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The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Each week, The Murder Book will present unsolved cases, missing persons, notorious crimes, controversial cases, and serial killers, exploring details of the crime scenes and the murderer's childhood. Some episodes are translated into Spanish as well. The podcast is produced and hosted by Kiara Coyle.
The Murder Book: A True Crime Podcast
Unraveling Columbine: Exploring the Minds Behind the Tragedy Part I
How do two seemingly ordinary high school students transform into the perpetrators of one of America's most infamous school shootings? Join us for an in-depth exploration of the chilling events that led up to the Columbine tragedy as we hear from Frank DeAngelis, the school's principal, who shares his heartfelt concerns for student safety just days before the attack. We delve into the contrasting lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, from Eric's surprising struggles to find a prom date despite his popularity to Dylan's unexpected social successes, shedding light on their complex personalities and troubled minds. This episode offers a glimpse into the turbulent dynamics at play in a peaceful suburban community in the late 1990s, grappling with the unsettling rise of school shootings across the nation.
Our journey continues as we explore the shared passions and personal struggles of Eric and Dylan, revealing the growing tensions in their lives and the broader societal forces at work. Despite their creativity and analytical brilliance, their rebellious behavior and personal challenges foreshadowed the violence to come. Through the backdrop of a seemingly serene community, we piece together the societal and cultural factors that may have influenced this tragedy, reflecting on the eruption of violence in small towns and the national turmoil of the era. Join us as we attempt to understand the motives and influences behind this devastating event, seeking lessons that resonate far beyond the walls of Columbine High School.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara. On April 20, 1999, two boys left an indelible stamp on the American psyche. The goal was simple to blow up their school and to leave a lasting impression on the world. Their bombs failed, but the ensuing shooting defined a new era of school violence, irrevocably branding every subsequent shooting another Columbine.
Speaker 1:Let's begin. Frank DeAngelis told them he loved them. He faced 2,000 hyped-up high school students in the wooden bleachers and they gave him their full attention. Then he told them how much they meant to him, how his heart would break to lose just one of them. It was a peculiar sentiment for an administrator to express to an assembly of teenagers, but Frank DeAngelis had been a coach longer than a principal and he earnestly believed in motivation by candor. He had coached football and baseball for 16 years, but he looked like a wrestler. He tried to play down his coaching past, but he exuded it. You could hear the fear in his voice. He didn't try to hide it and he didn't try to fight back the tears that welled up in his eyes, and he got away with it. Those kids could sniff out a phony with one whiff and convey displeasure with sneakers and fumbling in an audible current of unrest. But they adored Mr D. He could say almost anything to his students. Precisely because he did, he didn't hold back, he didn't sugarcoat it and he didn't dumb it down.
Speaker 1:On Friday, april 16, 1999, principal Frank DeAngelis was an utterly transparent man. Every student in the gym understood Mr D's message. There were fewer than 36 hours until the junior-senior prom, meaning lots of drinking and lots of driving. Lecturing the kids would just provoke eye-rolling. So instead he copped to three tragedies in his own life. And then he said look to your left, look to your right and then close your eyes and imagine one of them gone. He told them to repeat after him I am a valued member of Columbi High School. And then he said open your eyes and I want to see each and every one of your bright, smiling faces again Monday morning. Every one of your bright, smiling faces again Monday morning. All 2,000 students will return safely on Monday morning after the prom. But the following afternoon, tuesday April 20th 1999, 24 of Mr D's kids and faculty members will be loaded into ambulances and rushed to hospitals. Members will be loaded into ambulances and rushed to hospitals. 13 bodies would remain in the building and two more on the grounds. It would be the worst school shooting in America history, a characterization that would have appalled the boys just then finalizing their plans plans.
Speaker 1:Eric Harris wanted a prom date. Eric was a senior about to leave Columbine High School forever. He really wanted a date. Dates were not generally a problem.
Speaker 1:Eric was a brain, but an uncommon subcategory cool brain. He smoked, he drank, he dated. He got invited to parties. He got high, he worked his look hard military chick hair, short and spike, with plenty of product, plus black t-shirts and baggy, cargo pants, rockets and road trip into Wyoming to replenish the stash. He broke the rules, tacked himself with the nickname Reb but did his homework and earned himself a slew of A's. He shot good videos and got them airplay on the closed circuit system at school and he got chicks, lots and lots of chicks On the ultimate high school scorecard. Eric outscored much of the football team. He was a little charmer. His blackjack pizza job offered a nice angle. Stop in later and he would slip them a free slice, and often they did.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan were called insiders, meaning anything but delivery, mostly making the pizzas, working the counter, cleaning up the mess. It was hard, sweaty work in the hot kitchen and boring as hell. Eric looked striking head on, prominent cheekbones hollowed out underneath all his features, proportionate, clean cut, all American. But prom had become a problem For some reason bad luck or bad timing he couldn't make it happen. He had gone nuts scrounging for a date. He would ask one girl but she already had a boyfriend. He would try another. Shut down again. He wasn't ashamed to call his friends in. His buddies asked, the girls he hung up with, asked. He asked Nothing, nothing, nothing. His best friend, dylan, had a date. How crazy was that?
Speaker 1:Dylan Claiborne was meek, self-conscious and authentically shy. He could barely speak in front of a stranger, especially a girl. He would follow quietly after Eric on the small conquest, attempting to appear invisible. Eric slathered chicks with the compliments. Dylan passed them Chips, ahoy cookies in class to let them know he liked them. Dylan's friend said he had never been on a date. He may never have even asked a girl out, including the one he was taking to prom.
Speaker 1:Dylan Clairvold was a brain too, but not quite so cool, certainly not in his own estimation. He tried so hard to emulate Eric. Dylan was taller, even smarter than Eric, but considerably less handsome. Dylan hated their oversized features on his slightly lopsided face, his nose especially. He saw it as a giant blob. Dylan saw the worst version of himself.
Speaker 1:Dylan cut a more convincing figure as a rebel. Long, ratty curls dangled toward his shoulders. He towered over his peers with a waist to go in purity. He was up to six foot three already, 143 stretched pounds, so he slouched off an inch or two. Most of his friends were over six foot. Eric was the exception at 5'9". His eyes lined up with Dylan's Adam's apple.
Speaker 1:Eric wasn't thrilled with his looks either, but he rarely let it show. He had undergone surgery in junior high to correct a congenital birth defect. Pectus excavatum, that means an abnormally sunken sternum. Early on it had undermined his confidence, but he had overcome it by acting tough. Yet it was Dylan who had scored the prom date. His tux was rented, the corsage purchased, five other couples organized to share a limo. He was going with a sweet, brainy Christian girl who had helped acquire three of the four guns. She adored Dylan enough to believe every story about using them to hunt.
Speaker 1:Robin Anderson was a pretty diminutive blonde who hid behind her long, straight hair which often covered a good portion of her face. She was active in her church youth group and right now she was in DC for a week-long trip with them, due back barely in time for the prom. Robin had gone straight A's at Columbine and was a month away from graduating as valedictorian. She saw Dylan every day in calculus, strove through the hallways and hung out with him anytime she could. Dylan liked her and loved her the adulation but wasn't really into her as a girlfriend. Dylan was heavy into school stuff, eric too. They attended the football games, the dances and the variety shows and worked together on video production for the Rebel News Network. School plays were big for Dylan. He would never want to face an audience, but backstage at the soundboard that was great. Earlier in the year he had rescued Rachel Scott, the senior class sweetheart, when her tape jammed during her talent show. In a few days Eric will kill her.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan were short on athletic ability, but they were big-time fans. Dylan watched a whole lot of baseball, studied the box scores, compiled his own stats. He was in first place in the fantasy league organized by a friend of his. Nobody could out-analyze Dylan Klebold as he prepped for the March draft weeks in advance. Eric fancied himself a nonconformist, but he craved approval and fumed over the slightest disrespect. His hand was always shooting up in class and he always had the right answer. Eric wrote a poem for creative writing class that week about ending hate and loving the world. He enjoyed quoting Nietzsche and Shakespeare but missed the irony of his own nickname, reb, so rebellious that he would name himself after the school mascot.
Speaker 1:Dylan went by Vodka, sometimes capitalizing his initials in the name of his favorite Liquor, the D and the K. He was a heavy drinker and damn proud of it. Supposedly he had earned the name after downing an entire bottle. Eric preferred Jack Daniels but scrupulously hid it from his parents. To adults' eyes, eric was an obedient child. Misbehavior had consequences, usually involving his father, usually curtailing his freedom. Eric was a little control freak. He gauged his moves and determined just how much he could get away with. He could suck up like crazy to make things go his way. The Blackjack Pizza store owner during most of their tenure was acquainted with Eric's wild side. After he closed the shop, robert Kyrgios would climb up to the roof, sometimes taking Eric and Dylan with him and chugging brewskis while the boys shot battle rockets over the strip mall.
Speaker 1:Kirkus was 29 but enjoyed hanging with this pair. They were bright kids. They talked just like adults. Sometimes Kirkus put Eric in charge when he left. Nobody put Dylan in charge of anything. He was unreliable. He had been on and off the payroll in the past year. He had applied for a better job at a computer store and presented a professional resume. The owner had been impressed and Dylan had gotten the job. But he never bothered to show.
Speaker 1:But nothing separated the boys' personalities like a run-in with authority, dylan would be voice personalities. Like a run-in with authority, dylan would be hyperventilating, eric calmly calculating. Eric's cool head steered them clear of most trouble. But they had their share of schoolyard fights. They liked to pick on younger kids. Dylan had been caught scratching obscenities into a freshman's locker. When Dean Peter Hordriath called him down, dylan went ballistic. He cussed the dean out, bounced off the walls, acted like a nutcase. Eric could have talked his way out with apologies, evasions or claims of innocence, whatever this subject was susceptible to. He read people quickly and tailored his responses. Eric was unflappable. Dylan erupted. He had no clue when Dean Horvath would respond to, nor did he care. He was just pure emotion.
Speaker 1:The boys were both gifted analytically, math whizzes, technology bounds, gadgets, computers, video games, any new technology, and they were mesmerized. They created websites, adapted games with their own characters and adventures, shot loads of videos, brief, little short subjects they wrote, directed and starred in. Surprisingly gangly, shy boy. Dylan made for the more engaging actor. Eric was so calm and even tempered he couldn't even fake intensity. In person he came off charming, confident and engaging, impersonating an emotional young man. He was dull and unconvincing and incapable of emoting. Dylan was a life wire In life. He was timid and shy, but not always quiet. Trip is anger and he erupted On film. He unleashed the anger and he was the crazy man disintegrated in front of the camera. Outwardly, eric and Dylan looked like normal young boys about to graduate. They were testing authority, testing their sexual prowess, a little frustrated with the dumbasses they have to deal with, a little full of themselves.
Speaker 1:Nothing unusual for high school. Columbine High School sits on a softly rolling meadow at the edge of a sprawling park in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains. It's a large, modern facility 250,000 square feet of solid north-east construction With a bait concrete exterior and few windows. The school looks like a factory. From most angles it's practical. Like the people of South Jefferson County, jeffco as it's known locally Scrimped on architectural affectations but invested generously in chem labs, computers, video production facilities and a first-rate teaching force.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan were fixtures in the smoker's gully. Teaching force Eric and Dylan were fixtures in the smoker's gully. They both smoke the same brand camel filtered. Eric picked it, dylan followed Lately friends have noticed more cutting and missed assignments. Dylan had kept getting in trouble for sleeping in class. Eric was frustrated and pissed, but also curiously unemotional. One day that year a friend videotaped him hanging out at the lunch table with his buddies. They bantered about cams and valves and a good price for a used Mazda. Eric appeared in trance with his cell phone, aimlessly spinning it in circles, and he didn't seem to be listening. But he was taking it all in. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Lunchtime was still a big daily event. The Columbine Cafeteria was a wide, open bubble of space protruding from the spacious corridor between the student entrance at the south corner and the giant stone staircase that could fit more than a dozen students across. Kids referred to the area as the Commons. It was wrapped with an open lattice work facade of white steel girders and awnings in a decorative crisscross of steel cables. At the start of a lunch more than 600 students rushed in. Some came and went quickly, using it as a central meeting hub or grabbing a pack of tater tots for the road. It was packed solid for five minutes, then empty out quickly. Three to four hundred kids eventually settled in for the duration in plastic chairs around movable tables, sitting six to eight.
Speaker 1:Two hours after the assembly Mr D was on lunch duty his favorite part of the day. Most administrators delegated the task, but Principal DeAngelis could not get enough. Mr D made his way around the commons chatting up kids at each table, pausing as eager students ran up to catch his ear. He was down here for the start of a lunch nearly every day. His visits were lighthearted and conversational. He listened to his students' stories and helped solve problems, but he avoided discipline at lunch. The one situation where he just could not stop himself was when he saw abandoned trays and food scraps. The Columbine Mr D had inherited was short on frills but he insisted it stay clean. He was so irritated by entitlement and sloppiness that he had four surveillance cameras continually swept the commons recording 15-second bursts of action automatically cut from camera to camera. Day after day they recorded the most banal footage imaginable. No one could have imagined what those cameras would capture just four months after installation, a terrifying affliction had infested America's small towns and suburbs the school shooter.
Speaker 1:In February 1997, a 16-year-old in remote Bethel, alaska, brought a shotgun to high school and opened fire. He killed the principal and a student and injured two others. In October, another boy shut up his school, this time in Pearl Mississippi Two dead students, seven wounded. Two more sprees erupted in December in remote locales West Paducah, kentucky, and Stamps, arkansas. Seven were dead by the end of the year, 16 wounded. The following year was worse 10 dead, 35 wounded and five separate incidents.
Speaker 1:The violence intensified in the springtime as the school year came to a close, shooting season. They began to call it. They began to call it. The perpetrator was always a white boy, always a teenager, in a placid town few had even heard of. Most of the shooters acted alone. Each attack erupted unexpectedly and ended quickly. So TV never caught the turmoil. The nation watched the aftermath Endless scenes of schools surrounded by ambulances, overrun by cops, hemorrhaging, terrified children, and by graduation day 1998, it felt like a full-blown epidemic.
Speaker 1:With each escalation, small towns and suburbia grew a little more tense. City schools had been armed camps for ages, but the suburbs were supposed to be safe. The public was riveted. The panic was real. During the entire 1998-99 school year not a single shooter emerged. The threat faded and a distant struggle took hold of the news.
Speaker 1:The slow disintegration of Yugoslavia erupted again. In March 1999, as Eric and Dylan finalized their plans, nato drew the line on Serbian aggression in a place called Kosovo. The United States began its largest air campaign since Vietnam. Swarms of F-15 squadrons pounded Belgrade. Central Europe was in chaos. America was at war. The suburban menace of the school shooter had receded. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan had a lunch, but they were rarely around for Mr D's visits anymore. Columbine was an open campus, so older kids with licenses and cars mostly took off for subway Wendy's or countless drive-thrus scattered around the subdivisions. Most of the Columbine parents were affluent enough to endow their kids with cars. Eric had a black Honda Prelude. Dylan drove a vintage BMW his dad had refurbished. The two cars sat side by side in their assigned spaces in the scene.
Speaker 1:On Friday, mr D had a major objective. On Friday Eric Harris had at least two. Mr D wanted to impress on his kids the importance of wise choices. He wanted everyone back alive. On Monday, eric wanted ammo and a date for prom night. Eric and Dylan planned to be dead shortly after the weekend, but Friday night they had a little work to do, one last shift at Blackjack. The job had funded most of Eric's bond production, weapons acquisition and not napalm experiments. Blackjack paid a little better than minimum $6.50 an hour for Dylan, $7.65 to Eric, who had seniority. Eric believed he could do better.
Speaker 1:Eric had no plans, which seemed odd for a kid with so much potential. He was a gifted student taking a pass on college. No career plans, no discernible goals, and he was driving his parents crazy. Dylan had a bright future. He was heading to college. Of course he was going to be a computer engineer. Several schools have accepted him and he and his dad had just driven down to Tucson on a four-day trip. He had picked out a dorm room. He liked the desert. The decision was final. His mom was going to mail his deposit to the University of Arizona on Monday. Eric had appeased his dad for the last few weeks by responding to a Marine recruiter. He had no interest, but it made a nice cover. Eric's dad, wayne, had been a decorated Air Force test pilot. He had retired as a major after 23 years.
Speaker 1:Eric's new boss had an announcement too. Mr Kyrgios had sold the store six weeks ago and things were changing. The new owner fired some of the staff. Eric and Dylan were keepers, but the roof was closed. No more brewskis, no more bottle rockets. Eric had made a great impression. Kyrgios had trusted Eric enough to leave him in charge frequently. But on Friday the new owner promoted him. Four days before his massacre. Eric made shift manager. He seemed pleased.
Speaker 1:Both boys asked for advances that night. Eric wanted $200, dylan $120, against hours they had already worked. The new owner paid them in cash. After work they headed to Bellevue Lanes. Friday night was rock and bold, a big weekly social event. Sixteen kids usually show up, some from the blackjack circle, some from outside. They jam into four adjacent lanes and track all the scores on the overhead monitors. Eric and Dylan played every Friday night. They were not great bowlers Dylan averaged 115, eric 108. But they sure had fun doing it. They took bowling at a gym class too.
Speaker 1:Eric was into all German philosophers. He liked Nietzsche, he read Freud, but he also read about Hitler. German industrial bands like KMFDM and Ramstein, german-language T-shirts. Sometimes he had punctuated his high-five with Sieg Heil or Heil Hitler. Reports conflict about whether or not Dylan followed his lead Dylan's friend Robin Anderson. The girl who had asked him to the prom usually picked them up at Blackjack and drove them to the alley. But this week she was still in Washington with her church group. So they went home early that night.
Speaker 1:Eric had a phone engagement. He called Susan after 9, as promised, but got her mother. The mom thought Eric seemed very nice until she told Susan was sleeping at a friend's house and Eric got mad and the mom thought that it was odd that Eric would get so angry so quickly just because Susan was out. Rejection was Eric's weak spot, especially by females. He wouldn't quite pull a clibble but the veil came down. His anger spilled out. It was just infuriating.
Speaker 1:He had a long list of betrayals and lists on his computer of despicable young girls. He called it the shit list. Susan did not make the list. Her mom offered Eric her pager number and he pounded out a message. Susan called back and Eric was suddenly nice again. They talked about school computers and kids who had knifed Eric in the back. Eric went on and on about one kid who had betrayed him. They chatted for half an hour and Eric finally asked her about Saturday night. Was she busy? And she said no. So he said great, he will call her early in the afternoon and he said, finally, prom night. He had a date for prom night. We'll be right back. A date for prom night, we'll be right back. Prom was scheduled for April 17th, but most kids it was a culmination of a long, painful dance stretching back to midwinter.
Speaker 1:Night after night, patrick Ireland had lain on his bed, phone in one hand, a bow in the other, tossing it up and snatching it out of the air, wishing his best friend, Laura, would take the hint. He kept prodding her about her prospects. Any ideas? Anybody asked yet and she tossed the questions back. Who are you going to ask, when? What are you waiting for?
Speaker 1:Indecision was unfamiliar ground for Patrick. He competed in basketball and baseball for Columbine and he earned his first place medals in water skiing, while earning a 4.0 average. He kept his eye on the ball when his team was down five points in the final minutes of a basketball game and he had just missed an easy layup or dribble off his foot and felt like a loser. The answer was simple Wash it off. If you wanted to win. You focus on the next play. With Laura, he couldn't focus on anything.
Speaker 1:Patrick was modest but self-assured with regard to most things. This mattered too much. He couldn't risk fourth grade again. Laura had been his first loved, his first girlfriend in third grade. It was a torrid romance, but it ended badly and she wouldn't speak to him the next year. It took them until high school to become friends again. For a while it was friendship, but then his pulse started racing. Had he been right about her the first time? Surely she felt it too, unless he was imagining it. No, she was flirting, totally flirting enough. Laura grew impatient. It wasn't just prom night at stake. It was weeks of planning dress shopping. It was weeks of planning dress shopping, accessorizing, endless conversations to risk being excluded. It was a full season of awkwardness. She got another offer. She stole for time and then finally accepted the guy was way into her. So Patrick asked Cora just as friends. His whole group was going as friends, no pressure, just a good time.
Speaker 1:Prom night arrived. Most groups turned into a 12-hour affair. Photos, fine dining, the dance. The after prom, patrick's gang started at Gabriel's, an old Victorian home in the country that had been converted into an elegant steak and seafood house. They pulled up in a limo and ate like kings. Then it was a long ride into Denver for the big event.
Speaker 1:The prom committee chose the Denver Design Center, a local landmark known as that building with the weird yellow thing. The thing was monumental, still sculpturedured. They call the articulated wall. The trade-off with a famous city location was space. You could barely move on the dance floor. And Patrick Ireland's second most memorable moment was Dancing to Ice Ice Baby. He had lip sync to it in Third Great Talent Show, so whenever they have heard it for the next decade he would grab his buddies and perform the same goofy dance. That was nothing compared to holding Laura. He got one dance, a slow song. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Monday morning was uneventful. Lots of bleary eyes from Saturday's all-nighter, lots of chatter about who did what. Oh, mr D's kids had made it back. A handful peeked through his doorway with big grins. Just wanted you to see our bright, shiny faces, they said.
Speaker 1:Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fusilier was a little on edge. Monday he headed the FBI's domestic terrorism unit in Denver and April 19 was a dangerous day in the region. The worst disaster in FBI history had erupted six years earlier and retaliation followed exactly two years after. On April 19, 1993, the Bureau ended a 51. Standoff with the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, texas, standoff with the branch Davidian called Neo Waco, texas. By storming the compound, a massive fire had erupted and most of the 80 inhabitants burned to death adults and children. Agent Fusilier was one of the nation's foremost hostage negotiators. He spent six weeks trying to talk to the Davidians out. Fusilier had opposed the attack on the compound but lost. Just before storming in, the FBI gave Fusilier one final chance. He was the last person known to speak to Davidian leader David Koresh. He watched the compound burn. Speculation raged about the FBI's world and the blaze the controversy nearly ended Attorney General Janet Reno's career. Waco radicalized the anti-government militia movement, made April 19 into a symbol of perverse authority.
Speaker 1:Timothy McVeigh sought vengeance by bombing the Murrup Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. His explosion killed 168 people, the largest terrorist attack in American history. To that point, it is a bet to think that Eric and Dylan watched the carnage of Waco and Oklahoma City on television with the rest of the country. Mcveigh was tried in federal court in downtown Denver and sentenced to death while the boys attended Columbine in the suburbs. The scenes of devastation were played over and over. In his journal, eric would brag about. Topping McVeigh Obahoma City was a one-note performance. Mcveigh set his timer and walked away. He didn't even see his spectacle unfold. Eric dreamed much bigger than that Judgment Day they call it. Columbine would erupt with an explosion too.
Speaker 1:Eric designed at least seven big bombs, working off the anarchist cookbook that he found on the web. He chose the barbecue design, standard propane tanks, the fat round white ones, 18 inches tall, a foot in diameter, packing some 20 pounds of highly explosive gas. Bomb number one employed aerosol cans for detonators, each wired up to an old-fashioned alarm clock with round metal bells on top. Step one was planting them in a park near Eric's house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy, rock the neighborhood and divert police. Every three minutes raised the potential body count. The boys were going to double or triple my base record. They estimated the damage variously as hundreds, several hundred and at least 400, oddly conservative for the arsenal they were preparing. Dylan had been wavering, and if Dylan was reticent, the decoy would help ease him in. It was a harmless explosive. No one would be hurt by it. But once they drove off, dylan would be committed.
Speaker 1:The main event was scripted in three acts, just like a movie. It would kick off with a massive explosion in the commons. More than 600 students swarmed in at the start of a lunch and two minutes after the bell rang. Most of them will be dead. Act one featured two bombs using propane tanks, like the decoy. Each was strung with nails and BBs for shrapnel, lashed to a full gasoline can and a smaller propane tank and wired to similar bell clocks. Each bomb fit snugly into a duffel bag which Eric and Dylan would lock in at the height of passing period chaos. Again, dylan was eased into killing. Clicking over the alarm hinge was bloodless and impersonal and it didn't sound like killing. No blood, no screams. Most of Dylan's murders would be over before he faced them. The fireball would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze.
Speaker 1:Eric drew detailed diagrams. He spaced the bumps out but located them centrally for maximum killing radius. They would sit beside two thick columns supporting the second floor. Computer modeling and field tests would later demonstrate a high probability that the bombs would have collapsed some of the second floor. Eric apparently hoped to watch the library and its inhabitants crash down upon the flaming launchers. As the time bombs ticked down, the killers would exit briskly and flare out across the parking lot at a 90-degree angle. Each boy was to head for his own car, strategically parked about 100 yards apart. The cars provided mobile base camps where they would gear up to unleash Act II Pre-positioning ens ensure optimal fire lanes. They had drilled the gear-ups repeatedly and could execute them rapidly. The bombs would detonate at 11.17 and the densely packed wing would crumble as the flames leaped up. Eric and D would train their semi-automatics on the exits and await survivors.
Speaker 1:Act 2, firing time. This was going to be fun. Dylan would sport an Intratec TCDC-9, which is a 9mm semi-automatic handgun, and a shotgun. Eric had a high-point 9mm carbine rifle and a shotgun. They had sold the barrels off the shotguns for concealment. Between them they have carried 80 portable explosives, pipe bombs and carbon dioxide bombs that Eric called crickets, plus a supply of Molotov cocktails and an assortment of freakish knives. In case it came down to hand-to-hand combat, they had suit up an infantry-style web harness allowing them to strap much of the ammo and explosive to their bodies. Each had a backpack and a duffel bag to hump more hardware into the attack zone. They would tape flint match striker strips to their forearms for rapid firebomb attacks. Their long black dusters would go on last for concealment and for looking badass. Later the dusters were widely referred to as trench coats.
Speaker 1:They planned to advance in the building as soon as the bombs blew. They would be set back far enough to see each other around the corner and just barely avoid the blast. They had devised their own hand signals to communicate. Every detail was planned. Battle positions were imperative. The 250,000 square foot school had 25 exits so some survivors would escape. The boys could remain in visual contact and still cover two sides of the building, including two of the three main exits. Including two of the three main exits, their firing lines intersected on the most important point, the student entrance, adjacent to the commons and just a dozen yards from the big bombs.
Speaker 1:Positioning yourself at a right angle to the objective is standard US infantry practice taught to every American foot soldier at the infantry school in Fort Benning, georgia. Eric and Dylan could sweep their gun barrels across a 90-degree firing radius without endangering each other. Even if one shooter advanced more quickly, he would never violate his partner's fire lane. It is both the safest and the most effective assault pattern of modern small arms warfare. This was the phase Eric and Dylan were sabering. It was also when they expected to die.
Speaker 1:They had little hope for witnessing Act 3. 45 minutes after the initial blast, when the cops declared it was over, paramedics started loading amputees into ambulances and reporters broadcast the horror to a riveted nation. Herrick's Honda and Dylan's BMW would rip right through the camera crews and the first responders. Each car was to be loaded with two more propane devices and 20 gallons of gasoline in an assortment of orange plastic jugs. The positions have been chosen to maximize both the firepower in Act 2 and the carnage in Act 3. The cars will be close to the building, near the main exits, ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging and news vans. They will be just far enough from the building and each other to wipe out most of the junior and senior parking lots. Maximum body count nearly 2,000 students plus 150 faculty and staff plus who knows how many police, paramedics and journalists.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan had been considering a killing spree for at least a year and a half. They finalized details as Judgment Day approached, monday April 19. The day appeared firm. The boys referred to it twice matter-of-factly in the recordings they made in the last ten days. They did not explain their choice, though. Eric discussed topping Oklahoma City, so they may have been planning to echo that anniversary as Tim McVeigh had done with Waco.
Speaker 1:The moment of attack was critical. Students liked to eat early, so a lunch was the most popular. The maximum human density anywhere anytime in the high school occurred in the commons at 11.17 am. Eric knew the exact minute because he had inventory his targets. He had counted just 60 to 80 kids scattered about the commons from 10.30 to 10.50. Between 10.56 and 10.58, lunch ladies, bring out shit. He wrote. Then lunch door two opened and a steady trickle of people appeared. He recorded the exact moment each door opened and body counts in minute-by-minute increments. At 11.10, the bell rang. Fourth period ended. Students piled through the hallways and moments later they rushed along lines Fifty more every minute 300, 350, 400, 450, 500, plus by 1115. Eric and Dylan's various handwritten timelines show the bombs scheduled to explode between 1116 and 1118. The final times are followed by little quips. Have fun and ha ha ha.
Speaker 1:Everton didn't expect their attack to puzzle the public, so they left an extraordinary cache of material to explain themselves. To explain themselves, they kept schedules, budgets, maps, drawings and all sorts of logistical artifacts, along with commentary in notebooks, journals and websites. A series of videos were specifically designed to explain their attack. They would come to be known as the basement tapes, because the bulk were shot in Eric's basement. It was so disturbing that the sheriff's department would choose to hide them from the public, concealing even the existence of the basement tapes for months. Eric and Dylan's true intentions would remain a mystery for months. Eric and Dylan's three intentions, or two intentions would remain a mystery for years.
Speaker 1:The date was the first element of Eric's plan to fail, apparently because of ammo. On Monday he had nearly 700 rounds for the four guns, but he wanted more. He had just turned 18, so he could buy his own, but that fact somehow escaped him. He was used to relying on others and he thought Mark Mainz could help. Mainz was a drug dealer who ran some guns and ammo on the side. He had come through with the Tech 9 in January, but he was dragging ass on the ammo. Thursday night Eric began hounding him to come up with the stuff. Four days later Eric remained empty-handed. They could have gone ahead without the extra ammo, but their firepower would have been impaired.
Speaker 1:Shotguns are not built for rapid fire assaults. The Tech 9 took 20 and 30 round magazines. Dylan could release one with a flick of a button and pop in a new mag with a single sweep of the hand. Real gun affection of those hate the thing. It's too big and bulky for a professional and way too unreliable A poor man's Uzi. Dealers complain of slap-dash design, frequent misfeeds and a lousy siding mechanism that is often misaligned and can't be adjusted. Eric and Dylan had a mostly uneventful Monday. They got up before sunrise to make bowling class. By 6 am they cut fourth hour for an extended lunch at Blackjack, attended their own classes as usual. That evening Maine suddenly came through with the ammo. He had gotten it at Kmart. Two boxes with 50 rounds apiece. Together they cost 25 buckets or bucks. Eric drove to Maine's house to pick up the ammo. He seemed eager to get it. Maine asked if Eric was going shooting that night. Maybe tomorrow. Eric said we will continue with the Columbine story next week. So thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
