Columbine (51 page)

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.

____

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.

____

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?

____

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.

____

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.)

____

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."

____

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.

____

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.

____

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.

Eric still couldn't decide on the timing of the attack: before prom or after? "It is a weird feeling knowing you're going to be dead in two and a half weeks," he said.

____

April 9 was Eric's birthday. Eighteen years old--officially an adult. He got together with a bunch of friends at a local hangout.

A couple of days before or after, a friend saw Eric and Dylan in the cafeteria, huddled over a piece of paper. What was going on? she asked. They tried to hide it. She played it cool, then snatched the paper away. It was a hand-drawn diagram of the cafeteria, showing details like the location of surveillance cameras. That was weird.

Eric made several more diagrams. He conducted his inventory of cafeteria traffic. He did not allow that to be seen.

____

The boys shot more tapes. NBK would make for one hell of a graduation, they said. Lots of people crying, probably a candlelight vigil. Too bad they wouldn't see it. They congratulated themselves for documenting all this. But the cops would get the tapes first. Do you think they'll let people see them? Dylan asked. Probably not. The cops would chop up all their footage and show the public how they wanted it to look. That could be a problem. They resolved to copy the videos and distribute them to four news stations. Eric would scan his journal and e-mail it with maps and blueprints.

They never got around to that.

On Sunday, the boys headed into Denver for supplies. Of course they brought the camcorder. This was history. They picked up fuel containers and propane bottles. Dylan got his army pants. Eric seems to have been funding most of the operation, but Dylan paid his share this time. He brought $200 in cash; Eric had a check for $150.

The next shot was in Eric's bedroom, alone. He sat on his bed, pointing the camera at his face from a few inches away, producing an eerie fish-eye effect. Eric talked about his "best parents" again--and the cops making them pay.

"It fucking sucks to do this to them," he said. "They're going to be put through hell."

They could not have stopped him, Eric assured them. He quoted Shakespeare: "Good wombs have borne bad sons."

He wrote the same line in his day planner on the page for Mother's Day. That was revealing, Fuselier thought. Dylan wanted to be a good boy, but Eric understood he was evil.

It was funny, Eric told the television audience: all that razzing from his parents about goals and he was working his ass off. "It's kinda hard on me, these last few days," he said. "This is my last week on earth and they don't know."

The payoff would be worth it. "The apocalypse is coming and it's starting in eight days," he said. He licked his lips. "Oh yeah. It's coming, all right."

Then he held up his masterpiece: "This is 'The Book of God,'" he said. "This is the thought process"--if you want to understand why, read this. He flipped through to show off his best work. "Somehow, I'll publish these."

He stopped at a sketch in the back, of himself or Dylan in battle gear. The soldier was outfitted with a huge tank to be strapped to his back. It was labeled "napalm." He pointed to it and said, "This is the suicide plan."

____

Five days before Judgment, Dylan finally accepted that he was enacting it. "Time to die," he wrote. "We are in wait of our reward, each other."

We. The word dominates the entry, but does not include Eric. Dylan was addressing Harriet. He was grateful to Eric for providing the exit, but was uninterested in spending eternity with him.

____

Thursday evening, the Marine recruiter showed up for the home visit at 6:00
P.M.
Wayne and Kathy had lots of questions about job opportunities in the corps. Kathy asked whether antidepressants would affect Eric's eligibility. She fetched the prescription bottle, and Sergeant Gonzales wrote down "Luvox." He said he would check and call back.