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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 the Columbine Tragedy Part IV
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part three of Unraveling the Columbine Tragedy. Let's begin. The Columbine crisis was never a hostage standoff. Eric and Dylan had no intentions of making demands.
Speaker 1:Swat teams searched the building for over three hours, but the killers were lying dead the entire time. They had committed suicide in the library at 12.08, 49 minutes after beginning the attack. The killings and the terror had been real. The standoff, however, had not. The SWAT teams discovered the truth around 3.15 pm when they peered into the library and saw bodies scattered around the floor, no sounds of movements. They cleared the entrance and prepared to enter. They took paramedic Troy Lehman in with them. The SWAT team warned the paramedic to be cautious. Touch as little as possible. They say anything could be booby-trapped. Be especially suspicious of backpacks.
Speaker 1:The room was in shambles, blood spattered the furniture and enormous pools soaked into the carpet. The tabletops were oddly undisturbed. Books open, calculus problems underway, a college application half completed. A lifeless boy still held a pencil. Another had collapsed beside a PC which was still running undisturbed.
Speaker 1:Paramedic Lehman was tasked with determining whether anyone was alive. It didn't look like it. Most of the kids had been dead for nearly four hours. So it was obvious by sight. And one of the things that he said later in an interview was, quote if I couldn't get a look at somebody at their face to see if they were still alive, I tried to touch, to kind of touch them. End quote. Twelve were cold, one was not Laban touched. A girl felt the warmth, rolled her over to get a look at her face. Her eyes were open, tears trickling out, and it was a girl named Lisa Krutz and she was carried down the stairs, rushed to Denver Health Medical Center. A gun blast had shattered her left shoulder. One hand and both arms were also injured. She had lost a lot of blood but she survived. Most of the bodies lay under tables. The victims had been uptempting to hide. Two bodies were different. They lay out in the open, weapons by their sides suicides. Clearly the SWAT team had descriptions of Eric and Dylan. These two looked like a match. It was over.
Speaker 1:The team discovered four women hiding in back rooms attached to the library. Patty Nielsen, the art teacher from the 911 call, had crept into a cupboard in the break room. She had squatted in the cupboard for three more hours, knees aching, unaware the danger had passed. Three other faculty. Hid further back, an officer instructed one to put her hand on his shoulders and follow him out, staring directly at his helmet, to minimize exposure to the hover. It had been over how long no one knew. With the fire alarm blaring, none of the staff had been close enough to hear.
Speaker 1:Detectives would piece it together eventually how long the attack had lasted, how long Eric and Dylan had killed. Those would turn out to be very different answers. Something peculiar had transpired 17 minutes into the attack, the investigation outpaced the SWAT teams. Detectives were combing the park, the library, leeward Elementary and the surrounding community. They interviewed hundreds of students and staff, everyone they could find. When waves of fresh survivors outnumbered police officers, they conducted 30 to 60-second triage interviews. Who are you? Where were you? What do you see? Those were the three main questions. Friends of the killers and witnesses to bloodshed were identified quickly and detectives were waved over for lengthier interviews.
Speaker 1:Lead investigator Kate Batan performed some interviews personally. She was briefed on the rest. Batan was intent on getting every detail right and avoiding costly errors that might come back to haunt them later. Her team also ran a simple search on Jeffco computer files and found something stunning. The shooters were already in the system. Eric and Dylan had been arrested junior year. They got caught breaking into a van to steal electronic equipment. They had entered a 12-month juvenile diversion program, performing community service, attending counseling. They had completed the program with glowing reviews exactly 10 weeks before the massacre.
Speaker 1:More disturbing was a complaint filed 30 months earlier by Randy and Judy Brown, the parents of the shooter's friend Brooks. Eric had made death threats toward Brooks. Ten pages of murderous rants printed from his website had been compiled. Someone in Bataan's department had known about the kid. Bataan organized the information and composed a single-space, six-page search warrant for Eric's home and a duplicate for Dylan's. She dictated them over the phone. The warrants were typed up in golden the county seat, delivered to a judge, signed, driven out to the killer's homes and exercised within four hours of the first shots before the SWAT team reached the library and discovered the attack was over. The warrant cited seven witnesses who had identified Harris and or Klebold as gunmen.
Speaker 1:In the meantime, agent Fusilier heard about the bodies on the police radio at 3.20. He had just gotten word that his son Brian was okay. Mass murder meant a massive investigation, so he asked the Jeffco commander how can I help? Do you want federal agents and their answer was definitely. Jeffco had a small detective team and there was no way he could handle the task. An hour later, 18 evidence specialists began arriving. A dozen special agents would follow, along with half a dozen support staff. At 4 pm Jeffco went public about their fatalities.
Speaker 1:Chief Spokesman Steve Davis called a press conference in Clement Park with Shevard Stone by his side. The pair had been briefing reporters all afternoon, with Sheriff Stone by his side. The pair had been briefing reporters all afternoon. Most of the press had never heard of either man, but consensus about them emerged quickly. Sheriff Stone was a straight shooter. He had this deep, gruff voice and it was a little bit of a contrast to the blow-dried spokesman affixed to his side.
Speaker 1:Steve Davis began the conference by reiterating warnings about rumors. Above all, he stressed caution on two subjects Number one, the number of fatalities. Number two, the status of the suspects. So Davis opened the floor to questions. The first was directed to him by name, sheriff Stone. Suddenly he stepped forward, he brushed Davis and his cautions aside and he held custody of the microphone. Through most of the press conference the sheriff answered nearly every question directly, despite later evidence that he had little or no information on many of them. So in other words, he winged it. The death count nearly doubled and he said I have heard numbers as high as 25, he said, and he pronounced the killers unequivocally dead. He fed the myth of a third shooter. He said three, two dead suspects in the library. And of course the press is gonna ask where, where is the set, the third? And his answer was well, we're not sure if there's a third yet or not, or how many. The swipe operation is still going on in there.
Speaker 1:Stone repeated the erroneous death count several times. He led newscasts around the world so newspaper headlines proclaimed it the next morning that 25 were dead in Colorado. Stone said that three kids detained in the park appear to be associates of this gentleman or good friends. And again he was wrong. They have never met the killers and were soon cleared. Stone made the first of an infamous string of accusations. He said what are these parents doing that are letting their kids have automatic weapons, he asked. Reporters were surprised to hear the rumors about automatic weapons confirmed. They rushed in with follow-ups and he said well, I don't know anything about the weapons. I assume there were probably automatic weapons just because of the mass casualties. And so a reporter asked about motive, and again wrong. Again, the Sherrod answered craziness.
Speaker 1:By now dozens of kids had fled to school with their friends. School officials herded them across Clement Park to meet school buses that would drive past barricades to Leawood. The buses parked directly beside the site of the press conferences. The kids trudged meekly toward the media throng. Many sobbed quietly, others held distrustfulness along, holding their hands or slinging an arm over their shoulders. Most of the kids stared at the ground. The crowd of reporters parted. They were not the faces of interview subjects, but the students were eager to speak.
Speaker 1:Teachers hurried the kids, trying to and asking them to keep quiet, but the kids were having none of that. The bus windows started coming down, heads popped out and the kids recounted their ordeal, their ordeals. And they kill. Uh, the kids starting getting out of the bus, of the buses, and the teachers tried to coax them back, but not a chance. A tough-looking senior described his terror in the choir room with a sense of bravado and shivery, but his voice cracked when a reporter asked how he felt and he said horrible. There were two kids lying on the pavement. I just started crying. I haven't cried for years. I don't know what I'm going to do, attention focused on the students. Endless reunions with the parents played out on TV.
Speaker 1:A different group weathered the crisis in seclusion. More than 100 teachers worked at Columbine along with dozens of support staff. 150 families feared for their husbands, wives and parents. There was no rendezvous point where they could gather. Most drove home and waited by their phones. That's where Linda Lou Sanders kept vigil. She had celebrated her mom's 70th birthday with the family. Then she headed up into the mountains for a pleasure drive and on the way Linda's brother-in-law called her sister, melody on her cell and he asked where does Dave teach? And she said Columbine. And he said well, you better head back down here. Everyone gathered at Linda's house.
Speaker 1:Most of the news was good. Only one adult was reported injured, and it was a science teacher, which ruled out Dave. So the question was why hadn't he called? Those reports were nearly accurate. Only one adult had been hit and Dave was still bleeding at the moment.
Speaker 1:The sense that afternoon was that gunfire had erupted all over the place. In fact, it had mostly been limited to the library and the west steps outside. Teachers had not been studying for tests or strolling outside to enjoy their lunch in the sunshine. If the bombs had gone off as planned it would have wiped out a quarter of the faculty in the teachers' lounge, but they had been spared by dumb luck. All but one, dave, held on for hours in science room three.
Speaker 1:Then the kids and teachers were evacuated and none knew whether he had made it. It would be a family mistake. It was to resolve why he had lain for three hours. All Dave's family knew was that he had failed to call. He must be trapped inside the building. They thought that wasn't good. Linda hoped he wasn't a hostage. She assumed she was hiding, that he was hiding and he would be safe. He was not a risk taker.
Speaker 1:So the family kept monitoring. The TV, took turns answering calls and the phone rang non-stop. But it was never Dave and Linda. Even though she was sort of athletic looking, she had a fragile psyche. Dave had found great satisfaction in protecting her In his absence. Her daughters and sisters stepped in. So now every call was fraught. So her family made sure to screen. In mid-afternoon she got the urge to answer a call herself and it was a woman, and she said she was from the Denver Post and the reporter told Linda that her husband had been shot and asked her do you have a comment? And of course Linda started screaming and threw the phone. She had no idea what happened from then on. She doesn't even have memory of it on. She doesn't even have memory of it Now.
Speaker 1:In another area there was Robin Anderson. Her prom date was a mass murderer and she apparently armed him. To her knowledge, only three people have known about the gun deal, and three out of the three, two were dead. Had they told anyone Were guns traceable? She had not signed anything. Would the cops know? Should she keep her mouth shut? And Robin had been already debriefed in Clement Park and had played it totally cool. She told the detective where she had been and what she had seen. She told the truth, but not the whole truth. She didn't know for sure who had been shooting, so she didn't mention that. She knew them. She certainly didn't mention the guns, should she? And now the guilt began eating her up.
Speaker 1:Robin talked to Zach Heckler on the phone that afternoon. She kept her mouth shut about the weapons. He didn't. He was clueless about the guns, thank God. But he knew the guys had been making pipe bombs and so she said bombs really, because that astounded Robin. And Zack said yes, they were making pipe bombs, and he wasn't surprised at all. Zack didn't have quite the innocent picture of Dylan that Robin did. Zack did not tell Robin that he had helped Eric and Dylan make any pipe bombs, but she did wonder, did he? Was he mixed up in this More than her? Zach was scared too. They all were. Anybody close to the killers were afraid Zach wasn't volunteering information to the cops. He had omitted mentioning the pipe bombs during his debriefing.
Speaker 1:Chris Morris went the opposite route. He called the cops in the first hour as soon as he suspected that his friends were involved. He was handcuffed in Clement Park and spirited away. On national television he kept talking at the police station. He described Eric's interest in Nazis a crack about drugs, some scary recent suggestions like cutting power to the school, setting PVC bombs at the exits with screws for shrapnel. If Chris's story was legit, it suggested the killers had been leaking information about their plans. This is a classic characteristic of young assailants. If Eric and Dylan had leaked to Chris, chances were they had tipped off others as well. So Chris's dad was called. He contacted a lawyer and at 7 43 pm the three sat down with detectives for a formal interview. Chris and his father signed a form waiving their rights. The cops found Chris highly cooperative. He described the killer's obsessions with explosives, volunteer all sorts of details. Dylan had brought a pipe bomb to work once but Chris ordered him to get it out of there.
Speaker 1:Chris knew the guys had gotten their hands on guns. It had been pretty much an open secret around Blackjack you know the place of employment several months ago that Eric and Dylan were working for hardware or were looking for hardware. We'll be right back. So Chris have never heard it from them directly, from Eric and Dylan directly but he had heard it from several people. Chris had a hunch who had come through for them and it was a kid named Phil Duran. Duran used to work at Blackjack, then moved to Chicago for a high-tech job. Before he had left, duran told Chris that he had gone shooting with Eric and Dylan, something about bowling pins and maybe an AK-47. Duran never said he had bought the guns, but Chris figured it was him. It sounded staggering how much Chris had known. He swore he had not taken it seriously. He agreed to turn over the clothes he was wearing and allow detectives to search his room. Everyone agreed to rendezvous at his house. Chris's mom met the cops at the front door, handed them his PC and showed them upstairs. Then his brother arrived with Chris's clothes in a paper bag. He said Chris was afraid to come home. There were mobs of media that were already staking out the street. The cops found nothing of obvious value but gathered up piles of material and they left at around 11.15 pm.
Speaker 1:Robin in the meantime needed company because she couldn't handle the stress alone. Her best friend, kelly, came over at 7.30 on Tuesday evening. They went to Robin's room. Kelly knew the boys well too, especially Dylan. She had been part of the prom group. There was something Kelly didn't know. Robin told her and she said do you remember that favor that she had done Eric and Dylan last November? And Kelly remembered and said yes, and she said it had been a big secret. And she said well, I'm telling you now. So Robin at that moment told Kelly repeatedly about this big favor she had done the guys but she had never would devote what, what it was until now. So she she feel that she need to tell someone and she said it had been a gun show, the Tanner gun show in Denver.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan had called her on Sunday. If she remembered right, they had checked the show out on Saturday seeing these sweet uh they have seen these sweet looking shotguns, but they had gotten carded so they were both underage. Then they needed somebody who was 18 years old with them. Robin was 18. She really liked Dylan, so she went. It was their money. Robin made sure not to sign any papers, but she was the one who bought the three guns. The boys each got a shotgun. One had some kind of pump thing on it. Eric went for a rifle too, a semi-automatic that looked like a giant paintball gun. Robin felt so guilty. Kelly said later how could she have imagined this? Robin didn't tell Kelly everything, though. She came clean with the main secret but held back on one detail. She told Kelly she didn't know it was Eric and Dylan killing people. Until she heard it announced on TV that night, kelly didn't buy it. Robin had never received a B in high school. She could have put the mystery together when she heard about the trench coats. She'd have to have known In the meantime.
Speaker 1:While all this is happening with Robin and Kelly, the Klebolds spent the afternoon and evening on their porch waiting because they were no longer allowed inside. At 8.10 pm a deputy arrived with instructions. The home was now a crime scene. They had to go. Tom and Sue Klebold told friends they felt hit by hurricanes. Hurricanes don't hit the Rockies. They have never seen it coming. And later Sue Klebold said quote, we ran for our lives. We didn't know what had happened. We couldn't grieve for our child. End quote. Officers escorted Tom in to gather clothes for the next couple of days and then Sue went in to take care of the pets. She fetched two cats, two birds and their food bowls and litter boxes. At 9 pm they drove away. They talked to a lawyer that night. He related a sobering thought. He said, quote Dylan isn't here anymore for people to hate, so people are going to hate you. End quote.
Speaker 1:The buses kept arriving at Leawood Elementary, delivering discouragement as well as joy. It was great if your kid got off, but the odds kept dropping as the remaining parents dwindled. But the odds kept dropping as the remaining parents dwindled. Brian Foba had given up even earlier. By 2 pm, while Leawood was packed with hopeful parents, brian had accepted Danny's fate. He said I knew he was gone. I assumed it was God telling me, preparing me. I hope I was wrong. We waited for busloads of kids. But I knew he wasn't going to be on it and I told Sue you know he's gone. But his ex-wife was hopeful In the public library.
Speaker 1:Misty Bernal was too. Her son, chris, had turned up but Cassie was still missing and she kept thinking she is alive. Misty told herself that fiercely. Nothing could dampen Misty's resolve or her perseverance. Misty gave up on the public library and she made her way through Clement Park and discovered the buses being loaded. She scurried from one to the next. A friend of Cassie's reached out to grab her hand and Misty cried have you seen Cass? And the student said no.
Speaker 1:Misty returned to the library. Brad and Chris met her there. Then everyone was sent to Leawood. That was a huge relief for the parents waiting there. More families, better odds. The buses kept coming every 10 to 20 minutes for a while. Then arrivals slowed Around 4 o'clock they stopped. One more bus was promised. Parents looked around. Whose kids would it be? The wait went on endlessly. At 5 o'clock it still wasn't there. Siblings wandered out to watch for it, hoping to run inside with the news. Doreen Tomlin had not gotten up in a long time but she was still praying her boy would be on it. They were clinging to that hope.
Speaker 1:At dinnertime President Clinton held a press conference in the West Wing to discuss the attack. He passed on the hope of a Jeffco official who had just told him. Quote perhaps now America would wake up to the dimensions of this challenge if it could happen in a place like Littleton end. Quote Clinton sent a federal crisis response team and urged reporters to resist jumping to conclusions. At Leawood, even the resilient families were faltering. Nothing had changed. No buses, no word.
Speaker 1:For hours on end, district Attorney Dave Thomas tried to convert the families. He knew which ones were needed. He had 13 names in his breast pocket. Ten students had been identified in the library and two more outside, based on the clothing and appearance. One teacher lay in Science Room 3, all deceased. It was a solid list but not definitive. Thomas kept it to himself. He told the parents not to worry. At eight o'clock they were moved to another room.
Speaker 1:Sheriff Stone introduced the coroner. She handed out forms asking for descriptions of their kids' clothing and other physical details. That's when John Tomlin realized the truth. The coroner asked them to retrieve their kids' dental records. That went over unevenly. Many took it gravely, others perked up. They have a task, finally, and hope for a resolution. A woman leaped up and said where is that other bus? She demanded, but there was no bus. There was never another bus. It was like a false hope they gave you.
Speaker 1:According to what parents would say later in their interviews, many parents felt betrayed. Brian Robo later accused the school officials of lying. Misty Bernal also felt deceived and she said, quote not intentionally perhaps, but deceived nonetheless, and so bitterly that it almost choked me. End quote. Sherry Stone told them that most of the dead kids had been in the library and Doreen said while John always went to the library, I felt like I was going to pass out and I felt sick. End quote. She felt sadness, but not surprise. Doreen was an evangelical Christian and believed the Lord had been preparing her for the news all afternoon.
Speaker 1:Most of the evangelicals reacted differently than the other parents. The press had been cleared from the area, but Lim Duff was assisting the families as a Red Cross volunteer, a liberal Jew from San Francisco. She was taken aback by what she saw and she said, quote the way that those families reacted was markedly differently. It was like 180 degrees from where everybody else was. They were singing, they were praying, they were comforting the other parents, especially the parents of Aseya Shoals, who was the only African American killed. They were thinking a lot about the other parents, the other families, and responding a lot to other people's needs. They were definitely in pain and you could see the pain in their eyes, but they were very confident of where the kids were. They were at peace with it. It was like they were a living example of their faith. But not all the evangelicals reacted the same way. Misty Bernal was defiant. She was sure Cassie was alive.
Speaker 1:Mr D stayed with the families. He was doing his best to console them and waiting for word on a close friend. He had known Dave Sanders for 20 years. They had coached three sports together, shared hundreds of beers and Frank had attended Dave's wedding. Frank had been hearing rumors about Dave all afternoon.
Speaker 1:Sometime after the coroner's announcement, a teacher and a friend of both men, rich Long, show up at Leawood. He saw Frank and rushed up to hug him and Frank said later in quote all I, rich. He was strong enough to take the news and he pleaded Please tell me. I need to know. Rich couldn't help him. He was struggling with the same question.
Speaker 1:Agent Fusilier had talked gunmen down and see if he opened fire right in front of him. He had struggled for weeks to release 82 people at Waco, then watch the gas tanks erupt and the buildings burn down. He had known they were all dying inside Waco. Watching had been unbearable. This was worse. Fusilio went home and gave Brian a hug. It had been a long time between hugs and it was hard to let go. Then he sat down to watch the news report with his wife Mimi. He held her hand and choked back tears and he asked how could you go home and get dental records? Then what you know, your kid is lying there dead. How do you go to sleep, dave Sanders? Let's talk a little bit about Dave Sanders.
Speaker 1:Dave Sanders was one of the few teachers unaccounted for. He was still in the science room number three. The SWAT team had reached him still alive but hopeless. Several minutes later, before he was evacuated, dave Sanders bled to death. His family was not notified. Late in the afternoon they got word. He was injured and taken to Swedish Medical Center and Linda Liu was still out of sorts and she remembered and said, quote I don't remember who drove me, I don't know how I got there.
Speaker 1:I don't remember the ride. I don't remember walking in there. I remember where we got there. They took us in a room. There was food, there was coffee, there were the sisters, the nuns. It was like a greeting committee awaiting their arrival but curiously waiting for Dave Two. So Linda found the head nurse reassuring and she said as soon as he gets here you get to see him. But he never got there. End quote. Eventually they gave up and went to Leawood. They waited there a while and then headed back home.
Speaker 1:Relief agencies dispatched victims' advocates. Several showed up at the house, a helpful but ominous sign. The phones rang constantly, five separate cells laid out on the coffee table, but never with the call they wanted. Linda retreated to her room, never with the call they wanted. Linda retreated to her room. Every time someone used the bathroom downstairs the exhaust fan clicked on and Linda jumped up believing it was the garage door opening. Finally, about 10.30, she said Angie, her daughter says Mom and I got sick of waiting. We knew they had been a cop of teacher with him, teachers who have known him for since before I was born and so we called them to find out what happened and they informed us Dave had been the teacher bleeding to death. But had he bled out? Dave was alive when the SWAT team evacuated all the civilians and after that no one seemed to know. Only the cops had seen it end and they were not ready to say so. Andy said we didn't know whether he was taken out of the school or not, but at least we knew a little more about what had happened inside.
Speaker 1:Linda tried to sleep, but it was useless she what she did was to curl up with a pair of dave socks. Um, she spent the evening trying to blank out her mind because there were odd thoughts slipping through. And Marjorie Lindholm, who has spent much of the afternoon with Dave Sanders, said that he kept getting whiter and explosions kept erupting. And when the SWAT team finally freed her, marjorie ran past two bodies on the way out. She worried about how she had dressed because her parents would find her in a tank top that suddenly felt sleazy. She borrowed a friend's shirt to cover herself up. A cop drove her to safety in Clement Park and a paramedic stepped up to examine her. And then one of the descriptions was that there was blood everywhere and it was terrible. But she kept running.
Speaker 1:And later that day she confers her story to a reporter. She said why didn't I stop to help that girl that was on the ground? I'm so mad, I was so selfish. Now we have Brad and Misty Bernal. They went home around 10 pm.
Speaker 1:Brad climbed on top of the garden shed with a pair of binoculars to peer across the field. The library windows were blown out. He could see men milling about inside. They were in blue jackets with big yellow letters A-T-E. They had their heads down. But Brad couldn't quite make out what they were up to and he said well, I guess they were stepping over bodies. They were probably looking for explosives. They were searching for life explosives and life gunmen. As a matter of fact, swat teams searched every broom closet. If third, fourth or fifth shooters were still hiding out, they would be flushed out by morning.
Speaker 1:Brad came back into the house At 10.30,. An explosion shook the neighborhood. Brad and Misty ran upstairs. They looked out Cassie's window but nothing moved. Whatever it was, it had passed. Cassie's bed was empty and Misty feared she was still in school. Had she been injured by the blast? It was the bomb squad's one major mistake. They were moving bombs out of the area for control explosions as they loaded one into a trailer. The strike anywhere. Match that Eric used for a detonator brushed the trailer wall and it blew. Bomb technicians fell backward as trained, and the blast shot straight up and no one was hurt, but it threw a big scare into the team. Everyone was exhausted and this was getting dangerous, so they called it a night. Commandos instructed them to return at 6.30 am. Brad and Misty kept watching and Brad said quote I knew Cassie was in there somewhere. It was terrible to know that she was on the other side of the fence and there was nothing that we could do. End quote. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
