo, a senior this fall.
"They were in these plays because they had open minds,
and most people in my school don't."
Theater required commitment. Dylan easily spent a
dozen hours a week in rehearsal. All after school, all
on his own time.
He found his role behind the spotlight, spending long
nights hunkered in a cramped room at the back of the
school auditorium. He usually ran sound, a job that
appealed to his love of anything technical.
Chris Logan, who was heavy into theater, ran around
with Dylan. Their circle of girls and guys bowled
together and went to movies.
When Chris threw a Christmas party, Dylan was there.
So was Chris' girlfriend, Robyn Anderson. Already she
and Dylan had developed a bond.
But a melancholy side of Dylan began to appear.
Sarah Slater saw the sadness. She handled the
spotlight in theater, working side-by-side with Dylan.
"I liked him," she said. "He was really shy, although
he wasn't all that shy with me."
Too busy to talk during rehearsal or the shows, they
spent hours communicating by e-mail when they got home
at night.
"We talked about a lot of stuff, mostly about
alcoholic beverages and how he hated the school," Sarah
said.
She understood that hatred. With her baggy pants and
spiked jewelry, Sarah didn't fit in until she started
dressing more conventionally at the end of her freshman
year.
She worked hard to change her negative attitude and
discovered when she did that she enjoyed Columbine.
Dylan never did.
"Just when I talked to him, I don't know, it was like
he would end the conversation with, '(Expletive) the
school,"' Sarah said. "If I asked how he was doing, he'd
say, 'I wish I didn't go here' or 'I wish I was
somewhere else."'
Sometimes during their online chats, Dylan would say
he had been drinking. Sometimes Sarah could tell by his
typing mistakes. Sometimes he would invite her to go out
drinking.
But Nate Dykeman doesn't remember Dylan -- or Eric --
drinking a lot. He wonders whether Dylan was just trying
to impress Sarah, trying to come across as a party
animal, trying to make her think he was living up to his
nickname, VoDkA.
Sarah lost touch with Dylan after she dropped out of
theater. But Dylan continued, handling the sound for
Go Ask Alice as a junior and
Frankenstein as a senior.
Last fall, theater students made a video for their
beloved drama teacher, Sue Carruthers. Mrs. C, they
called her.
Dylan was in the video. His brown hair had grown out
below his ears. He looked shy, even though Brooks Brown,
his friend for 12 years, was behind the camera.
Pepperoni and homemade bombs
Eric liked pepperoni and green pepper pizza. That's
all he would eat during his shifts at Blackjack Pizza.
While other employees heaped on a smorgasbord of
toppings, Eric didn't budge from his favorites.
Eric and Dylan started at Blackjack in the spring of
their sophomore year, cooking pizzas for $5.15 an hour.
Their buddy Chris Morris, who was in the Trench Coat
Mafia, already worked at the strip-mall pizzeria off
Pierce Street south of Columbine. Chris had urged them
to apply, saying it would be fun.
It was a blast.
There were flour fights in the kitchen and fireworks
in the parking lot.
Two co-workers, Kim Carlin and Sara Arbogast, were in
the same grade as Eric and Dylan.
Sara: "Eric was nice and talkative and funny and just
a cool guy. He never expressed any hate toward anything,
just the normal teen-age angst. A lot of people say they
don't like school. I said it all the time."
Kim: "Dylan and me never got heart-to-heart like me
and Eric would. I don't think Dylan fit into us very
well. He was too quiet. We would get into massive food
fights or water fights. He wasn't into playing with us.
If you would ask him something embarrassing he'd turn
red and give you this little grin."
On slow nights, the crew would sit behind the
building and set off firecrackers or homemade
explosives.
"We used to make dry-ice balls behind the store," Kim
said. "You put dry ice and hot water in a 2-liter
bottle. It just shoots up. We stole a cone one time when
they did road construction in the parking lot. We would
see how high we could shoot the cone."
One night Dylan brought a pipe bomb to work. The
manager wrote him up and told him to never do that
again.
Shortly afterward, Dylan quit Blackjack. Eric stayed.
Kim and Sara grew closer to Eric. He complained that
some jocks were bullying him.
Sara never witnessed any taunting, but she did see
classmates give Eric weird looks. She thought it was
because of how he dressed. The boy who wore khaki when
he started at Blackjack now draped himself in black
cargo pants and black T-shirts, just like his friend
Chris Morris.
But Eric drew the line at wearing a beret like Chris,
opting for a baseball cap worn backward.
Kim and Sara couldn't understand why their classmates
didn't like Eric.
"No one ever gave him a chance," Kim said. "People
always looked at me because I would go over and hug him
in the morning."
Sara would tease him about a co-worker he briefly
dated. He would call Sara "Ohzay BooBoo," a phrase he
picked up from the movie Ace Ventura,
Pet Detective.
When Eric got his senior pictures taken and whined
about how "stupid" he looked, Kim and Sara cooed about
how cute he was and helped him choose prints.
When Eric harped that girls wouldn't have anything to
do with him, Kim and Sara invited him to hang out with
them. Sometimes he went bowling, but many times he
refused, telling them he thought he wouldn't fit in.
Eric did join Kim and Sara and their friends
homecoming night of their junior year. They had skipped
the school dance for dinner at the Old Spaghetti Factory
in downtown Denver. When they arrived to pick up Eric,
they had to wait 10 minutes until his mother got home.
"He didn't want to leave without her knowing where he
was," Kim said. "He didn't want her to worry."
Moving from state to state
As teen-agers, Eric's parents traveled some of the
same streets he later did.
Before Wayne Nelson Harris was a decorated Air Force
pilot, he was a local boy.
Englewood High School, Class of 1966. Quiet and
smart, according to former classmates.
Wayne's late father, Walter, worked as a valet at the
Brown Palace Hotel. His mother, Thelma, stayed home with
Wayne and his older sister, Sandra.
Wayne Harris met Katherine Ann Pool in the days of
buzz cuts and beehives. She was a Colorado native, too.
George Washington High School, Class of 1967.
Her father, Richard Pool, was retired military, and
ran a hardware store on Holly Street in southeast
Denver. The Pools still live in the house where Kathy
and her two sisters grew up.
Wayne and Kathy had a church wedding at First
Presbyterian in Englewood on April 17, 1970.
Three years later, Wayne joined the Air Force and it
was off to Oklahoma for pilot training.
Harris and his young wife crisscrossed the country --
Washington, Kansas, Ohio. Their first child, Kevin, was
born in 1978 in Washington. Eric David came along three
years later while the family was stationed in Wichita,
Kan.
At his 20-year high school reunion, Wayne Harris
wrote that his goal was to "raise two good sons." The
highlight of his life, according to the reunion
questionnaire, had been the birth of his boys.
Kathy Harris stayed home when Kevin and Eric were
young, busying herself with military-wives luncheons,
volunteer projects and school functions.
Former friends in military towns describe Eric as a
good kid. Smart. And cute, always cute.
By the time Wayne Harris retired from the Air Force,
he'd risen to the rank of major and tackled some
prestigious assignments as a test pilot and flight
instructor. He earned a Meritorious Service Medal for
his work on B-1 bombers.
Then, like many military bases in the early 1990s,
Plattsburgh Air Force Base in New York closed.
In 1993, after 20 years of military life, Wayne and
Kathy returned to Colorado.
Wayne got a job at Flight Safety Services, an
Englewood company that makes military flight simulators.
Eric's friends said his dad worked a lot. Kathy was
hired by Everything Goes, an Englewood caterer.
At first, the Harrises rented. Then in May 1996, just
as Eric ended his freshman year, they paid $180,000 for
a house a few blocks away, the place they finally
planned to call home for many years. Two stories, brick,
blue-gray trim, it sits on a cul de sac off Pierce
Street, straight south of Columbine.
Wayne and Kathy drilled the value of homework and
hard work into the boys. Kevin Hofstra, who hung around
Eric mostly in middle school, said Eric and his brother
Kevin always had to do homework before they could goof
off.
Sports was big, too. Sunday afternoon football on TV,
Wayne coaching Kevin's rec-league basketball team.
"His parents were always 100 percent awesome to me,"
said Derek Holliday, a 1996 Columbine graduate who is
close to Kevin. "The Harrises are great parents."
The family pet, a tiny dog named Sparky, suffered
from seizures. Eric sometimes took off work when Sparky
got sick.
"Eric loved that dog," Nate Dykeman said.
At some point in high school, Eric's parents realized
their son had problems more serious than they alone
could fix. They took him to a psychiatrist, who
prescribed Luvox, an anti-depressant used to treat
obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Eric's bedroom was in the basement. His shelves were
lined with boxes of old firecrackers and a collection of
miniature cars. A poster with one of his favorite
musical groups, KMFDM, was taped to the ceiling.
Another band Eric liked was Rammstein, a German band.
Eric, who studied German, would play the group's CDs at
Blackjack and translate for his co-workers.
KMFDM and Rammstein feature music with brooding and
violent lyrics that Eric often copied and sent out to
friends through the Internet.
Nate didn't visit Eric's house as much as he did
Dylan's. No one did. It wasn't as much fun.
"Eric would just get on his computer," Nate said.
Most of Eric's friends outgrew their fascination with
violent computer games. Eric never did.
His nickname, Reb, was inspired by a character in one
of his favorite computer games, Doom, where the
goal is to score high body counts.
One of the game's slogans: "DOOM -- where the sanest
place is behind a trigger."
Rebels in $100 coats
Eric and Dylan seemed to relish their roles as
outsiders.
"The impression I always got from them was they kind
of wanted to be outcasts," said Dara Ferguson, a senior
this fall. "It wasn't that they were labeled that way.
It's what they chose to be."
|
A
picture of the Trench Coat mafia appears in the
1998 Columbine yearbook. Dylan Klebold and Eric
Harris are not in the photo, but they were friends
with the group.
|
That choice invited taunting by a group of jocks,
many of whom graduated in 1998, and were known as
bullies throughout the school. Students said they would
block the hallways and make underclassmen take the long
way to class. Even Kevin Hofstra, co-captain of the
soccer team, said he was afraid of them.
Eric endured more of the taunting than Dylan.
Some of the jocks and their friends pushed Eric into
lockers. They called him "faggot." They threw Coke cans
at him from their cars.
"They wouldn't pick on Dylan because he was tall and
lanky. Dylan was a pretty intimidating looking guy,"
classmate Patrick McDuffee said. "They picked on Eric."
Jessica Hughes, a 1999 graduate, defined Columbine
this way:
"There's basically two classes of people. There's the
low and the high. The low sticks together and the high
sticks together, and the high makes fun of the low and
you just deal with it."
A small group of the 1,965 students dealt with it by
bonding together in their unhappiness.
For the most part, these were bright, crafty kids.
Computer whizzes. Video-game masters.
The Trench Coat Mafia.
The group got its sinister name in the most innocent
way.
Tad Boles, who graduated last May, was the first to
don a so-called trench coat.
In fact, Tad's mother, Terri Isaac, bought him
two of the long cowboy dusters for Christmas his
freshman year.
She found the coats on sale at Miller Stockman at
Southwest Plaza for $99, and bought one. Three days
later, when it was time to wrap the coat, she couldn't
find it.
"All I could think of was 'Oh my God, I left the
hatchback open on my husband's car and somebody took
it,"' she said.
So she spent another $104.79.
When she was cleaning closets the following May she
found the original duster. Her husband had forgotten he
hid it there.
By that time, Tad's friends were wearing the coats,
too. And kids at Columbine had started calling them the
Trench Coat Mafia -- a name the group proudly adopted.
Eric and Dylan were not even official members. They
were just friends of lead Trench Coaters Joe Stair, who
graduated in 1998, and classmate Chris Morris.
The Trench Coaters resented the social system.
They refused to move out of the paths of jocks and
their friends in the halls and lunch lines.
Their message to the locker-room elite: "Unless you
do something to gain our respect, we're not going to bow
down to you."
"We didn't actually tell them that," Joe said. "We
showed them."
Among themselves, there was a lot of grumbling and
wild fantasies about blowing up Columbine.
No big deal.
"Eighty percent of people talk about how much they
hate school, or 'I'm gonna get that person,"' Joe said.
"But we were never serious."
Chris Morris was known to be the most vocal in his
Columbine hate. Even students who didn't know much about
the Trench Coat Mafia knew Chris Morris.
Chris just didn't like many people. But he liked Eric
and Dylan.
Chris' contagious darkness influenced others,
particularly Eric, according to some Columbine students.
But Chris' friends say he is a nice guy, all bluff
and no violence.
"One time Chris was going to get into a fight and I
embarrassed him by saying, 'Come on, honey, go to
class,"' said Kim Carlin, who worked with Chris at
Blackjack.
The way some Trench Coaters see it, Chris was a
positive influence on Dylan and Eric.
"He just got them to start sticking up for
themselves," said Cory Friesen, a 1997 Columbine
graduate and Chris' current roommate.
The 1998 Columbine yearbook features a picture of the
Trench Coat Mafia, with the inscription, "Who says we're
different. Insanity's healthy!" Dylan and Eric are not
in the picture.
There was no picture in the 1999 yearbook. The Trench
Coat Mafia had lost momentum.
Eric and Dylan only needed each other to get into
trouble.
Pathetic pair of thieves
Eric and Dylan bumbled, rather pathetically, as
thieves their junior year.
Jan. 30, 1998. Parked in a gravel lot near Chatfield
Reservoir listening to a new CD in Eric's gray Honda
Prelude. Bored 16-year-olds. Setting off a few
fireworks, breaking some bottles. Still bored.
Eric and Dylan told police different versions of what
happened next.
"Dylan suggested we should steal some of the objects
in the white van. At first I was very uncomfortable and
questioning with the thought," Eric wrote on a police
report.
From Dylan: "Almost at the same time, we both got the
idea of breaking into this white van."
They hauled a briefcase, electrical gear and
sunglasses out of the van, then took off in Eric's car.
They parked off Deer Creek Canyon Road to check out the
loot.
A Jefferson County sheriff's deputy confronted them
minutes after the crime.
Both insisted they found the property stacked by the
roadside. Yeah, right, thought the deputy. They were
arrested, charged with theft, criminal mischief and
criminal trespassing and released them to their
none-too-happy parents.
Eric finally confided to one of his Blackjack workers
why he was grounded.
"He said, 'I wish I hadn't done it,"' Sara Arbogast
said. "He said their parents were really mad at them and
they weren't allowed to hang out together for a while
because of it."
Dylan was so ashamed he didn't even tell Nate
Dykeman, who found out about it third-hand.
"I said, 'Is this the reason you can't go out?' and
he got all red and told me he didn't want to talk about
it," Nate said.
Two months after their arrest, Dylan and Eric
appeared before Jefferson County Magistrate John DeVita.
Both fathers were there.
Eric spoke crisply. Dylan mumbled. Eric told the
judge he made As and Bs. Dylan said he was a C student,
which got him a stern lecture from the judge.
"I bet you're an A student if you put your brain
power to paperwork."
"I don't know, sir," Dylan said. The rest of his
response was unintelligible.
"When the hell you going to find out? You got one
year of school left. ... . When you going to get with
the program?" the judge barked.
More hangdog mumbling from Dylan.
Both boys insisted this was their first crime. Their
fathers backed them up.
Tom Klebold told the judge: "This has been a rather
traumatic experience, and I think it's probably good, a
good experience, that they got caught the first time."
To which DeVita responded, "He'd tell you if there
were any more?"
"Yes, he would actually," Klebold said.
DeVita sent Dylan and Eric to a diversion program, a
mix of community service and counseling.
When DeVita chose the sentence, he had no idea that
Jefferson County detectives had just received
information about other criminal activities by Eric and
Dylan. No one had bothered to forward him the report.
They were sneaking out at night and setting off
homemade bombs. The detectives knew this because Eric
bragged about it in a Web site filled with his viperous
writings.
Raging through cyberspace
Randy and Judy Brown, parents of Brooks Brown, turned
over 12 pages of Eric's violent cyberspace rantings to
detectives in March 1998, days before the court hearing.
"You all better hide in your (expletive) houses
because I'm coming for EVERYONE soon, and i WILL be
armed to the (expletive) teeth and i WILL shoot to kill
and i WILL (expletive) KILL EVERYTHING!" Eric had
written.
"No i am not crazy, crazy is just a word to me."
But Judy Brown thought he was crazy. She had become
suspicious of Eric months earlier.
Eric had blamed Brooks for vandalizing a classmate's
house. Someone had toilet-papered a tree, set a bush on
fire and glued the locks.
But Judy knew her son had been home that night.
Brooks, once again, had been grounded, this time for
breaking curfew.
Judy and Randy Brown are the kind of parents who know
a lot about their kids' lives. Judy is a stay-at-home
mom who usually is gone only on Tuesday afternoons for
watercolor lessons. Randy is a golf pro turned real
estate agent whose flexible hours allow him to zip in
and out.
They have two sons: Brooks, who graduated last May,
and Aaron, a junior.
Much to the dismay of the boys' friends, Brooks and
Aaron often told their bubbly mom all. What they didn't
tell her, she managed to find out. When they lied, they
usually were caught.
Judy talked to the homeowner whose house had been
vandalized and she called deputies and told them Eric
was responsible. The deputies said they would talk to
Eric's parents.
Eric was furious. One day as Brooks was driving by
the bus stop near his house, Eric threw a chunk of ice,
breaking his windshield.
Brooks told his mother, who immediately drove to the
bus stop and confronted Eric. She got his backpack and
told him she was going to talk to his mother.
He grabbed onto her car, screaming, his face turning
red. He reminded her of an animal attacking a vehicle at
a wild-animal park.
Kathy Harris was in her driveway when Judy Brown
pulled up. Judy can still recall the plaid flannel shirt
she was wearing. Kathy's eyes teared up when Judy
described Eric's behavior.
Later that day, Brooks talked to Kathy, too, telling
her that Eric had been slipping out of the house at
night, pulling pranks and setting off fireworks.
Wayne Harris called the Browns.
"He said his son was afraid of me and that's why he
was hanging on the door handle," Judy Brown said. "I
said, 'Your son's not afraid. Your son is terrifying.
Your son is violent."'
Wayne Harris drove Eric to the Browns to apologize.
He waited in the car while Eric went inside.
"He went through this whole spiel, how it was all in
fun," Judy Brown said. "I said, 'Eric Harris, you can
pull the wool over your dad's eyes, but you're not going
to pull the wool over my eyes."'
She told Eric if she ever saw him near her house
again she would call the sheriff.
"I said, 'Stay away from my kids.' I just had a
feeling about him at this point."
Judy and Randy Brown thought the problem had ended.
Then in March 1998, Brooks came home from Columbine
one day. He said a friend had tipped him about a Web
site Eric had created.
"He said, 'I can't tell you who it is, Mom, because
he's afraid that Eric Harris will harm him,"' Judy Brown
said.
The friend: Dylan Klebold.
What the Browns read on the Web page terrified them.
Eric threatened to kill Brooks, but their son wasn't his
only target. Eric said that meteorologists who make
wrong predictions should be stabbed with broken baseball
bats. He wanted to take a shotgun to anyone who blocked
his path in hallways.
"I am the law, if you don't like it, you die. If I
don't like you or I don't like what you want me to do,
you die. God I can't wait till I can kill you people."
Eric bragged how he and "VoDkA" managed to sneak out
of his house one night and set off a pipe bomb they had
named "Pazzie" -- Italian for madness.
Eric said he and Dylan had built four other pipe
bombs, "the first true pipe bombs created entirely from
scratch by the rebels (REB and VoDkA)."
"Now our only problem," Eric continued, "is to find
the place that will be 'ground zero."'
The Browns gave Eric's and Dylan's home addresses and
phone numbers to a detective. But the detective never
returned their phone calls after that.
The Browns didn't know what to do.
Brooks told his parents to relax, Eric was a keyboard
kind of tough guy. But brother Aaron was terrified. He
slept with a bat by his bed.
Randy and Judy had one comfort: Dylan.
Dylan was one of the sweetest kids they knew. They
figured Dylan would never let Eric get really violent.
The Browns thought about telling Tom and Sue Klebold
about Eric's Web site but decided to let the detective
handle it.
"Sue was the kind of mother who, if there was a
problem when the boys were playing when they were
little, she would say, 'Is it one of my kids?' Because
if it was, she would take care of it," Judy Brown said.
"We knew that when she found out what Dylan and Eric
were up to, that would be the end of it."
A family that banned toy guns
Sue and Tom Klebold grew up in Ohio, but their
childhoods were hardly similar.
Sue knew privilege, Tom knew tragedy.
Susan Frances Yassenoff lived in the well-to-do
suburb of Bexley outside Columbus.
|
Brenda Parker, 24, keeps pictures of Eric
harris in her computer. He taught her how to use
the Internet during their brief fling.
|
The name Yassenoff means something in Columbus. Her
grandfather, Leo Yassenoff, was a prominent developer
and philanthropist who left his $13 million estate to
charity. The Jewish community center in Columbus is
named after him.
Sue's father, Milton, was Jewish; her mother,
Charlene, was not. Sue attended Temple Israel, said
Solly Yassenoff, a distant cousin.
After high school, Sue studied art and math at Ohio
State University.
Thomas Ernest Klebold was born in the Toledo area.
His mother died when he was 6, his father when he was
12. His half brother, Donald, who was 18 years older,
raised him.
Tom attended a small college in Springfield, Ohio,
for two years before transferring to Ohio State, where
he majored in sculpting and fell in love with another
art student.
Tom and Sue were married in 1971. Tom was the
thinker, the more reserved partner. Sue was artsy and
extroverted and sensitive.
The Klebolds moved to Milwaukee where Tom got a
graduate degree in geophysics from Marquette University.
The oil-and-gas industry took them to Oklahoma City in
the mid-1970s, and then to Colorado.
Their eldest son, Byron, was born in 1978. Dylan
Bennet was born three years later, on Sept. 9, 1981, in
Lakewood.
In the early 1980s, the Klebolds moved from Lakewood
to a neighborhood just southeast of Columbine. They
became good friends with neighbors Randy and Vicki
DeHoff, who lived across the beltway.
Their kids were the same age. Vicki and Sue spent
summers by the pool, talking as their children splashed
away. When the DeHoffs had two more children, Sue
Klebold passed on toys that Dylan had outgrown.
"You know how sometimes couples click?" Randy DeHoff
said. "We just did. We had discussions on almost
anything and everything."
Which was interesting, because the families diverged
philosphically. The DeHoffs were evangelical Christians.
The Klebolds searched for a spirital niche. The DeHoffs
voted conservative. The Klebolds considered themselves
liberal.
"Their kids weren't even allowed toy guns when they
were growing up," Randy DeHoff said.
"Dylan did not learn hate in that home."
Sue and Vicki eventually worked together at Arapahoe
Community College. Sue's job was to make sure disabled
students had access. She moved on to the same position
with the state consortium of community colleges.
Tom, predicting the fallout in the oil-and-gas
business, started looking for another career. He started
a mortgage-management business. One of the rental
properties he and Sue own is in Denver -- on Columbine
Street.
In 1989, Tom and Sue paid $250,000 for a stunning
3,528-square-foot home tucked between two red rock
outcroppings on Cougar Road in Deer Creek Canyon.
A kid's playground, it had a swimming pool, tennis
court and basketball court. But Dylan, sensitive like
his mother, worried the cougars would eat his cats, Lucy
and Rocky.
Dylan's friends loved to visit because there was so
much to do and his parents were so cool.
"His parents were so nice to me," Nate Dykeman said.
"Either they'd get doughnuts for me or they'd be making
crepes or omelets."
The Klebolds had to have a lot of food for Dylan,
whose appetite was legendary. He ate breakfast cereal
from a metal mixing bowl. And it was nothing for him to
eat a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken by himself.
His older brother, Byron, went to a private high
school before transferring to Columbine when he was a
senior and graduating in 1997.
When Byron moved into an apartment in 1998, Dylan
inherited his bedroom. He repainted the room, two black
facing walls and two white facing walls with red
shutters on the windows. He stocked a miniature
refrigerator that had been a 17th birthday gift from the
family with candy bars and Dr Pepper.
Dylan hung posters of Roger Clemens and Lou Gehrig on
the walls, along with music groups and models. One
poster described how to make cocktails.
"And there was your typical teen-age pile of dirty
laundry," Nate said.
Four or five years ago, the family attended St.
Philip Lutheran Church in Jefferson County.
The pastor, Don Marxhausen, is not your traditional
man of the cloth. A tough-talking New Yorker, he spent
much of his ministry working with ghetto drug addicts.
He says one of his goals is to be socially unacceptable.
He swears on occasion.
Marxhausen said the Klebolds were looking for a sense
of community, but Tom had "a bunch of issues" with
organized religion and the family quit coming after
about six months.
Marxhausen didn't push them. He understood the
family's spiritual struggles.
"You're talking about a Jewish and Christian
background," he said.
The family celebrated both Hanukkah and Christmas.
Tom and Sue imposed strict limits on how much money
they spent on their kids, friend Judy Brown said.
"These kids were not spoiled," she said. "Tom and Sue
wanted them to know the value of money and work."
One Christmas, Sue fretted because Dylan wanted a
collectible baseball card that cost as much as she had
planned to spend on all his gifts. She worried about
only having one gift under the tree. But that's what
Dylan wanted, and that's all he got.
Dylan drove an older BMW. It was already so beat up
that when a classmate bumped into it with her car he
told her it was no big deal.
As a senior, Dylan was out of class by 1 p.m. He
often came straight home and spent time with his dad,
who worked out of the house.
Tom treasured that time. He thought he and Dylan had
grown extremely close.
Kill, kill, kill. Kein mitleid!
Eric's Web site disappeared days after his and
Dylan's court hearing. He now began putting down his
thoughts in a journal, a mixture of typed pages and
handwritten entries, a trail of a year-long plan to blow
up Columbine on Adolf Hitler's birthday. April 20, 1999.
But his and Dylan's rage, concealed so well from
their parents, was not entirely hidden. It showed up in
Nate Dykeman's junior yearbook.
|
Eric
Harris sent these and other drawings to his
friends through the Internet.
|
Their coded messages were an odd, adolescent mix of
exclamation marks, jabs at vapid pop stars, video-game
boasts.
Eric wrote: "I hate everything unless I say
otherwise, hey don't follow your dreams or your goals or
any of that (expletive), follow your (expletive) animal
instincts. if it moves kill it, it it doesn't, burn it.
kein mitleid !!!"
The last phrase is German for no mercy.
Dylan, in Nate's yearbook, had especially unkind
words for musicians he didn't like:
kill jiggy
kill puffy
kill hanson
kill RICHARD MARX!!!
That summer, just before his senior year, Eric got a
second job. Besides cooking at Blackjack, he worked
alongside Nate Dykeman at Tortilla Wraps. Eric wanted
extra money to help pay for a new computer.
Again, Eric's employer raved.
"He was a real nice kid," said David Cave, who hired
Eric. "He would come in every day with nice T-shirts,
khaki shorts, sandals. He was kind of quiet but everyone
got along with him."
Eric provided two references when he applied.
One was Columbine English teacher Jason Webb, one of
his favorite teachers.
"He loved Mr. Webb," classmate Jeni LaPlante said.
"He even gave Mr. Webb a Christmas present."
Eric's other reference: Sue Klebold.
Girls and guns
They may have shared a hatred, but Eric and Dylan
parted ways on a crucial part of high school life:
girls.
Dylan rarely dated.
"He liked girls, you know, but he would never
approach them because he was too shy or was waiting for
them to approach him," said Sarah Slater, his friend
from theater.
Nate Dykeman has another opinion on why Dylan didn't
date.
"Dylan wanted to wait," he said. "He didn't want to
get into anything in high school."
Robyn Anderson had a crush on Dylan and they went out
a couple of times, but Dylan never considered her a
girlfriend.
|
Dylan
Klebold and Robyn Anderson pose during Columbine's
prom on April 17, three days before the shootings.
They then met up with Eric Harris at an after-prom
party.
|
Pals since ninth grade, both studied German. Both
were a bit nervous around the opposite sex. But Dylan
was always polite. He treated her with respect.
Eric asked a number of girls out, including a girl
both he and Nate liked. The girl chose Nate, which made
Eric so mad he didn't talk to his friend for a while.
Many girls told Eric no.
Brenda Parker said yes.
They had met at Southwest Plaza in late January 1998,
his junior year, when Brenda and her girlfriends were
certain a group of guys was following them.
"Dylan was really tall so you can't miss him," Brenda
said.
She confronted the boys. They ended up talking about
what they were going to do that night. Cruising in her
1996 Mustang, Brenda said.
That night Eric drove to Westminster, where Brenda
lived.
Brenda would turn 23 in three weeks. Eric was 16.
Only she didn't know that.
When he talked about school, she didn't know he meant
Columbine. She thought he meant a community college.
"He acted a lot older," she said. "And I'm immature."
They bowled. They cruised. They went to Bandimere
Speedway.
She thought he was nice. He bought her Mountain Dews
-- "I didn't even have to ask." And he told her she was
pretty.
Eric taught Brenda how to download Doom and
other computer games, and how to use the Internet.
Eric liked to visit her Westminster apartment because
she lived alone. Sometimes Dylan came along, but he
rarely said a word. One night Dylan made Brenda laugh
when he slipped out of his shell and lip synched to a
Beastie Boys song on television.
Brenda visited Littleton a couple of times. She
watched as Eric and Dylan shot crickets with a BB-gun in
Eric's basement.
Once Eric called her late and whispered for her to
come get him, that he was going to sneak out of the
house. Then they drove to Dylan's house and waited for
him. About an hour later, Dylan's tall figure appeared
out of the dark.
The trio drove to the mountains and drank. They
decided to spend the night in her Mustang because they
were worried about drinking and driving.
"Eric was a little tipsy and we went for a walk and
it was really dark. He was holding on to me and he
tripped and he took me with him," Brenda said.
She described their brief relationship as a
"friendship but more than a friendship." One of the
reasons it ended was because Eric was grounded and
couldn't get away to see her much.
Brenda thinks the last time she saw Eric was about
five months before the shootings. They met at the
Macaroni Grill in Westminster.
"He seemed like he was really bummed out. At first I
thought it was because we were broken up. He kept
calling and wanting to see me but I didn't want to
because I had a boyfriend at the time," she said. "He
just said he was bummed out. I asked about what and he
wouldn't tell."
What Brenda didn't know is that Eric and Dylan had
been shopping for guns with Robyn.
In December, they picked up three guns -- a Hi Point
9mm carbine rifle and two shotguns -- at a gun show.
A Gilpin County man named J.D. "Jimmie" Tanner has
them monthly at the Denver Merchandise Mart on East 58th
Avenue.
Robyn already had turned 18, and Dylan and Eric
apparently thought they needed her along. Actually, at
17, either of them could have bought the guns from an
unlicensed dealer at the Tanner show.
Robyn has said she figured Dylan and Eric wanted the
guns for hunting, or maybe they were collectors. She
wasn't sure. To her, these were just cool guys she had
fun with.
They gave her cash. She showed the seller her
driver's license. They got their guns.
About a month later, Eric and Dylan went to another
Tanner show. They met up with one of their Blackjack
buddies, Philip Duran, and his friend, Mark Manes.
Philip knew Eric and Dylan were scouting another gun.
He put them in touch with Mark, who owned a TEC-DC9
semiautomatic pistol. The foursome discussed the sale at
the January gun show, and Dylan and Eric later paid Mark
$500 for the gun, according to court records.
In early 1999, Brenda came home to find three
messages from Eric on her answering machine. He kept
calling back because her machine cut him off.
"He said, 'I'm sorry I lied to you. There's something
we need to talk about. I'm 17. I'll be 18 in three
months."'
And then he told her it would be great if she wanted
more in their relationship.
But it was something else he said that prompted
Brenda to call right away.
He had left some Rammstein CDs at her house. He told
her she could have them because he wouldn't be needing
them anymore.
She wanted to see if he was all right. And she also
wanted to make sure he was clear about their
relationship.
"I told him I just wanted to be friends."
Cerebral subjects for high school
Their senior year, Eric and Dylan went for some
pretty cerebral subjects: psychology, creative writing.
One theme dominated Eric's homework assignments.
Guns.
As part of Eric's government and economics class,
students marketed a product and made a video of it.
"His product was the Trench Coat Mafia Protection
Service," classmate Matt Cornwell said.
"Dylan was not in the class, but he was in the video.
If you paid $5 they would beat someone up for you. If
you paid them $10, they would shoot somebody for you."
Eric's video stood out, Matt said.
"There were some pretty crazy products. Some people
did Hit Man For Hire. Most of them were funny. This
wasn't funny at all. After it was over, everybody was
like, 'Whoa, that was weird."'
Matt and Dylan were in composition class, but they
only talked once.
"That's because he wore this Soviet pin on his boot,"
Matt said. "One of the last days I was like, 'Why do you
wear that pin on your boot?' And he was like, 'Just to
get a reaction out of people."'
Brooks Brown found himself in two classes with Eric
in their last semester.
The two hadn't talked in more than a year. They
decided to patch things up, mostly for Dylan's sake.
That way, Eric could go along if Brooks invited Dylan
for a smoke. Dylan wouldn't feel torn between his two
friends.
Brooks shook his family up one night when he
announced at the dinner table that he and Eric were
friends again. Judy Brown looked at her son in
disbelief.
"He said, 'He's changed,"' she recalled. "I said,
'Stay away from him. It's a trick."'
Brooks didn't believe her. In their creative writing
class, he even volunteered to read Eric's essay
describing a childhood memory.
Eric wrote about playing war with his brother Kevin,
two little boys using the forest as their battlefield
and pine cones as their grenades.
"It was real good," classmate Domonic Duran said.
Students were asked to describe themselves as an
inanimate object. Eric chose a shotgun and a shell.
Brooks doubts Eric took the assignment seriously.
Although some students in the class adored the teacher,
Judy Kelly, they said Eric clearly felt superior to her.
Dylan also chose violent themes, and once wrote about
a killing.
Kelly was concerned enough about Eric and Dylan's
papers to talk to their parents at parent-teacher
conferences in March.
Wayne Harris had justified his son's fascination with
weapons by saying he had been in the military and Eric
hoped to join the Marines.
But then there was the dream.
To psychology teacher Tom Johnson, Eric's dream
wasn't much weirder than a lot of others that landed on
his desk.
It was February. Eric and Dylan were in the class
together fifth period, after lunch. They would show up
early, sit side-by-side and talk openly with other kids
in the small, friendly class.
Dream analysis was optional. Students would type up a
recent dream and hand it in. No names, no grades.
But the class figured out which one was Eric's
because it had so many references to "me and Dylan."
"It occurred in a mall and the boys were being put
upon by someone, and they retaliated," Johnson said.
Guns were involved, and the dream was somewhat
violent. But at the time it seemed fairly normal in the
surrealistic dream world.
"Whenever there are guns involved, there's anger. But
it didn't strike me as being particularly obsessive or
compulsive," Johnson said. "You do 100 dreams a day and
many of them are in the same ilk."
Johnson had taught Eric freshman government and
economics. To him, Eric wasn't much different his senior
year, just more gothic, longer hair and darker clothes.
Eric was still motivated and worried about grades. He
had a 99 percent.
Dylan, well, he'd missed a test and hadn't made it
up. Johnson couldn't remember Dylan's exact grade
average, but knew it was lacking.
Eric and Dylan's first class during spring semester
was bowling.
At 6:15 a.m.
"It's just to have fun," classmate Jeni LaPlante
said.
It was the only class she had with her closest
friends: Sara Arbogast, Kim Carlin and Cindy Shinnick.
Dylan and Eric bowled on a team with Nate Dykeman and
Chris Morris.
One reason Kim and Sara liked the class is they could
catch up with Eric. They hadn't seen him much after
quitting Blackjack in the fall.
"Eric bowled like an idiot," Kim recalled, giggling.
"He'd throw it," Sara said. "A lot of people laughed
because it worked and he would get strikes and stuff."
Sometimes Eric and Dylan shouted "Sieg Heil!" when
they made strikes.
But something else stands out for the bowling
partners: Dylan's explosive temper.
"Dylan would get so mad when he didn't get strikes,"
Jeni said. "One time he hit the bowling return machine
really hard."
In fact, a tendency to flash quick anger was a trait
Eric and Dylan shared.
"Eric had a short fuse," said friend Joe Stair. "You
could just tell he got mad easier than most people."
But the way Joe saw it, Eric's anger was a reflection
of Eric's passion.
"He got angry. But with other things he was really
happy," Joe said. "He was a very passionate person."
Countdown to graduation
Graduation was only two months away.
Eric and Dylan were weeks from being free of the
place they hated.
Parents attended a graduation meeting at the school
in March.
Judy Brown and Sue Klebold slipped into the
auditorium to catch up. The two old friends talked. And
talked. And talked. Finally, they looked at their
watches. It was 10:30 p.m. They couldn't believe it.
They were alone in the school.
Sue couldn't contain her excitement. Dylan was going
to the University of Arizona in the fall to study
computer science.
"We were just so excited for him," Judy said. "Sue
was ecstatic."
Dylan was on his way.
He and Eric sailed through the classes and community
service they were forced to do after the van break-in.
They took anger management sessions, gave urine samples
for drug tests and spent 45 hours helping at a
recreation center.
Eric and Dylan so impressed their counselor they were
let go a month early.
Feb. 3, 1999. The counselor praised Eric on a
diversion termination report:
"Eric is a very bright young man who is likely to
succeed in life."
Eric impressed the counselor with his intelligence.
Prognosis: Good.
Dylan, likewise, made a good impression on the
counselor. "He is intelligent enough to make any dream a
reality but he needs to understand hard work is a part
of it."
Prognosis: Good.
A month later, Eric and Dylan hauled out their
sawed-off shotguns and a new assault rifle.
It was time for target practice.
Colorado 67 twists through Douglas County's lonesome
foothills through miles and miles of lush forest.
The shooting range isn't marked. But lots of people
target practice in the Rampart Range area of Pike
National Forest. They leave behind grubby evidence of
their sport. Shotgun shell casings in every color, torn
paper targets. Trees whose waifish trunks didn't stand a
chance against a clip of .40-caliber shots.
You can hear it from the highway. Pow. Pow. Pow. All
around the lemony smell of ponderosa pine.
Eric and Dylan warmed up here.
On March 6, they loaded up their TEC-DC9 and the two
shotguns -- now illegally sawed off -- and went into the
woods with Mark Manes and Philip Duran, the friends who
got them the TEC-DC9.
They blasted away with the shotguns -- the same ones
Robyn Anderson had bought. And they all fired the
TEC-DC9, an aggressive, sloppy pistol that turns up in a
lot of drug killings.
Eric and Dylan videotaped the action.
Friday night, April 9
The AMF bowling alley dimmed the lights and brought
in a DJ from midnight to 2 a.m. Eric loved the disco
lights and rowdy music and camaraderie he found at Rock
N' Bowl. He was there most Friday nights.
Only this night, many of his pals had early-morning
Saturday plans. Only two made it to the bowling alley,
Dylan and Robyn.
Dylan wouldn't let Eric down, wouldn't let him be all
alone.
Not on Eric's 18th birthday.
Thursday evening, April 15
A Marine recruiter huddled with parents in their
living room. A painful conversation about their
teenager's psychiatric problems. Rejection.
This was one of Eric Harris' last nights.
Eric had no plans for college. Though he was a
brilliant student with a brain that could wind through
Shakespeare or HTML with equal ease, Eric lusted after
the military. Like his Air Force pilot father and his
World War II veteran grandfather.
Eric told friends he wanted to fight in Kosovo. Bombs
and explosions, the brutality of it all. Eric told a
classmate he'd like to be on the front lines so he could
kill a lot of people.
Eric wanted to join the Marines to pursue the
toughest challenges, to prove himself. Something he felt
he could never in the Columbine atomsphere.
"He said it's unlike here, where they go for the
lowest common denominator, like the teachers helping out
the stupid kids," Brooks Brown said. "There, they're
going for the best."
But Eric's Marine Corps goals were crushed.
The recruiter told the family that Eric would never
be a Marine because he was taking the drug Luvox. The
Marines would have none of that. He told Eric he would
have to be Luvox-free for six months before trying out
again for the Marines.
That same day, Tom Klebold turned 52.
Friday, April 16
Eric and Dylan cooked pizzas at Blackjack.
Dylan had gone back to work at the pizza joint
several months earlier. They didn't always work
together, but they did on what turned out to be their
final shift.
One of the customers that night was Susan DeWitt, a
Columbine junior, who was a receptionist at Great Clips
next door.
When she came to pick up dinner for a stylist, Eric
asked her if she wanted to do something that weekend.
She said sure.
She thought he was cute. Adorable even. He always
talked to her when he ran into her at school.
Saturday, April 17
Cigarettes. A white stretch limo. A girl in a
royal-blue prom dress and soft blonde curls. She's
holding his hand.
This was one of Dylan Klebold's last nights.
Prom night for Columbine. Hardly the outsider, he was
one of a dozen dressed-up kids who piled into a limo and
dined at a ritzy LoDo restaurant. Then it was off to the
dance at the Design Center on South Broadway in Denver.
Dylan wore a black tuxedo, a pink rosebud tucked into
his lapel. His long wavy hair slicked back into an
uncooperative ponytail.
His date was Robyn Anderson, now a valedictorian
contender with her straight-A average. She asked him to
the prom -- just as friends.
In recent months, Robyn and Dylan's relationship had
been wobbling along that murky territory between
friendship and romance.
Robyn later told a friend that Dylan behaved
gentlemanly on prom night, complimenting her on her
dress.
"They were holding hands and stuff," said Jessica
Hughes, one of the limo crowd.
Jessica sat next to Robyn and Dylan during dinner at
Bella Ristorante. There was a lot of silly joking
between them, playing with knives and matches.
"They were pretending to light themselves on fire,"
Jessica said.
Dylan ate a big salad, followed by a seafood dish
with shells, mussels she thinks, then dessert. "I was
like, my Lord," Jessica said.
Jessica and Dylan chatted about a party both planned
to attend in a couple weeks, a reunion for kids who'd
been in the gifted program in elementary school.
"He was all excited to see everyone," Jessica said.
Dylan even agreed to bring pizza because he worked at
Blackjack.
Back in the limo, no one was drinking anything
stronger than Pepsi, Jessica recalled.
The car's TV was off. The radio was turned to a
hard-rock station and on so low the kids drowned out the
music. They were being, well, normal goofy teens
enjoying themselves. Cameras flashing. Lipstick smiles.
Whisking through the night in a mirrored-ceiling car.
"We were flipping people off because the windows were
so dark. We were making fun of people," Jessica said.
Dylan even talked of everyone staying in touch after
he left for college in three months.
"He was in a really great mood that night," another
friend in the limo, Monica Schuster, said.
Eric didn't have a prom date. At least one Columbine
girl turned him down after he sent her a late,
convoluted invitation through a classmate. Friends have
said he tried a few more times for dates.
So he and Susan DeWitt, the girl he had talked to the
night before at Blackjack, made plans for prom night.
She came to his house and they watched Event
Horizon, a 1997 box-office dud about a spaceship,
the futuristic, gory kind of movie that Eric
liked. His favorite films were Alien and
Starship Troopers.
"He seemed fine," Susan said. "I was a little nervous
because, like, dates are nervous."
They talked about friends they knew. He didn't
mention Dylan. If he had, she wouldn't have known who he
was talking about. She can't recall ever seeing them
together -- even at Blackjack.
Wayne and Kathy Harris had gone out to dinner to
celebrate their 29th wedding anniversary. Susan met them
when they got home. They were "super nice."
Eric invited her to the after-prom party at
Columbine's gymnasium, the affair that parents throw for
kids as an alternative to drinking and driving when the
prom ends.
Susan said no, she had to be home, so Eric joined up
with his buddies. He ran into Sara Arbogast and Kim
Carlin, who were with their dates.
"I hugged him and I picked him up," Kim said. "Me and
him always pretended we fought. We sucker-punched each
other. We were goofing off.
"He seemed normal to me. He was with Dylan."
Monday, April 19
Eric and Dylan ditched their second to last class of
the day, creative writing, with two other classmates,
Brooks Brown and Becca Heins.
They decided to go to McDonald's for lunch. But first
Eric and Dylan wanted to drop by Eric's house. They told
Brooks and Becca they would meet them at the restaurant.
Eric and Dylan never went back to school for their
last class, psychology.
That day someone was making strange noises in Wayne
and Kathy Harris' garage. A man hanging wallpaper in the
next-door neighbor's home heard glass breaking and other
jolting, explosive sounds.
Eric asked Mark Manes to buy ammunition for the
semiautomatic pistol, although Eric was old enough to
buy it himself. Mark went to Kmart and bought 100 rounds
for $25. That night, Eric drove the few blocks to Mark's
house to get the ammo.
They talked in front of the Manes house. Mark asked
if he planned to go target shooting that night. Eric
told him no, he needed the ammo for the next day.
Tuesday, April 20
Dylan and Eric skipped bowling.
Nate Dykeman wondered about that because Dylan
usually told him if he wasn't going to be at school.
Eric and Dylan finally arrived. They were dressed to
kill. And their secret sickness wasn't a secret anymore.
Brooks Brown, who had walked outside to have a
cigarette, saw Eric pull up and he confronted him in the
parking lot, telling him he was an idiot for missing an
important test that morning.
It doesn't matter any more, Eric told him.
"I like you, Brooks. Get out of here."
At 11:21 a.m., stunned students ran for their lives
as two gunmen in trench coats sprayed them with a
relentless accumulation of firepower. They giggled and
screamed "Death to the jocks!" as they killed their
classmates at random.
Pain and death all around. Human suffering did not
distract them. They had each other. This was fun, a
game. And they were the winning team.
They would leave 13 dead: schoolmates Cassie Bernall,
Steven Curnow, Corey DePooter, Kelly Fleming, Matthew
Kechter, Daniel Mauser, Daniel Rohrbough, Rachel Scott,
Isaiah Shoels, John Tomlin, Lauren Townsend and Kyle
Velasquez, and teacher Dave Sanders.
And they would wound more than 20 others.
When Nate heard about the shootings, he called the
Klebold house and asked if Dylan were there.
"No, Nate, he's at school," Tom Klebold said.
Nate told him about the shootings, about the trench
coats, about Dylan not coming to school.
Tom Klebold checked Dylan's closet for his coat.
"Oh my God," he told Nate. "It's not here."
Fatal friendship
Eric's and Dylan's grand plan for a high body count
failed.
Teachers warned hundreds of students to run.
|
|
Crosses for Dylan Klebold, top, and Eric
Harris stand on Rebel Hill near Columbine just
days after the shootings. The family of one of the
slain students destroyed them, saying it was wrong
to honor such evil.
|
A huge homemade bomb Dylan and Eric planted in the
cafeteria never exploded. The boys who had built so many
pipe bombs in preparation for this day had manufactured
a dud.
And the weapons they had diligently practiced
shooting jammed repeatedly.
In the end, Eric and Dylan returned to the library,
where 10 of their victims lay dead and two wounded
students drifted in and out of consciousness.
Art teacher Patti Nielson, hiding in a cabinet, heard
voices in unison count, "One! Two! Three!" Then she
heard a loud boom.
Dylan and Eric died next to each other.
If Eric had been afraid to kill himself, Dylan was
there for encouragement. If Dylan had contemplated
backing down -- even for a second -- he had Eric
depending on him.
They were a team. Best friends.
Blood brothers.