February 17, 2025 • 68 mins
Witness a profound story of resilience as we explore the recovery journey of Patrick Ireland, a young man rebuilding his life following the Columbine tragedy. Grappling with the challenges of regaining his speech and motor skills, Patrick's story is not just about physical rehabilitation but also about emotional resilience as he faces the reality of his friends' deaths. Join us to understand the intimate struggles of Patrick and his family, offering insight into the courage required to navigate such an overwhelming experience, all while being unaware of the national spotlight on their journey.
Through a careful examination of the complex lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, we aim to shed light on the paths that led to the tragic events at Columbine. By dissecting their early behaviors and family dynamics, we uncover how Eric's critical thinking was overshadowed by anger, and Dylan's path was marked by isolation and depression. The differing parental responses and the discovery of dark elements in their lives serve as a backdrop to this narrative, allowing us to explore the vulnerabilities and psychological states that played a role in making this calamity.
We unravel the tangled web of crime and deception surrounding Eric and Dylan as detectives navigate a maze of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Despite early suspicions, the investigation ultimately confirmed their solitary roles in the tragedy, a fact underscored by their chilling journals and videos. We also dive into the myths and media narratives that complicated public perception, seeking to offer clarity and understanding in a case often clouded by rumors. Join us as we piece together the intricate puzzle of motivations, misunderstandings, and the search for truth after such a haunting event.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis part nine of Unraveling the
Columbine Tragedy.
Let's begin.
Patrick Arlen was trying tolearn to talk again.
The first couple of days hecouldn't manage much of anything
.
He struggled to spit out asingle sentence, word by word,
(00:24):
and when he had finishedsometimes it made no sense.
In his best moments Patrickspoke like the victim of a
stroke.
Slow, labored attempts thatwould produce a single guttural
syllable and then a southernburst of sound.
(00:45):
He could form the words in hishead, but few made the passage
to his mouth.
His mom would ask how he wasfeeling and he would answer in
Spanish or recite the capitalsof South American countries.
His brain was never aware ofthe mix-up.
He was sure he had justdescribed his mood, or as well
(01:08):
as draw, and was confused by herconfusion.
Patrick's brain tended to spitout whatever was in short-term
memory.
He had been studying thecapitals just before the
shooting and recently returnedfrom Spain.
Often the memories were moreimmediate.
(01:30):
Hospital intercom announcementswere constantly echoing out of
Patrick's mouth and respond tounrelated questions.
He had no idea he had evenheard the voices in the
background.
Other times it was completenonsense.
It got frustrated for everyone.
One of Patrick's first mealsout of the ICU was a hamburger
(01:56):
and he was so excited about itthat he couldn't wait to slather
the bun with something.
Kathy gently asked him torepeat and that was annoying.
But he answered with thisgibberish and over and over he
repeated himself and he gotangrier with each new batch of
nonsense.
He tried miming it, shaking thebottle.
(02:17):
He really wanted the condiment.
Kathy's sister ran downstairsand got one of everything from
the cafeteria and a lot, youknow, handfuls of packets, but
none of that.
They never figured out what hewanted.
Patrick understood that he hadbeen shot and he knew he had
(02:40):
gone out of the window.
He didn't grasp the scale ofthe massacre.
He didn't know he had been onTV or that television shows were
interested in him.
He had no idea the networks hadcast him as the boy in the
window.
Now and then Patrick wouldstammer out an intelligible
(03:01):
answer and it would make himextremely happy.
His motor skills seemed fine onthe left side and if his brain
could control his left hand towork a fork, why not a pen?
Someone fetched a pack ofmarkers and a whiteboard and it
was just scribbles, absolutescribbles.
(03:23):
It was one thing to hearPatrick struggle, seeing his
inability sketch out in blackand white, that was a shocker.
It was like a diagram of abrain malfunctioning, you know
scats of tiny neurons misfiringrandomly into nowhere.
(03:43):
The Arlands were also confrontedwith the realization that the
problem lay deeper than thecontrol centers for Patrick's
vocal cords.
He couldn't organize thethoughts behind them.
He could respond emotionally,but he could not translate that
(04:04):
into language, regardless of themedium, and it frustrated him
and it scared him.
He can speak, he cannot write.
So the question was how arethey, the family, going to
communicate with him?
But Patrick was a bright kid.
(04:27):
Columbine was competitive andsome kids could cruise to easy
A's, but Patrick was not one ofthose.
He had to fight for.
Some of his Several studentswith unblemished records shared
their valedictory title everyyear.
He couldn't afford even one B.
(04:49):
The geniuses could cruise twoways without breaking a sweat,
but Patrick hated getting lumpedin with them.
So Patrick made his parents alittle uneasy when he announced
his intention Frenchman year inthe car on the way to basketball
practice.
He didn't make a big deal outof it.
(05:10):
He didn't say he would try, hejust said he was going to do it
Two years later, in his hospitalroom, john and Kathy Ireland
had let go of basketball.
Go of basketball.
Water skiing, academic honors,walking and talking sounded
(05:32):
ambitious.
Patrick Garland did not see atelevision or a newspaper the
first week.
He didn't realize his familywas protecting him on how big
the Columbine tragedy was.
He had no idea the wholecountry was watching.
He didn't even know who haddied.
The first indication of what hewas involved in came when
friends called to check on himfrom Europe.
(05:52):
He had gone on a class trip amonth earlier and stayed with a
family near Madrid.
Now they were worried about him.
Patrick was taken aback.
They were hearing about this inSpain Seven days out.
He transferred to CraigHospital.
He began rehab and was quicklyscooting around the hospital in
(06:15):
a wheelchair.
He returned from therapy oneday and turned on the TV and it
was the news.
They were listing the peoplekilled.
They showed Corey DePooter'spicture and Patrick, of course,
was stunned.
Corey was one of his bestfriends.
They had started in the librarytogether but gotten separated
(06:35):
when the noises first startedoutside and Corey went to
investigate.
Patrick had never seen himsince.
Patrick later on in aninterview, said that he started
bawling and he said, quote Ithink that was the first time I
cried.
End quote.
The staff at Craig Hospital wasnot pushing for a first step,
(06:59):
just a little movement.
If he could get control of thatleg and lift it up off the
mattress, there was hope.
His leg was fine.
All the neural pathways up anddown his spinal cord were intact
.
Signals passed unimpeded to themuscles wrapped around his
femur.
Millions of tiny nerve endingscontinued transmitting sensory
(07:23):
data along the length of histhigh.
Somewhere inside his head hecould feel himself issued the
command.
He felt it moving in there, butthen it got lost.
He squeezed his eyes, hesqueezed his brain, he tried to
force it.
Squeezing didn't help.
The leg refused.
(07:44):
Something was missing.
The makeshift memorials atClement Park had grown enormous
over the first few days andhundreds of flowers, and they
were piling up with poems anddrawings and teddy bears, letter
jackets, jewelry, wind chimesand teddy bears, leather jackets
(08:05):
, jewelry, wind chimes.
The district rented severalwarehouses to store them.
So while Patrick is trying torecover in the hospital, these
memorials were happening allaround the park and it wasn't
enough, because the survivorsdidn't know what they needed,
(08:28):
where or why exactly, but theyneeded something and they were
searching for a symbol and theyknew immediately when it came.
Seven days after the massacre,shortly before sunset, a roll of
15 wooden crosses rose up alongthe crest of Rebel Hill.
They stood seven feet high,three feet wide and were spaced
(08:50):
evenly along the length of themesa.
Clement Park's floodlights litup the long hanging clouds
behind them and the crosses castan eerie silhouette against the
thunderheads.
The dimensions seemed a littleoff.
The crossbeams looked far tooshort, were branched too close
to the top, some were plantedpoorly, leaning badly to one
(09:13):
side.
Within hours the arms dangledbeets, ribbons, rosaries,
placards, flax and so many blueand white balloons.
Over the next five days, 125,000people trekked up the hill to
reach the crosses.
They trudged through the mud asa vicious storm pounded the
(09:36):
hill.
They tore away the grass.
Many waited two hours in therain just to begin to climb.
It felt more like a pilgrimage.
The crosses had come fromChicago.
A carpenter built them out ofpine that he got at Home Depot.
He drove to Colorado in apickup, planted them on the hill
(10:00):
and drove back.
He taped a black and whitephoto of one victim or killer to
each cross and he left a pendangling from each one to
encourage graffiti.
Soon, each cross had sprouted apile covering the base and
making its way up to the arms.
Christian dog tags were popularwith phrases like God is
(10:23):
awesome, jesus lives.
Several crosses were wrappedhead to foot in flowers, others
dressed in shirts and jacketsand pants.
On 13 crosses the messages wereloving and uncontroversial.
The killer's crosses hosted abitter debate.
(10:44):
Hate breeds hate.
How can anyone forgive you?
Someone responded I forgive you.
So half of the messages wereconciliatory Sorry, we all
failed you, no one is to blame.
It was exactly as Ton and SueCleobold had feared.
If they had buried Dylan, hisgrave would look like that.
(11:06):
A woman told a reporter thatshe had been spit on for
grieving for the killers andthen shoved into the mud.
Despite the flare-ups,controversy was the exception.
One woman marveled at theforgiveness in her community was
the exception.
One woman marbled theforgiveness in her community.
(11:29):
Saturday's edition of the Rockyled with a three-word headline
Dad Destroys Crosses.
A hunting photo captured 13remaining tributes with two
stark gaps.
Eric and Dylan's crosses hadlasted only three days and this
(11:49):
parent said you don't sheepenwhat christ did for us by
honoring murderers with crossesand he had.
He also said there's nowhere inthe bible that says to forgive
an unrepentant murderer.
Most Christians don't know thatthese fools have come out
(12:14):
saying forgive everyone, youdon't repent.
You don't forgive them.
That's what the Bible says, andthis is all his quote, by the
way.
And this is all his quote, bythe way.
So this parent was Mr BrianRoble, and Mr Roble divided the
(12:42):
community because some peopleunderstood his anger but others
found his response a littleharsh.
Brian's first response was notto destroy the two crosses.
He initially affixed each onewith a sign saying Murders, burn
and Hell.
The Park District took themdown.
Officials say that they hadalso removed a teddy bear
smeared with ketchup and wereprohibiting anything obscene.
So Brian conferred with hisex-wife Sue and her husband Rich
(13:05):
Petrone, and they agreed to aunited front on everything.
Rich called several officialsSheriff Stone, dave Thomas and
the DA and the men in charge ofthe Parks Department and Brian
said and I'm going to quote thethree of them said those crosses
shouldn't be there.
We're going to take them down.
(13:26):
Give us until tomorrow at fiveand we promise they will be gone
.
End quote.
So Brian, robert and he and thepatrons went to the hill at five
and nothing had happened.
So he said we decided let'sjust go take care of this, we
(13:48):
don't need to put up with thisstuff.
So Brian wanted those symbolsout and he wanted the world to
see it.
He called CNN and a crew cameand filmed it and Brian said
unquote, it wasn't going to bedone in the darkness, unquote.
So Brian and the patrons hauledthe crosses away, hacked them
(14:10):
into little pieces, tossed therubble into a dumpster.
Brian took charge of hisstrategy.
That day he discovered thepower of being Danny Robert's
dad and from that day forward hewould not hesitate to wield it.
But this particular battle wasjust getting underway.
The carpenter drove back fromChicago, pulled out the 13
(14:35):
remaining crosses.
Now Brian Robo was reallyfuming.
The cruelest man of theaftermath had returned to turn
down the monument to his son.
Robert also sensed opportunism.
He said quote I question hismotives.
End quote.
Brian had good instincts.
(14:58):
The carpenter had made a familybusiness out of similar stunts.
He returned with a new set ofcrosses and a pack of media on
his heels.
The highlight was a jointappearance with Brian on the
Today Show.
The showman apologizedprofusely and offered a series
of solemn vows.
He would never build anothercross for the killers or for any
(15:20):
killer, and he would drivearound the country removing a
sebo he had erected in the past.
He broke every promise.
He built 15 new crosses andtook them on a national tour.
He mailed his celebrity foryears.
Brian Roble returned toCursingham and said quote,
cursing him, and said quote theopportunist, the great carpenter
(15:44):
, the most hateful, despicableperson who would come to someone
else's tragedy, end quote theworld forgot the carpenter.
Few have noted his name.
Most never knew what a hucksterhe was.
All the lies he told or thepain he inflict reflected.
But they remember his crossesfondly.
(16:06):
They recall the comfort thatthey found.
We'll be right back.
Let's go sort of a flashback ofEric and Dylan.
Eric was a thief.
Now he had a set of rent-a-finsigns.
He liked the feeling.
(16:27):
He wanted more.
This was his junior year.
So in junior year the boys gotright to work.
Eric and Dylan and Zach hackedinto the school computer and
commandeered a list of lockercombinations and they began
breaking in.
They got sloppy.
On October 2, 1997, they gotcaught.
(16:48):
They were sent to the dean whosuspended them for three days.
The Harris and Claiborneparents responded the way they
always did.
Wayne Harris was a pragmatist.
He would make Eric regret whathe had done With outsiders.
He was focused on containment.
Eric's future was at stake.
(17:09):
He called the dean and arguedthat Eric was a minor.
The dean was unmoved.
What would show up on Eric'srecords, wayne asked.
He jotted down the answer inhis journal In-house, only
because police were not involvedDestroyed upon graduation.
Good, eric had a promisingfuture ahead.
(17:34):
The Claywolks addressed thesituation intellectually.
Dylan had demonstrated ashocking lapse of ethics, but
Tom disagreed with suspensionson philosophical grounds.
There were more effective waysto discipline a child.
The dean had rarely met such athoughtful, intelligent parent.
But this judgment stood.
(17:57):
Eric and Dylan were eachgrounded for a month and were
forbidden contact with eachother or with Zach.
Zach began drifting away,particularly from Eric.
The tight threesome was overFrom that day forward.
Eric and Dylan committed thecrimes as a pair.
Special Agent Fusilierconsidered Eric's psychological
(18:22):
state at this point, a year anda half before the murders.
Eric was not a depressive likeDylan, that was for sure.
There were no signs of mentalillness, no signs of anything to
predict murder.
Eric's website was obscenelyangry, but anger and young men
were practically synonymous.
The instincts that would leadto Columbine were surely in
(18:46):
place by now, but Eric had yetto reveal them.
Dylan continued to be fixated onHarriet, fifty minutes a day
for one class period.
Dylan felt like he was inheaven because Harriet was in
his class, felt like he was inheaven because Harriet was in
his class.
Sometimes she would laugh andhe thought that her laugh was
(19:13):
darling, so innocent, so pure,and innocence was, he felt, was
an angelic quality and somedayDylan would speak to her, or so
he thought.
One day Dylan saw his chanceand there was a group of project
(19:37):
for the class, a report to workon together, and Harriet was on
his team, and that for him,felt like a blessed day.
This was it.
Felt like a blessed day, thiswas it, but he did nothing.
Dylan described his trajectoryas a downward spiral.
He borrowed the phrase fromNine Inch Nails' Rippin' Concept
album, which documents afictional man unraveling and it
(19:58):
ends with him killing himselfwith a gun to the mouth.
Oliver Stone's satirical filmNatural Born Killers would
become the pop culture artifactmost associated with the
Columbine Massacre.
That was reasonable, since Ericand Dylan use NBK as shorthand
(20:20):
for their own event and the filmbears considerable resemblances
for their own event.
And the film bears considerableresemblances.
It also captured the flavor ofEric's egotistical, empathy-free
attitude, but it bore norelation to Dylan's psyche.
For the first 18 to 20 monthsof his journal, dylan identified
with two powerful characters toconvey his torment the
(20:44):
protagonists of the DownwardSpiral and Derek Lynch's film
Lost Highway.
After the murders, controversiesraged about the role of violent
films, music and video games.
Some columnists and talk radiohosts saw an easy cause and
(21:04):
effect.
But that seemed simplistic forEric, who was a gifted critical
thinker with a voraciousappetite for the classics, and
absurd for his partner.
Dylan identified withdepressives on the brink of
suicide.
He focused on fictionalcharacters mirrored in the
(21:27):
hopelessness he already felt.
Eric got sloppy.
He allowed the worst imaginableperson to discover one of his
pipe bombs.
His dad, wayne Harris, wasbeside himself.
Firecrackers were one thing,but this was too much.
He wasn't even sure what to dowith it.
(21:48):
Eric told several friends aboutthe incident and their accounts
of Wayne's response weredifferent every time.
Zach Heckler said that Waynecould not figure out how to
defuse the bomb.
So he went outside with Ericand detonated it.
But Nate Dyckman said thatWayne had merely confiscated the
bomb.
So he went outside with Ericand detonated it.
But Nate Dyckman said thatWayne had merely confiscated the
bomb.
Sometime later Eric took Nateinto his parents' bedroom closet
(22:13):
and showed it to him.
Wayne Harris never referred tothe incident in his journal on
Eric, which was dormant at thattime.
Eric swore up and down to hisparents that he would never make
a bomb again and theyapparently believed him.
They wanted to.
Eric probably shut downproduction for a while and he
(22:35):
definitely covered his tracksbetter.
Eventually he got back tobusiness.
At some point he showed Natetwo or three of his later
products which he was storing inhis own room.
Dylan felt abandoned.
He was grounded for the lockerscam, home alone and lonelier
(22:57):
than ever.
Then his older brother, brianor Byron, I should say was
kicked out for drugs.
Tom and Sue understood thetough love would cause an
upheaval so they went to familycounseling with Dylan.
That didn't change their son'soutlook.
He got a new room out of it andhe put his own stamp on the
place Two black walls and twored ones, posters of baseball
(23:21):
heroes and rock bands, also somestreet signs and a woman in a
leopard bikini.
And he complained that he getsmore depressed with each day and
he asked why did friends keepdeserting him.
They did not actually, butDylan perceived it that way and
(23:44):
he fretted about Eric dumpinghim too and he repeated Wanna
die, death, equal freedom.
Now Death offered tranquilityand he began using the words
interchangeably.
Then he waited the other option.
He named a friend and he saidhe will get me a gun, I'll go on
(24:08):
my killing spree against anyoneI want.
It was Dylan's second allusionto murder.
The first had been ambiguous,this was overt, and now it was a
spree.
He changed the subjectimmediately, and that was
(24:30):
unusual.
As a rule, dylan hammered ideasrelentlessly.
He would drill for two straightpages on the everlasting
struggle or his destiny as aseeker.
Murder was different.
For the second time he tossedin a single line at the peak of
despair and promptly returned tohis own destruction.
The idea was germinating.
(24:52):
A year and a half out, dylanappeared to be exploring a spree
, with Eric probably, but thedetails of this critical moment
are lost.
Neither boy ever mentionedthose conversations.
In the paper trail they leftbehind, eric recorded his
actions.
He was building bigger bombs.
(25:13):
Coincidence Unlikely, becauseEric's thinking had been
evolving steadily in onedirection since freshman year.
Late in 1997, eric took noticeof school shooters and he wrote
(25:33):
Every day news broadcast storiesof students shooting students
or going on killing sprees.
He researched the possibilitiesfor an English paper.
Guns were cheap, readilyavailable.
He discovered Gun Digest saidyou could get a Saturday night
special for $69, and schoolswere easy targets.
(25:57):
Special for $69, and schoolswere easy targets.
Eric wrote quote it is just aseasy to bring a loaded handgun
to school as it is to bring acalculator.
End quote.
And then, when he wrote that inhis paper, his teacher made a
note on the marginates and wroteouch, and overall he rated it
(26:20):
thorough and logical, nice job.
The last day of school beforeChristmas something happened.
Dylan's true love waved at himfinally and Dylan of course, was
ecstatic.
Then he began to wonder had shewaved at him ecstatic?
(26:42):
Then he began to wonder had shewaved at him?
Maybe not, probably not,definitely, not Just delusional?
He sat down and considered wholoved him and he listed their
names on a page in his journal.
He drew little hearts besidethree.
Nineteen people, nineteenfailures, 19 people, 19 failures
(27:02):
.
A few weeks later Eric made itwith a real woman.
Brenda was almost 23, and shehad no idea he was 16, because
he acted a lot older, she saidwhen he told her he was in
school.
She took it to mean college.
They met at the mall.
He drove her to her house.
They started going out, bowling, drag racing, driving into the
(27:24):
mountains to get drunk.
He taught her about thecomputer.
He told her how great shelooked and she could not have
been more charmed.
She described it to reporterslater as a friendship, but more
than a friendship.
Sometimes dylan would hang outwith them but he was too shy to
(27:45):
to speak.
Eric and dylan got cockier andthey stole more valuable
merchandise and started testingtheir pipe bombs.
And they seem outwardly.
They seem like responsible kids.
Because teachers trusted them,they granted them access to the
(28:07):
computer closet.
They helped themselves toexpensive equipment and at some
point Eric may have started acredit card scam.
In his notebook he listed eightsteps to complete the scam,
though there's no evidence thathe carried them out.
He later claimed he had.
(28:28):
Dylan was no good at deception.
He kept getting caught, butEric did not.
Tom Klebel noticed Dylan had anew laptop.
Eric could have weaseled out ofthat without missing a beat.
You know he would lie, butDylan couldn't.
Dylan just confessed.
His dad made him turn himselfin.
(28:50):
Eric and Dylan both had apenchant for picking up on the
classmen, but Dylan got caughtIn January 1998, he got sent to
the dean for scratching a slutabout fags a slur, I shouldn't
say he scratched a slur aboutfags onto a freshman's locker.
(29:13):
Remember, this is 1997-98, andthat was the terminology used.
He got another suspension andhe paid $70 to get the locker
fixed.
The boys were shooting offtheir pipe bombs by then and man
, were those things badass.
(29:34):
They bragged to Nate Dykemanand then they brought him along
for a demo.
Eric was in charge where bumpswere concerned, so everything
went according to plan.
They waited until Super BowlSunday, when the streets of
Metro Denver were deserted.
(29:54):
The Broncos were underdogs intheir fifth shot at the
championship and everyone waswatching the game.
Eric took advantage of the lawand he brought Nate and Dylan
out to a quiet spot near hishouse, dropped the bomb in a
culvert and let her rip, andNate, of course, was
(30:18):
appropriately impressed.
On January 30, three days afterDylan's meeting with the dean, a
crime of opportunity presenteditself.
It was a Friday night and theboys were restless.
Eric and Dylan drove out intothe country, pulled onto a
gravel strip and got out tobreak stuff.
(30:40):
There was a van parked therewith lots of electronic gizmos
inside.
How cool would it be to stealit?
The boys had no idea what theymight use the stuff for, but
they were sure they could getaway with it.
No witnesses, no fingerprints.
(31:03):
Eric had a pair of ski gloves tomask detection and Eric took
guard duty and gave Dylan thedirty work.
Dylan put one ski glove on andtried to punch out a window.
They had no idea how solid acar window was, so he hit it
(31:25):
again and again and nothing Erictook over.
So just as useless.
So Dylan went for a rock and heholed up a boulder, hurled it
into the glass and even that wasdeflected.
So it took several blows beforethe rock crashed through.
Dylan put the other glove on,reached in to unlock the door
(31:49):
and started digging through thepile like crazy.
Eric again left Dylan to committhe act.
He ran back to man the getawaycar.
Dylan grabbed anything thatlooked interesting.
He flung everything else overthe van.
By his count he nabbed onebriefcase, one black pouch, one
(32:11):
flashlight, a yellow thing and abucket of stuff.
Those are his words.
Dylan ran armloads of loot backto the Honda.
Those are his words.
Dylan ran armloads of loot backto the Honda.
Eric continued to guard.
Another car approached andDylan froze, but the car passed
On face.
Dylan ran back to grab more andEric, at this point, had grown
(32:37):
wary and he said no, no, that'senough, let's go.
This point have grown wary andhe said no, no, that's enough,
let's go.
They drove deeper into thecountry, over the hulk, back to
deer creek canyon park, and deercreek canyon park is a vast
preserve that ran for miles upinto the mountains.
The park was deserted.
It closed an hour afternightfall and the sun had set
(32:59):
four hours ago.
So they pulled into the parkinglot, killed the engine and
checked out the take.
They cranked some tunes toenjoy themselves and then
flipped on the dome light tohunt for another CD.
Dylan reached back and hauledout his favorite item, a $400
(33:19):
volt meter, the yellow thingwith buttons along the base and
black and red probes hanging offit.
Dylan poked out the buttons.
Eric watched intently.
When the meter lit up, the boyswent wild and thought okay,
that's cool.
Dylan pulled out the flashlightand switched it on and Eric wow
(33:42):
, that is really bright.
And then he spotted somethingcooler they got a Nintendo game
pad.
They rummaged a bit more beforeEric realized they have gone
sloppy.
Time to resume precautions.
And Eric said we better putthis stuff in the trunk.
And so he popped the latch andstepped out.
(34:05):
But that's when Jeffco andSheriff's Deputy Timothy Walsh
decided to make his presenceknown.
He had been standing outsidethe car for several minutes
watching and listening to theentire exchange.
You can see for miles out inthe country a lone vehicle in an
empty lot in a closed statepark just asked for intervention
(34:27):
.
The boys had been so immersedthat they had failed to see his
car, hear his engine or hisfootsteps, hear his engine or
his footsteps, or notice histall frame looming right over
the rear window.
When Eric stepped out, deputyWalsh blinded him with a
(34:51):
flashlight beam and asked whatwere they up to?
Whose property was of that?
And Eric wrote later quoteRight, then I realized what a
fool I was.
He would claim remorse, but hedidn't show any even then.
(35:12):
So Eric thought fast but liedpoorly.
He was off his game that night.
He said they had been messingaround in a parking lot near
town and had stumbled onto theequipment stacked neatly in the
grass.
He gave a precise location anddescribed it vividly.
Details were the key to goodlie Good tactics, bad choice.
(35:33):
He depicted the actual robberylocation.
He depicted the actual robberylocation.
Walsh was incredulous.
He asked to see the propertyand Eric said sure, he kept
playing it.
Cool, he kept doing the talking.
Dylan was quiet and went along.
Walsh had the boys stack thegoods on the trunk and try again
(35:53):
.
Where do you find the property?
Dylan summoned up his nerve.
He perverted Eric's story andwell, said it looked suspicious.
He would radio another deputyto check on any break-ins.
Eric was confident.
(36:17):
He looked over at his partnerbut Dylan folded.
Wayne and Kathy Harris werewaiting when Eric arrived at the
police station.
Tom and Sue Klebot were closebehind.
They couldn't believe theirboys could do something like
this.
The boys could be charged withthree felonies, including a
Class 5, which carried up to a$100,000 fine and one to three
(36:43):
years in prison.
Eric and Dylan were questionedseparately.
With their parents' consent.
They waived their rights.
Each boy gave oral and writtenstatements.
Eric blamed Dylan.
Dylan suggested that, as hesaid that they could steal, that
they should steal some of theobjects in the white van.
At first he was veryuncomfortable and questioning
(37:05):
with the thought and his verbalaccount was more adamant because
he said that he and Dylanlooked into the van and asked
should we break into it andsteal it?
It would be nice to steal somestuff in there?
And Eric claimed that.
He responded hell no.
He said that Dylan keptpestering him and eventually
(37:27):
wore him down.
Dylan accepted him to blame thejoint blame and almost at the
same time they both got the ideaof breaking into his white van.
The boys were taken to countyjail.
They were fingerprinted,photographed and booked and then
(37:49):
they were released into thecustody of four furious parents.
We'll be right back After themurders.
The detective team soughtconvictions.
He had three possible crimes touncover Participation in the
(38:12):
attack, participation in theplanning or guilty knowledge.
At first it looked easy.
The killers had been sloppy,they had not even tried to cover
their tracks and the primaryliving suspects were juveniles.
Most of the friends hadwithheld something crucial Robin
had helped purchase three ofthe guns, chris and Nate had
(38:35):
seen pipe bombs, chris and Zachhad heard about napalm.
They all broke quickly.
They were kids, it was easy.
But they broke only so far.
They admitted to knowingdetails but claimed to be
clueless about the plan.
Detectives pushed harder.
(38:56):
The suspects didn't push back,they just threw up their hands.
Fusilier had several solidagents on the case and he knew
they could sniff out a liar.
His team leader described themas wide-eyed and understandably
(39:16):
anxious.
Most had begun by hidingsomething and it had been
painfully obvious.
They were awful actors.
But once they spilled it theyjust seemed relieved.
They were calm, peaceful, allthe signs of someone coming
clean.
Most of the suspects agree topolygraphs.
(39:36):
That usually meant they hadnothing left to hide.
Two friends, robert Perry andJoe Stare, had been identified
by witnesses as shooters or atleast present at the scene.
Both boys produced alibis.
Perry's was shaky.
He had been sleeping downstairsuntil his grandmother woke him
(39:57):
with news of the shooting.
He said he walked upstairs,stumbled out onto the porch and
cried.
Did anyone see him other thanhis grandmother?
No, he didn't think so.
But Perry had been seen byothers.
He had just been too upset tonotice them.
Within a week a neighbor whowas interviewed described
(40:22):
driving up around noon andseeing Perry crying just the way
he had described.
The physical evidence was evenless damning.
All the friends' houses weresearched and no weapons were
found, no ammo, no ordinance, norefuse of any pine bomb
assembly.
Zach had a copy of theanarchist cookbook, but there
(40:44):
was no sign that he had used itto build anything.
Fingerprints at the crime scenewere all abust.
There was an extraordinaryamount of material guns, ammo
gear, unused pipe bombs, stripsof duct tape, dozens of
components from the big bombs.
All of it was covered with thekiller's print, nobody else's.
(41:06):
The same was true at thekiller's houses Nothing on the
journals, videotapes, camcordersor bomb assembly gear.
No one appeared in the killers'records.
Eric had been a meticulousplanner and recorder of dates,
locations and receipts.
(41:26):
Detectives searched the store'sfiles and credit card records.
All signs indicated that thekillers had purchased everything
.
For months.
Shevestone publicly espoused aconspiracy theory.
Fusilier could feel theconspiracy slipping away the
(41:47):
first week.
Within two he knew it wasremote.
The most telling evidence camefrom the killers themselves In
their journals and videos, fromthe killers themselves.
In their journals and videosthey cop to everything.
They never mention outsideinvolvement except derisively
when they talk about haplessdupes.
(42:10):
The killers leak their plans incountless ways, but there's no
indication that anyone close tothem ever breathed a word.
The friends' emails, ims, dayplanners, journals were searched
along with every paper.
The investigators could findthere was no sign that any of
(42:30):
the friends had known.
Rumors about a third shooter hadcontinued right up to the
present day, but publicly.
It didn't take long forinvestigators to put them to
rest.
Eric and Dylan were correctlyidentified by witnesses who knew
them.
No one else turned up on thesurveillance videos on the 911
(42:54):
audio.
Witnesses' accounts wereremarkably consistent about a
tall shooter and a short one,but there seemed to be two of
each two in t-shirts, two intrench coats.
And as soon as they learned,eric's coat was left outside in
(43:14):
the landing.
He knew what had happened thereand this is Fusilier's thinking
.
Witnesses exchanged stories.
Reports of two guys in t-shirtsand two in trench coats quickly
turned into four-shooters.
Dylan's decision to leave hiscoat on until he reached the
library made for morecombinations and the number
(43:38):
multiplied over the afternoon.
The killers also lobbed pipebombs in every direction.
The gunfire shadowed windows andricocheted off floors, ductwork
and stairs.
Many kids heard crashes orexplosions and positively
identified their location as thesource of activity rather than
(44:00):
the destination.
Several witnesses insisted thatthey had spotted a gunman on
the roof.
What they had seen was amaintenance man adjusting an air
conditioner unit.
So what accounted for all theconfusion?
Eyewitness testimony in generalis not very accurate.
(44:21):
Put that together with gunshotsgoing off and just the most
terrifying situation in theirlife.
What they remember now may notbe anywhere near what really
happened.
Human memory can be erratic.
We tend to record fragmentsgunshots, explosions, trench
(44:44):
coats, terror, sirens, screams.
Images come back jumbled, butwe crave coherence, so we trim
them, adjust details andassemble everything together in
a story that makes sense.
We record vivid details, likethe scraggly ponytail flapping
(45:05):
against the dirty blue t-shirtof the boy fleeing just ahead,
all the way out of the building.
A witness may focus on thatswishing hair.
Later she remembers a glimpseof the killer.
He was tall and lanky but hehad scraggly hair.
(45:30):
It fits together and sheconnects it.
Soon the killer is wearing thedirty blue t-shirt as well, and
moments later and forever after,she's convinced that that's
exactly what she saw.
Investigators identify nearly adozen common misperceptions
among library survivors.
(45:51):
Distortion of time was rampant,particularly chronology.
Witnesses recall less once thekillers approach them, not more.
Terror stops the brain fromforming new memories.
A staggering number insistedthat they were the last ones out
of the library.
Once they were out, it was over.
(46:12):
Similarly, most of thoseinjured even superficially
believed they were the lastone's head.
Survivors also clung toreassuring concepts that they
were actually hiding bycrouching on the tables in plain
sight.
Memory is notoriouslyunreliable.
(46:34):
So investigators went back tointerview the killer's closest
friends several times.
Each new interview and leadwould raise more questions about
the killer's associates.
Sometimes new evidence revealedlies.
An FBI agent interviewed ChristyEpling the day after the
(46:57):
murders.
Christy was connected to bothkillers, particularly Eric.
They were close and she wasdating his buddy, nate Dykeman.
No-transcript.
Her FBI report was brief andunremarkable, she said.
Nate was in shock.
The TCM connection was sillyand Eric had probably been the
(47:23):
leader.
Christy did not mention any ofhis notes in her procession.
Christy played cool about thenotes during her FBI interview,
then mailed them to a friend inSt Louis who was unconnected to
Columbine and unlikely to bequestioned.
Christy was careful no returnaddress on the envelope.
(47:49):
The friend went to the police.
She did not inform Christy.
The pages included notes passedback and forth between Christy
and Eric in German class.
It was a rambling conversationconducted in German.
They mentioned a hit list.
That was all news toinvestigators.
Most of the school was on oneof Eric's list, but they had
(48:15):
withheld that information fromthe public.
Christy had been hiding it.
Maybe she was hiding more.
So detectives returned toquestion her.
They asked about German classand Christy said she had
exchanged notes with Eric buthad thrown them away months ago.
But had thrown them away monthsago.
She assured them repeatedlythat Eric had never made any
(48:40):
threats.
She would have told a teacher,she insisted.
Christy also said Nate had fledto Florida to stay with his
father and avoid the media hands.
They had talked on the phonethat morning.
The detectives asked Christywhat should happen to someone
(49:02):
who had helped the killers andshe said they should go to jail
forever.
It was a horrible thing.
And what about someone whowithheld information after the
attack?
And Christy said well, I don'tknow, it would depend on what it
was.
They should probably getcounseling, she suggested, but
(49:27):
some sort of punishment too.
So they ask again did she knowanything more?
No, has she destroyed any?
Know anything more?
No, had she destroyed any notesfrom Eric?
No, they kept repeating thequestions, assuring her that she
(49:49):
could disclose anything nowwithout repercussions.
No, there was nothing.
They continued questioning her,repeated the offer and finally
she went for it.
Okay, there were notes, sheadmitted.
And Nate was not in Florida, hewas staying with her.
He was there in the house rightnow.
(50:12):
She said the notes had beenvery painful to hold on to, but
far, far away.
She hoped to retrieve themsomeday when everything was more
clear.
Once she caught the truth,christy was forthcoming.
She agreed to turn over her PCand her email accounts and to
take a polygraph.
Beyond that she didn't knowanything significant.
(50:35):
She told them about some thingsNate had confessed to, but
detectives knew about themalready.
Christy had just been afraid.
She had thought she hadsomething incriminating and she
had panic.
No evidence of a conspiracy, soanother dead end.
(50:56):
Nevertheless, dr Fusilierlearned a great deal from the
German conversation.
It revolved around Christy'snew boyfriend.
She had a short-lived romancewith a sophomore named Dan.
Eric couldn't believe she wasgoing out with that little and
(51:20):
he used the F word.
What was wrong with Dan?
She asked, and he said for onething the pretty boy had punched
him in the face last year, ericsaid, and a fist fight.
She said that surprised herbecause he always seemed so
rational.
He got mad when kids made funof his black clothes or all his
(51:42):
German crap, but he always kepthis cool.
He would calmly figure out howto get even Christy worried
about Eric getting even.
She asked her boyfriend aboutit and he said he was afraid
Eric might kill him.
Christy decided to play peacebroker.
She took it up with Eric inGerman class again.
(52:03):
She told him straight out howseared Dan was.
She used the phrase kill him.
Dan was she used the phrasekill him Then?
That make Eric nervous.
He was in the juvenilediversion program because of the
(52:24):
band breaking and threats likethat could get him in trouble.
Christy said she had beencareful about it.
But how could Dan make it up tohim?
How about if he let me punchhim in the face?
Eric suggested and she answeredseriously and Eric answered
(52:45):
back seriously.
Dr Fusilier was not surprised bythe notes.
Very cold-blooded any kid couldget in a fight.
Dylan had gotten really angryand in the heat of a fistfight
had clocked Eric.
Eric was planning his punch.
He wanted Dan to stand theredefenseless and let him do it.
(53:06):
Complete power over the kid,that's what Eric craved.
As the conspiracy theorycrumbled, a new motive emerged.
The jug fuel theory wasaccepted as the underlying
driver.
But that had supposedly gone onfor a year.
What made the killer snap?
(53:26):
Nine days after the murders,the media found yet another
trigger the Marines.
The New York Times and theWashington Post broke the story
on April 29.
The rest of the media found yetanother trigger the Marines,
the New York Times and theWashington Post broke the story
on April 29.
The rest of the media, ofcourse, piled on quickly.
They learned that Eric had beentalking to a Marine recruiter
during the last few weeks of hislife.
(53:49):
They also discovered he hadbeen talking or taking the
prescription antidepressantLuvox, something that would
typically disqualify him becauseit implied depression.
A defense department spokesmanverified that the recruiter had
learned about the medication andrejected Eric.
(54:11):
The media was off to the racesagain.
Luvox added an extra wrinkle asit functioned as an anger
suppressant.
The Times cited unnamed friendsof Eric's as saying that they
believe that he had tried tostop taking the drugs, perhaps
(54:37):
because of his rejection by theMarines.
Five days before he and hisfriend Dylan Claiborne stormed
into the Columbine campus withguns and bombs.
The story added a bit ofevidence that seemed to confirm
it.
The coroner's office said nodrugs or alcohol had been found
in Mr Harris's body in anautopsy, but it would not
specify whether the body hadbeen screened for Luvox.
(55:00):
It was finally coming together.
The Marines rejected Eric.
He quit the Luvox.
To fuel his rage he grabbed agun and started again.
It all fit.
Fusilier read the stories andhe shuddered.
All the conclusions werereasonable and wrong.
Eric's body had not initiallybeen screened for Luvox and
(55:30):
later he had remained on a fulldose right up to his death.
And investigators had talked tothe Marine recruiter the
morning after the murders.
He had determined Eric wasineligible.
But Eric had never known.
By this time Fusilier hadalready read Eric's journal and
seen the basement tapes.
(55:51):
He knew what the media did not.
There had been no trigger.
April 30th officials met withthe Klebolds and several
attorneys to discuss groundrules for a series of interviews
.
Kate Baton was aggravated thatshe could not question the
family directly, so she askedthem to tell her about their son
(56:15):
.
They were still dumbfounded.
They described a normal teenageboy, extraordinarily shy but
happy.
Dylan was coping well withadolescence and developing into
a responsible young adult.
They entrusted him with majordecisions when he could
(56:39):
articulate his rationale.
Teachers loved him and so didother kids.
He was gentle, sensitive, untilthe day he died.
Sue couldn't recall seeingDylan cry.
Only once he came home fromschool, upset and went up to his
(57:05):
room.
He pulled the box of stuffedanimals out of the closet,
dumped them out, borrowed themand fell asleep surrounded.
He never did reveal whatdisturbed him.
His parents granted Dylan ameasure of privacy in his own
(57:30):
room.
The last time Tori called beingin there was about two weeks
before the murders.
To turn off the computer.
Dylan left on.
Otherwise, they monitor Dylan'slife aggressively and forbade
him from hanging out with badinfluence.
(57:50):
Tom said he was extremely closeto Dylan.
They share rocky season ticketswith three other families and
on his nights Tom usually tookone of his sons and Tom and
Dylan.
They hung out all the timetogether.
They played a lot of sportsuntil Tom developed arthritis in
the mid-1990s.
(58:10):
Now it was a lot of chess,computers and working in Dylan's
BMW they built a set of customspeakers together.
Dylan didn't like doing repairwork with Tom, though.
Sometimes he got testy andsnapped off one-word responses,
and that was normal.
Tom considered Dylan his bestfriend.
(58:31):
Dylan had a handful of tightbuddies.
His parents said Zach and Nateand of course Eric, who was
definitely closest.
Chris Morris seemed like moreof an acquaintance.
Dylan had fun with RobinAnderson, a sweet girl but
definitely nothing romantic.
He had not had a girlfriend yetbut had been kind of group
(58:52):
dating.
His friends seemed happy.
Eric was the quietest of thegroup.
Tom and Sue never felt theyknew what was going on in that
head of his.
Eric was always respectful,though they were aware Judy
(59:13):
Brown had a different opinionand Sue even said quote Judy
doesn't like a lot of people.
End quote.
Tom and Sue didn't perceiveEric to be leading or following
their son, but they noticed thathe got angry at Dylan when he
screwed something up.
(59:36):
Before they left, detectivesasked the Clarebolds if they had
any questions.
And they say yes, they asked toread anything.
Dylan had written anything tounderstand.
But Tan left frustrated becauseshe said I didn't get to ask
any questions.
All I got was a fluff piece ontheir son.
(59:56):
So she documented the interview, which remained sealed for 18
months.
The series of interviews neveroccur.
Lawyers demanded immunity fromprosecution before they could
talk.
Jafka officials refused.
The Harris's took the sameposition.
(01:00:17):
Bataan didn't even get a fluffpiece from them.
While Bataan interviewed theClare Boards, the National Rifle
Association convened in Denverand it was a ghastly coincidence
Mayor Wellington Webb beggedthe group to cancel its annual
convention scheduled long beforeAngry Barbs had flown back and
(01:00:38):
forth a week and he said wedon't want you here.
This is what the Mayor Web toldthem.
Other promoters gave in tosimilar demands.
Marilyn Manson had beenincorrectly linked to the
killers.
He canceled his concert at RedRocks and the remainder of his
national tour.
(01:00:58):
The National Rifle Associationshow went on.
4,000 attended, 3,000protesters met them.
They massed on the Capitolsteps, marched to the convention
site and formed a human chainaround the Adam's Marks Hotel.
So all this was happening.
(01:01:22):
When the conspiracy evaporated,it left a dangerous vacuum.
Dr Fusilier saw the dangerearly on.
He said quote Once weunderstood there was no third
shooter, I realized that foreveryone this was going to be
difficult to get closer.
End quote.
(01:01:42):
The final act of the killerswas among their cruelest.
They deprived the survivors ofa living perpetrator.
They deprived the families of afocus for the anger and their
blame.
There would be no cathartictrial for the victims.
There was no killer to rebukein a courtroom, nor judge to
(01:02:06):
implore to impose the maximumpenalty.
South Jekyll was seething withanger and it would be deprived
of a reasonable target.
Displaced anger would riddlethe community for years.
The crumbling conspiracyeliminated the primary mission
of the task force.
(01:02:26):
The all-star team was left tosort out logistical issues,
exactly what had happened andhow.
Those were massiveinvestigations, easy to get lost
inside.
Investigators wanted to retraceevery step, reconstruct each
(01:02:47):
moment, place every witness andevery buckshot fragment in place
and time and context, and itdrew the team's attention from
the real objective why.
The families wanted to know howtheir children died, of course,
but that was nothing comparedto the underlying question.
(01:03:10):
Sheriff Stone kept talking aboutthe conspiracy theory with the
press.
He was driving his team nuts.
Every few days, jeffcospokesman corrected another
misstatement by the sheriff.
Several corrections wereextreme Arrests were not
imminent, deputies had notblocked the killers from
(01:03:32):
escaping the school and Stone'sdescriptions of the cafeteria
videos had been pure conjecture.
The tapes had not even beenanalyzed yet.
They did not try to correctsome of his mischaracterizations
, like when he quoted Eric'sjournal out of context to give
(01:03:52):
the impression that the killershad been planning to hijack a
plane when they had startedtheir attack.
He was quickly becoming alaughingstock.
Yet he was the ultimate rankingauthority on the case.
His staff begged him to stopspeaking to the press.
But how would it look ifsubordinates spoke about the
case while the head man wasmuscled.
(01:04:14):
A tacit understanding developedon the team If Stone kept his
mouth shut, they would too.
Though they continuedbackground interviews with the
Rocky For the next five monthsuntil an impromptu interview by
lead investigator Kit Baton inSeptember.
Law enforcement officers woulddivulge virtually nothing more
(01:04:37):
publicly about their discoveriesor conclusions.
After that it would be a slowtrickle and a fight for every
scrap of information.
Nine days after the shootings,the Jeffco blackout began.
Columbine coverage endedabruptly too.
A string of deadly tornadoeshit Oklahoma.
(01:05:01):
The National Press Corp lefttown in a single afternoon.
The school would returnperiodically to national
headlines over the years, butthe narrative of what had
happened was set.
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis part nine of Unraveling the
Columbine Tragedy.
Let's begin.
Patrick Arlen was trying tolearn to talk again.
The first couple of days hecouldn't manage much of anything
.
He struggled to spit out asingle sentence, word by word,
(00:24):
and when he had finishedsometimes it made no sense.
In his best moments Patrickspoke like the victim of a
stroke.
Slow, labored attempts thatwould produce a single guttural
syllable and then a southernburst of sound.
(00:45):
He could form the words in hishead, but few made the passage
to his mouth.
His mom would ask how he wasfeeling and he would answer in
Spanish or recite the capitalsof South American countries.
His brain was never aware ofthe mix-up.
He was sure he had justdescribed his mood, or as well
(01:08):
as draw, and was confused by herconfusion.
Patrick's brain tended to spitout whatever was in short-term
memory.
He had been studying thecapitals just before the
shooting and recently returnedfrom Spain.
Often the memories were moreimmediate.
(01:30):
Hospital intercom announcementswere constantly echoing out of
Patrick's mouth and respond tounrelated questions.
He had no idea he had evenheard the voices in the
background.
Other times it was completenonsense.
It got frustrated for everyone.
One of Patrick's first mealsout of the ICU was a hamburger
(01:56):
and he was so excited about itthat he couldn't wait to slather
the bun with something.
Kathy gently asked him torepeat and that was annoying.
But he answered with thisgibberish and over and over he
repeated himself and he gotangrier with each new batch of
nonsense.
He tried miming it, shaking thebottle.
(02:17):
He really wanted the condiment.
Kathy's sister ran downstairsand got one of everything from
the cafeteria and a lot, youknow, handfuls of packets, but
none of that.
They never figured out what hewanted.
Patrick understood that he hadbeen shot and he knew he had
(02:40):
gone out of the window.
He didn't grasp the scale ofthe massacre.
He didn't know he had been onTV or that television shows were
interested in him.
He had no idea the networks hadcast him as the boy in the
window.
Now and then Patrick wouldstammer out an intelligible
(03:01):
answer and it would make himextremely happy.
His motor skills seemed fine onthe left side and if his brain
could control his left hand towork a fork, why not a pen?
Someone fetched a pack ofmarkers and a whiteboard and it
was just scribbles, absolutescribbles.
(03:23):
It was one thing to hearPatrick struggle, seeing his
inability sketch out in blackand white, that was a shocker.
It was like a diagram of abrain malfunctioning, you know
scats of tiny neurons misfiringrandomly into nowhere.
(03:43):
The Arlands were also confrontedwith the realization that the
problem lay deeper than thecontrol centers for Patrick's
vocal cords.
He couldn't organize thethoughts behind them.
He could respond emotionally,but he could not translate that
(04:04):
into language, regardless of themedium, and it frustrated him
and it scared him.
He can speak, he cannot write.
So the question was how arethey, the family, going to
communicate with him?
But Patrick was a bright kid.
(04:27):
Columbine was competitive andsome kids could cruise to easy
A's, but Patrick was not one ofthose.
He had to fight for.
Some of his Several studentswith unblemished records shared
their valedictory title everyyear.
He couldn't afford even one B.
(04:49):
The geniuses could cruise twoways without breaking a sweat,
but Patrick hated getting lumpedin with them.
So Patrick made his parents alittle uneasy when he announced
his intention Frenchman year inthe car on the way to basketball
practice.
He didn't make a big deal outof it.
(05:10):
He didn't say he would try, hejust said he was going to do it
Two years later, in his hospitalroom, john and Kathy Ireland
had let go of basketball.
Go of basketball.
Water skiing, academic honors,walking and talking sounded
(05:32):
ambitious.
Patrick Garland did not see atelevision or a newspaper the
first week.
He didn't realize his familywas protecting him on how big
the Columbine tragedy was.
He had no idea the wholecountry was watching.
He didn't even know who haddied.
The first indication of what hewas involved in came when
friends called to check on himfrom Europe.
(05:52):
He had gone on a class trip amonth earlier and stayed with a
family near Madrid.
Now they were worried about him.
Patrick was taken aback.
They were hearing about this inSpain Seven days out.
He transferred to CraigHospital.
He began rehab and was quicklyscooting around the hospital in
(06:15):
a wheelchair.
He returned from therapy oneday and turned on the TV and it
was the news.
They were listing the peoplekilled.
They showed Corey DePooter'spicture and Patrick, of course,
was stunned.
Corey was one of his bestfriends.
They had started in the librarytogether but gotten separated
(06:35):
when the noises first startedoutside and Corey went to
investigate.
Patrick had never seen himsince.
Patrick later on in aninterview, said that he started
bawling and he said, quote Ithink that was the first time I
cried.
End quote.
The staff at Craig Hospital wasnot pushing for a first step,
(06:59):
just a little movement.
If he could get control of thatleg and lift it up off the
mattress, there was hope.
His leg was fine.
All the neural pathways up anddown his spinal cord were intact
.
Signals passed unimpeded to themuscles wrapped around his
femur.
Millions of tiny nerve endingscontinued transmitting sensory
(07:23):
data along the length of histhigh.
Somewhere inside his head hecould feel himself issued the
command.
He felt it moving in there, butthen it got lost.
He squeezed his eyes, hesqueezed his brain, he tried to
force it.
Squeezing didn't help.
The leg refused.
(07:44):
Something was missing.
The makeshift memorials atClement Park had grown enormous
over the first few days andhundreds of flowers, and they
were piling up with poems anddrawings and teddy bears, letter
jackets, jewelry, wind chimesand teddy bears, leather jackets
(08:05):
, jewelry, wind chimes.
The district rented severalwarehouses to store them.
So while Patrick is trying torecover in the hospital, these
memorials were happening allaround the park and it wasn't
enough, because the survivorsdidn't know what they needed,
(08:28):
where or why exactly, but theyneeded something and they were
searching for a symbol and theyknew immediately when it came.
Seven days after the massacre,shortly before sunset, a roll of
15 wooden crosses rose up alongthe crest of Rebel Hill.
They stood seven feet high,three feet wide and were spaced
(08:50):
evenly along the length of themesa.
Clement Park's floodlights litup the long hanging clouds
behind them and the crosses castan eerie silhouette against the
thunderheads.
The dimensions seemed a littleoff.
The crossbeams looked far tooshort, were branched too close
to the top, some were plantedpoorly, leaning badly to one
(09:13):
side.
Within hours the arms dangledbeets, ribbons, rosaries,
placards, flax and so many blueand white balloons.
Over the next five days, 125,000people trekked up the hill to
reach the crosses.
They trudged through the mud asa vicious storm pounded the
(09:36):
hill.
They tore away the grass.
Many waited two hours in therain just to begin to climb.
It felt more like a pilgrimage.
The crosses had come fromChicago.
A carpenter built them out ofpine that he got at Home Depot.
He drove to Colorado in apickup, planted them on the hill
(10:00):
and drove back.
He taped a black and whitephoto of one victim or killer to
each cross and he left a pendangling from each one to
encourage graffiti.
Soon, each cross had sprouted apile covering the base and
making its way up to the arms.
Christian dog tags were popularwith phrases like God is
(10:23):
awesome, jesus lives.
Several crosses were wrappedhead to foot in flowers, others
dressed in shirts and jacketsand pants.
On 13 crosses the messages wereloving and uncontroversial.
The killer's crosses hosted abitter debate.
(10:44):
Hate breeds hate.
How can anyone forgive you?
Someone responded I forgive you.
So half of the messages wereconciliatory Sorry, we all
failed you, no one is to blame.
It was exactly as Ton and SueCleobold had feared.
If they had buried Dylan, hisgrave would look like that.
(11:06):
A woman told a reporter thatshe had been spit on for
grieving for the killers andthen shoved into the mud.
Despite the flare-ups,controversy was the exception.
One woman marveled at theforgiveness in her community was
the exception.
One woman marbled theforgiveness in her community.
(11:29):
Saturday's edition of the Rockyled with a three-word headline
Dad Destroys Crosses.
A hunting photo captured 13remaining tributes with two
stark gaps.
Eric and Dylan's crosses hadlasted only three days and this
(11:49):
parent said you don't sheepenwhat christ did for us by
honoring murderers with crossesand he had.
He also said there's nowhere inthe bible that says to forgive
an unrepentant murderer.
Most Christians don't know thatthese fools have come out
(12:14):
saying forgive everyone, youdon't repent.
You don't forgive them.
That's what the Bible says, andthis is all his quote, by the
way.
And this is all his quote, bythe way.
So this parent was Mr BrianRoble, and Mr Roble divided the
(12:42):
community because some peopleunderstood his anger but others
found his response a littleharsh.
Brian's first response was notto destroy the two crosses.
He initially affixed each onewith a sign saying Murders, burn
and Hell.
The Park District took themdown.
Officials say that they hadalso removed a teddy bear
smeared with ketchup and wereprohibiting anything obscene.
So Brian conferred with hisex-wife Sue and her husband Rich
(13:05):
Petrone, and they agreed to aunited front on everything.
Rich called several officialsSheriff Stone, dave Thomas and
the DA and the men in charge ofthe Parks Department and Brian
said and I'm going to quote thethree of them said those crosses
shouldn't be there.
We're going to take them down.
(13:26):
Give us until tomorrow at fiveand we promise they will be gone
.
End quote.
So Brian, robert and he and thepatrons went to the hill at five
and nothing had happened.
So he said we decided let'sjust go take care of this, we
(13:48):
don't need to put up with thisstuff.
So Brian wanted those symbolsout and he wanted the world to
see it.
He called CNN and a crew cameand filmed it and Brian said
unquote, it wasn't going to bedone in the darkness, unquote.
So Brian and the patrons hauledthe crosses away, hacked them
(14:10):
into little pieces, tossed therubble into a dumpster.
Brian took charge of hisstrategy.
That day he discovered thepower of being Danny Robert's
dad and from that day forward hewould not hesitate to wield it.
But this particular battle wasjust getting underway.
The carpenter drove back fromChicago, pulled out the 13
(14:35):
remaining crosses.
Now Brian Robo was reallyfuming.
The cruelest man of theaftermath had returned to turn
down the monument to his son.
Robert also sensed opportunism.
He said quote I question hismotives.
End quote.
Brian had good instincts.
(14:58):
The carpenter had made a familybusiness out of similar stunts.
He returned with a new set ofcrosses and a pack of media on
his heels.
The highlight was a jointappearance with Brian on the
Today Show.
The showman apologizedprofusely and offered a series
of solemn vows.
He would never build anothercross for the killers or for any
(15:20):
killer, and he would drivearound the country removing a
sebo he had erected in the past.
He broke every promise.
He built 15 new crosses andtook them on a national tour.
He mailed his celebrity foryears.
Brian Roble returned toCursingham and said quote,
cursing him, and said quote theopportunist, the great carpenter
(15:44):
, the most hateful, despicableperson who would come to someone
else's tragedy, end quote theworld forgot the carpenter.
Few have noted his name.
Most never knew what a hucksterhe was.
All the lies he told or thepain he inflict reflected.
But they remember his crossesfondly.
(16:06):
They recall the comfort thatthey found.
We'll be right back.
Let's go sort of a flashback ofEric and Dylan.
Eric was a thief.
Now he had a set of rent-a-finsigns.
He liked the feeling.
(16:27):
He wanted more.
This was his junior year.
So in junior year the boys gotright to work.
Eric and Dylan and Zach hackedinto the school computer and
commandeered a list of lockercombinations and they began
breaking in.
They got sloppy.
On October 2, 1997, they gotcaught.
(16:48):
They were sent to the dean whosuspended them for three days.
The Harris and Claiborneparents responded the way they
always did.
Wayne Harris was a pragmatist.
He would make Eric regret whathe had done With outsiders.
He was focused on containment.
Eric's future was at stake.
(17:09):
He called the dean and arguedthat Eric was a minor.
The dean was unmoved.
What would show up on Eric'srecords, wayne asked.
He jotted down the answer inhis journal In-house, only
because police were not involvedDestroyed upon graduation.
Good, eric had a promisingfuture ahead.
(17:34):
The Claywolks addressed thesituation intellectually.
Dylan had demonstrated ashocking lapse of ethics, but
Tom disagreed with suspensionson philosophical grounds.
There were more effective waysto discipline a child.
The dean had rarely met such athoughtful, intelligent parent.
But this judgment stood.
(17:57):
Eric and Dylan were eachgrounded for a month and were
forbidden contact with eachother or with Zach.
Zach began drifting away,particularly from Eric.
The tight threesome was overFrom that day forward.
Eric and Dylan committed thecrimes as a pair.
Special Agent Fusilierconsidered Eric's psychological
(18:22):
state at this point, a year anda half before the murders.
Eric was not a depressive likeDylan, that was for sure.
There were no signs of mentalillness, no signs of anything to
predict murder.
Eric's website was obscenelyangry, but anger and young men
were practically synonymous.
The instincts that would leadto Columbine were surely in
(18:46):
place by now, but Eric had yetto reveal them.
Dylan continued to be fixated onHarriet, fifty minutes a day
for one class period.
Dylan felt like he was inheaven because Harriet was in
his class, felt like he was inheaven because Harriet was in
his class.
Sometimes she would laugh andhe thought that her laugh was
(19:13):
darling, so innocent, so pure,and innocence was, he felt, was
an angelic quality and somedayDylan would speak to her, or so
he thought.
One day Dylan saw his chanceand there was a group of project
(19:37):
for the class, a report to workon together, and Harriet was on
his team, and that for him,felt like a blessed day.
This was it.
Felt like a blessed day, thiswas it, but he did nothing.
Dylan described his trajectoryas a downward spiral.
He borrowed the phrase fromNine Inch Nails' Rippin' Concept
album, which documents afictional man unraveling and it
(19:58):
ends with him killing himselfwith a gun to the mouth.
Oliver Stone's satirical filmNatural Born Killers would
become the pop culture artifactmost associated with the
Columbine Massacre.
That was reasonable, since Ericand Dylan use NBK as shorthand
(20:20):
for their own event and the filmbears considerable resemblances
for their own event.
And the film bears considerableresemblances.
It also captured the flavor ofEric's egotistical, empathy-free
attitude, but it bore norelation to Dylan's psyche.
For the first 18 to 20 monthsof his journal, dylan identified
with two powerful characters toconvey his torment the
(20:44):
protagonists of the DownwardSpiral and Derek Lynch's film
Lost Highway.
After the murders, controversiesraged about the role of violent
films, music and video games.
Some columnists and talk radiohosts saw an easy cause and
(21:04):
effect.
But that seemed simplistic forEric, who was a gifted critical
thinker with a voraciousappetite for the classics, and
absurd for his partner.
Dylan identified withdepressives on the brink of
suicide.
He focused on fictionalcharacters mirrored in the
(21:27):
hopelessness he already felt.
Eric got sloppy.
He allowed the worst imaginableperson to discover one of his
pipe bombs.
His dad, wayne Harris, wasbeside himself.
Firecrackers were one thing,but this was too much.
He wasn't even sure what to dowith it.
(21:48):
Eric told several friends aboutthe incident and their accounts
of Wayne's response weredifferent every time.
Zach Heckler said that Waynecould not figure out how to
defuse the bomb.
So he went outside with Ericand detonated it.
But Nate Dyckman said thatWayne had merely confiscated the
bomb.
So he went outside with Ericand detonated it.
But Nate Dyckman said thatWayne had merely confiscated the
bomb.
Sometime later Eric took Nateinto his parents' bedroom closet
(22:13):
and showed it to him.
Wayne Harris never referred tothe incident in his journal on
Eric, which was dormant at thattime.
Eric swore up and down to hisparents that he would never make
a bomb again and theyapparently believed him.
They wanted to.
Eric probably shut downproduction for a while and he
(22:35):
definitely covered his tracksbetter.
Eventually he got back tobusiness.
At some point he showed Natetwo or three of his later
products which he was storing inhis own room.
Dylan felt abandoned.
He was grounded for the lockerscam, home alone and lonelier
(22:57):
than ever.
Then his older brother, brianor Byron, I should say was
kicked out for drugs.
Tom and Sue understood thetough love would cause an
upheaval so they went to familycounseling with Dylan.
That didn't change their son'soutlook.
He got a new room out of it andhe put his own stamp on the
place Two black walls and twored ones, posters of baseball
(23:21):
heroes and rock bands, also somestreet signs and a woman in a
leopard bikini.
And he complained that he getsmore depressed with each day and
he asked why did friends keepdeserting him.
They did not actually, butDylan perceived it that way and
(23:44):
he fretted about Eric dumpinghim too and he repeated Wanna
die, death, equal freedom.
Now Death offered tranquilityand he began using the words
interchangeably.
Then he waited the other option.
He named a friend and he saidhe will get me a gun, I'll go on
(24:08):
my killing spree against anyoneI want.
It was Dylan's second allusionto murder.
The first had been ambiguous,this was overt, and now it was a
spree.
He changed the subjectimmediately, and that was
(24:30):
unusual.
As a rule, dylan hammered ideasrelentlessly.
He would drill for two straightpages on the everlasting
struggle or his destiny as aseeker.
Murder was different.
For the second time he tossedin a single line at the peak of
despair and promptly returned tohis own destruction.
The idea was germinating.
(24:52):
A year and a half out, dylanappeared to be exploring a spree
, with Eric probably, but thedetails of this critical moment
are lost.
Neither boy ever mentionedthose conversations.
In the paper trail they leftbehind, eric recorded his
actions.
He was building bigger bombs.
(25:13):
Coincidence Unlikely, becauseEric's thinking had been
evolving steadily in onedirection since freshman year.
Late in 1997, eric took noticeof school shooters and he wrote
(25:33):
Every day news broadcast storiesof students shooting students
or going on killing sprees.
He researched the possibilitiesfor an English paper.
Guns were cheap, readilyavailable.
He discovered Gun Digest saidyou could get a Saturday night
special for $69, and schoolswere easy targets.
(25:57):
Special for $69, and schoolswere easy targets.
Eric wrote quote it is just aseasy to bring a loaded handgun
to school as it is to bring acalculator.
End quote.
And then, when he wrote that inhis paper, his teacher made a
note on the marginates and wroteouch, and overall he rated it
(26:20):
thorough and logical, nice job.
The last day of school beforeChristmas something happened.
Dylan's true love waved at himfinally and Dylan of course, was
ecstatic.
Then he began to wonder had shewaved at him ecstatic?
(26:42):
Then he began to wonder had shewaved at him?
Maybe not, probably not,definitely, not Just delusional?
He sat down and considered wholoved him and he listed their
names on a page in his journal.
He drew little hearts besidethree.
Nineteen people, nineteenfailures, 19 people, 19 failures
(27:02):
.
A few weeks later Eric made itwith a real woman.
Brenda was almost 23, and shehad no idea he was 16, because
he acted a lot older, she saidwhen he told her he was in
school.
She took it to mean college.
They met at the mall.
He drove her to her house.
They started going out, bowling, drag racing, driving into the
(27:24):
mountains to get drunk.
He taught her about thecomputer.
He told her how great shelooked and she could not have
been more charmed.
She described it to reporterslater as a friendship, but more
than a friendship.
Sometimes dylan would hang outwith them but he was too shy to
(27:45):
to speak.
Eric and dylan got cockier andthey stole more valuable
merchandise and started testingtheir pipe bombs.
And they seem outwardly.
They seem like responsible kids.
Because teachers trusted them,they granted them access to the
(28:07):
computer closet.
They helped themselves toexpensive equipment and at some
point Eric may have started acredit card scam.
In his notebook he listed eightsteps to complete the scam,
though there's no evidence thathe carried them out.
He later claimed he had.
(28:28):
Dylan was no good at deception.
He kept getting caught, butEric did not.
Tom Klebel noticed Dylan had anew laptop.
Eric could have weaseled out ofthat without missing a beat.
You know he would lie, butDylan couldn't.
Dylan just confessed.
His dad made him turn himselfin.
(28:50):
Eric and Dylan both had apenchant for picking up on the
classmen, but Dylan got caughtIn January 1998, he got sent to
the dean for scratching a slutabout fags a slur, I shouldn't
say he scratched a slur aboutfags onto a freshman's locker.
(29:13):
Remember, this is 1997-98, andthat was the terminology used.
He got another suspension andhe paid $70 to get the locker
fixed.
The boys were shooting offtheir pipe bombs by then and man
, were those things badass.
(29:34):
They bragged to Nate Dykemanand then they brought him along
for a demo.
Eric was in charge where bumpswere concerned, so everything
went according to plan.
They waited until Super BowlSunday, when the streets of
Metro Denver were deserted.
(29:54):
The Broncos were underdogs intheir fifth shot at the
championship and everyone waswatching the game.
Eric took advantage of the lawand he brought Nate and Dylan
out to a quiet spot near hishouse, dropped the bomb in a
culvert and let her rip, andNate, of course, was
(30:18):
appropriately impressed.
On January 30, three days afterDylan's meeting with the dean, a
crime of opportunity presenteditself.
It was a Friday night and theboys were restless.
Eric and Dylan drove out intothe country, pulled onto a
gravel strip and got out tobreak stuff.
(30:40):
There was a van parked therewith lots of electronic gizmos
inside.
How cool would it be to stealit?
The boys had no idea what theymight use the stuff for, but
they were sure they could getaway with it.
No witnesses, no fingerprints.
(31:03):
Eric had a pair of ski gloves tomask detection and Eric took
guard duty and gave Dylan thedirty work.
Dylan put one ski glove on andtried to punch out a window.
They had no idea how solid acar window was, so he hit it
(31:25):
again and again and nothing Erictook over.
So just as useless.
So Dylan went for a rock and heholed up a boulder, hurled it
into the glass and even that wasdeflected.
So it took several blows beforethe rock crashed through.
Dylan put the other glove on,reached in to unlock the door
(31:49):
and started digging through thepile like crazy.
Eric again left Dylan to committhe act.
He ran back to man the getawaycar.
Dylan grabbed anything thatlooked interesting.
He flung everything else overthe van.
By his count he nabbed onebriefcase, one black pouch, one
(32:11):
flashlight, a yellow thing and abucket of stuff.
Those are his words.
Dylan ran armloads of loot backto the Honda.
Those are his words.
Dylan ran armloads of loot backto the Honda.
Eric continued to guard.
Another car approached andDylan froze, but the car passed
On face.
Dylan ran back to grab more andEric, at this point, had grown
(32:37):
wary and he said no, no, that'senough, let's go.
This point have grown wary andhe said no, no, that's enough,
let's go.
They drove deeper into thecountry, over the hulk, back to
deer creek canyon park, and deercreek canyon park is a vast
preserve that ran for miles upinto the mountains.
The park was deserted.
It closed an hour afternightfall and the sun had set
(32:59):
four hours ago.
So they pulled into the parkinglot, killed the engine and
checked out the take.
They cranked some tunes toenjoy themselves and then
flipped on the dome light tohunt for another CD.
Dylan reached back and hauledout his favorite item, a $400
(33:19):
volt meter, the yellow thingwith buttons along the base and
black and red probes hanging offit.
Dylan poked out the buttons.
Eric watched intently.
When the meter lit up, the boyswent wild and thought okay,
that's cool.
Dylan pulled out the flashlightand switched it on and Eric wow
(33:42):
, that is really bright.
And then he spotted somethingcooler they got a Nintendo game
pad.
They rummaged a bit more beforeEric realized they have gone
sloppy.
Time to resume precautions.
And Eric said we better putthis stuff in the trunk.
And so he popped the latch andstepped out.
(34:05):
But that's when Jeffco andSheriff's Deputy Timothy Walsh
decided to make his presenceknown.
He had been standing outsidethe car for several minutes
watching and listening to theentire exchange.
You can see for miles out inthe country a lone vehicle in an
empty lot in a closed statepark just asked for intervention
(34:27):
.
The boys had been so immersedthat they had failed to see his
car, hear his engine or hisfootsteps, hear his engine or
his footsteps, or notice histall frame looming right over
the rear window.
When Eric stepped out, deputyWalsh blinded him with a
(34:51):
flashlight beam and asked whatwere they up to?
Whose property was of that?
And Eric wrote later quoteRight, then I realized what a
fool I was.
He would claim remorse, but hedidn't show any even then.
(35:12):
So Eric thought fast but liedpoorly.
He was off his game that night.
He said they had been messingaround in a parking lot near
town and had stumbled onto theequipment stacked neatly in the
grass.
He gave a precise location anddescribed it vividly.
Details were the key to goodlie Good tactics, bad choice.
(35:33):
He depicted the actual robberylocation.
He depicted the actual robberylocation.
Walsh was incredulous.
He asked to see the propertyand Eric said sure, he kept
playing it.
Cool, he kept doing the talking.
Dylan was quiet and went along.
Walsh had the boys stack thegoods on the trunk and try again
(35:53):
.
Where do you find the property?
Dylan summoned up his nerve.
He perverted Eric's story andwell, said it looked suspicious.
He would radio another deputyto check on any break-ins.
Eric was confident.
(36:17):
He looked over at his partnerbut Dylan folded.
Wayne and Kathy Harris werewaiting when Eric arrived at the
police station.
Tom and Sue Klebot were closebehind.
They couldn't believe theirboys could do something like
this.
The boys could be charged withthree felonies, including a
Class 5, which carried up to a$100,000 fine and one to three
(36:43):
years in prison.
Eric and Dylan were questionedseparately.
With their parents' consent.
They waived their rights.
Each boy gave oral and writtenstatements.
Eric blamed Dylan.
Dylan suggested that, as hesaid that they could steal, that
they should steal some of theobjects in the white van.
At first he was veryuncomfortable and questioning
(37:05):
with the thought and his verbalaccount was more adamant because
he said that he and Dylanlooked into the van and asked
should we break into it andsteal it?
It would be nice to steal somestuff in there?
And Eric claimed that.
He responded hell no.
He said that Dylan keptpestering him and eventually
(37:27):
wore him down.
Dylan accepted him to blame thejoint blame and almost at the
same time they both got the ideaof breaking into his white van.
The boys were taken to countyjail.
They were fingerprinted,photographed and booked and then
(37:49):
they were released into thecustody of four furious parents.
We'll be right back After themurders.
The detective team soughtconvictions.
He had three possible crimes touncover Participation in the
(38:12):
attack, participation in theplanning or guilty knowledge.
At first it looked easy.
The killers had been sloppy,they had not even tried to cover
their tracks and the primaryliving suspects were juveniles.
Most of the friends hadwithheld something crucial Robin
had helped purchase three ofthe guns, chris and Nate had
(38:35):
seen pipe bombs, chris and Zachhad heard about napalm.
They all broke quickly.
They were kids, it was easy.
But they broke only so far.
They admitted to knowingdetails but claimed to be
clueless about the plan.
Detectives pushed harder.
(38:56):
The suspects didn't push back,they just threw up their hands.
Fusilier had several solidagents on the case and he knew
they could sniff out a liar.
His team leader described themas wide-eyed and understandably
(39:16):
anxious.
Most had begun by hidingsomething and it had been
painfully obvious.
They were awful actors.
But once they spilled it theyjust seemed relieved.
They were calm, peaceful, allthe signs of someone coming
clean.
Most of the suspects agree topolygraphs.
(39:36):
That usually meant they hadnothing left to hide.
Two friends, robert Perry andJoe Stare, had been identified
by witnesses as shooters or atleast present at the scene.
Both boys produced alibis.
Perry's was shaky.
He had been sleeping downstairsuntil his grandmother woke him
(39:57):
with news of the shooting.
He said he walked upstairs,stumbled out onto the porch and
cried.
Did anyone see him other thanhis grandmother?
No, he didn't think so.
But Perry had been seen byothers.
He had just been too upset tonotice them.
Within a week a neighbor whowas interviewed described
(40:22):
driving up around noon andseeing Perry crying just the way
he had described.
The physical evidence was evenless damning.
All the friends' houses weresearched and no weapons were
found, no ammo, no ordinance, norefuse of any pine bomb
assembly.
Zach had a copy of theanarchist cookbook, but there
(40:44):
was no sign that he had used itto build anything.
Fingerprints at the crime scenewere all abust.
There was an extraordinaryamount of material guns, ammo
gear, unused pipe bombs, stripsof duct tape, dozens of
components from the big bombs.
All of it was covered with thekiller's print, nobody else's.
(41:06):
The same was true at thekiller's houses Nothing on the
journals, videotapes, camcordersor bomb assembly gear.
No one appeared in the killers'records.
Eric had been a meticulousplanner and recorder of dates,
locations and receipts.
(41:26):
Detectives searched the store'sfiles and credit card records.
All signs indicated that thekillers had purchased everything
.
For months.
Shevestone publicly espoused aconspiracy theory.
Fusilier could feel theconspiracy slipping away the
(41:47):
first week.
Within two he knew it wasremote.
The most telling evidence camefrom the killers themselves In
their journals and videos, fromthe killers themselves.
In their journals and videosthey cop to everything.
They never mention outsideinvolvement except derisively
when they talk about haplessdupes.
(42:10):
The killers leak their plans incountless ways, but there's no
indication that anyone close tothem ever breathed a word.
The friends' emails, ims, dayplanners, journals were searched
along with every paper.
The investigators could findthere was no sign that any of
(42:30):
the friends had known.
Rumors about a third shooter hadcontinued right up to the
present day, but publicly.
It didn't take long forinvestigators to put them to
rest.
Eric and Dylan were correctlyidentified by witnesses who knew
them.
No one else turned up on thesurveillance videos on the 911
(42:54):
audio.
Witnesses' accounts wereremarkably consistent about a
tall shooter and a short one,but there seemed to be two of
each two in t-shirts, two intrench coats.
And as soon as they learned,eric's coat was left outside in
(43:14):
the landing.
He knew what had happened thereand this is Fusilier's thinking
.
Witnesses exchanged stories.
Reports of two guys in t-shirtsand two in trench coats quickly
turned into four-shooters.
Dylan's decision to leave hiscoat on until he reached the
library made for morecombinations and the number
(43:38):
multiplied over the afternoon.
The killers also lobbed pipebombs in every direction.
The gunfire shadowed windows andricocheted off floors, ductwork
and stairs.
Many kids heard crashes orexplosions and positively
identified their location as thesource of activity rather than
(44:00):
the destination.
Several witnesses insisted thatthey had spotted a gunman on
the roof.
What they had seen was amaintenance man adjusting an air
conditioner unit.
So what accounted for all theconfusion?
Eyewitness testimony in generalis not very accurate.
(44:21):
Put that together with gunshotsgoing off and just the most
terrifying situation in theirlife.
What they remember now may notbe anywhere near what really
happened.
Human memory can be erratic.
We tend to record fragmentsgunshots, explosions, trench
(44:44):
coats, terror, sirens, screams.
Images come back jumbled, butwe crave coherence, so we trim
them, adjust details andassemble everything together in
a story that makes sense.
We record vivid details, likethe scraggly ponytail flapping
(45:05):
against the dirty blue t-shirtof the boy fleeing just ahead,
all the way out of the building.
A witness may focus on thatswishing hair.
Later she remembers a glimpseof the killer.
He was tall and lanky but hehad scraggly hair.
(45:30):
It fits together and sheconnects it.
Soon the killer is wearing thedirty blue t-shirt as well, and
moments later and forever after,she's convinced that that's
exactly what she saw.
Investigators identify nearly adozen common misperceptions
among library survivors.
(45:51):
Distortion of time was rampant,particularly chronology.
Witnesses recall less once thekillers approach them, not more.
Terror stops the brain fromforming new memories.
A staggering number insistedthat they were the last ones out
of the library.
Once they were out, it was over.
(46:12):
Similarly, most of thoseinjured even superficially
believed they were the lastone's head.
Survivors also clung toreassuring concepts that they
were actually hiding bycrouching on the tables in plain
sight.
Memory is notoriouslyunreliable.
(46:34):
So investigators went back tointerview the killer's closest
friends several times.
Each new interview and leadwould raise more questions about
the killer's associates.
Sometimes new evidence revealedlies.
An FBI agent interviewed ChristyEpling the day after the
(46:57):
murders.
Christy was connected to bothkillers, particularly Eric.
They were close and she wasdating his buddy, nate Dykeman.
No-transcript.
Her FBI report was brief andunremarkable, she said.
Nate was in shock.
The TCM connection was sillyand Eric had probably been the
(47:23):
leader.
Christy did not mention any ofhis notes in her procession.
Christy played cool about thenotes during her FBI interview,
then mailed them to a friend inSt Louis who was unconnected to
Columbine and unlikely to bequestioned.
Christy was careful no returnaddress on the envelope.
(47:49):
The friend went to the police.
She did not inform Christy.
The pages included notes passedback and forth between Christy
and Eric in German class.
It was a rambling conversationconducted in German.
They mentioned a hit list.
That was all news toinvestigators.
Most of the school was on oneof Eric's list, but they had
(48:15):
withheld that information fromthe public.
Christy had been hiding it.
Maybe she was hiding more.
So detectives returned toquestion her.
They asked about German classand Christy said she had
exchanged notes with Eric buthad thrown them away months ago.
But had thrown them away monthsago.
She assured them repeatedlythat Eric had never made any
(48:40):
threats.
She would have told a teacher,she insisted.
Christy also said Nate had fledto Florida to stay with his
father and avoid the media hands.
They had talked on the phonethat morning.
The detectives asked Christywhat should happen to someone
(49:02):
who had helped the killers andshe said they should go to jail
forever.
It was a horrible thing.
And what about someone whowithheld information after the
attack?
And Christy said well, I don'tknow, it would depend on what it
was.
They should probably getcounseling, she suggested, but
(49:27):
some sort of punishment too.
So they ask again did she knowanything more?
No, has she destroyed any?
Know anything more?
No, had she destroyed any notesfrom Eric?
No, they kept repeating thequestions, assuring her that she
(49:49):
could disclose anything nowwithout repercussions.
No, there was nothing.
They continued questioning her,repeated the offer and finally
she went for it.
Okay, there were notes, sheadmitted.
And Nate was not in Florida, hewas staying with her.
He was there in the house rightnow.
(50:12):
She said the notes had beenvery painful to hold on to, but
far, far away.
She hoped to retrieve themsomeday when everything was more
clear.
Once she caught the truth,christy was forthcoming.
She agreed to turn over her PCand her email accounts and to
take a polygraph.
Beyond that she didn't knowanything significant.
(50:35):
She told them about some thingsNate had confessed to, but
detectives knew about themalready.
Christy had just been afraid.
She had thought she hadsomething incriminating and she
had panic.
No evidence of a conspiracy, soanother dead end.
(50:56):
Nevertheless, dr Fusilierlearned a great deal from the
German conversation.
It revolved around Christy'snew boyfriend.
She had a short-lived romancewith a sophomore named Dan.
Eric couldn't believe she wasgoing out with that little and
(51:20):
he used the F word.
What was wrong with Dan?
She asked, and he said for onething the pretty boy had punched
him in the face last year, ericsaid, and a fist fight.
She said that surprised herbecause he always seemed so
rational.
He got mad when kids made funof his black clothes or all his
(51:42):
German crap, but he always kepthis cool.
He would calmly figure out howto get even Christy worried
about Eric getting even.
She asked her boyfriend aboutit and he said he was afraid
Eric might kill him.
Christy decided to play peacebroker.
She took it up with Eric inGerman class again.
(52:03):
She told him straight out howseared Dan was.
She used the phrase kill him.
Dan was she used the phrasekill him Then?
That make Eric nervous.
He was in the juvenilediversion program because of the
(52:24):
band breaking and threats likethat could get him in trouble.
Christy said she had beencareful about it.
But how could Dan make it up tohim?
How about if he let me punchhim in the face?
Eric suggested and she answeredseriously and Eric answered
(52:45):
back seriously.
Dr Fusilier was not surprised bythe notes.
Very cold-blooded any kid couldget in a fight.
Dylan had gotten really angryand in the heat of a fistfight
had clocked Eric.
Eric was planning his punch.
He wanted Dan to stand theredefenseless and let him do it.
(53:06):
Complete power over the kid,that's what Eric craved.
As the conspiracy theorycrumbled, a new motive emerged.
The jug fuel theory wasaccepted as the underlying
driver.
But that had supposedly gone onfor a year.
What made the killer snap?
(53:26):
Nine days after the murders,the media found yet another
trigger the Marines.
The New York Times and theWashington Post broke the story
on April 29.
The rest of the media found yetanother trigger the Marines,
the New York Times and theWashington Post broke the story
on April 29.
The rest of the media, ofcourse, piled on quickly.
They learned that Eric had beentalking to a Marine recruiter
during the last few weeks of hislife.
(53:49):
They also discovered he hadbeen talking or taking the
prescription antidepressantLuvox, something that would
typically disqualify him becauseit implied depression.
A defense department spokesmanverified that the recruiter had
learned about the medication andrejected Eric.
(54:11):
The media was off to the racesagain.
Luvox added an extra wrinkle asit functioned as an anger
suppressant.
The Times cited unnamed friendsof Eric's as saying that they
believe that he had tried tostop taking the drugs, perhaps
(54:37):
because of his rejection by theMarines.
Five days before he and hisfriend Dylan Claiborne stormed
into the Columbine campus withguns and bombs.
The story added a bit ofevidence that seemed to confirm
it.
The coroner's office said nodrugs or alcohol had been found
in Mr Harris's body in anautopsy, but it would not
specify whether the body hadbeen screened for Luvox.
(55:00):
It was finally coming together.
The Marines rejected Eric.
He quit the Luvox.
To fuel his rage he grabbed agun and started again.
It all fit.
Fusilier read the stories andhe shuddered.
All the conclusions werereasonable and wrong.
Eric's body had not initiallybeen screened for Luvox and
(55:30):
later he had remained on a fulldose right up to his death.
And investigators had talked tothe Marine recruiter the
morning after the murders.
He had determined Eric wasineligible.
But Eric had never known.
By this time Fusilier hadalready read Eric's journal and
seen the basement tapes.
(55:51):
He knew what the media did not.
There had been no trigger.
April 30th officials met withthe Klebolds and several
attorneys to discuss groundrules for a series of interviews
.
Kate Baton was aggravated thatshe could not question the
family directly, so she askedthem to tell her about their son
(56:15):
.
They were still dumbfounded.
They described a normal teenageboy, extraordinarily shy but
happy.
Dylan was coping well withadolescence and developing into
a responsible young adult.
They entrusted him with majordecisions when he could
(56:39):
articulate his rationale.
Teachers loved him and so didother kids.
He was gentle, sensitive, untilthe day he died.
Sue couldn't recall seeingDylan cry.
Only once he came home fromschool, upset and went up to his
(57:05):
room.
He pulled the box of stuffedanimals out of the closet,
dumped them out, borrowed themand fell asleep surrounded.
He never did reveal whatdisturbed him.
His parents granted Dylan ameasure of privacy in his own
(57:30):
room.
The last time Tori called beingin there was about two weeks
before the murders.
To turn off the computer.
Dylan left on.
Otherwise, they monitor Dylan'slife aggressively and forbade
him from hanging out with badinfluence.
(57:50):
Tom said he was extremely closeto Dylan.
They share rocky season ticketswith three other families and
on his nights Tom usually tookone of his sons and Tom and
Dylan.
They hung out all the timetogether.
They played a lot of sportsuntil Tom developed arthritis in
the mid-1990s.
(58:10):
Now it was a lot of chess,computers and working in Dylan's
BMW they built a set of customspeakers together.
Dylan didn't like doing repairwork with Tom, though.
Sometimes he got testy andsnapped off one-word responses,
and that was normal.
Tom considered Dylan his bestfriend.
(58:31):
Dylan had a handful of tightbuddies.
His parents said Zach and Nateand of course Eric, who was
definitely closest.
Chris Morris seemed like moreof an acquaintance.
Dylan had fun with RobinAnderson, a sweet girl but
definitely nothing romantic.
He had not had a girlfriend yetbut had been kind of group
(58:52):
dating.
His friends seemed happy.
Eric was the quietest of thegroup.
Tom and Sue never felt theyknew what was going on in that
head of his.
Eric was always respectful,though they were aware Judy
(59:13):
Brown had a different opinionand Sue even said quote Judy
doesn't like a lot of people.
End quote.
Tom and Sue didn't perceiveEric to be leading or following
their son, but they noticed thathe got angry at Dylan when he
screwed something up.
(59:36):
Before they left, detectivesasked the Clarebolds if they had
any questions.
And they say yes, they asked toread anything.
Dylan had written anything tounderstand.
But Tan left frustrated becauseshe said I didn't get to ask
any questions.
All I got was a fluff piece ontheir son.
(59:56):
So she documented the interview, which remained sealed for 18
months.
The series of interviews neveroccur.
Lawyers demanded immunity fromprosecution before they could
talk.
Jafka officials refused.
The Harris's took the sameposition.
(01:00:17):
Bataan didn't even get a fluffpiece from them.
While Bataan interviewed theClare Boards, the National Rifle
Association convened in Denverand it was a ghastly coincidence
Mayor Wellington Webb beggedthe group to cancel its annual
convention scheduled long beforeAngry Barbs had flown back and
(01:00:38):
forth a week and he said wedon't want you here.
This is what the Mayor Web toldthem.
Other promoters gave in tosimilar demands.
Marilyn Manson had beenincorrectly linked to the
killers.
He canceled his concert at RedRocks and the remainder of his
national tour.
(01:00:58):
The National Rifle Associationshow went on.
4,000 attended, 3,000protesters met them.
They massed on the Capitolsteps, marched to the convention
site and formed a human chainaround the Adam's Marks Hotel.
So all this was happening.
(01:01:22):
When the conspiracy evaporated,it left a dangerous vacuum.
Dr Fusilier saw the dangerearly on.
He said quote Once weunderstood there was no third
shooter, I realized that foreveryone this was going to be
difficult to get closer.
End quote.
(01:01:42):
The final act of the killerswas among their cruelest.
They deprived the survivors ofa living perpetrator.
They deprived the families of afocus for the anger and their
blame.
There would be no cathartictrial for the victims.
There was no killer to rebukein a courtroom, nor judge to
(01:02:06):
implore to impose the maximumpenalty.
South Jekyll was seething withanger and it would be deprived
of a reasonable target.
Displaced anger would riddlethe community for years.
The crumbling conspiracyeliminated the primary mission
of the task force.
(01:02:26):
The all-star team was left tosort out logistical issues,
exactly what had happened andhow.
Those were massiveinvestigations, easy to get lost
inside.
Investigators wanted to retraceevery step, reconstruct each
(01:02:47):
moment, place every witness andevery buckshot fragment in place
and time and context, and itdrew the team's attention from
the real objective why.
The families wanted to know howtheir children died, of course,
but that was nothing comparedto the underlying question.
(01:03:10):
Sheriff Stone kept talking aboutthe conspiracy theory with the
press.
He was driving his team nuts.
Every few days, jeffcospokesman corrected another
misstatement by the sheriff.
Several corrections wereextreme Arrests were not
imminent, deputies had notblocked the killers from
(01:03:32):
escaping the school and Stone'sdescriptions of the cafeteria
videos had been pure conjecture.
The tapes had not even beenanalyzed yet.
They did not try to correctsome of his mischaracterizations
, like when he quoted Eric'sjournal out of context to give
(01:03:52):
the impression that the killershad been planning to hijack a
plane when they had startedtheir attack.
He was quickly becoming alaughingstock.
Yet he was the ultimate rankingauthority on the case.
His staff begged him to stopspeaking to the press.
But how would it look ifsubordinates spoke about the
case while the head man wasmuscled.
(01:04:14):
A tacit understanding developedon the team If Stone kept his
mouth shut, they would too.
Though they continuedbackground interviews with the
Rocky For the next five monthsuntil an impromptu interview by
lead investigator Kit Baton inSeptember.
Law enforcement officers woulddivulge virtually nothing more
(01:04:37):
publicly about their discoveriesor conclusions.
After that it would be a slowtrickle and a fight for every
scrap of information.
Nine days after the shootings,the Jeffco blackout began.
Columbine coverage endedabruptly too.
A string of deadly tornadoeshit Oklahoma.
(01:05:01):
The National Press Corp lefttown in a single afternoon.
The school would returnperiodically to national
headlines over the years, butthe narrative of what had
happened was set.
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
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