No Easy Answers (11 page)

I sat there staring at the screen for a moment. It was unexpected, to say the least.

On another page, Eric had posted my phone number, along with a specific list of everything he hated about me. On yet another, he encouraged would-be killers to seek me out, and promised a reward for my head.

Eric had an entire three-page document dedicated to the building of pipe bombs. He gave specific instructions on what ingredients to use, along with updates on his own progress. He described the bombs he'd already built, and the successful detonation of one of them. The entry read:

Mother fucker blew BIG. Pazzie was a complete success and it blew dee fuck outa a little creek bed. Flipping thing was heartpounding
gut-wrenching brain-twitching ground-moving insanely cool! His brothers haven't found a target yet though
.

Atlanta, Phobus, Peltro, and Pazzie are complete, for those of who [sic] that don't know what they are, they are the first 4 true pipe bombs created entirely from scratch by the rebels REB and VoDkA. Atlanta and Phobus are each 1 1/4″ by 6″ pipes, Peltro is 1″ by 6″, and Pazzie is 3/4″ by 5″. Each is packed with powder that we got from fountains, mortar shells, and cracker-ing balls. Each also has a 14″ mortar shell type fuse. Now our only problem is to find the place that will be “ground zero.”

Eric had posted detailed descriptions of the “Rebel Missions” he and Dylan had carried out in the neighborhood. In this example, they set off firecrackers outside the house of the person they had targeted for the evening:

Awwwwyeya. This mission was so fuckin fun man. OK, first of all, my dad was the only parent home, so it was much easier getting out. . . but still hard since all those rocks in my backyard make so much noise . . .

We watched as some lights in the Target's house went on, then off. Maybe the bastard heard something. But when the (firecracker) strip started, he turned his bedroom lights off. The strip lasted for about 30 seconds . . . we think . . . It was very fucking long. Almost all of it went off, loud and bright. Everything worked exactly how we wanted it to. After about 15 minutes we started down the bike trail to the next target. The first target's lights were on again in the bedroom, but we think we got away undetected. While we were walking to the next target, we shot some stuff. Heh, VoDkA brought his sawed off BB gun and a few BB's, too.
So we loaded it, pumped it, and fired it off a few shots at some houses and trees and stuff. We probably didn't do any damage to any houses, but we aren't sure . . .

. . . Ok people, I'm gonna let you in on the big secret of our clan. We ain't no god damn stupid ass quake clan! We are more of a gang. We plan out and execute missions. Anyone pisses us off, we do a little deed to their house. Eggs, [TP], superglue, busyboxes, large amounts of fireworks, you name it and we will probably or already have done it. We have many enemies in our school, therefore we make many missions. It is sort of a nighttime tradition for us
.

Based on the Web site, however, it seemed clear that these “Rebel Missions” weren't going to satisfy Eric for much longer. Writing, “I live in Denver and would love to kill all its residents,” Eric offered one final warning to his readers:

Well all you people out there can just kiss my ass and die. From now on, I don't give a fuck what almost any of you mutha fuckas have to say, unless I respect you which is highly unlikely, but for those of you who happen to know me and know that I respect you, may peace be with you and don't be in my line of fire. For the rest of you, you all better fucking hide in your house because im comin [sic] for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the fuckin teeth and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL fucking KILL EVERYTHING! No I am not crazy, crazy is just a word, to me it has no meaning, everyone is different, but most of you fuckheads out there in society, going to your everyday fucking jobs and doing your everyday routine shitty things, I say fuck you and die. If you got a problem with my thoughts, come
tell me and I'll kill you, because . . . god damnit, DEAD PEOPLE DON'T ARGUE!

I'd seen enough. I told my parents.

“This was not a little kid's joke,” said Randy Brown of Eric Harris's Web pages. “Threats against everybody, wanting to kill everybody, the violence of it all. And then there was his specific threat against Brooks. I didn't know anything about threat assessment at the time—we'd never even heard the words before—but those are certainly signs that we know now of serious threats.”

Brooks and his parents got into a heated argument over what to do next. Randy wanted to go to the Harrises and tell them. He suggested faxing the pages to Mr. Harris anonymously. But Judy Brown objected. She said Mr. Harris had done nothing about the windshield incident; he hadn't even offered to pay for the damage.

The family eventually agreed to call the police. That night, Deputy Miller of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department came to the Brown home to look at the pages for himself. It was March 18, 1998.

Randy Brown handed over printed copies of the Web pages to Miller, and explained his family's past troubles with Eric. They discussed the pipe bombs and Eric's desire to kill more people. Most of all, Randy expressed his concern for Brooks's safety.

Judy and Randy gave Dylan Klebold's name to Miller as well, because he and Eric were such close friends—and Dylan had been mentioned on the site as being part of the “Rebel Missions.” However, Brooks had not told his parents that Dylan was the one who gave him the Web site address in the first place.

I never told my parents that I got the address from Dylan until after the shootings. I was worried that if I did, Eric would find out, and then Dylan would be in trouble with him for having warned me. I simply told my parents that a friend had given it to me, and that if Eric ever found out who, he would hurt him.

In truth, I don't know what Dylan's motives were for giving me that Web site. Maybe he was trying to warn me. Maybe he thought the site was funny, and just didn't take it as seriously as I did.

Or maybe Eric did want him to give the address to me. Maybe Dylan was in on it, and both of them wanted to send me a scare. I didn't know.

I have no doubt that Dylan knew exactly what was on that Web site when he gave me the address. He might not have been posting things on it himself, but at the very least, Eric was keeping him up to speed. So I was afraid to go back to him and mention it.

I was afraid to call the police at first, too. In my dealings at Columbine, I had learned that if you report someone, nothing gets done—and then the person finds out who reported him and makes that person's life that much worse. At Columbine, if you got into a fight with someone and you were scared of him, you might mention this to the administration; the administration would then bring both of you into a “counseling session” to try to work things out. That didn't work. So I feared calling the police, but at the same time, I knew something needed to be done.

My parents did their best to explain to the officer about the Web pages, the references to
Doom
, and other computer terms. The officer admitted that he knew little about computers, but told us that there were others at the station who would understand better.

The officer seemed very sympathetic to me. He could tell that the whole situation had really freaked me out, and he told me a little about his own experiences with bullies in an effort to make me feel better. He also promised us that the situation would be investigated further.

A week or so later, my parents phoned the police station to follow up on their complaint. They made an appointment to see Detective John Hicks on March 31.

“We actually went over there twice,” Judy Brown said. “They couldn't find the Web pages the first time, so we printed out new copies and went a second time. The minute he saw them, he said, ‘I have only seen one or two like this. This is serious.’ His demeanor immediately changed when he started to read it.”

According to the Browns, Detective Hicks brought in two members of the bomb squad to explain to the Browns how to spot a pipe bomb. He also asked the bomb squad to check if there had been any reports of bombs being set off in the area. When they looked into it, the answer was that yes, there was activity.

The Browns say Detective Hicks warned them that there might not be enough in the pages to legally accuse Eric of a threat against Brooks. The wording read, “I want to kill and maim . . . especially a few people . . . LIKE Brooks Brown.”

“He wasn't sure if that wording was going to be good enough to go for everything,” Randy explained. “But he added, ‘I've certainly got him for the pipe bomb building and the detonating.’ So we knew they had him for at least something. There was no point during that meeting that we didn't think they were going to get this kid.

“That's why it was such a shock when the attack on Columbine happened, and we found out that nothing had been done.”

A few days after my parents went to see the police, the word around school was that Eric and Dylan had gotten in big trouble over something. No one knew what it was; Eric and Dylan wouldn't talk about it. But we heard that both of them were in counseling.

I came home and told my parents. My dad had a big look of relief on his face. “That's it,” he said. “They did their job.”

My mom asked me if I could find out what specifically they were in trouble for, and I said there was no way; they were keeping it quiet.

“But Mom, it's big,” I said. “Everybody is talking about it.”

It only made sense to think that the counseling was for the pipe bomb building and the hate, and everything else that was on Eric's Web site.

What the Browns didn't know was that in reality, Eric and Dylan had just experienced their day in court for a van break-in that had happened at the end of January.

On January 30, 1998, Eric and Dylan were hanging out together in a parking lot near Deer Creek Canyon Road. They were parked next to a van loaded with various pieces of electrical equipment.

At first, Eric and Dylan were just killing time, breaking bottles and lighting a few small fireworks. Yet their attention was drawn to the van. When they realized that no one was around, they decided to force their way into it. While Eric kept watch from inside his car, Dylan smashed in the van's window with a rock and began unloading equipment.

Once they had filled up the back seat of Eric's new Honda Prelude—Eric's parents had given him a car now that he finally had his driver's license—the two took off and pulled over a few miles away to check out what they had stolen.

Officer Tim Walsh of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office was on routine patrol in the area. He noticed the two boys and parked his car a short distance away to observe them. After about five minutes, he approached, shone a flashlight into Eric's face, and asked him what they were doing.

At first, Eric and Dylan claimed they had found the equipment stacked up on the side of the road. When Walsh made it clear that he didn't believe that story, they cracked. The boys admitted what they had done, and Walsh took them into custody.

Their parents were furious. Eric and Dylan received significant grounding as punishment. However, both of their fathers backed them up when they appeared before Jefferson County Magistrate John DeVita in early April of 1998.

“This has been a rather traumatic experience, and I think it's probably good... that they got caught the first time,” Tom Klebold told DeVita.

Eric and Dylan were sentenced to one year in a juvenile diversion program, where they would be forced to undergo four days of classes dealing with anger management and drunk driving, 45 hours of community service, multiple fines, and counseling. They received this sentence the same week that the Browns met with Detective Hicks at the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

According to the Browns, when Detective Hicks ran a search for prior offenses on Eric Harris, the report of the break-in came up. However, the Browns did not learn that Dylan had been involved in the break-in as well. So when Brooks came home and said that both Eric and Dylan were in trouble, they had no reason to suspect anything other than the Web pages.

As for Eric, he offered two completely different perspectives on the incident. In a school essay he wrote on November 18, 1998, he described the incident to his teacher:

After a very unique experience in a real live police station being a real live criminal, I had lots of time to think about what I did. . . . As I waited, I cried, I hurt, and I felt like hell . . . My parents lost all respect and trust in me and I am still slowly regaining it. That experience showed me that no matter what crime you think of committing, you will get caught, that you must, absolutely must, think things through before you act, and that just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. To this day I still do not have a hard realistic reason why we broke into that car, but since we did, we have been set on a track that makes it mandatory for me to be a literal angel until March of ‘99.

However, in his own personal journal, which was obtained by members of the media in late 2001, Eric described the incident much, much differently:

Isn't America supposed to be the land of the free? How come if I'm free, I can't deprive a stupid fucking dumbshit from his possessions if he leaves them sitting in the front seat of his fucking van out in plain sight and in the middle of fucking nowhere on a Fri-fucking-day night? NATURAL SELECTION. Fucker should be shot.

Just as he had done with Judy Brown several months earlier, Eric Harris was saying one thing and thinking another. The diversion program would not stop Eric's hatred—nor would it stop him from secretly beginning a plot with Dylan Klebold to attack Columbine High School
.

Our whole family was on edge for some time after we discovered Eric's Web pages. We kept a baseball bat by the door, in case Eric tried to break into our house. If we saw a car drive by slowly or heard people making noise outside, my brother and I would sneak out with my dad and hide behind the bushes, watching. My dad installed brighter lights for the front and rear doors, as well as a motion-detector light.