Could the devastating Columbine massacre have been prevented? By examining the early signs of Eric Harris's troubling behavior, we uncover a series of missed opportunities that might have altered the course of history. This episode of "Unraveling the Columbine Tragedy" takes a hard look at the red flags that went unnoticed, from Eric's vandalism sprees with Dylan Klebold and their friend Zack, to the damaging altercation with Brooks Brown. The tense relationship between the Harris and Brown families unfolds, revealing the overlooked warning signals that hinted at a much darker path ahead.
Amidst a backdrop of law enforcement oversight and secrecy, a chilling narrative emerges. Thirteen months before the massacre, crucial evidence of Eric Harris building pipe bombs was discovered but left unaddressed. We bring you the gripping details of secret meetings among officials who concealed this knowledge, leading to years of public deception. As detectives worked tirelessly to connect the dots, key figures such as Chris Morris, Phil Duran, and Mark Maines played pivotal roles in shedding light on the weapon procurement network, unraveling a complex web of hidden truths and investigative challenges.
Alongside FBI Agent Dr. Fusilier, we explore the intricate psychological profiles of Harris and Klebold, delving into their journals and basement tapes to understand their motives. Eric's writings reveal a calculated hatred, while Dylan's entries paint a picture of internal turmoil and depression. Through this lens, we ponder the rare circumstances where anger and depression explode into violence. This episode promises an insightful journey into the minds of the Columbine killers, offering a deeper understanding of the tragic events and what might drive seemingly ordinary individuals to commit such heinous acts.
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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 six of Unraveling the
Columbine Tragedy.
Let's begin.
Two years before he carried thebombs into the Columbine
cafeteria, eric took a crucialstep.
He had always maintained anactive fantasy life.
(00:23):
His extension fantasiesprogressed steadily, but reality
held firm and was completelyseparate from his fantasy life.
Then, one day, midway throughsophomore year, eric began to
take action.
He was an angry, cruel orparticularly hateful.
His campaign against theinferiors was comically banal,
(00:49):
but it was real.
The mischief started as athreesome.
Dylan and Zack were calledconspirators and squad mates.
In his written accounts, ericreferred to the two by their
code names, vodka and Kibbitz.
They launched the escapades inJanuary 1997, second semester of
(01:14):
their sophomore year.
They would meet at Eric's house, mostly sneak out after
midnight and vandalize houses ofkids he didn't like.
Eric chose the targets.
Of course they have to becareful speaking out.
They couldn't wake his parents.
Lots of rocks to navigate inEric's backyard and a pesky
(01:38):
neighbor's dog kept barking hishead off, according to Eric, and
then they plunged into a fieldof tall grass that he compared
to Jurassic Park's Lost World.
To Eric it was one hell of anadventure.
He had been role-playing marineheroes on military maneuvers
(01:58):
since grade school.
Finally he was in the fieldconducting them.
Eric dubbed his pranks themissions.
Eric sometimes attacked thehouses of his peers to retaliate
(02:19):
for perceived slights, but mostoften for the offense of
inferiority.
Between missions the boys gotinto unscripted trouble.
Eric got mad at Brooks Brownand stopped talking to him.
Then he escalated a snowballfight by breaking a chunk of ice
off a drainpipe and he hurledit at the car of a friend of
(02:43):
Brooks and dented the trunk.
He grabbed another hunk andcracked the windshield at
Brooks' Mercedes and of courseBrooks got mad and insulted him
you know, used foul language andtold him you're going to pay
for this, which of course Ericsaid that he wasn't going to pay
(03:05):
.
So brooks drove home and toldhis mom and then he headed to
eric's.
He was furious, but his mother,kathy harris, remained calm.
She invited brooks in and gavehim a seat in the living room.
Brooks knew lots of Eric'ssecrets and he spilled them all
(03:28):
and he told her your son's beensneaking out at night.
He's going around vandalizingthings.
And Kathy seemed incredulous.
She tried to calm the kid down,but Brooks kept ranting and he
said he got liquor in his room.
You need to search for it.
He got spray paint cans, searchit.
She wanted him to talk but hefelt that she was acting like a
(03:52):
school counselor.
He was out of there and he saidhe was getting out before Eric
got back.
So Brooks went home anddiscovered his friend had
grabbed Eric's backpack, takingit hostage, more or less.
Brooke's mom, judy, tookcontrol of the situation.
She ordered everyone into thecar and brought them to see Eric
(04:14):
, and Judy said to lock thedoors because she was still
enjoying the stop-mall fight.
So she rolled her window down acrack and yelled over to.
Eric said to lock the doorsbecause he was still enjoying
the stop-mall fight.
So she rolled her window down acrack and yelled over to Eric
(04:34):
and she said I got your backpackand I'm taking it to your mom's
.
Meet us over there.
So Eric grabbed hold of the carand screamed ferociously and
when she pulled away he hung onwailing harder.
So Eric reminded her of anescaped animal attacking a car,
like in one of those wildlifetheme parks.
So brooke's friend shifted tothe, to the other side of of of
(04:58):
the back uh seat and judy atthis moment she was terrified
because they have never seenthis side of Eric.
They were used to Dylan'scharades, but he was so show.
Eric looked like he meant it.
So Judy got up enough speed andEric let go and at his house
(05:20):
Eric's mom greeted them in thedriveway and Judy handed her the
backpack and unloaded the story.
Kathy began to cry and Judyfelt bad because Kathy has
always been so sweet.
So now Wayne came home and hethrew the fear of God into Eric.
(05:41):
He interrogated him about thealcohol, but Eric had it hidden
and played innocent convincingly.
He wasn't taking any chances.
As soon as he got a chance hedestroyed the stash and he wrote
in his diary I had to ditchevery bottle I had and lie like
an effing salesman to my parents.
(06:02):
And that night he went with theconfessional approach.
He admitted a weakness to hisdad.
The truth was that he wasafraid of Mrs Brown and Wayne
thought well, that explains alot.
Kathy wanted to hear more fromthe Browns.
Wayne bitterly resentedinterference.
(06:22):
Who was this hysterical womanor her conniving little Brad
Brooks?
Wayne was hard enough on theboys without outsiders telling
him how to raise his sons.
Kathy called Judy that night.
Judy felt she really wanted tolisten, but Wayne was negative
and dismissive in the background.
(06:43):
It was kid stuff.
He insisted it was all blown,way out of proportion.
He got on the line and toldJudy that Eric had copped to the
truth that bottom line that hewas afraid of her.
And Judy told him.
And Judy told him your sonisn't afraid of me because he
(07:11):
came after me and my car.
Wayne jotted notes about theexchange on a green notepad and
he outlined Eric's misdeeds,including getting into and Judy
Brown's face and being a littlebully.
(07:31):
At the bottom of the page hesummarized he found Eric guilty
of aggression, disrespect,property damage and idle threats
of physical harm.
But he did not look kindly onthe Browns.
He concluded overreaction tominor incident and he dated that
piece of paper February 28th1997 and he kept it in that
green notepad.
(07:52):
At school the next day Brooksheard Eric was making threats
about him and he told hisparents that night.
So they called the cops.
A deputy came by to questionthem and then they went to see
the Harris's.
Wayne called a few minuteslater.
He was bringing Eric over toapologize.
(08:12):
Judy told Brooks and hisbrother Aaron to hide.
He said I want you both in theback bedroom and don't come out.
Wayne waited in his car.
In the car and he refused tosupply moral support.
Eric had to walk up to the doorand face Mr and Mrs Brown alone
(08:33):
.
Eric had regained his normalcomposure.
He was exceptionally contrite.
Mrs Brown, I didn't mean anyharm, he said, and you know I
would never do anything to hurtBrooks.
So of course Mrs Brown said youcan pull the wool over your
dad's eyes, but you can't pullthe wool over my eyes.
(08:53):
And Eric, you know, tookoffense to that statement and he
asked her are you calling me aliar?
And she said yes, I am.
And if you ever come up ourstreets or if you ever do
anything to Brooks again, I'mcalling the police.
(09:14):
So Eric left in a huff.
He went home and plottedrevenge.
He was worried now, but hewouldn't back down.
The next mission target was theBrowns' house.
The team also hid random houses.
Mostly they would set upfireworks, toilet paper.
The places trigger a housealarm.
(09:35):
They also stuck silly putty toBrooks' Mercedes.
Eric had been bragging aboutthe missions on his website and
at this point he posted Brooks'name, address and phone number
and he encouraged readers toharass.
What he said is A-hole.
Brooks had betrayed Eric.
Brooks had to be punished, buthe was never significant.
(09:59):
Eric had bigger ideas and hewas experimenting with timers.
Now, and those offered newopportunities.
Eric wired a dozen firecrackerstogether and attached a long
fuse.
He was fastidiously analyticalbut he had no way to assess his
(10:20):
data because he fled as soon ashe lit the fuses.
Judy Brown viewed Eric as acriminal in bloom.
She and Randy, her husband,spoke to Eric's dad repeatedly
and they kept calling the cops.
Wayne did not appreciate thatand he would do anything to
protect his son's futures.
(10:41):
Discipline was a no-brainer,but the boy's reputations were
out of his control.
One black mark could wipe out alifetime of opportunities.
Wayne scrutinized Eric for awhile but ultimately he bought
into his son's version.
Eric was smart enough to cop tosome bad behavior and his calm
(11:03):
contrition made the Browns lookhysterical.
Three days after the iceincident, wayne was grappling
with more parents and aColumbine dean.
Wayne pulled out the six bynine inch pad and labeled the
cover Eric.
He filled three more notebookpages over two days.
(11:24):
Brooks knew about the missionsand had gone to see Nadine.
Nadine was concerned aboutalcohol consumption and damage
to school property.
He would get the policeinvolved if necessary.
Eric played dumb.
The word denial appears inlarge letters on two consecutive
(11:44):
pages of Wayne's journal.
Both times the word is circledby the first entry scribbled out
.
Wayne concluded that the issuewas over and done.
Don't discuss with friends.
He repeatedly stressed thatsilence was key.
Talk to Eric basically finish.
(12:05):
He wrote.
And then he also wrote leaveeach other alone, don't talk
about it, agree, all discussionis over with.
Wayne.
Harris apparently breathedeasier for a while.
He didn't write in his journalfor a month and a half.
Then come four rapid entriesdocumenting a slew of phone
(12:25):
calls.
First Wayne talked to Zach'smom and another parent.
The next day, two years and oneday before the massacre, a
deputy from the Defco Sheriff'sDepartment called Wayne and put
his guard up and he said we feelvictimizedized too.
(12:45):
We don't want to be accusedevery time something happens.
That it's you know.
Eric learned his lesson, so hecrossed out the last phrase and
wrote it's not at fault.
The real problem was Brooks,according to Wayne, and he wrote
(13:06):
Brooks Brown is out to get Eric.
Brooks had problems with otherboys, manipulative and con
artists.
If the problem continued itmight be time to hire a mediator
or a lawyer.
Wayne's last entry on the feudoccurred a week later, on April
27, after a call with Judy Brown, and he wrote Eric has not
(13:31):
broken promise to Mr Place thedean after leaving each other
alone.
And at the bottom of the pagehe repeated his earlier
sentiment.
We feel victimized too.
Manipulative con artist.
Eric totally rocked on themissions.
Dylan enjoyed them too and heliked the camaraderie,
(13:53):
especially because he fit inthere.
He had a role to play, hebelonged.
But the missions were briefdiversions.
They were not making him happy.
In fact Dylan was miserable.
Now Jeff Go had a problem.
(14:18):
Before Eric and Dylan shotthemselves, officers had
discovered files on the boys.
The cops had 12 pages fromEric's website spewing hate and
threatening to kill.
For detectives a writtenconfession discovered before the
killers were captured was a bigbreak.
(14:38):
It certainly simplified thesearch warrant.
But for commanders a publicconfession which they set on
since 1997, that could be a PRdisaster.
The webpages had come fromRandy and Judy Brown.
They had warned the Sheriff'sDepartment repeatedly about Eric
(15:01):
for more than a year and a half.
Sometime around noon April 20ththe file was shuttled to the
command center in a trailer setup in Clement Park.
Jeffco officials quoted Eric'ssite extensively in the search
warrants executed that afternoonbut then denied ever seeing it.
Denied ever seeing it.
(15:28):
They would spend several yearsrepeating those denials.
They suppress the damningwarrants as well.
Then Sheriff Stone fingeredBrooks as a suspect on the Today
Show.
It was a rough time for theBrown family.
The public got two conflictedstories.
Family the public got twoconflicted stories.
Randy and Judy Brown had eitherlabored to prevent Columbine or
(15:50):
raised one of his conspirators,or both.
To the Browns it looked likeretribution.
Yes, their son had been closeto the killers, close enough to
see it coming.
The Browns had blown thewhistle on Eric Harris over a
year earlier and the cops haddone nothing.
The Browns were fingered asaccomplices instead of heroes.
(16:13):
They couldn't believe it.
They told the New York Timesthey had contacted the Sheriff's
Department about Eric 15 times.
Jeffco officials would insistfor years that the Browns never
met with an investigator,despite holding a report
indicating they had.
The officers knew they had aproblem and it was much worse
(16:38):
than the Browns realized.
13 months before the massacre,sheriff's, 13 months before the
massacre, sheriff'sinvestigators John Hicks and
Mike Guerra had investigated oneof the Browns' complaints.
They had discovered substantialevidence that Eric was building
pipe bombs.
(16:58):
Guerra had considered itserious enough to draft an
affidavit for a search warrantagainst the Harris home.
For some reason, the warrantwas never taken before a judge.
Guerra's affidavit wasconvincing.
It spelled out all the keycomponents motive, means and
(17:19):
opportunity.
A few days after the massacre,about a dozen local officials
slipped away from the feds andgathered clandestinely in an
innocuous office in the countyopen space department building.
It would come to be known asthe open space meeting.
(17:39):
The purpose was to discuss theaffidavit for a search warrant.
How bad was it?
What should they tell thepublic?
The purpose was to discuss theaffidavit for a search warrant.
How bad was it?
What should they tell thepublic?
Guerra was driven to themeeting and told never to
discuss it outside the group.
So he complied.
The meeting was kept secret too.
That held for five years.
(18:04):
March 22, 2004.
Guerra would finally confess ithappened to investigators from
the Colorado Attorney General.
He described it as one of thosecover your ass meetings.
District Attorney Dave Thomasattended the meeting.
He told the group he found noprobable cause for the
(18:24):
investigators to have executedthe draft warrant, finding
ridicule once it was released.
He was formally contradicted bythe Colorado attorney in 2004.
At a notorious press conference10 days after the murders.
Jeffco officials suppressed theaffidavit and boldly lied about
(18:50):
what they have known.
They said they could not findEric's webpages.
They found no evidence of pipebombs matching Eric's
descriptions and had no recordof the Browns meeting with Hicks
.
Giver's affidavit plainlycontradicted all three claims.
Officials had just spent daysreviewing it.
(19:11):
They would repeat the lies foryears.
Several days after the meeting,investigator Gavris' file on
his investigation of Ericdisappeared for the first time.
The cover your ass meeting was astrictly Jeffco affair limited
(19:32):
mostly to senior officials, mostof the detectives on the case,
including the feds and cops fromlocal jurisdictions.
They were unaware of the coverup.
They were trying to crack thecase.
Police detectives continuedfanning out across Littleton.
They had two thousand studentsto interview, not telling where
(19:55):
the truth might be tucked away.
They all reported back to theleadership team in the Columbine
band room.
It was chaos.
Guys were coming in with noteson scraps of paper and matchbook
covers.
At the end of the week KateBaton took control of the
situation.
She called everyone into theband room for a massive
(20:18):
four-hour debriefing andinformation exchange.
At the end of the meeting threecrucial questions remained.
How had the killers gotten allthe guns?
How had they gotten the bombsinto the school?
Who had conspired to help them?
Batan and her team had a goodidea where the conspiracy lay.
(20:41):
They had nearly a dozen chiefsuspects.
They pitted two against eachother.
Chris Morris claimed he wasinnocent and they told him prove
it, help us smoke out Duran.
Chris agreed to a wiretap and onSaturday afternoon he called
(21:02):
Phil Duran from FBI headquartersin Denver.
While federal agents listenedin.
They commiserated about howrough it had gotten and phil
said it's pretty crazy man.
And um, chris said yeah, themedia's going psycho.
Chris went for the kill toosoon and he had heard that duran
(21:22):
had gone out shooting with thekillers and someone videotaped
it and he mentioned the tape.
But Duran brushed it off.
For 14 minutes they spoke.
Chris kept circling back to itand Duran deflected as many
times.
Yes, I had no clue, dude, hesaid.
Finally, chris got an admissionthat Durant had been out
(21:45):
shooting with Eric and Dylan andhe got a name.
The place was called RampartRanch.
It didn't sound like much butit was leverage.
On Sunday an ATF agent paidDuran a visit.
Duran told him everything.
Eric and Dylan had approachedhim about a gun he had put them
(22:07):
in touch with Mark Maines whohad sold them the Tech-9.
Duran admitted to relaying someof the money but said he had
earned nothing on the deal andevery bit of that was was true.
So five days later detectiveshauled means into ATF
(22:30):
headquarters in downtown Denverwith attorneys for defense and
prosecution.
Mains made a full confession.
Duran had introduced him toEric and Dylan on January 23rd
at the Tanner gun show, the sameplace the killers had bought
the three other guns.
(22:51):
Duran identified Eric as thebuyer and he did the talking.
Mains agreed to sell the gun oncredit and he did the talking.
Mainz agreed to sell the gun oncredit.
Eric would pay $300 now $200more when he could raise it.
It was Dylan who showed up atMainz's house that night and he
(23:14):
handed over the down payment andpicked up the gun.
Duran delivered the $200.
A couple of weeks laterDetectives asked Maines
repeatedly about the killer'sages.
Eventually he admitted that hehad assumed they were under 18.
Maines had bought the Tech-9 atthe same show about six months
(23:36):
earlier.
He had used his debit card.
Later he produced a bankstatement showing he had paid
$491.
He had made $9 on the deal.
It could cost him 18 years.
In the meantime, the FBI agentDr Fusilier didn't think much
(23:59):
about motive.
The first few days, everyminute evidence could be
vanishing, alibis arranged,cover stories coordinated.
But curiosity soon intruded andrefused to be dented.
His mind kept returning to thecritical question of why, with
(24:23):
nearly 100 detectives workingthe case, that central question
largely fell to no one.
So it began as a small part ofAgent Fusilier's job.
He was primarily concerned withleading the FBI's team.
He met daily with his teamleaders.
They briefed him.
He asked questions, shot holesin their theories, suggested new
(24:45):
questions and challenged themto probe harder.
On Saturdays he drove intoDenver to sort through his inbox
at FBI headquarters.
He had to get up to speed onthe federal cases he had handed
off and offer insight andsuggestions where he could.
(25:08):
But he began to carve out alittle time out every evening to
assess the killers.
He had teams of people toassemble the data but no one
else was qualified to analyze it.
He was the only psychologist onthe team.
(25:28):
He had studied this very sortof killer for years for the FBI
and he knew what he was against.
It pissed him off watching thembrag on video about the people
they would maim and he wouldhear himself said you little
(25:49):
damn, you damn little jerks.
But sometimes he felt a littlesorry for them.
Their point of view wasindefensible but he had to
embrace it temporarily andempathize with them.
If he refused to see the worldthrough their lens, how would he
ever understand how they coulddo it?
They were high school kids.
(26:09):
How did they get this way?
Dylan in particular.
What a waste.
Fusilier's peers andsubordinates had a lot of
questions about the killers andthey needed someone to turn to,
one person who deeplyunderstands the perps.
Fusilier quickly became knowninternally as the expert on the
(26:31):
two boys.
Kate Batan was leading theday-to-day investigation and
everyone deferred to herlogistical questions.
The investigation and everyonedeferred to her logistical
questions, like who had beenrunning down a particular
hallway at a certain momentduring the attack.
But Fusilier understood theperpetrators.
He returned to Eric's journalover and over and then Dylan's,
(26:55):
poring over every line, pouringover every line.
About a week after the murdersFusilier was introduced to the
basement tapes and earlierfootage Eric and Dylan had shot
of themselves.
So he took the tapes home.
He watched them repeatedly.
He hit the pause buttonfrequently, advancing frame by
(27:18):
frame, going back over revealingmoments to dissect nuance.
On the surface, much of thematerial was tedious and banal,
little snippets of daily life,like the boys making dumb high
school jokes with Chris Morrisin the car bickering over the
drive-thru order at Wendy's.
(27:38):
Nothing even tangentiallyrelated to the murders appear on
most of the tapes, but Fusiliersoaked up ordinary impressions
of his murderers.
Dr Fusilier watched or readevery word from the killers
dozens of times.
(27:59):
His big break came just a fewdays after the murders.
Before he saw the basementtapes, fusilier heard an ATF
agent quoting a ghastly phraseEric Harris had written.
And Fusilier asked what you gotthere?
And it was the journal.
For the last year of his life,eric Harris had written down
(28:23):
many of his plans in a journal.
Fusilier zipped over and readthe opening line that says,
quote I hate the effing world.
Suddenly, the big bombs began tomake a lot more sense.
Suddenly the big bombs began tomake a lot more sense.
Fusilier read a bit further andthen turned to the ATF agent
(28:45):
and he said Can I have a copy ofthis?
And the pages had beenphotocopied from a spiral
notebook 16 handwritten pagesand a dozen more of sketches and
charts and diagrams.
There were 19 entries, alldated, running from April 10,
(29:08):
1998 to April 3, 1999, 17 daysbefore Columbine.
They ran a page or two at thebeginning, then shortened
considerably, with the last fivecrammed into the last page and
a half.
They were dark and fussy fromtoo many trips through the
(29:31):
copier and every scroll was hardto decipher sometimes.
But Fusilier was reading againwhile the pages made another
pass through the copy machineand he said this is mesmerizing.
The journal told infinitely morethan Eric's website had.
(29:53):
The website which predated thejournal by at least a year was
mostly vented rage.
It told us who he hated, whathe wanted to do to the world,
what he had already done.
It said very little about whythe journal was angry.
(30:18):
So Fusilier started reading thephotocopies and he read on the
walk back to the ATF agent'sdesk and he stood there reading
rather than return to his ownchair.
He didn't notice his backstiffening up for several
minutes until the pain finallyinterrupted and so he finally
(30:41):
sat down and he kept reading andthen suddenly he said to
himself you know, there's apoint that he said oh, holy moly
, he's telling us why he did it.
Eric would prove the easierkiller to understand.
(31:04):
Eric always knew what he was upto.
Dylan did not.
We'll be right back.
Dylan's mind raced night and dayanalyzing, inventing,
(31:26):
deconstructing.
He was 15, and he had taggedalong on the missions.
He was Eric's number one go-toguy and none of that mattered.
Dylan's head was bursting withideas, sounds, impressions.
He could never turn the racketoff.
Dylan was in pain.
(31:47):
Nobody got it.
Vodka helped.
The internet did too.
Girls were hard to talk to.
Instant messaging made iteasier.
Dylan would IM alone in hisroom for hours at night.
Vodka make the words flow butreduce his ability to spell them
(32:07):
.
When an internet girl calledhim on it, he laughed and
admitted he was sloshed.
It was easy to hide from hisparents.
They never suspected.
It all happened quietly in hisroom.
Ims were not enough.
Too many secrets to hold on.
Too many concepts sipping overtheir heads.
(32:34):
Suicide was consuming him.
No way.
Dylan was confessing that hetried explaining some of the
other ideas, but people were toothick to understand.
In the spring of the sophomoreyear, shortly after this, the
missions started.
(32:54):
March 31st 1997, dylan gotdrunk, picked up a pen and began
the conversation with the oneperson who could understand
himself.
He imagined his journal as astately old tome with oversized
covers extending just past theparchment and a fine satin
(33:15):
ribbon sewn into the binding,like in a Bible.
All he had was a plain pad ofnotebook paper, college ruled
and three-hole punched.
So he drew the imaginary coveron the cover and he titled his
work Existences, a Virtual Book.
(33:39):
He had tried deleting the Doomfiles from his computer, tried
staying sober, tried to stopmaking fun of kids.
That was a tough one.
Kids were so easy to ridicule.
The spiritual purge wasn'thelping.
So he wrote my existence isshit.
He described eternal sufferingin infinite directions though
(34:03):
infinite realities.
Loneliness was the crux of theproblem.
Dylan felt cut off fromhumanity.
Some of Dylan's ideas were hardto put into words.
He drew squiggles in themargins and labeled them thought
pictures.
He was a profoundly religiousyoung man.
(34:23):
His family was not active inany congregation, yet Dylan's
belief was unwavering.
He believed in God, withoutquestion, but constantly
challenged his choices.
Dylan would cry out cursing Godfor making him a modern job,
(34:46):
demanding an explanation for thedivine brutality of his
faithful servant.
Dylan believed in morality,ethics and an afterlife.
He wrote intently about theseparation of body and soul.
The body was meaningless, buthis soul would live forever.
It would reside either in thepeaceful serenity of heaven or
(35:07):
in the blistering tortures ofhell.
Dylan's anger would flare, thenfizzle quickly into
self-disgust.
Dylan wasn't planning to killanyone except, god willing,
himself.
He craved death for at leasttwo years.
The first mention comes in thefirst entry he wrote quote
(35:32):
Thinking of suicide gives mehope that I will be in my place
wherever I go after this life.
In my place wherever I go afterthis life, that I'll finally
not be at war with myself, theworld, the universe, my mind,
body, everywhere, everything atpeace, me, my soul, my
(35:54):
existence", end quote.
But suicide posed a problem.
Dylan believed in a literalheaven and hell.
He would be a believer right upuntil the end.
When he murdered several peoplehe knew there would be
consequences.
He would refer to them in hisfinal video message, recorded on
(36:18):
the morning he called JudgmentDay.
Dylan was unique, that much hewas sure of he had been watching
the kids at school.
Some were good, some bad, butalso utterly different from him.
Dylan exceeded even Eric in hisbelief in his own singularity.
(36:39):
But Eric equated unique withsuperior.
Dylan saw it mostly as bad.
His moods came and went quickly.
Dylan turned compassionate,then fatalistic.
Eric and Dylan both leftjournals behind.
(36:59):
Dr Fusilier would spend yearsstudying them.
At first glance, dylan's lookmore promising.
Fusilier was hungry for dataand Dylan provided an impressive
stack.
His journal began a yearearlier than Eric's, filled
nearly five times as many pagesand remained active right up to
(37:22):
the end.
But Eric would begin hisjournal as a killer.
He already knew where it wouldend.
Every page pointed in the samedirection.
His purpose was notself-discovery but
self-lionization.
Dylan was just trying tograpple with existence.
(37:44):
He had no idea where he washeaded.
His ideas were all over the map.
Dean liked order.
Each journal entry began with athree-line heading in the right
margin name, date and title, allwritten out in half-sized
letters.
He then repeated the title orsometimes adapted it in
(38:08):
double-sized characters centeredabove the main text.
Most of the copy was printed,but occasionally he would veer
into script.
He wrote one entry a month,nearly every month, but hardly
every twice a month.
He would fill two completepages and then stop.
If he ran out of ideas orinterest he would fill out the
(38:32):
second page with huge letteringor sketches.
The battle between good and badnever ends, he wrote.
Dylan would repeat this ideaendlessly for the next two years
.
Good and evil, love and hate,always wrestling, never
(38:53):
resolving.
Pick your side, it's up to you,but you better pray it picks
you back.
Why would love never choose him?
Sunday morning, april 25th, theColumbine churches were packed.
Afterward the crowds trekkeddown to the Bowes Crossing
(39:16):
shopping center across fromClement Park.
Organizers had planned for upto 30,000 mourners in the
sprawling parking lot.
70,000 show up.
Vice President Al Gore was inthe platform, along with the
governor, most of Colorado'scongressional delegation and a
whole lot of clergy.
(39:37):
The TV networks broadcast theceremony live.
Reverend Graham dominated theceremony with a long,
impassioned appeal for returningprayer to public schools.
He invoked the name of hispersonal Savior seven times in a
single 45-second flurry.
He called upon God and Jesusnearly 50 times.
(40:00):
In the course of the speech,christian pop star Amy Grant
sang twice, a drum and buglecorps performed a staring
rendition of Amazing Grace and asuccession of 13 white doves
were released as Governor BillOwens recited the names of the
victims.
Toward the end it began to rainA slow, steady shower.
(40:24):
Nobody moved.
Thousands of umbrellas went up,but tens of thousands of
mourners just got wet.
For many, cassie Bernal was theheroine of Columbine.
Word spread quickly that herkiller had held her at gunpoint
and asked if she believed in God, and she said yes, she would
(40:49):
profess her face and hadpromptly been shot in the head.
Vice President Gore recountedher story to the crowd and the
cameras and he quoted liberallyfrom scripture throughout his
speech.
The country was transfixed.
In the first 10 days, newsmagazines on the four main
(41:16):
broadcast networks devoted 43pieces to the attack.
The shows dominated the ratingsthat week.
Cnn and Fox News charted thehighest ratings in their history
.
A week afterward, usa Today wasstill running 10 separate
Columbine stories in a singleedition.
(41:38):
It would be nearly two weeksbefore the New York Times would
print an issue without Columbineon page one.
We'll be right back Two yearsbefore Cassie's murder.
(41:59):
Dylan laid out his case for God.
He enumerated the pros and consof his existence Good, a nice
family, a beautiful house.
He enumerated the pros and consof his existence no other
(42:24):
friends, nobody accepting him,doing badly in sports, looking
ugly and acting shy, getting badgrades, having no ambition in
life.
Dylan understood what God hadchosen for him.
Dylan was to be a seeker, oneman in search of answers, never
(42:46):
finding them, yet inhopelessness, understands things
and he seeks knowledge of theunthinkable, of the undefinable,
of the unknown.
He explores the everythingusing his mind, the most
powerful tool known to him.
(43:07):
Dylan took to referring tohumans as zombies.
But pitiful as we zombies were,dylan didn't want to harm us.
He found us interesting, likenew toys, and he wrote I am God
compared to some of theseunexistable, brainless zombies.
(43:29):
End quote.
That was Dylan's first brushwith blasphemy.
He immediately qualified hewasn't claiming godhood, just
that he was like God compared tohumans.
It would be months before hewould try it again.
Each time he would push theidea further, but he never quite
(43:52):
seemed to believe.
As spring 1997 progressed, hefilled page after page with
aborted attempts.
Eric had more practicalconcerns.
Two months of heat from his dadtaught Eric to cover his tracks
better.
The vandalism missions continuedthrough spring and early summer
(44:14):
, with no record of furtherdetection.
By mission five the boys weredrinking again.
Wayne appeared to have watchedEric closely for a while, then
resumed trusting him.
According to Eric, only oneouting went alcohol-free.
The emphasis on largerexplosives continued.
(44:38):
Some of the timing devicesbegan to work.
Eric discovered that he couldlight the tip of a cigarette and
let it burn down toward thefuse.
For an added delay.
The boys survived a few closecalls, including near detection
by a police officer in a squadcar.
On the sixth outing theybrought along Dylan's Solov BB
(45:02):
gun and fired randomly intohouses and fire randomly into
houses and Eric wrote weprobably didn't do any damage,
but we weren't sure.
That same night they stole somerent fence signs from a
construction site and Ericdidn't make much of the swipe.
(45:22):
But this appears to be themoment where they cross the hazy
boundary between pettyvandalism and petty theft.
The missions had been satisfiedfor a couple of months, but
Suffolk, new York, was over.
Eric was hungry for more.
In the summer of 1997, zachHeckler went to Pennsylvania for
(45:46):
two weeks.
When he got back Eric and Dylanhad built a pipe bomb.
Dylan was involved, but it wasEric's baby.
Eric would not begin his journaluntil the spring of 1998, but
he was active with his websitethe previous year.
By the summer of 1997, he hadposted his hate list and it says
(46:13):
you know what I hate?
Country music.
You know what I hate R-ratedmovies on cable.
My dog can do a better editingjob than those tarts.
You know what I really hate?
The WB Network.
Oh Jesus, mary, mother of God,almighty, I hate that channel
(46:36):
with all my heart and soul.
And the list went on for pages.
50 odd entries about hatingfitness People, phony martial
art experts, people whomispronounce espresso.
(46:57):
At first this target seemedpreposterously random, but then
Fusilier divined the underlyingtheme Stupid witless inferiors.
The underlying theme Stupidwitless inferiors it wasn't just
the WB network.
Eric hated hard and so it wasall the morons watching it.
(47:18):
Eric's briefer, loveless,backed Fusilier's analysis.
Eric loved making fun of stupidpeople doing stupid things.
It's great.
If love was natural selectionhe would say God damn, it's the
best thing that ever happened tothe earth, getting rid of all
the stupid and weak organisms.
I wish the government wouldjust take off every warning
(47:41):
label, so then all the the dumbswould either severely hurt
themselves or die.
So what the boy was reallyexpressing was contempt.
Eric's ideas began to fuse.
He loved explosions, activelyhated inferiors, passively hoped
(48:04):
for human extinction.
He built his first bombs.
He started small, nothing thatwould kill anyone, just enough
to injure people or the property.
He went searching forinstructions and found them
readily available on the web.
During the summer of 1997, hebuilt several explosives and
(48:28):
began setting them off.
Then he bragged about it on hiswebsite.
It says, quote if you haven'tmake a co2 bomb today, I suggest
you do so.
Me and Vodka detonated oneyesterday and it was like an
(48:51):
effing dynamite stick.
Just watch out for shrapnel.
End quote.
That was an exaggeration.
They have taken small carbondioxide cartridges, which kids
often call whippets, and whatthey did is that they punctured
them and then they shovedgunpowder inside.
(49:13):
Eric called them crickets andthey were closer to a large
firecracker than a bomb.
Eric had also built pipe bombswhich were more powerful, and he
was still searching for a spotsafe for detonation.
(49:43):
Eric continued with all thesethings on his website until he
realized that his web audiencewould doubt him.
So he backed his claims withspecifications and an ingredient
list.
He wanted to make sure hisreaders understood that he was
serious.
Someone sensed a danger and onAugust 7th 1997, a concerned
citizen, apparently Randy Brown,read Eric's website and called
the Sheriff's Department.
(50:04):
On that day, one year, eightmonths and 13 days before
Columbine the killers namedpermanently into the law
enforcement system, deputy MarkBurgess printed out Eric's pages
.
He read through them and wroteup a report and says, quote this
(50:24):
webpage refers to missionswhere possible criminal
mischiefs have occurred.
End quote.
Curiously, berger's made nomention of the pipe bombs, which
seemed far more serious.
Berger sent his report to asuperior investigator, john
Hicks, with eight websites pagesattached.
(50:47):
They were filed.
Eric and Zach and Dylan wereworking age now, so they all got
jobs at a place calledBlackjack and they made dry ass,
dry-ass eruptions out back inthe parking lot.
(51:08):
Watch how high they could get aconstruction cone to sail.
It was great.
And then Zach met a girl andDylan took it hard.
Devon was her name and shetotally ripped the team apart.
Zach was with her all the timenow and she squeezed his buddies
(51:29):
out of the picture.
Eric and Dylan were nobodies.
The mission were suddenly over.
Eric didn't seem to mind it toomuch, but Dylan was a mess.
They had done everythingtogether drinking cigars,
sabotaging houses.
Since seventh grade.
He had felt so lonely.
(51:49):
Zach had changed all that, butSeth had found a girlfriend and
moved on.
And Dylan wrote I felt solonely without a friend.
Dylan did not yet consider Erichis best friend.
Dylan belabored the point thatno one besides Zach had ever
(52:15):
understood him.
No one else appreciated him.
That would include Eric.
Dylan was lonelier than ever.
Conveniently, he stumbled intoa solution my first love
question mark.
And in his next entry he wroteoh my God, I'm almost sure I am
(52:40):
in love with Harriet Such astrange name like mine.
He loved everything about her,from her good body to her almost
perfect face, her charm, herwit and cunning, and not being
popular.
He just hoped she liked him asmuch as he loved her.
That was the wrinkle.
(53:03):
Dylan had not actually spokento Harriet, but he couldn't let
that stop him.
He thought of her every secondof every day and he even wrote
If soulmates exist, then I thinkI have found mine.
I hope she likes techno.
(53:26):
That was the other hurdle.
He had not yet establishedwhether she liked techno.
That was the other hurdle.
He had not yet establishedwhether she liked techno.
Dylan felt happiness.
Sometimes he got excited abouthis driver's license.
But he couldn't stay happy.
Shortly after falling forHarriet he returned to his
(53:49):
journal to complain Such adesolate, lonely, unsavageable
life, not fair, and he wanted todie.
Zach and Devin looked at himlike he was a stranger.
But Harris had played themeanest trick.
Dylan had fallen for fake love.
Dylan had fallen for fake love.
She in reality doesn't give agood F about me, he said.
(54:15):
She didn't even know him.
He admitted he had no happiness, no ambitions, no friends, no
love.
Dylan wanted a gun.
He had spoken to a friend aboutgetting one.
He planned to turn the weaponon himself.
That was a big step in the longsuicide process from writing
(54:37):
about it to action.
At this point, nearly two yearsbefore Columbine, dylan saw the
gun as his last resort.
He continued his spiritualquest.
Love was the most common wordin Dylan's journal.
(54:58):
Eric was filling his websitewith hate.
So when Fusilier examined acrime, one of the primary
tactics was to begin ruling outmotives.
Dylan seemed like a classicdepressive, but Fusilier had to
be sure.
With both Columbine killers anobvious question loomed Were
(55:22):
they insane?
Most mass murderers actdeliberately.
They just want to hurt people,but some truly cannot help
themselves.
Fusilier would describe thosekillers as psychotic.
A broad term psychotic covers aspectrum of severe mental
illness, including paranoia andschizophrenia.
(55:44):
Psychotic can grow deeplydisoriented and delusional,
hearing voices andhallucinations.
In severe cases they lose allcontact with reality.
They sometimes act out ofimaginary yet terrifying fear
for their own safety oraccording to instructions from
(56:10):
imaginary beings.
Fusiliers are no indication ofany of that here.
Another possibility waspsychopathy.
The term denotes a specificmental condition.
Psychopaths appear charming andlikable, but it's an act.
They are cold-heartedmanipulators who would do
(56:32):
anything for their own.
Again, the vast majority arenon-violent.
They want your money, not yourlife.
But the ones who turn sadisticcan be monstrous.
If murder amuses them they willkill again and again.
(56:54):
Ted Bundy, gary Gilmore andJeffrey Dammer were all
psychopaths.
Typically murderous psychopathsare serial killers, but
occasionally one will go on aspree.
Are serial killers, butoccasionally one will go on a
spree.
The Columbine massacre couldhave been the work of a
psychopath, but Dylan showednone of the signs.
(57:15):
Fusilier continued ruling outprofiles.
None of the usual theories fit.
Everything about Dylan screameddepressive An extreme case,
self-medicating with alcohol.
The problem was how that hadled to murder.
Dillon's journal read like thatof a boy on the road to suicide
(57:37):
, not homicide.
Fusilier had seen murder arisefrom depression, but it rarely
looked like this.
There is usually a continuum ofdepressive reactions ranging
from lethargy to mass murder.
Dillon seemed muddled on thelanguorous side.
(57:58):
Depressives are inherently angry.
Though they rarely appear thatway.
They are angry at themselves.
In other words, anger turnedinwards equals depression.
Depression leads to murder whenthe anger is severe enough and
then turns outward.
(58:20):
Depressive outbursts tend toerupt after a debilitating loss,
getting fired, dumped by agirlfriend, even a bad grade, if
the depressive sees that assignificant.
Most of us get angry.
Kick a trash, can drink a beeror two, get over it.
(58:43):
For 99.9% of the populationthat's the end of it, but for a
few the anger festers.
Some depressives withdraw fromfriends, families, schoolmates.
Most of them get help or justget over it.
A few spiral downward towardssuicide, but for a tiny
(59:09):
percentage their own death isnot enough.
They perform a vengeful suicide.
A common example is the angryhusband who shoots himself in
front of his wedding photo.
He deliberately splatters hisremains on the symbol of the
marriage.
The offense is directlystraight at his conception.
On the symbol of the marriage.
The offense is directlystraight at his conception of
(59:30):
the guilty party.
A tiny number of angrydepressives decide to make the
tormentor pay.
Typically that's a wife, agirlfriend, boss or parent,
someone close enough to matter.
It's a rare depressive whoresorts to murder, but when one
(59:51):
does it nearly always ends witha single person.
A few lash out in a widercircle the wife and her friend
who badmouth him, the boss andsome co-workers.
Their targets are specific.
They want to lash out randomlyand show us all, hurt us back
(01:00:16):
and make sure we feel it.
This is the gunman who opensfire on a random crowd.
Fusilier had seen each of thosetypes several times over the
course of his career.
Dylan didn't look like acandidate.
Murder, or even suicide, takeswillpower as well as anger.
(01:00:42):
Dylan fantasized about suicidefor years without making an
attempt.
He had never spoken to thegirls he dreamed of.
Dylan Klebold was not a man ofaction.
He was conscripted by a boy whowas.
(01:01:02):
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
Welcome to the Murder Book.
I'm your host, kiara, and thisis part six of Unraveling the
Columbine Tragedy.
Let's begin.
Two years before he carried thebombs into the Columbine
cafeteria, eric took a crucialstep.
He had always maintained anactive fantasy life.
(00:23):
His extension fantasiesprogressed steadily, but reality
held firm and was completelyseparate from his fantasy life.
Then, one day, midway throughsophomore year, eric began to
take action.
He was an angry, cruel orparticularly hateful.
His campaign against theinferiors was comically banal,
(00:49):
but it was real.
The mischief started as athreesome.
Dylan and Zack were calledconspirators and squad mates.
In his written accounts, ericreferred to the two by their
code names, vodka and Kibbitz.
They launched the escapades inJanuary 1997, second semester of
(01:14):
their sophomore year.
They would meet at Eric's house, mostly sneak out after
midnight and vandalize houses ofkids he didn't like.
Eric chose the targets.
Of course they have to becareful speaking out.
They couldn't wake his parents.
Lots of rocks to navigate inEric's backyard and a pesky
(01:38):
neighbor's dog kept barking hishead off, according to Eric, and
then they plunged into a fieldof tall grass that he compared
to Jurassic Park's Lost World.
To Eric it was one hell of anadventure.
He had been role-playing marineheroes on military maneuvers
(01:58):
since grade school.
Finally he was in the fieldconducting them.
Eric dubbed his pranks themissions.
Eric sometimes attacked thehouses of his peers to retaliate
(02:19):
for perceived slights, but mostoften for the offense of
inferiority.
Between missions the boys gotinto unscripted trouble.
Eric got mad at Brooks Brownand stopped talking to him.
Then he escalated a snowballfight by breaking a chunk of ice
off a drainpipe and he hurledit at the car of a friend of
(02:43):
Brooks and dented the trunk.
He grabbed another hunk andcracked the windshield at
Brooks' Mercedes and of courseBrooks got mad and insulted him
you know, used foul language andtold him you're going to pay
for this, which of course Ericsaid that he wasn't going to pay
(03:05):
.
So brooks drove home and toldhis mom and then he headed to
eric's.
He was furious, but his mother,kathy harris, remained calm.
She invited brooks in and gavehim a seat in the living room.
Brooks knew lots of Eric'ssecrets and he spilled them all
(03:28):
and he told her your son's beensneaking out at night.
He's going around vandalizingthings.
And Kathy seemed incredulous.
She tried to calm the kid down,but Brooks kept ranting and he
said he got liquor in his room.
You need to search for it.
He got spray paint cans, searchit.
She wanted him to talk but hefelt that she was acting like a
(03:52):
school counselor.
He was out of there and he saidhe was getting out before Eric
got back.
So Brooks went home anddiscovered his friend had
grabbed Eric's backpack, takingit hostage, more or less.
Brooke's mom, judy, tookcontrol of the situation.
She ordered everyone into thecar and brought them to see Eric
(04:14):
, and Judy said to lock thedoors because she was still
enjoying the stop-mall fight.
So she rolled her window down acrack and yelled over to.
Eric said to lock the doorsbecause he was still enjoying
the stop-mall fight.
So she rolled her window down acrack and yelled over to Eric
(04:34):
and she said I got your backpackand I'm taking it to your mom's
.
Meet us over there.
So Eric grabbed hold of the carand screamed ferociously and
when she pulled away he hung onwailing harder.
So Eric reminded her of anescaped animal attacking a car,
like in one of those wildlifetheme parks.
So brooke's friend shifted tothe, to the other side of of of
(04:58):
the back uh seat and judy atthis moment she was terrified
because they have never seenthis side of Eric.
They were used to Dylan'scharades, but he was so show.
Eric looked like he meant it.
So Judy got up enough speed andEric let go and at his house
(05:20):
Eric's mom greeted them in thedriveway and Judy handed her the
backpack and unloaded the story.
Kathy began to cry and Judyfelt bad because Kathy has
always been so sweet.
So now Wayne came home and hethrew the fear of God into Eric.
(05:41):
He interrogated him about thealcohol, but Eric had it hidden
and played innocent convincingly.
He wasn't taking any chances.
As soon as he got a chance hedestroyed the stash and he wrote
in his diary I had to ditchevery bottle I had and lie like
an effing salesman to my parents.
(06:02):
And that night he went with theconfessional approach.
He admitted a weakness to hisdad.
The truth was that he wasafraid of Mrs Brown and Wayne
thought well, that explains alot.
Kathy wanted to hear more fromthe Browns.
Wayne bitterly resentedinterference.
(06:22):
Who was this hysterical womanor her conniving little Brad
Brooks?
Wayne was hard enough on theboys without outsiders telling
him how to raise his sons.
Kathy called Judy that night.
Judy felt she really wanted tolisten, but Wayne was negative
and dismissive in the background.
(06:43):
It was kid stuff.
He insisted it was all blown,way out of proportion.
He got on the line and toldJudy that Eric had copped to the
truth that bottom line that hewas afraid of her.
And Judy told him.
And Judy told him your sonisn't afraid of me because he
(07:11):
came after me and my car.
Wayne jotted notes about theexchange on a green notepad and
he outlined Eric's misdeeds,including getting into and Judy
Brown's face and being a littlebully.
(07:31):
At the bottom of the page hesummarized he found Eric guilty
of aggression, disrespect,property damage and idle threats
of physical harm.
But he did not look kindly onthe Browns.
He concluded overreaction tominor incident and he dated that
piece of paper February 28th1997 and he kept it in that
green notepad.
(07:52):
At school the next day Brooksheard Eric was making threats
about him and he told hisparents that night.
So they called the cops.
A deputy came by to questionthem and then they went to see
the Harris's.
Wayne called a few minuteslater.
He was bringing Eric over toapologize.
(08:12):
Judy told Brooks and hisbrother Aaron to hide.
He said I want you both in theback bedroom and don't come out.
Wayne waited in his car.
In the car and he refused tosupply moral support.
Eric had to walk up to the doorand face Mr and Mrs Brown alone
(08:33):
.
Eric had regained his normalcomposure.
He was exceptionally contrite.
Mrs Brown, I didn't mean anyharm, he said, and you know I
would never do anything to hurtBrooks.
So of course Mrs Brown said youcan pull the wool over your
dad's eyes, but you can't pullthe wool over my eyes.
(08:53):
And Eric, you know, tookoffense to that statement and he
asked her are you calling me aliar?
And she said yes, I am.
And if you ever come up ourstreets or if you ever do
anything to Brooks again, I'mcalling the police.
(09:14):
So Eric left in a huff.
He went home and plottedrevenge.
He was worried now, but hewouldn't back down.
The next mission target was theBrowns' house.
The team also hid random houses.
Mostly they would set upfireworks, toilet paper.
The places trigger a housealarm.
(09:35):
They also stuck silly putty toBrooks' Mercedes.
Eric had been bragging aboutthe missions on his website and
at this point he posted Brooks'name, address and phone number
and he encouraged readers toharass.
What he said is A-hole.
Brooks had betrayed Eric.
Brooks had to be punished, buthe was never significant.
(09:59):
Eric had bigger ideas and hewas experimenting with timers.
Now, and those offered newopportunities.
Eric wired a dozen firecrackerstogether and attached a long
fuse.
He was fastidiously analyticalbut he had no way to assess his
(10:20):
data because he fled as soon ashe lit the fuses.
Judy Brown viewed Eric as acriminal in bloom.
She and Randy, her husband,spoke to Eric's dad repeatedly
and they kept calling the cops.
Wayne did not appreciate thatand he would do anything to
protect his son's futures.
(10:41):
Discipline was a no-brainer,but the boy's reputations were
out of his control.
One black mark could wipe out alifetime of opportunities.
Wayne scrutinized Eric for awhile but ultimately he bought
into his son's version.
Eric was smart enough to cop tosome bad behavior and his calm
(11:03):
contrition made the Browns lookhysterical.
Three days after the iceincident, wayne was grappling
with more parents and aColumbine dean.
Wayne pulled out the six bynine inch pad and labeled the
cover Eric.
He filled three more notebookpages over two days.
(11:24):
Brooks knew about the missionsand had gone to see Nadine.
Nadine was concerned aboutalcohol consumption and damage
to school property.
He would get the policeinvolved if necessary.
Eric played dumb.
The word denial appears inlarge letters on two consecutive
(11:44):
pages of Wayne's journal.
Both times the word is circledby the first entry scribbled out
.
Wayne concluded that the issuewas over and done.
Don't discuss with friends.
He repeatedly stressed thatsilence was key.
Talk to Eric basically finish.
(12:05):
He wrote.
And then he also wrote leaveeach other alone, don't talk
about it, agree, all discussionis over with.
Wayne.
Harris apparently breathedeasier for a while.
He didn't write in his journalfor a month and a half.
Then come four rapid entriesdocumenting a slew of phone
(12:25):
calls.
First Wayne talked to Zach'smom and another parent.
The next day, two years and oneday before the massacre, a
deputy from the Defco Sheriff'sDepartment called Wayne and put
his guard up and he said we feelvictimizedized too.
(12:45):
We don't want to be accusedevery time something happens.
That it's you know.
Eric learned his lesson, so hecrossed out the last phrase and
wrote it's not at fault.
The real problem was Brooks,according to Wayne, and he wrote
(13:06):
Brooks Brown is out to get Eric.
Brooks had problems with otherboys, manipulative and con
artists.
If the problem continued itmight be time to hire a mediator
or a lawyer.
Wayne's last entry on the feudoccurred a week later, on April
27, after a call with Judy Brown, and he wrote Eric has not
(13:31):
broken promise to Mr Place thedean after leaving each other
alone.
And at the bottom of the pagehe repeated his earlier
sentiment.
We feel victimized too.
Manipulative con artist.
Eric totally rocked on themissions.
Dylan enjoyed them too and heliked the camaraderie,
(13:53):
especially because he fit inthere.
He had a role to play, hebelonged.
But the missions were briefdiversions.
They were not making him happy.
In fact Dylan was miserable.
Now Jeff Go had a problem.
(14:18):
Before Eric and Dylan shotthemselves, officers had
discovered files on the boys.
The cops had 12 pages fromEric's website spewing hate and
threatening to kill.
For detectives a writtenconfession discovered before the
killers were captured was a bigbreak.
(14:38):
It certainly simplified thesearch warrant.
But for commanders a publicconfession which they set on
since 1997, that could be a PRdisaster.
The webpages had come fromRandy and Judy Brown.
They had warned the Sheriff'sDepartment repeatedly about Eric
(15:01):
for more than a year and a half.
Sometime around noon April 20ththe file was shuttled to the
command center in a trailer setup in Clement Park.
Jeffco officials quoted Eric'ssite extensively in the search
warrants executed that afternoonbut then denied ever seeing it.
Denied ever seeing it.
(15:28):
They would spend several yearsrepeating those denials.
They suppress the damningwarrants as well.
Then Sheriff Stone fingeredBrooks as a suspect on the Today
Show.
It was a rough time for theBrown family.
The public got two conflictedstories.
Family the public got twoconflicted stories.
Randy and Judy Brown had eitherlabored to prevent Columbine or
(15:50):
raised one of his conspirators,or both.
To the Browns it looked likeretribution.
Yes, their son had been closeto the killers, close enough to
see it coming.
The Browns had blown thewhistle on Eric Harris over a
year earlier and the cops haddone nothing.
The Browns were fingered asaccomplices instead of heroes.
(16:13):
They couldn't believe it.
They told the New York Timesthey had contacted the Sheriff's
Department about Eric 15 times.
Jeffco officials would insistfor years that the Browns never
met with an investigator,despite holding a report
indicating they had.
The officers knew they had aproblem and it was much worse
(16:38):
than the Browns realized.
13 months before the massacre,sheriff's, 13 months before the
massacre, sheriff'sinvestigators John Hicks and
Mike Guerra had investigated oneof the Browns' complaints.
They had discovered substantialevidence that Eric was building
pipe bombs.
(16:58):
Guerra had considered itserious enough to draft an
affidavit for a search warrantagainst the Harris home.
For some reason, the warrantwas never taken before a judge.
Guerra's affidavit wasconvincing.
It spelled out all the keycomponents motive, means and
(17:19):
opportunity.
A few days after the massacre,about a dozen local officials
slipped away from the feds andgathered clandestinely in an
innocuous office in the countyopen space department building.
It would come to be known asthe open space meeting.
(17:39):
The purpose was to discuss theaffidavit for a search warrant.
How bad was it?
What should they tell thepublic?
The purpose was to discuss theaffidavit for a search warrant.
How bad was it?
What should they tell thepublic?
Guerra was driven to themeeting and told never to
discuss it outside the group.
So he complied.
The meeting was kept secret too.
That held for five years.
(18:04):
March 22, 2004.
Guerra would finally confess ithappened to investigators from
the Colorado Attorney General.
He described it as one of thosecover your ass meetings.
District Attorney Dave Thomasattended the meeting.
He told the group he found noprobable cause for the
(18:24):
investigators to have executedthe draft warrant, finding
ridicule once it was released.
He was formally contradicted bythe Colorado attorney in 2004.
At a notorious press conference10 days after the murders.
Jeffco officials suppressed theaffidavit and boldly lied about
(18:50):
what they have known.
They said they could not findEric's webpages.
They found no evidence of pipebombs matching Eric's
descriptions and had no recordof the Browns meeting with Hicks
.
Giver's affidavit plainlycontradicted all three claims.
Officials had just spent daysreviewing it.
(19:11):
They would repeat the lies foryears.
Several days after the meeting,investigator Gavris' file on
his investigation of Ericdisappeared for the first time.
The cover your ass meeting was astrictly Jeffco affair limited
(19:32):
mostly to senior officials, mostof the detectives on the case,
including the feds and cops fromlocal jurisdictions.
They were unaware of the coverup.
They were trying to crack thecase.
Police detectives continuedfanning out across Littleton.
They had two thousand studentsto interview, not telling where
(19:55):
the truth might be tucked away.
They all reported back to theleadership team in the Columbine
band room.
It was chaos.
Guys were coming in with noteson scraps of paper and matchbook
covers.
At the end of the week KateBaton took control of the
situation.
She called everyone into theband room for a massive
(20:18):
four-hour debriefing andinformation exchange.
At the end of the meeting threecrucial questions remained.
How had the killers gotten allthe guns?
How had they gotten the bombsinto the school?
Who had conspired to help them?
Batan and her team had a goodidea where the conspiracy lay.
(20:41):
They had nearly a dozen chiefsuspects.
They pitted two against eachother.
Chris Morris claimed he wasinnocent and they told him prove
it, help us smoke out Duran.
Chris agreed to a wiretap and onSaturday afternoon he called
(21:02):
Phil Duran from FBI headquartersin Denver.
While federal agents listenedin.
They commiserated about howrough it had gotten and phil
said it's pretty crazy man.
And um, chris said yeah, themedia's going psycho.
Chris went for the kill toosoon and he had heard that duran
(21:22):
had gone out shooting with thekillers and someone videotaped
it and he mentioned the tape.
But Duran brushed it off.
For 14 minutes they spoke.
Chris kept circling back to itand Duran deflected as many
times.
Yes, I had no clue, dude, hesaid.
Finally, chris got an admissionthat Durant had been out
(21:45):
shooting with Eric and Dylan andhe got a name.
The place was called RampartRanch.
It didn't sound like much butit was leverage.
On Sunday an ATF agent paidDuran a visit.
Duran told him everything.
Eric and Dylan had approachedhim about a gun he had put them
(22:07):
in touch with Mark Maines whohad sold them the Tech-9.
Duran admitted to relaying someof the money but said he had
earned nothing on the deal andevery bit of that was was true.
So five days later detectiveshauled means into ATF
(22:30):
headquarters in downtown Denverwith attorneys for defense and
prosecution.
Mains made a full confession.
Duran had introduced him toEric and Dylan on January 23rd
at the Tanner gun show, the sameplace the killers had bought
the three other guns.
(22:51):
Duran identified Eric as thebuyer and he did the talking.
Mains agreed to sell the gun oncredit and he did the talking.
Mainz agreed to sell the gun oncredit.
Eric would pay $300 now $200more when he could raise it.
It was Dylan who showed up atMainz's house that night and he
(23:14):
handed over the down payment andpicked up the gun.
Duran delivered the $200.
A couple of weeks laterDetectives asked Maines
repeatedly about the killer'sages.
Eventually he admitted that hehad assumed they were under 18.
Maines had bought the Tech-9 atthe same show about six months
(23:36):
earlier.
He had used his debit card.
Later he produced a bankstatement showing he had paid
$491.
He had made $9 on the deal.
It could cost him 18 years.
In the meantime, the FBI agentDr Fusilier didn't think much
(23:59):
about motive.
The first few days, everyminute evidence could be
vanishing, alibis arranged,cover stories coordinated.
But curiosity soon intruded andrefused to be dented.
His mind kept returning to thecritical question of why, with
(24:23):
nearly 100 detectives workingthe case, that central question
largely fell to no one.
So it began as a small part ofAgent Fusilier's job.
He was primarily concerned withleading the FBI's team.
He met daily with his teamleaders.
They briefed him.
He asked questions, shot holesin their theories, suggested new
(24:45):
questions and challenged themto probe harder.
On Saturdays he drove intoDenver to sort through his inbox
at FBI headquarters.
He had to get up to speed onthe federal cases he had handed
off and offer insight andsuggestions where he could.
(25:08):
But he began to carve out alittle time out every evening to
assess the killers.
He had teams of people toassemble the data but no one
else was qualified to analyze it.
He was the only psychologist onthe team.
(25:28):
He had studied this very sortof killer for years for the FBI
and he knew what he was against.
It pissed him off watching thembrag on video about the people
they would maim and he wouldhear himself said you little
(25:49):
damn, you damn little jerks.
But sometimes he felt a littlesorry for them.
Their point of view wasindefensible but he had to
embrace it temporarily andempathize with them.
If he refused to see the worldthrough their lens, how would he
ever understand how they coulddo it?
They were high school kids.
(26:09):
How did they get this way?
Dylan in particular.
What a waste.
Fusilier's peers andsubordinates had a lot of
questions about the killers andthey needed someone to turn to,
one person who deeplyunderstands the perps.
Fusilier quickly became knowninternally as the expert on the
(26:31):
two boys.
Kate Batan was leading theday-to-day investigation and
everyone deferred to herlogistical questions.
The investigation and everyonedeferred to her logistical
questions, like who had beenrunning down a particular
hallway at a certain momentduring the attack.
But Fusilier understood theperpetrators.
He returned to Eric's journalover and over and then Dylan's,
(26:55):
poring over every line, pouringover every line.
About a week after the murdersFusilier was introduced to the
basement tapes and earlierfootage Eric and Dylan had shot
of themselves.
So he took the tapes home.
He watched them repeatedly.
He hit the pause buttonfrequently, advancing frame by
(27:18):
frame, going back over revealingmoments to dissect nuance.
On the surface, much of thematerial was tedious and banal,
little snippets of daily life,like the boys making dumb high
school jokes with Chris Morrisin the car bickering over the
drive-thru order at Wendy's.
(27:38):
Nothing even tangentiallyrelated to the murders appear on
most of the tapes, but Fusiliersoaked up ordinary impressions
of his murderers.
Dr Fusilier watched or readevery word from the killers
dozens of times.
(27:59):
His big break came just a fewdays after the murders.
Before he saw the basementtapes, fusilier heard an ATF
agent quoting a ghastly phraseEric Harris had written.
And Fusilier asked what you gotthere?
And it was the journal.
For the last year of his life,eric Harris had written down
(28:23):
many of his plans in a journal.
Fusilier zipped over and readthe opening line that says,
quote I hate the effing world.
Suddenly, the big bombs began tomake a lot more sense.
Suddenly the big bombs began tomake a lot more sense.
Fusilier read a bit further andthen turned to the ATF agent
(28:45):
and he said Can I have a copy ofthis?
And the pages had beenphotocopied from a spiral
notebook 16 handwritten pagesand a dozen more of sketches and
charts and diagrams.
There were 19 entries, alldated, running from April 10,
(29:08):
1998 to April 3, 1999, 17 daysbefore Columbine.
They ran a page or two at thebeginning, then shortened
considerably, with the last fivecrammed into the last page and
a half.
They were dark and fussy fromtoo many trips through the
(29:31):
copier and every scroll was hardto decipher sometimes.
But Fusilier was reading againwhile the pages made another
pass through the copy machineand he said this is mesmerizing.
The journal told infinitely morethan Eric's website had.
(29:53):
The website which predated thejournal by at least a year was
mostly vented rage.
It told us who he hated, whathe wanted to do to the world,
what he had already done.
It said very little about whythe journal was angry.
(30:18):
So Fusilier started reading thephotocopies and he read on the
walk back to the ATF agent'sdesk and he stood there reading
rather than return to his ownchair.
He didn't notice his backstiffening up for several
minutes until the pain finallyinterrupted and so he finally
(30:41):
sat down and he kept reading andthen suddenly he said to
himself you know, there's apoint that he said oh, holy moly
, he's telling us why he did it.
Eric would prove the easierkiller to understand.
(31:04):
Eric always knew what he was upto.
Dylan did not.
We'll be right back.
Dylan's mind raced night and dayanalyzing, inventing,
(31:26):
deconstructing.
He was 15, and he had taggedalong on the missions.
He was Eric's number one go-toguy and none of that mattered.
Dylan's head was bursting withideas, sounds, impressions.
He could never turn the racketoff.
Dylan was in pain.
(31:47):
Nobody got it.
Vodka helped.
The internet did too.
Girls were hard to talk to.
Instant messaging made iteasier.
Dylan would IM alone in hisroom for hours at night.
Vodka make the words flow butreduce his ability to spell them
(32:07):
.
When an internet girl calledhim on it, he laughed and
admitted he was sloshed.
It was easy to hide from hisparents.
They never suspected.
It all happened quietly in hisroom.
Ims were not enough.
Too many secrets to hold on.
Too many concepts sipping overtheir heads.
(32:34):
Suicide was consuming him.
No way.
Dylan was confessing that hetried explaining some of the
other ideas, but people were toothick to understand.
In the spring of the sophomoreyear, shortly after this, the
missions started.
(32:54):
March 31st 1997, dylan gotdrunk, picked up a pen and began
the conversation with the oneperson who could understand
himself.
He imagined his journal as astately old tome with oversized
covers extending just past theparchment and a fine satin
(33:15):
ribbon sewn into the binding,like in a Bible.
All he had was a plain pad ofnotebook paper, college ruled
and three-hole punched.
So he drew the imaginary coveron the cover and he titled his
work Existences, a Virtual Book.
(33:39):
He had tried deleting the Doomfiles from his computer, tried
staying sober, tried to stopmaking fun of kids.
That was a tough one.
Kids were so easy to ridicule.
The spiritual purge wasn'thelping.
So he wrote my existence isshit.
He described eternal sufferingin infinite directions though
(34:03):
infinite realities.
Loneliness was the crux of theproblem.
Dylan felt cut off fromhumanity.
Some of Dylan's ideas were hardto put into words.
He drew squiggles in themargins and labeled them thought
pictures.
He was a profoundly religiousyoung man.
(34:23):
His family was not active inany congregation, yet Dylan's
belief was unwavering.
He believed in God, withoutquestion, but constantly
challenged his choices.
Dylan would cry out cursing Godfor making him a modern job,
(34:46):
demanding an explanation for thedivine brutality of his
faithful servant.
Dylan believed in morality,ethics and an afterlife.
He wrote intently about theseparation of body and soul.
The body was meaningless, buthis soul would live forever.
It would reside either in thepeaceful serenity of heaven or
(35:07):
in the blistering tortures ofhell.
Dylan's anger would flare, thenfizzle quickly into
self-disgust.
Dylan wasn't planning to killanyone except, god willing,
himself.
He craved death for at leasttwo years.
The first mention comes in thefirst entry he wrote quote
(35:32):
Thinking of suicide gives mehope that I will be in my place
wherever I go after this life.
In my place wherever I go afterthis life, that I'll finally
not be at war with myself, theworld, the universe, my mind,
body, everywhere, everything atpeace, me, my soul, my
(35:54):
existence", end quote.
But suicide posed a problem.
Dylan believed in a literalheaven and hell.
He would be a believer right upuntil the end.
When he murdered several peoplehe knew there would be
consequences.
He would refer to them in hisfinal video message, recorded on
(36:18):
the morning he called JudgmentDay.
Dylan was unique, that much hewas sure of he had been watching
the kids at school.
Some were good, some bad, butalso utterly different from him.
Dylan exceeded even Eric in hisbelief in his own singularity.
(36:39):
But Eric equated unique withsuperior.
Dylan saw it mostly as bad.
His moods came and went quickly.
Dylan turned compassionate,then fatalistic.
Eric and Dylan both leftjournals behind.
(36:59):
Dr Fusilier would spend yearsstudying them.
At first glance, dylan's lookmore promising.
Fusilier was hungry for dataand Dylan provided an impressive
stack.
His journal began a yearearlier than Eric's, filled
nearly five times as many pagesand remained active right up to
(37:22):
the end.
But Eric would begin hisjournal as a killer.
He already knew where it wouldend.
Every page pointed in the samedirection.
His purpose was notself-discovery but
self-lionization.
Dylan was just trying tograpple with existence.
(37:44):
He had no idea where he washeaded.
His ideas were all over the map.
Dean liked order.
Each journal entry began with athree-line heading in the right
margin name, date and title, allwritten out in half-sized
letters.
He then repeated the title orsometimes adapted it in
(38:08):
double-sized characters centeredabove the main text.
Most of the copy was printed,but occasionally he would veer
into script.
He wrote one entry a month,nearly every month, but hardly
every twice a month.
He would fill two completepages and then stop.
If he ran out of ideas orinterest he would fill out the
(38:32):
second page with huge letteringor sketches.
The battle between good and badnever ends, he wrote.
Dylan would repeat this ideaendlessly for the next two years
.
Good and evil, love and hate,always wrestling, never
(38:53):
resolving.
Pick your side, it's up to you,but you better pray it picks
you back.
Why would love never choose him?
Sunday morning, april 25th, theColumbine churches were packed.
Afterward the crowds trekkeddown to the Bowes Crossing
(39:16):
shopping center across fromClement Park.
Organizers had planned for upto 30,000 mourners in the
sprawling parking lot.
70,000 show up.
Vice President Al Gore was inthe platform, along with the
governor, most of Colorado'scongressional delegation and a
whole lot of clergy.
(39:37):
The TV networks broadcast theceremony live.
Reverend Graham dominated theceremony with a long,
impassioned appeal for returningprayer to public schools.
He invoked the name of hispersonal Savior seven times in a
single 45-second flurry.
He called upon God and Jesusnearly 50 times.
(40:00):
In the course of the speech,christian pop star Amy Grant
sang twice, a drum and buglecorps performed a staring
rendition of Amazing Grace and asuccession of 13 white doves
were released as Governor BillOwens recited the names of the
victims.
Toward the end it began to rainA slow, steady shower.
(40:24):
Nobody moved.
Thousands of umbrellas went up,but tens of thousands of
mourners just got wet.
For many, cassie Bernal was theheroine of Columbine.
Word spread quickly that herkiller had held her at gunpoint
and asked if she believed in God, and she said yes, she would
(40:49):
profess her face and hadpromptly been shot in the head.
Vice President Gore recountedher story to the crowd and the
cameras and he quoted liberallyfrom scripture throughout his
speech.
The country was transfixed.
In the first 10 days, newsmagazines on the four main
(41:16):
broadcast networks devoted 43pieces to the attack.
The shows dominated the ratingsthat week.
Cnn and Fox News charted thehighest ratings in their history
.
A week afterward, usa Today wasstill running 10 separate
Columbine stories in a singleedition.
(41:38):
It would be nearly two weeksbefore the New York Times would
print an issue without Columbineon page one.
We'll be right back Two yearsbefore Cassie's murder.
(41:59):
Dylan laid out his case for God.
He enumerated the pros and consof his existence Good, a nice
family, a beautiful house.
He enumerated the pros and consof his existence no other
(42:24):
friends, nobody accepting him,doing badly in sports, looking
ugly and acting shy, getting badgrades, having no ambition in
life.
Dylan understood what God hadchosen for him.
Dylan was to be a seeker, oneman in search of answers, never
(42:46):
finding them, yet inhopelessness, understands things
and he seeks knowledge of theunthinkable, of the undefinable,
of the unknown.
He explores the everythingusing his mind, the most
powerful tool known to him.
(43:07):
Dylan took to referring tohumans as zombies.
But pitiful as we zombies were,dylan didn't want to harm us.
He found us interesting, likenew toys, and he wrote I am God
compared to some of theseunexistable, brainless zombies.
(43:29):
End quote.
That was Dylan's first brushwith blasphemy.
He immediately qualified hewasn't claiming godhood, just
that he was like God compared tohumans.
It would be months before hewould try it again.
Each time he would push theidea further, but he never quite
(43:52):
seemed to believe.
As spring 1997 progressed, hefilled page after page with
aborted attempts.
Eric had more practicalconcerns.
Two months of heat from his dadtaught Eric to cover his tracks
better.
The vandalism missions continuedthrough spring and early summer
(44:14):
, with no record of furtherdetection.
By mission five the boys weredrinking again.
Wayne appeared to have watchedEric closely for a while, then
resumed trusting him.
According to Eric, only oneouting went alcohol-free.
The emphasis on largerexplosives continued.
(44:38):
Some of the timing devicesbegan to work.
Eric discovered that he couldlight the tip of a cigarette and
let it burn down toward thefuse.
For an added delay.
The boys survived a few closecalls, including near detection
by a police officer in a squadcar.
On the sixth outing theybrought along Dylan's Solov BB
(45:02):
gun and fired randomly intohouses and fire randomly into
houses and Eric wrote weprobably didn't do any damage,
but we weren't sure.
That same night they stole somerent fence signs from a
construction site and Ericdidn't make much of the swipe.
(45:22):
But this appears to be themoment where they cross the hazy
boundary between pettyvandalism and petty theft.
The missions had been satisfiedfor a couple of months, but
Suffolk, new York, was over.
Eric was hungry for more.
In the summer of 1997, zachHeckler went to Pennsylvania for
(45:46):
two weeks.
When he got back Eric and Dylanhad built a pipe bomb.
Dylan was involved, but it wasEric's baby.
Eric would not begin his journaluntil the spring of 1998, but
he was active with his websitethe previous year.
By the summer of 1997, he hadposted his hate list and it says
(46:13):
you know what I hate?
Country music.
You know what I hate R-ratedmovies on cable.
My dog can do a better editingjob than those tarts.
You know what I really hate?
The WB Network.
Oh Jesus, mary, mother of God,almighty, I hate that channel
(46:36):
with all my heart and soul.
And the list went on for pages.
50 odd entries about hatingfitness People, phony martial
art experts, people whomispronounce espresso.
(46:57):
At first this target seemedpreposterously random, but then
Fusilier divined the underlyingtheme Stupid witless inferiors.
The underlying theme Stupidwitless inferiors it wasn't just
the WB network.
Eric hated hard and so it wasall the morons watching it.
(47:18):
Eric's briefer, loveless,backed Fusilier's analysis.
Eric loved making fun of stupidpeople doing stupid things.
It's great.
If love was natural selectionhe would say God damn, it's the
best thing that ever happened tothe earth, getting rid of all
the stupid and weak organisms.
I wish the government wouldjust take off every warning
(47:41):
label, so then all the the dumbswould either severely hurt
themselves or die.
So what the boy was reallyexpressing was contempt.
Eric's ideas began to fuse.
He loved explosions, activelyhated inferiors, passively hoped
(48:04):
for human extinction.
He built his first bombs.
He started small, nothing thatwould kill anyone, just enough
to injure people or the property.
He went searching forinstructions and found them
readily available on the web.
During the summer of 1997, hebuilt several explosives and
(48:28):
began setting them off.
Then he bragged about it on hiswebsite.
It says, quote if you haven'tmake a co2 bomb today, I suggest
you do so.
Me and Vodka detonated oneyesterday and it was like an
(48:51):
effing dynamite stick.
Just watch out for shrapnel.
End quote.
That was an exaggeration.
They have taken small carbondioxide cartridges, which kids
often call whippets, and whatthey did is that they punctured
them and then they shovedgunpowder inside.
(49:13):
Eric called them crickets andthey were closer to a large
firecracker than a bomb.
Eric had also built pipe bombswhich were more powerful, and he
was still searching for a spotsafe for detonation.
(49:43):
Eric continued with all thesethings on his website until he
realized that his web audiencewould doubt him.
So he backed his claims withspecifications and an ingredient
list.
He wanted to make sure hisreaders understood that he was
serious.
Someone sensed a danger and onAugust 7th 1997, a concerned
citizen, apparently Randy Brown,read Eric's website and called
the Sheriff's Department.
(50:04):
On that day, one year, eightmonths and 13 days before
Columbine the killers namedpermanently into the law
enforcement system, deputy MarkBurgess printed out Eric's pages
.
He read through them and wroteup a report and says, quote this
(50:24):
webpage refers to missionswhere possible criminal
mischiefs have occurred.
End quote.
Curiously, berger's made nomention of the pipe bombs, which
seemed far more serious.
Berger sent his report to asuperior investigator, john
Hicks, with eight websites pagesattached.
(50:47):
They were filed.
Eric and Zach and Dylan wereworking age now, so they all got
jobs at a place calledBlackjack and they made dry ass,
dry-ass eruptions out back inthe parking lot.
(51:08):
Watch how high they could get aconstruction cone to sail.
It was great.
And then Zach met a girl andDylan took it hard.
Devon was her name and shetotally ripped the team apart.
Zach was with her all the timenow and she squeezed his buddies
(51:29):
out of the picture.
Eric and Dylan were nobodies.
The mission were suddenly over.
Eric didn't seem to mind it toomuch, but Dylan was a mess.
They had done everythingtogether drinking cigars,
sabotaging houses.
Since seventh grade.
He had felt so lonely.
(51:49):
Zach had changed all that, butSeth had found a girlfriend and
moved on.
And Dylan wrote I felt solonely without a friend.
Dylan did not yet consider Erichis best friend.
Dylan belabored the point thatno one besides Zach had ever
(52:15):
understood him.
No one else appreciated him.
That would include Eric.
Dylan was lonelier than ever.
Conveniently, he stumbled intoa solution my first love
question mark.
And in his next entry he wroteoh my God, I'm almost sure I am
(52:40):
in love with Harriet Such astrange name like mine.
He loved everything about her,from her good body to her almost
perfect face, her charm, herwit and cunning, and not being
popular.
He just hoped she liked him asmuch as he loved her.
That was the wrinkle.
(53:03):
Dylan had not actually spokento Harriet, but he couldn't let
that stop him.
He thought of her every secondof every day and he even wrote
If soulmates exist, then I thinkI have found mine.
I hope she likes techno.
(53:26):
That was the other hurdle.
He had not yet establishedwhether she liked techno.
That was the other hurdle.
He had not yet establishedwhether she liked techno.
Dylan felt happiness.
Sometimes he got excited abouthis driver's license.
But he couldn't stay happy.
Shortly after falling forHarriet he returned to his
(53:49):
journal to complain Such adesolate, lonely, unsavageable
life, not fair, and he wanted todie.
Zach and Devin looked at himlike he was a stranger.
But Harris had played themeanest trick.
Dylan had fallen for fake love.
Dylan had fallen for fake love.
She in reality doesn't give agood F about me, he said.
(54:15):
She didn't even know him.
He admitted he had no happiness, no ambitions, no friends, no
love.
Dylan wanted a gun.
He had spoken to a friend aboutgetting one.
He planned to turn the weaponon himself.
That was a big step in the longsuicide process from writing
(54:37):
about it to action.
At this point, nearly two yearsbefore Columbine, dylan saw the
gun as his last resort.
He continued his spiritualquest.
Love was the most common wordin Dylan's journal.
(54:58):
Eric was filling his websitewith hate.
So when Fusilier examined acrime, one of the primary
tactics was to begin ruling outmotives.
Dylan seemed like a classicdepressive, but Fusilier had to
be sure.
With both Columbine killers anobvious question loomed Were
(55:22):
they insane?
Most mass murderers actdeliberately.
They just want to hurt people,but some truly cannot help
themselves.
Fusilier would describe thosekillers as psychotic.
A broad term psychotic covers aspectrum of severe mental
illness, including paranoia andschizophrenia.
(55:44):
Psychotic can grow deeplydisoriented and delusional,
hearing voices andhallucinations.
In severe cases they lose allcontact with reality.
They sometimes act out ofimaginary yet terrifying fear
for their own safety oraccording to instructions from
(56:10):
imaginary beings.
Fusiliers are no indication ofany of that here.
Another possibility waspsychopathy.
The term denotes a specificmental condition.
Psychopaths appear charming andlikable, but it's an act.
They are cold-heartedmanipulators who would do
(56:32):
anything for their own.
Again, the vast majority arenon-violent.
They want your money, not yourlife.
But the ones who turn sadisticcan be monstrous.
If murder amuses them they willkill again and again.
(56:54):
Ted Bundy, gary Gilmore andJeffrey Dammer were all
psychopaths.
Typically murderous psychopathsare serial killers, but
occasionally one will go on aspree.
Are serial killers, butoccasionally one will go on a
spree.
The Columbine massacre couldhave been the work of a
psychopath, but Dylan showednone of the signs.
(57:15):
Fusilier continued ruling outprofiles.
None of the usual theories fit.
Everything about Dylan screameddepressive An extreme case,
self-medicating with alcohol.
The problem was how that hadled to murder.
Dillon's journal read like thatof a boy on the road to suicide
(57:37):
, not homicide.
Fusilier had seen murder arisefrom depression, but it rarely
looked like this.
There is usually a continuum ofdepressive reactions ranging
from lethargy to mass murder.
Dillon seemed muddled on thelanguorous side.
(57:58):
Depressives are inherently angry.
Though they rarely appear thatway.
They are angry at themselves.
In other words, anger turnedinwards equals depression.
Depression leads to murder whenthe anger is severe enough and
then turns outward.
(58:20):
Depressive outbursts tend toerupt after a debilitating loss,
getting fired, dumped by agirlfriend, even a bad grade, if
the depressive sees that assignificant.
Most of us get angry.
Kick a trash, can drink a beeror two, get over it.
(58:43):
For 99.9% of the populationthat's the end of it, but for a
few the anger festers.
Some depressives withdraw fromfriends, families, schoolmates.
Most of them get help or justget over it.
A few spiral downward towardssuicide, but for a tiny
(59:09):
percentage their own death isnot enough.
They perform a vengeful suicide.
A common example is the angryhusband who shoots himself in
front of his wedding photo.
He deliberately splatters hisremains on the symbol of the
marriage.
The offense is directlystraight at his conception.
On the symbol of the marriage.
The offense is directlystraight at his conception of
(59:30):
the guilty party.
A tiny number of angrydepressives decide to make the
tormentor pay.
Typically that's a wife, agirlfriend, boss or parent,
someone close enough to matter.
It's a rare depressive whoresorts to murder, but when one
(59:51):
does it nearly always ends witha single person.
A few lash out in a widercircle the wife and her friend
who badmouth him, the boss andsome co-workers.
Their targets are specific.
They want to lash out randomlyand show us all, hurt us back
(01:00:16):
and make sure we feel it.
This is the gunman who opensfire on a random crowd.
Fusilier had seen each of thosetypes several times over the
course of his career.
Dylan didn't look like acandidate.
Murder, or even suicide, takeswillpower as well as anger.
(01:00:42):
Dylan fantasized about suicidefor years without making an
attempt.
He had never spoken to thegirls he dreamed of.
Dylan Klebold was not a man ofaction.
He was conscripted by a boy whowas.
(01:01:02):
Thank you for listening to theMurder Book.
Have a great week.
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