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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 IX
Witness a profound story of resilience as we explore the recovery journey of Patrick Ireland, a young man rebuilding his life following the Columbine tragedy. Grappling with the challenges of regaining his speech and motor skills, Patrick's story is not just about physical rehabilitation but also about emotional resilience as he faces the reality of his friends' deaths. Join us to understand the intimate struggles of Patrick and his family, offering insight into the courage required to navigate such an overwhelming experience, all while being unaware of the national spotlight on their journey.
Through a careful examination of the complex lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, we aim to shed light on the paths that led to the tragic events at Columbine. By dissecting their early behaviors and family dynamics, we uncover how Eric's critical thinking was overshadowed by anger, and Dylan's path was marked by isolation and depression. The differing parental responses and the discovery of dark elements in their lives serve as a backdrop to this narrative, allowing us to explore the vulnerabilities and psychological states that played a role in making this calamity.
We unravel the tangled web of crime and deception surrounding Eric and Dylan as detectives navigate a maze of misinformation and conspiracy theories. Despite early suspicions, the investigation ultimately confirmed their solitary roles in the tragedy, a fact underscored by their chilling journals and videos. We also dive into the myths and media narratives that complicated public perception, seeking to offer clarity and understanding in a case often clouded by rumors. Join us as we piece together the intricate puzzle of motivations, misunderstandings, and the search for truth after such a haunting event.
Welcome to the Murder Book. I'm your host, kiara, and this is part nine of Unraveling the Columbine Tragedy. Let's begin.
Speaker 1:Patrick Arlen was trying to learn to talk again. The first couple of days he couldn't manage much of anything. He struggled to spit out a single sentence, word by word, and when he had finished sometimes it made no sense. In his best moments Patrick spoke like the victim of a stroke. Slow, labored attempts that would produce a single guttural syllable and then a southern burst of sound. He could form the words in his head, but few made the passage to his mouth. His mom would ask how he was feeling and he would answer in Spanish or recite the capitals of South American countries. His brain was never aware of the mix-up. He was sure he had just described his mood, or as well as draw, and was confused by her confusion. Patrick's brain tended to spit out whatever was in short-term memory. He had been studying the capitals just before the shooting and recently returned from Spain. Often the memories were more immediate.
Speaker 1:Hospital intercom announcements were constantly echoing out of Patrick's mouth and respond to unrelated questions. He had no idea he had even heard the voices in the background. Other times it was complete nonsense. It got frustrated for everyone. One of Patrick's first meals out of the ICU was a hamburger and he was so excited about it that he couldn't wait to slather the bun with something. Kathy gently asked him to repeat and that was annoying. But he answered with this gibberish and over and over he repeated himself and he got angrier with each new batch of nonsense. He tried miming it, shaking the bottle. He really wanted the condiment. Kathy's sister ran downstairs and got one of everything from the cafeteria and a lot, you know, handfuls of packets, but none of that. They never figured out what he wanted.
Speaker 1:Patrick understood that he had been shot and he knew he had gone out of the window. He didn't grasp the scale of the massacre. He didn't know he had been on TV or that television shows were interested in him. He had no idea the networks had cast him as the boy in the window. Now and then Patrick would stammer out an intelligible answer and it would make him extremely happy. His motor skills seemed fine on the left side and if his brain could control his left hand to work a fork, why not a pen? Someone fetched a pack of markers and a whiteboard and it was just scribbles, absolute scribbles. It was one thing to hear Patrick struggle, seeing his inability sketch out in black and white, that was a shocker. It was like a diagram of a brain malfunctioning, you know scats of tiny neurons misfiring randomly into nowhere.
Speaker 1:The Arlands were also confronted with the realization that the problem lay deeper than the control centers for Patrick's vocal cords. He couldn't organize the thoughts behind them. He could respond emotionally, but he could not translate that into language, regardless of the medium, and it frustrated him and it scared him. He can speak, he cannot write. So the question was how are they, the family, going to communicate with him? But Patrick was a bright kid. Columbine was competitive and some kids could cruise to easy A's, but Patrick was not one of those. He had to fight for. Some of his Several students with unblemished records shared their valedictory title every year. He couldn't afford even one B. The geniuses could cruise two ways without breaking a sweat, but Patrick hated getting lumped in with them. So Patrick made his parents a little uneasy when he announced his intention Frenchman year in the car on the way to basketball practice. He didn't make a big deal out of it. He didn't say he would try, he just said he was going to do it Two years later, in his hospital room, john and Kathy Ireland had let go of basketball.
Speaker 1:Go of basketball. Water skiing, academic honors, walking and talking sounded ambitious. Patrick Garland did not see a television or a newspaper the first week. He didn't realize his family was protecting him on how big the Columbine tragedy was. He had no idea the whole country was watching. He didn't even know who had died.
Speaker 1:The first indication of what he was involved in came when friends called to check on him from Europe. He had gone on a class trip a month earlier and stayed with a family near Madrid. Now they were worried about him. Patrick was taken aback. They were hearing about this in Spain Seven days out. He transferred to Craig Hospital. He began rehab and was quickly scooting around the hospital in a wheelchair. He returned from therapy one day and turned on the TV and it was the news. They were listing the people killed. They showed Corey DePooter's picture and Patrick, of course, was stunned. Corey was one of his best friends. They had started in the library together but gotten separated when the noises first started outside and Corey went to investigate. Patrick had never seen him since. Patrick later on in an interview, said that he started bawling and he said, quote I think that was the first time I cried. End quote.
Speaker 1:The staff at Craig Hospital was not pushing for a first step, just a little movement. If he could get control of that leg and lift it up off the mattress, there was hope. His leg was fine. All the neural pathways up and down his spinal cord were intact. Signals passed unimpeded to the muscles wrapped around his femur. Millions of tiny nerve endings continued transmitting sensory data along the length of his thigh. Somewhere inside his head he could feel himself issued the command. He felt it moving in there, but then it got lost. He squeezed his eyes, he squeezed his brain, he tried to force it. Squeezing didn't help. The leg refused. Something was missing.
Speaker 1:The makeshift memorials at Clement Park had grown enormous over the first few days and hundreds of flowers, and they were piling up with poems and drawings and teddy bears, letter jackets, jewelry, wind chimes and teddy bears, leather jackets, jewelry, wind chimes. The district rented several warehouses to store them. So while Patrick is trying to recover in the hospital, these memorials were happening all around the park and it wasn't enough, because the survivors didn't know what they needed, where or why exactly, but they needed something and they were searching for a symbol and they knew immediately when it came. Seven days after the massacre, shortly before sunset, a roll of 15 wooden crosses rose up along the crest of Rebel Hill. They stood seven feet high, three feet wide and were spaced evenly along the length of the mesa. Clement Park's floodlights lit up the long hanging clouds behind them and the crosses cast an eerie silhouette against the thunderheads. The dimensions seemed a little off. The crossbeams looked far too short, were branched too close to the top, some were planted poorly, leaning badly to one side. Within hours the arms dangled beets, ribbons, rosaries, placards, flax and so many blue and white balloons.
Speaker 1:Over the next five days, 125,000 people trekked up the hill to reach the crosses. They trudged through the mud as a vicious storm pounded the hill. They tore away the grass. Many waited two hours in the rain just to begin to climb. It felt more like a pilgrimage. The crosses had come from Chicago. A carpenter built them out of pine that he got at Home Depot. He drove to Colorado in a pickup, planted them on the hill and drove back. He taped a black and white photo of one victim or killer to each cross and he left a pen dangling from each one to encourage graffiti. Soon, each cross had sprouted a pile covering the base and making its way up to the arms. Christian dog tags were popular with phrases like God is awesome, jesus lives. Several crosses were wrapped head to foot in flowers, others dressed in shirts and jackets and pants.
Speaker 1:On 13 crosses the messages were loving and uncontroversial. The killer's crosses hosted a bitter debate. Hate breeds hate. How can anyone forgive you? Someone responded I forgive you. So half of the messages were conciliatory Sorry, we all failed you, no one is to blame. It was exactly as Ton and Sue Cleobold had feared. If they had buried Dylan, his grave would look like that. A woman told a reporter that she had been spit on for grieving for the killers and then shoved into the mud. Despite the flare-ups, controversy was the exception. One woman marveled at the forgiveness in her community was the exception. One woman marbled the forgiveness in her community.
Speaker 1:Saturday's edition of the Rocky led with a three-word headline Dad Destroys Crosses. A hunting photo captured 13 remaining tributes with two stark gaps. Eric and Dylan's crosses had lasted only three days and this parent said you don't sheepen what christ did for us by honoring murderers with crosses and he had. He also said there's nowhere in the bible that says to forgive an unrepentant murderer. Most Christians don't know that these fools have come out saying forgive everyone, you don't repent. You don't forgive them. That's what the Bible says, and this is all his quote, by the way. And this is all his quote, by the way. So this parent was Mr Brian Roble, and Mr Roble divided the community because some people understood his anger but others found his response a little harsh.
Speaker 1:Brian's first response was not to destroy the two crosses. He initially affixed each one with a sign saying Murders, burn and Hell. The Park District took them down. Officials say that they had also removed a teddy bear smeared with ketchup and were prohibiting anything obscene. So Brian conferred with his ex-wife Sue and her husband Rich Petrone, and they agreed to a united front on everything. Rich called several officials Sheriff Stone, dave Thomas and the DA and the men in charge of the Parks Department and Brian said and I'm going to quote the three of them said those crosses shouldn't be there. We're going to take them down. Give us until tomorrow at five and we promise they will be gone. End quote.
Speaker 1:So Brian, robert and he and the patrons went to the hill at five and nothing had happened. So he said we decided let's just go take care of this, we don't need to put up with this stuff. So Brian wanted those symbols out and he wanted the world to see it. He called CNN and a crew came and filmed it and Brian said unquote, it wasn't going to be done in the darkness, unquote. So Brian and the patrons hauled the crosses away, hacked them into little pieces, tossed the rubble into a dumpster. Brian took charge of his strategy. That day he discovered the power of being Danny Robert's dad and from that day forward he would not hesitate to wield it. But this particular battle was just getting underway. The carpenter drove back from Chicago, pulled out the 13 remaining crosses. Now Brian Robo was really fuming.
Speaker 1:The cruelest man of the aftermath had returned to turn down the monument to his son. Robert also sensed opportunism. He said quote I question his motives. End quote. Brian had good instincts. The carpenter had made a family business out of similar stunts. He returned with a new set of crosses and a pack of media on his heels.
Speaker 1:The highlight was a joint appearance with Brian on the Today Show. The showman apologized profusely and offered a series of solemn vows. He would never build another cross for the killers or for any killer, and he would drive around the country removing a sebo he had erected in the past. He broke every promise. He built 15 new crosses and took them on a national tour. He mailed his celebrity for years. Brian Roble returned to Cursingham and said quote, cursing him, and said quote the opportunist, the great carpenter, the most hateful, despicable person who would come to someone else's tragedy, end quote the world forgot the carpenter.
Speaker 1:Few have noted his name. Most never knew what a huckster he was. All the lies he told or the pain he inflict reflected. But they remember his crosses fondly. They recall the comfort that they found. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1:Let's go sort of a flashback of Eric and Dylan. Eric was a thief. Now he had a set of rent-a-fin signs. He liked the feeling. He wanted more. This was his junior year. So in junior year the boys got right to work.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan and Zach hacked into the school computer and commandeered a list of locker combinations and they began breaking in. They got sloppy. On October 2, 1997, they got caught. They were sent to the dean who suspended them for three days. The Harris and Claiborne parents responded the way they always did. Wayne Harris was a pragmatist. He would make Eric regret what he had done With outsiders. He was focused on containment. Eric's future was at stake. He called the dean and argued that Eric was a minor. The dean was unmoved. What would show up on Eric's records, wayne asked. He jotted down the answer in his journal In-house, only because police were not involved Destroyed upon graduation. Good, eric had a promising future ahead.
Speaker 1:The Claywolks addressed the situation intellectually. Dylan had demonstrated a shocking lapse of ethics, but Tom disagreed with suspensions on philosophical grounds. There were more effective ways to discipline a child. The dean had rarely met such a thoughtful, intelligent parent. But this judgment stood. Eric and Dylan were each grounded for a month and were forbidden contact with each other or with Zach. Zach began drifting away, particularly from Eric. The tight threesome was over From that day forward.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan committed the crimes as a pair. Special Agent Fusilier considered Eric's psychological state at this point, a year and a half before the murders. Eric was not a depressive like Dylan, that was for sure. There were no signs of mental illness, no signs of anything to predict murder. Eric's website was obscenely angry, but anger and young men were practically synonymous. The instincts that would lead to Columbine were surely in place by now, but Eric had yet to reveal them.
Speaker 1:Dylan continued to be fixated on Harriet, fifty minutes a day for one class period. Dylan felt like he was in heaven because Harriet was in his class, felt like he was in heaven because Harriet was in his class. Sometimes she would laugh and he thought that her laugh was darling, so innocent, so pure, and innocence was, he felt, was an angelic quality and someday Dylan would speak to her, or so he thought. One day Dylan saw his chance and there was a group of project for the class, a report to work on together, and Harriet was on his team, and that for him, felt like a blessed day. This was it. Felt like a blessed day, this was it, but he did nothing. Dylan described his trajectory as a downward spiral. He borrowed the phrase from Nine Inch Nails' Rippin' Concept album, which documents a fictional man unraveling and it ends with him killing himself with a gun to the mouth.
Speaker 1:Oliver Stone's satirical film Natural Born Killers would become the pop culture artifact most associated with the Columbine Massacre. That was reasonable, since Eric and Dylan use NBK as shorthand for their own event and the film bears considerable resemblances for their own event. And the film bears considerable resemblances. It also captured the flavor of Eric's egotistical, empathy-free attitude, but it bore no relation to Dylan's psyche. For the first 18 to 20 months of his journal, dylan identified with two powerful characters to convey his torment the protagonists of the Downward Spiral and Derek Lynch's film Lost Highway.
Speaker 1:After the murders, controversies raged about the role of violent films, music and video games. Some columnists and talk radio hosts saw an easy cause and effect. But that seemed simplistic for Eric, who was a gifted critical thinker with a voracious appetite for the classics, and absurd for his partner. Dylan identified with depressives on the brink of suicide. He focused on fictional characters mirrored in the hopelessness he already felt.
Speaker 1:Eric got sloppy. He allowed the worst imaginable person to discover one of his pipe bombs. His dad, wayne Harris, was beside himself. Firecrackers were one thing, but this was too much. He wasn't even sure what to do with it. Eric told several friends about the incident and their accounts of Wayne's response were different every time. Zach Heckler said that Wayne could not figure out how to defuse the bomb. So he went outside with Eric and detonated it. But Nate Dyckman said that Wayne had merely confiscated the bomb. So he went outside with Eric and detonated it. But Nate Dyckman said that Wayne had merely confiscated the bomb. Sometime later Eric took Nate into his parents' bedroom closet and showed it to him. Wayne Harris never referred to the incident in his journal on Eric, which was dormant at that time. Eric swore up and down to his parents that he would never make a bomb again and they apparently believed him. They wanted to. Eric probably shut down production for a while and he definitely covered his tracks better. Eventually he got back to business. At some point he showed Nate two or three of his later products which he was storing in his own room.
Speaker 1:Dylan felt abandoned. He was grounded for the locker scam, home alone and lonelier than ever. Then his older brother, brian or Byron, I should say was kicked out for drugs. Tom and Sue understood the tough love would cause an upheaval so they went to family counseling with Dylan. That didn't change their son's outlook. He got a new room out of it and he put his own stamp on the place Two black walls and two red ones, posters of baseball heroes and rock bands, also some street signs and a woman in a leopard bikini.
Speaker 1:And he complained that he gets more depressed with each day and he asked why did friends keep deserting him. They did not actually, but Dylan perceived it that way and he fretted about Eric dumping him too and he repeated Wanna die, death, equal freedom. Now Death offered tranquility and he began using the words interchangeably. Then he waited the other option. He named a friend and he said he will get me a gun, I'll go on my killing spree against anyone I want. It was Dylan's second allusion to murder. The first had been ambiguous, this was overt, and now it was a spree. He changed the subject immediately, and that was unusual.
Speaker 1:As a rule, dylan hammered ideas relentlessly. He would drill for two straight pages on the everlasting struggle or his destiny as a seeker. Murder was different. For the second time he tossed in a single line at the peak of despair and promptly returned to his own destruction. The idea was germinating. A year and a half out, dylan appeared to be exploring a spree, with Eric probably, but the details of this critical moment are lost. Neither boy ever mentioned those conversations. In the paper trail they left behind, eric recorded his actions. He was building bigger bombs. Coincidence Unlikely, because Eric's thinking had been evolving steadily in one direction since freshman year.
Speaker 1:Late in 1997, eric took notice of school shooters and he wrote Every day news broadcast stories of students shooting students or going on killing sprees. He researched the possibilities for an English paper. Guns were cheap, readily available. He discovered Gun Digest said you could get a Saturday night special for $69, and schools were easy targets. Special for $69, and schools were easy targets. Eric wrote quote it is just as easy to bring a loaded handgun to school as it is to bring a calculator. End quote. And then, when he wrote that in his paper, his teacher made a note on the marginates and wrote ouch, and overall he rated it thorough and logical, nice job.
Speaker 1:The last day of school before Christmas something happened. Dylan's true love waved at him finally and Dylan of course, was ecstatic. Then he began to wonder had she waved at him ecstatic? Then he began to wonder had she waved at him? Maybe not, probably not, definitely, not Just delusional? He sat down and considered who loved him and he listed their names on a page in his journal. He drew little hearts beside three. Nineteen people, nineteen failures, 19 people, 19 failures.
Speaker 1:A few weeks later Eric made it with a real woman. Brenda was almost 23, and she had no idea he was 16, because he acted a lot older, she said when he told her he was in school. She took it to mean college. They met at the mall. He drove her to her house. They started going out, bowling, drag racing, driving into the mountains to get drunk. He taught her about the computer. He told her how great she looked and she could not have been more charmed. She described it to reporters later as a friendship, but more than a friendship. Sometimes dylan would hang out with them but he was too shy to to speak.
Speaker 1:Eric and dylan got cockier and they stole more valuable merchandise and started testing their pipe bombs. And they seem outwardly. They seem like responsible kids. Because teachers trusted them, they granted them access to the computer closet. They helped themselves to expensive equipment and at some point Eric may have started a credit card scam. In his notebook he listed eight steps to complete the scam, though there's no evidence that he carried them out. He later claimed he had.
Speaker 1:Dylan was no good at deception. He kept getting caught, but Eric did not. Tom Klebel noticed Dylan had a new laptop. Eric could have weaseled out of that without missing a beat. You know he would lie, but Dylan couldn't. Dylan just confessed. His dad made him turn himself in. Eric and Dylan both had a penchant for picking up on the classmen, but Dylan got caught In January 1998, he got sent to the dean for scratching a slut about fags a slur, I shouldn't say he scratched a slur about fags onto a freshman's locker.
Speaker 1:Remember, this is 1997-98, and that was the terminology used. He got another suspension and he paid $70 to get the locker fixed. The boys were shooting off their pipe bombs by then and man, were those things badass. They bragged to Nate Dykeman and then they brought him along for a demo. Eric was in charge where bumps were concerned, so everything went according to plan. They waited until Super Bowl Sunday, when the streets of Metro Denver were deserted. The Broncos were underdogs in their fifth shot at the championship and everyone was watching the game. Eric took advantage of the law and he brought Nate and Dylan out to a quiet spot near his house, dropped the bomb in a culvert and let her rip, and Nate, of course, was appropriately impressed.
Speaker 1:On January 30, three days after Dylan's meeting with the dean, a crime of opportunity presented itself. It was a Friday night and the boys were restless. Eric and Dylan drove out into the country, pulled onto a gravel strip and got out to break stuff. There was a van parked there with lots of electronic gizmos inside. How cool would it be to steal it? The boys had no idea what they might use the stuff for, but they were sure they could get away with it. No witnesses, no fingerprints.
Speaker 1:Eric had a pair of ski gloves to mask detection and Eric took guard duty and gave Dylan the dirty work. Dylan put one ski glove on and tried to punch out a window. They had no idea how solid a car window was, so he hit it again and again and nothing Eric took over. So just as useless. So Dylan went for a rock and he holed up a boulder, hurled it into the glass and even that was deflected. So it took several blows before the rock crashed through. Dylan put the other glove on, reached in to unlock the door and started digging through the pile like crazy.
Speaker 1:Eric again left Dylan to commit the act. He ran back to man the getaway car. Dylan grabbed anything that looked interesting. He flung everything else over the van. By his count he nabbed one briefcase, one black pouch, one flashlight, a yellow thing and a bucket of stuff. Those are his words. Dylan ran armloads of loot back to the Honda. Those are his words. Dylan ran armloads of loot back to the Honda. Eric continued to guard. Another car approached and Dylan froze, but the car passed On face. Dylan ran back to grab more and Eric, at this point, had grown wary and he said no, no, that's enough, let's go. This point have grown wary and he said no, no, that's enough, let's go.
Speaker 1:They drove deeper into the country, over the hulk, back to deer creek canyon park, and deer creek canyon park is a vast preserve that ran for miles up into the mountains. The park was deserted. It closed an hour after nightfall and the sun had set four hours ago. So they pulled into the parking lot, killed the engine and checked out the take. They cranked some tunes to enjoy themselves and then flipped on the dome light to hunt for another CD. Dylan reached back and hauled out his favorite item, a $400 volt meter, the yellow thing with buttons along the base and black and red probes hanging off it. Dylan poked out the buttons. Eric watched intently. When the meter lit up, the boys went wild and thought okay, that's cool. Dylan pulled out the flashlight and switched it on and Eric wow, that is really bright. And then he spotted something cooler they got a Nintendo game pad. They rummaged a bit more before Eric realized they have gone sloppy. Time to resume precautions. And Eric said we better put this stuff in the trunk. And so he popped the latch and stepped out.
Speaker 1:But that's when Jeffco and Sheriff's Deputy Timothy Walsh decided to make his presence known. He had been standing outside the car for several minutes watching and listening to the entire exchange. You can see for miles out in the country a lone vehicle in an empty lot in a closed state park just asked for intervention. The boys had been so immersed that they had failed to see his car, hear his engine or his footsteps, hear his engine or his footsteps, or notice his tall frame looming right over the rear window. When Eric stepped out, deputy Walsh blinded him with a flashlight beam and asked what were they up to? Whose property was of that? And Eric wrote later quote Right, then I realized what a fool I was. He would claim remorse, but he didn't show any even then.
Speaker 1:So Eric thought fast but lied poorly. He was off his game that night. He said they had been messing around in a parking lot near town and had stumbled onto the equipment stacked neatly in the grass. He gave a precise location and described it vividly. Details were the key to good lie Good tactics, bad choice. He depicted the actual robbery location. He depicted the actual robbery location.
Speaker 1:Walsh was incredulous. He asked to see the property and Eric said sure, he kept playing it. Cool, he kept doing the talking. Dylan was quiet and went along. Walsh had the boys stack the goods on the trunk and try again. Where do you find the property? Dylan summoned up his nerve. He perverted Eric's story and well, said it looked suspicious. He would radio another deputy to check on any break-ins. Eric was confident. He looked over at his partner but Dylan folded. Wayne and Kathy Harris were waiting when Eric arrived at the police station. Tom and Sue Klebot were close behind. They couldn't believe their boys could do something like this. The boys could be charged with three felonies, including a Class 5, which carried up to a $100,000 fine and one to three years in prison.
Speaker 1:Eric and Dylan were questioned separately. With their parents' consent. They waived their rights. Each boy gave oral and written statements. Eric blamed Dylan. Dylan suggested that, as he said that they could steal, that they should steal some of the objects in the white van. At first he was very uncomfortable and questioning with the thought and his verbal account was more adamant because he said that he and Dylan looked into the van and asked should we break into it and steal it? It would be nice to steal some stuff in there? And Eric claimed that. He responded hell no. He said that Dylan kept pestering him and eventually wore him down. Dylan accepted him to blame the joint blame and almost at the same time they both got the idea of breaking into his white van. The boys were taken to county jail. They were fingerprinted, photographed and booked and then they were released into the custody of four furious parents. We'll be right back After the murders.
Speaker 1:The detective team sought convictions. He had three possible crimes to uncover Participation in the attack, participation in the planning or guilty knowledge. At first it looked easy. The killers had been sloppy, they had not even tried to cover their tracks and the primary living suspects were juveniles. Most of the friends had withheld something crucial Robin had helped purchase three of the guns, chris and Nate had seen pipe bombs, chris and Zach had heard about napalm. They all broke quickly. They were kids, it was easy. But they broke only so far. They admitted to knowing details but claimed to be clueless about the plan. Detectives pushed harder. The suspects didn't push back, they just threw up their hands.
Speaker 1:Fusilier had several solid agents on the case and he knew they could sniff out a liar. His team leader described them as wide-eyed and understandably anxious. Most had begun by hiding something and it had been painfully obvious. They were awful actors. But once they spilled it they just seemed relieved. They were calm, peaceful, all the signs of someone coming clean. Most of the suspects agree to polygraphs. That usually meant they had nothing left to hide.
Speaker 1:Two friends, robert Perry and Joe Stare, had been identified by witnesses as shooters or at least present at the scene. Both boys produced alibis. Perry's was shaky. He had been sleeping downstairs until his grandmother woke him with news of the shooting. He said he walked upstairs, stumbled out onto the porch and cried. Did anyone see him other than his grandmother? No, he didn't think so. But Perry had been seen by others. He had just been too upset to notice them. Within a week a neighbor who was interviewed described driving up around noon and seeing Perry crying just the way he had described.
Speaker 1:The physical evidence was even less damning. All the friends' houses were searched and no weapons were found, no ammo, no ordinance, no refuse of any pine bomb assembly. Zach had a copy of the anarchist cookbook, but there was no sign that he had used it to build anything. Fingerprints at the crime scene were all abust. There was an extraordinary amount of material guns, ammo gear, unused pipe bombs, strips of duct tape, dozens of components from the big bombs. All of it was covered with the killer's print, nobody else's. The same was true at the killer's houses Nothing on the journals, videotapes, camcorders or bomb assembly gear. No one appeared in the killers' records. Eric had been a meticulous planner and recorder of dates, locations and receipts. Detectives searched the store's files and credit card records. All signs indicated that the killers had purchased everything. For months. Shevestone publicly espoused a conspiracy theory. Fusilier could feel the conspiracy slipping away the first week. Within two he knew it was remote.
Speaker 1:The most telling evidence came from the killers themselves In their journals and videos, from the killers themselves. In their journals and videos they cop to everything. They never mention outside involvement except derisively when they talk about hapless dupes. The killers leak their plans in countless ways, but there's no indication that anyone close to them ever breathed a word. The friends' emails, ims, day planners, journals were searched along with every paper. The investigators could find there was no sign that any of the friends had known.
Speaker 1:Rumors about a third shooter had continued right up to the present day, but publicly. It didn't take long for investigators to put them to rest. Eric and Dylan were correctly identified by witnesses who knew them. No one else turned up on the surveillance videos on the 911 audio. Witnesses' accounts were remarkably consistent about a tall shooter and a short one, but there seemed to be two of each two in t-shirts, two in trench coats. And as soon as they learned, eric's coat was left outside in the landing. He knew what had happened there and this is Fusilier's thinking. Witnesses exchanged stories. Reports of two guys in t-shirts and two in trench coats quickly turned into four-shooters. Dylan's decision to leave his coat on until he reached the library made for more combinations and the number multiplied over the afternoon. The killers also lobbed pipe bombs in every direction.
Speaker 1:The gunfire shadowed windows and ricocheted off floors, ductwork and stairs. Many kids heard crashes or explosions and positively identified their location as the source of activity rather than the destination. Several witnesses insisted that they had spotted a gunman on the roof. What they had seen was a maintenance man adjusting an air conditioner unit. So what accounted for all the confusion? Eyewitness testimony in general is not very accurate. Put that together with gunshots going off and just the most terrifying situation in their life. What they remember now may not be anywhere near what really happened.
Speaker 1:Human memory can be erratic. We tend to record fragments gunshots, explosions, trench coats, terror, sirens, screams. Images come back jumbled, but we crave coherence, so we trim them, adjust details and assemble everything together in a story that makes sense. We record vivid details, like the scraggly ponytail flapping against the dirty blue t-shirt of the boy fleeing just ahead, all the way out of the building. A witness may focus on that swishing hair. Later she remembers a glimpse of the killer. He was tall and lanky but he had scraggly hair. It fits together and she connects it. Soon the killer is wearing the dirty blue t-shirt as well, and moments later and forever after, she's convinced that that's exactly what she saw.
Speaker 1:Investigators identify nearly a dozen common misperceptions among library survivors. Distortion of time was rampant, particularly chronology. Witnesses recall less once the killers approach them, not more. Terror stops the brain from forming new memories. A staggering number insisted that they were the last ones out of the library. Once they were out, it was over. Similarly, most of those injured even superficially believed they were the last one's head. Survivors also clung to reassuring concepts that they were actually hiding by crouching on the tables in plain sight. Memory is notoriously unreliable. So investigators went back to interview the killer's closest friends several times. Each new interview and lead would raise more questions about the killer's associates. Sometimes new evidence revealed lies.
Speaker 1:An FBI agent interviewed Christy Epling the day after the murders. Christy was connected to both killers, particularly Eric. They were close and she was dating his buddy, nate Dykeman. No-transcript. Her FBI report was brief and unremarkable, she said. Nate was in shock. The TCM connection was silly and Eric had probably been the leader. Christy did not mention any of his notes in her procession. Christy played cool about the notes during her FBI interview, then mailed them to a friend in St Louis who was unconnected to Columbine and unlikely to be questioned. Christy was careful no return address on the envelope. The friend went to the police. She did not inform Christy.
Speaker 1:The pages included notes passed back and forth between Christy and Eric in German class. It was a rambling conversation conducted in German. They mentioned a hit list. That was all news to investigators. Most of the school was on one of Eric's list, but they had withheld that information from the public. Christy had been hiding it. Maybe she was hiding more.
Speaker 1:So detectives returned to question her. They asked about German class and Christy said she had exchanged notes with Eric but had thrown them away months ago. But had thrown them away months ago. She assured them repeatedly that Eric had never made any threats. She would have told a teacher, she insisted. Christy also said Nate had fled to Florida to stay with his father and avoid the media hands. They had talked on the phone that morning.
Speaker 1:The detectives asked Christy what should happen to someone who had helped the killers and she said they should go to jail forever. It was a horrible thing. And what about someone who withheld information after the attack? And Christy said well, I don't know, it would depend on what it was. They should probably get counseling, she suggested, but some sort of punishment too. So they ask again did she know anything more? No, has she destroyed any? Know anything more? No, had she destroyed any notes from Eric? No, they kept repeating the questions, assuring her that she could disclose anything now without repercussions. No, there was nothing. They continued questioning her, repeated the offer and finally she went for it. Okay, there were notes, she admitted. And Nate was not in Florida, he was staying with her. He was there in the house right now. She said the notes had been very painful to hold on to, but far, far away. She hoped to retrieve them someday when everything was more clear.
Speaker 1:Once she caught the truth, christy was forthcoming. She agreed to turn over her PC and her email accounts and to take a polygraph. Beyond that she didn't know anything significant. She told them about some things Nate had confessed to, but detectives knew about them already. Christy had just been afraid. She had thought she had something incriminating and she had panic. No evidence of a conspiracy, so another dead end.
Speaker 1:Nevertheless, dr Fusilier learned a great deal from the German conversation. It revolved around Christy's new boyfriend. She had a short-lived romance with a sophomore named Dan. Eric couldn't believe she was going out with that little and he used the F word. What was wrong with Dan? She asked, and he said for one thing the pretty boy had punched him in the face last year, eric said, and a fist fight. She said that surprised her because he always seemed so rational. He got mad when kids made fun of his black clothes or all his German crap, but he always kept his cool. He would calmly figure out how to get even Christy worried about Eric getting even. She asked her boyfriend about it and he said he was afraid Eric might kill him.
Speaker 1:Christy decided to play peace broker. She took it up with Eric in German class again. She told him straight out how seared Dan was. She used the phrase kill him. Dan was she used the phrase kill him Then? That make Eric nervous. He was in the juvenile diversion program because of the band breaking and threats like that could get him in trouble. Christy said she had been careful about it. But how could Dan make it up to him? How about if he let me punch him in the face? Eric suggested and she answered seriously and Eric answered back seriously.
Speaker 1:Dr Fusilier was not surprised by the notes. Very cold-blooded any kid could get in a fight. Dylan had gotten really angry and in the heat of a fistfight had clocked Eric. Eric was planning his punch. He wanted Dan to stand there defenseless and let him do it. Complete power over the kid, that's what Eric craved.
Speaker 1:As the conspiracy theory crumbled, a new motive emerged. The jug fuel theory was accepted as the underlying driver. But that had supposedly gone on for a year. What made the killer snap? Nine days after the murders, the media found yet another trigger the Marines. The New York Times and the Washington Post broke the story on April 29. The rest of the media found yet another trigger the Marines, the New York Times and the Washington Post broke the story on April 29. The rest of the media, of course, piled on quickly. They learned that Eric had been talking to a Marine recruiter during the last few weeks of his life. They also discovered he had been talking or taking the prescription antidepressant Luvox, something that would typically disqualify him because it implied depression. A defense department spokesman verified that the recruiter had learned about the medication and rejected Eric.
Speaker 1:The media was off to the races again. Luvox added an extra wrinkle as it functioned as an anger suppressant. The Times cited unnamed friends of Eric's as saying that they believe that he had tried to stop taking the drugs, perhaps because of his rejection by the Marines. Five days before he and his friend Dylan Claiborne stormed into the Columbine campus with guns and bombs. The story added a bit of evidence that seemed to confirm it. The coroner's office said no drugs or alcohol had been found in Mr Harris's body in an autopsy, but it would not specify whether the body had been screened for Luvox.
Speaker 1:It was finally coming together. The Marines rejected Eric. He quit the Luvox. To fuel his rage he grabbed a gun and started again. It all fit. Fusilier read the stories and he shuddered. All the conclusions were reasonable and wrong. Eric's body had not initially been screened for Luvox and later he had remained on a full dose right up to his death. And investigators had talked to the Marine recruiter the morning after the murders. He had determined Eric was ineligible. But Eric had never known. By this time Fusilier had already read Eric's journal and seen the basement tapes. He knew what the media did not. There had been no trigger.
Speaker 1:April 30th officials met with the Klebolds and several attorneys to discuss ground rules for a series of interviews. Kate Baton was aggravated that she could not question the family directly, so she asked them to tell her about their son. They were still dumbfounded. They described a normal teenage boy, extraordinarily shy but happy. Dylan was coping well with adolescence and developing into a responsible young adult. They entrusted him with major decisions when he could articulate his rationale. Teachers loved him and so did other kids. He was gentle, sensitive, until the day he died. Sue couldn't recall seeing Dylan cry. Only once he came home from school, upset and went up to his room. He pulled the box of stuffed animals out of the closet, dumped them out, borrowed them and fell asleep surrounded. He never did reveal what disturbed him. His parents granted Dylan a measure of privacy in his own room. The last time Tori called being in there was about two weeks before the murders. To turn off the computer. Dylan left on. Otherwise, they monitor Dylan's life aggressively and forbade him from hanging out with bad influence.
Speaker 1:Tom said he was extremely close to Dylan. They share rocky season tickets with three other families and on his nights Tom usually took one of his sons and Tom and Dylan. They hung out all the time together. They played a lot of sports until Tom developed arthritis in the mid-1990s. Now it was a lot of chess, computers and working in Dylan's BMW they built a set of custom speakers together. Dylan didn't like doing repair work with Tom, though. Sometimes he got testy and snapped off one-word responses, and that was normal. Tom considered Dylan his best friend.
Speaker 1:Dylan had a handful of tight buddies. His parents said Zach and Nate and of course Eric, who was definitely closest. Chris Morris seemed like more of an acquaintance. Dylan had fun with Robin Anderson, a sweet girl but definitely nothing romantic. He had not had a girlfriend yet but had been kind of group dating. His friends seemed happy. Eric was the quietest of the group. Tom and Sue never felt they knew what was going on in that head of his. Eric was always respectful, though they were aware Judy Brown had a different opinion and Sue even said quote Judy doesn't like a lot of people. End quote. Tom and Sue didn't perceive Eric to be leading or following their son, but they noticed that he got angry at Dylan when he screwed something up.
Speaker 1:Before they left, detectives asked the Clarebolds if they had any questions. And they say yes, they asked to read anything. Dylan had written anything to understand. But Tan left frustrated because she said I didn't get to ask any questions. All I got was a fluff piece on their son. So she documented the interview, which remained sealed for 18 months. The series of interviews never occur. Lawyers demanded immunity from prosecution before they could talk. Jafka officials refused. The Harris's took the same position. Bataan didn't even get a fluff piece from them.
Speaker 1:While Bataan interviewed the Clare Boards, the National Rifle Association convened in Denver and it was a ghastly coincidence Mayor Wellington Webb begged the group to cancel its annual convention scheduled long before Angry Barbs had flown back and forth a week and he said we don't want you here. This is what the Mayor Web told them. Other promoters gave in to similar demands. Marilyn Manson had been incorrectly linked to the killers. He canceled his concert at Red Rocks and the remainder of his national tour. The National Rifle Association show went on. 4,000 attended, 3,000 protesters met them. They massed on the Capitol steps, marched to the convention site and formed a human chain around the Adam's Marks Hotel. So all this was happening.
Speaker 1:When the conspiracy evaporated, it left a dangerous vacuum. Dr Fusilier saw the danger early on. He said quote Once we understood there was no third shooter, I realized that for everyone this was going to be difficult to get closer. End quote. The final act of the killers was among their cruelest. They deprived the survivors of a living perpetrator. They deprived the families of a focus for the anger and their blame. There would be no cathartic trial for the victims. There was no killer to rebuke in a courtroom, nor judge to implore to impose the maximum penalty. South Jekyll was seething with anger and it would be deprived of a reasonable target. Displaced anger would riddle the community for years.
Speaker 1:The crumbling conspiracy eliminated the primary mission of the task force. The all-star team was left to sort out logistical issues, exactly what had happened and how. Those were massive investigations, easy to get lost inside. Investigators wanted to retrace every step, reconstruct each moment, place every witness and every buckshot fragment in place and time and context, and it drew the team's attention from the real objective why. The families wanted to know how their children died, of course, but that was nothing compared to the underlying question.
Speaker 1:Sheriff Stone kept talking about the conspiracy theory with the press. He was driving his team nuts. Every few days, jeffco spokesman corrected another misstatement by the sheriff. Several corrections were extreme Arrests were not imminent, deputies had not blocked the killers from escaping the school and Stone's descriptions of the cafeteria videos had been pure conjecture. The tapes had not even been analyzed yet. They did not try to correct some of his mischaracterizations, like when he quoted Eric's journal out of context to give the impression that the killers had been planning to hijack a plane when they had started their attack.
Speaker 1:He was quickly becoming a laughingstock. Yet he was the ultimate ranking authority on the case. His staff begged him to stop speaking to the press. But how would it look if subordinates spoke about the case while the head man was muscled. A tacit understanding developed on the team If Stone kept his mouth shut, they would too. Though they continued background interviews with the Rocky For the next five months until an impromptu interview by lead investigator Kit Baton in September. Law enforcement officers would divulge virtually nothing more publicly about their discoveries or conclusions. After that it would be a slow trickle and a fight for every scrap of information. Nine days after the shootings, the Jeffco blackout began. Columbine coverage ended abruptly too. A string of deadly tornadoes hit Oklahoma. The National Press Corp left town in a single afternoon. The school would return periodically to national headlines over the years, but the narrative of what had happened was set. Thank you for listening to the Murder Book. Have a great week.
