A subtler form of leakage is preoccupation with death, destruction, and violence. A graphic mutilation story might be an early warning sign--or a vivid imagination. Add malice, brutality, and an unrepentant hero, and concern should rise. Don't overreact to a single story or drawing, the FBI warned. Normal teen boys enjoy violence and are fascinated with the macabre. "Writings and drawings on these themes can be a reflection of a harmless but rich and creative fantasy life," the report said. The key was repetition leading to obsession. The Bureau described a boy who'd worked guns and violence into every assignment. In home ec class he'd baked a cake in the shape of a gun.
The FBI compiled a specific list of warning signs, including symptoms of both psychopathy and depression: manipulation, intolerance, superiority, narcissism, alienation, rigidity, lethargy, dehumanization of others, and externalizing blame. It was a daunting list--that's a small excerpt. Few teachers were going to master it. The FBI recommended against trying. It suggested one person per school be trained intensely, for all faculty and administrators to turn to.
The FBI added one final caution: a kid matching most of its warning signs was more likely to be suffering from depression or mental illness than planning an attack. Most kids matching the criteria needed help, not incarceration.
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Columbine also changed police response to attacks. No more perimeters. A national task force was organized to develop a new plan. In 2003, it released "The Active Shooter Protocol." The gist was simple: If the shooter seems active, storm the building. Move toward the sound of gunfire. Disregard even victims. There is one objective: Neutralize the shooters. Stop them or kill them.
The concept had been around for years but had been rejected. Pre-Columbine, cops had been exhorted to proceed cautiously: secure the perimeter, get the gunman talking, wait for the SWAT team.
The key to the new protocol was active. Most shootings--the vast majority--were labeled passive: the gunman was alive but not firing. Those cases reverted to the old protocol. Success depended on accurately determining the threat in the first moments.
Officers face a second decision point when they reach the shooters. If the killer is holed up in a classroom, holding kids but not firing, responders may need to stop there and use traditional hostage techniques. Storming the classroom could provoke the gunman. But if the shooter is firing, even just periodically, move in.
The active shooter protocol gained quick and widespread acceptance. In a series of shootings over the next decade, including the worst disaster, at Virginia Tech, cops or guards rushed in, stopped shooters, and saved lives.
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Sue Petrone asked for and received the two sidewalk blocks her son Danny died on. They were jackhammered out of the ground and installed in her backyard, in the shadow of a fragrant spruce tree. Around the slab, she created a rock garden, with two big wooden tubs overflowing with petunias. She had a sturdy oak truss constructed over the slab, and a porch swing suspended from the crossbeam. She and Rich and their shaggy little dog can nestle comfortably into the generous swing.
Linda Sanders kept the Advil tablet found near Dave's body. He had trouble with knee swelling, so he always carried one in his pocket. Just one. She took his bloody clothes, a swath of carpet from under his head, a little fragment of tooth that chipped off when he fell, and his glasses.
She would never let those glasses go. She snapped them into an eyeglass case and placed them on the nightstand by her bed. She intends to leave them that way forever.
The lawsuit on behalf of Dave Sanders outlived all the others, but his widow chose not to take part. She was not angry at the police, or the school, or the parents. She was angry at her situation. She was lonely.
50. The Basement Tapes
Eric wanted to be remembered. He spent a year on "The Book of God," but five weeks before Judgment Day, he decided that wasn't good enough. He wanted a starring role on-camera. So on March 15, he and Dylan began the Basement Tapes. It would be a tight shooting schedule, with no time for editing or postproduction. They filmed with a Sony 8mm camcorder, checked out from the Columbine High video lab.
The first installment was a basic talk-show setup: a stationary camera in the family room in Eric's basement, outside his bedroom. He continued making camera adjustments after he was rolling--perhaps as a sneaky way to ensure his audience would be clear on the director. The video project was entirely about his audience. Ultimately, the attack was, too.
Eric joined Dylan on-set. They kicked back in plush velvet recliners, bantering about the big event. Eric had a bottle of Jack Daniel's in one hand and Arlene laid across his lap. He took a swig and tried not to grimace. He hated the stuff. Dylan munched on a toothpick and took little sips of Jack as well.
They ranted for more than an hour. Dylan was wild and animated and angry, obsessively hurling his fingers through his long, ratty hair. Eric was mostly calm and controlled. They spoke with one voice: Eric's.
Eric introduced most ideas; Dylan riffed along. They insulted the usual inferiors: blacks, Latinos, gays, and women. "Yes, moms, stay home," Eric said. "Fucking make me dinner, bitch!"
Sometimes, Eric got kind of loud. That made Dylan nervous. It was after 1:00 A.M., and Eric's parents were upstairs, snoozing away. Careful, Dylan warned.
They rattled off a list of kids who'd pissed them off. Eric had been dragged across the country: the scrawny little white guy, constantly starting over, always at the bottom of the food chain. People kept making fun of him--"my face, my hair, my shirts." He enumerated every girl who had refused his advances.
Dylan got fired up just listening. He faced the camera and addressed his tormenters. "If you could see all the anger I've stored over the past four fucking years," he said. He described a sophomore who didn't deserve the jaw evolution gave him. "Look for his jaw," Dylan said. "It won't be on his body."
Eric named one guy he planned to shoot in the balls, another in the face. "I imagine I will be shot in the head by a fucking cop," he said.
No one they named would be killed.
It went back so much further than high school. From prekindergarten, at Foothills Day Care center, Dylan could remember them: all the stuck-up toddlers sneering at him. "Being shy didn't help," he said. At home it was just as bad. Except for his parents, his whole extended family looked down on him, treated him like the runt of the litter. His brother was always ripping on him; Byron's friends, too. "You made me what I am," Dylan said. "You added to the rage."
"More rage, more rage!" Eric demanded. He motioned with his arms. "Keep building it."
Dylan hurled another Ericism: "I've narrowed it down. It's humans I hate."
Eric raised Arlene, and aimed her at the camera. "You guys will all die, and it will be fucking soon," he said. "You all need to die. We need to die, too."
The boys made it clear, repeatedly, that they planned to die in battle. Their legacy would live. "We're going to kick-start a revolution," Eric said. "I declared war on the human race and war is what it is."
He apologized to his mom. "I really am sorry about this, but war's war," he told her. "My mother, she's so thoughtful. She helps out in so many ways." She brought him candy when he was sad, and sometimes Slim Jims. He said his dad was great, too.
Eric grew quiet. He said his parents had probably noticed him withdrawing. That was intentional--he was doing it to help them. "I don't want to spend any more time with them," he said. "I wish they were out of town so I didn't have to look at them and bond more."
Dylan was less generous. "I'm sorry I have so much rage, but you put it in me," he said. He got around to thanking them for self-awareness and self-reliance. "I appreciate that," he said.
The boys insisted their parents were not to blame. "They gave me my fucking life," Dylan said. "It's up to me what I do with it."
Dylan bemoaned the guilt they would feel, but then ridiculed it. He pitched his voice to mimic his mom: "If only we could have reached them sooner. Or found this tape."
> Eric loved that. "If only we would have asked the right questions," he added.
Oh, they were wily, the boys agreed. Parents were easy to fool. Teachers, cops, bosses, judges, shrinks, Diversion officers, and anyone in authority were pathetic. "I could convince them that I'm going to climb Mount Everest," Eric said, "or that I have a twin brother growing out of my back. I can make you believe anything."
Eventually, they got tired of the talk show and moved on to a tour of their arsenal.
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Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. "I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn't have any remorse," Eric said. "But I do."
Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn't done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him.
"Those are the most worthless apologies I've ever heard in my life," he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, "if you guys live."
"If you live?" Fuselier repeated. "They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry, they would not do it!"
This is exactly the sort of false apology Dr. Cleckley identified in 1941. He described phony emotional outbursts and dazzling simulations of love for friends, relatives, and their own children--shortly before devastating them. Psychopaths mimic remorse so convincingly that victims often believe their apologies, even from a state of ruin. Consider Eric Harris: months after his massacre, a group of experienced journalists from the top papers in the country watched him perform on the Basement Tapes. Most reported Eric apologizing and showing remorse. They marveled at his repentance.
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The boys got the camera rolling again three nights later. Same place, same setup, same time frame.
They laughed about how easy it was to build all the stuff. Instructions for everything were right there on the Internet--"bombs, poison, napalm, and how to buy guns if you're underage."
In between the logistics, they tossed in more bits of philosophy: "World Peace is an impossible thing.... Religions are gay."
"Directors will be fighting over this story," Dylan gushed. They pondered whom they should trust with their material: Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino?
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Agent Fuselier watched the tapes dozens of times. In one respect, they were a revelation. While the journals explained motive, the tapes conveyed personality. There was ample testimony about them from friends, but there's nothing like meeting a killer in person. The tapes offered the best approximation.
Fuselier understood that the Basement Tapes had been shot for an audience. They were partially performance--for the public, for the cops, and for each other. Dylan, in particular, was working his heart out to show Eric how invested he was. To laymen, Dylan appeared dominant. He was louder, brasher, and had much more personality. Eric preferred directing. He was often behind the lens. But he was always in charge. Fuselier saw Dylan gave himself away with his eyes. He would shout like a madman, then glance at his partner for approval. How was that?
The Basement Tapes were a fusion of invented characters with the real killers. But the characters the killers chose were revealing, too.
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Eric had a new idea. Columbine would remain the centerpiece of his apocalypse, but maybe he could make it bolder. Trip bombs and land mines? Nothing fancy, just simple explosives.
Expansion would require additional manpower. Eric began recruitment plans.
Around the end of March, Eric approached Chris Morris. What if they strung up a trip bomb right there behind Blackjack? That hole in the fence would be perfect--kids crawled through there all the time.
Chris was unenthusiastic. A bomb for pesky kids? Sounds a little extreme, he said.
Eric backpedaled. The bomb would not actually hit the kids, just scare the shit out of them.
No, Chris said. Definitely not.
Chris was starting to worry. Eric and Dylan were making a lot of bombs. They had blown a bunch off. And he was hearing stories from all kinds of kids about them getting guns.
Chris noticed a change in Eric. He was acting aggressive all of a sudden, picking fights with people for no good reason. Nate Dykeman saw something, too, in both Eric and Dylan: cutting classes more, sleeping in class, acting secretive. No one said anything.
Eric made at least three attempts to recruit Chris Morris, though Chris did not grasp that at the time. Some of the overtures came in the form of "jokes."
"Wouldn't it be fun to kill all the jocks?" he asked in bowling class. Why stop there, why not blow up the whole school? How hard would it be, really? Chris assumed Eric was joking, but still.
Come on, Eric said. They could put bombs on the power generators--that ought to take out the school.
Chris had enough. He turned to talk to someone else.
That is a standard recruitment technique for aspiring mass murderers, Fuselier explained. They toss out the idea, and if it's shunned it's a "joke"; if the person lights up, the recruiter proceeds to the next step.
When news of Eric's crack about killing the jocks was reported, many took it as confirmation of the target motive. Eric was a much wilier recruiter than that. He always played to the audience in front of him. He nearly always gauged their desires correctly. Suggesting the jocks didn't mean he wanted to single them out, it indicated he thought the idea would appeal to Chris.
Of course Eric would enjoy killing jocks, too, along with niggers, spics, fags, and every other group he railed against.
Dylan was leaking indiscriminately now. He made several public displays of the pipe bombs. These grew far more frequent as NBK came within sight. A lot of people knew about the guns. And the pipe bombs. Eric and Dylan were setting off more and more of them, getting bolder with whom they let in on it.
In February or March, Eric spilled something even scarier: napalm. It happened at a party at Robyn's house. Eric had not been friends with Zack since their falling out the past summer, but Eric needed something. He could not get the napalm recipes off the Web to work. Zack was good with that kind of thing. Eric had a pretty good idea that Zack was the man to help him.
Eric walked up to Zack good-naturedly, asked him how he was doing, chatted him up awhile. They talked about their futures.
Zack and Eric left the party at the same time, and drove separately to a supermarket, King Soopers. Zack bought a soda and a candy bar, and waited for Eric back in the parking lot. Eric came out and showed him a soda and a box of bleach. Bleach? What was the bleach for? Zack asked.
Eric said he was "going to try it."
Try what?
Napalm. Eric said he was going to try napalm. Did Zack know how to make it?
No.
Zack told the story to the investigators after the murders, but he lied the first time. He described Robyn's party, but edited out the napalm. He agreed to a polygraph, and just before they strapped him in, he confessed to the rest. He said the conversation went no further, and he never discussed napalm or the shotguns again--with Eric, Dylan, or anyone else. The results of his polygraph were inconclusive.
Eric also asked Chris to store napalm at his house. Eric and Dylan joked about it on the Basement Tapes: "Napalm better not freeze at that certain person's house." They disguised his identity at first, but then referred to "Chris Pizza's house." Crafty. (Chris Morris later testified that it was indeed him, and that he'd refused.)
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No time. Less than a month to go. Eric had a lot of shit left to do. He organized it into a list labeled "shit left to do." He had to figure out napalm, acquire more ammo, find a laser-aiming device, practice gear-ups, prepare final explosives, and determine the peak killing moment. One item was apparently not accomplished: "get laid." br />
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April 2, Staff Sergeant Mark Gonzales cold-called Eric about enlisting in the Marines. Eric said maybe. They talked several times.
That same month, he returned to "The Book of God." Months had passed; a whole lot had happened. He had thirty-nine crickets ready, twenty-four pipe bombs, and all four guns. Eric closed up the journal. That was done.
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Eric met Sergeant Gonzales. He wore a black Rammstein T-shirt, black pants, and black combat boots. He took a screening test and got an average score. The sergeant asked Eric to describe himself by selecting among tabs labeled with personal attributes. He chose "physical fitness," "leadership and self-reliance," and "self-discipline and self-direction." He would think about enlisting, and talk it over with his parents. He agreed to a home visit, with his parents.
It's not clear what Eric was getting out of the exercise. He probably had multiple motives. He had always pictured himself as a Marine--he might enjoy a last-minute taste. And he needed information: he was still struggling with the time bombs and the napalm. He told Gonzales he was interested in weapons and demolitions training, and he asked a lot of questions. But his parents were probably the key motive. They kept hounding Eric about his future. This would get them off his back. Two weeks of tranquillity. Breathing room to maneuver.
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Eric shot the next video scene on his own, in his car, driving, with the camera facing him from the dash. He had the music blaring, so much of what he said is unclear. He talked about the Blackjack crew, and apologized for what was ahead: "Sorry dudes, I had to do what I had to do." He was going to miss them. He was really going to miss Bob, his old boss who'd gotten drunk on the roof with them.