Columbine (26 page)

Kathy wanted to hear more from the Browns; Wayne bitterly resented the interference. Who was this hysterical woman? Or her conniving little brat Brooks? Wayne was hard enough on the boys without outsiders telling him how to raise his sons.

Kathy called Judy that night. Judy felt she really wanted to listen, but Wayne was negative and dismissive in the background. It was kids' stuff, he insisted. It was all blown way out of proportion. He got on the line and told Judy that Eric had copped to the truth: he was afraid of her.

"Your son isn't afraid of me!" Judy said. "He came after me at my car!"

Wayne jotted notes about the exchange on a green steno pad. He outlined Eric's misdeeds, including getting in Judy Brown's face and "being a little bully." At the bottom of the page he summarized. He found Eric guilty of aggression, disrespect, property damage, and idle threats of physical harm. But he did not look kindly on the Browns. "Over-reaction to minor incident," he concluded. He dated it February 28, 1997.

At school the next day, Brooks heard Eric was making threats about him. He told his parents that night. They called the cops. A deputy came by to question them, then went to see the Harrises. Wayne called a few minutes later. He was bringing Eric over to apologize.

Judy told Brooks and his brother, Aaron, to hide. "I want you both in the back bedroom," she said. "And don't come out."

Wayne waited in the car. He refused to supply moral support--Eric had to walk up to the door and face Mr. and Mrs. Brown alone.

Eric had regained his normal composure. He was exceptionally contrite. "Mrs. Brown, I didn't mean any harm," he said. "And you know I would never do anything to hurt Brooks."

"You can pull the wool over your dad's eyes," she said, "but you can't pull the wool over my eyes."

Eric gaped. "Are you calling me a liar?"

"Yes, I am. And if you ever come up our street, or if you ever do anything to Brooks again, I'm calling the police."

Eric left in a huff. He went home and plotted revenge. He was wary now, but he wouldn't back down. The next mission target was the Browns' house. The team also hit "random houses." Mostly, they would set off fireworks, toilet paper the places, or trigger a house alarm; they also stuck Silly Putty to Brooks's Mercedes. Eric had been bragging about the missions on his Web site, and at this point, he posted Brooks's name, address, and phone number. He encouraged readers to harass "this asshole."

Brooks had betrayed Eric. Brooks had to be punished, but he was never significant. Eric had bigger ideas. He was experimenting with timers now, and those offered new opportunities. Eric wired a dozen firecrackers together and attached a long fuse. He was fastidiously analytical, but he had no way to assess his data, because he fled as soon as he lit the fuses.

Judy Brown viewed Eric as a criminal in bloom. She and Randy spoke to Eric's dad repeatedly. They kept calling the cops.

Wayne did not appreciate that. He would do anything to protect his sons' futures. Discipline was a no-brainer, but the boys' reputations were out of his control. Every kid was going to screw up now and then. The important thing was keeping it inside the family. One black mark could wipe out a lifetime of opportunities. What was the purpose of instilling discipline if one crazy family could ruin Eric's permanent record?

Wayne scrutinized Eric for a while, but ultimately he bought into his son's version. Eric was smart enough to cop to some bad behavior. His calm contrition made the Browns look hysterical.

Three days after the ice incident, Wayne was grappling with more parents and a Columbine dean. Wayne pulled out the six-by-nine-inch pad and labeled the cover "ERIC." He filled three more notebook pages over two days. Brooks knew about the missions and had gone to see a dean. The dean was concerned about alcohol consumption and damage to school property. He would get the police involved if necessary.

Eric played dumb. The word "denial" appears in large letters on two consecutive pages of Wayne's journal. Both times the word is circled, but the first entry is scribbled out. "Denial of even knowledge about alcohol subject between he & me," the second entry reads. "Didn't know what [Dean] Place was talking about." Wayne concluded that the issue was "Over & done--don't discuss with friends." He repeatedly stressed that silence was key. "Talked to Eric: Basically--finished," he wrote. "Leave each other alone don't talk about it. Agreed all discussion is over with."

Wayne Harris apparently breathed easier for a while. He didn't write in his journal for a month and a half. Then come four rapid entries documenting a slew of phone calls. First, Wayne talked to Zack's mom and another parent. The next day, two years and one day before the massacre, a deputy from the Jeffco sheriff's department called. Wayne put his guard up. "We feel victimized, too," he wrote. "We don't want to be accused every time something happens. Eric learned his lesson." He crossed out the last phrase and wrote "is not at fault."

The real problem was Brooks, Wayne was convinced. "Brooks Brown is out to get Eric," he wrote. "Brooks had problems with other boys. Manipulative & Con Artist."

If the problem continued, it might be time to hire a mediator. Or a lawyer. Wayne's last entry on the feud occurred a week later, on April 27, after a call with Judy Brown. "Eric hasn't broken promise to Mr. Place--the dean--about leaving each other alone," he wrote. At the bottom of the page he repeated his earlier sentiments: "We feel victimized, too. Manipulative, Con Artist."

____

Eric totally rocked on the missions. Dylan enjoyed them, too--he liked the camaraderie, especially. He fit in there, he had a role to play, he belonged. But the missions were brief diversions; they were not making him happy. In fact, Dylan was miserable.

30. Telling Us Why

J
effco had a problem. Before Eric and Dylan shot themselves, officers had discovered files on the boys. The cops had twelve pages from Eric's Web site, spewing hate and threatening to kill. For detectives, a written confession, discovered before the killers were captured, was a big break. It certainly simplified the search warrant. But for commanders, a
public
confession, which they had sat on since 1997--that could be a PR disaster.

The Web pages had come from Randy and Judy Brown. They had warned the sheriff's department repeatedly about Eric, for more than a year and a half. Sometime around noon April 20, the file was shuttled to the command center in a trailer set up in Clement Park. Jeffco officials quoted Eric's site extensively in the search warrants executed that afternoon, but then denied ever seeing it. (They would spend several years repeating those denials. They suppressed the damning warrants as well.) Then Sheriff Stone fingered Brooks as a suspect on
The Today Show
.

It was a rough time for the Brown family. The public got two conflicting stories: Randy and Judy Brown had either labored to prevent Columbine or raised one of its conspirators. Or both.

To the Browns it looked like retribution. Yes, their son had been close to the killers--close enough to see it coming. The Browns had blown the whistle on Eric Harris over a year earlier, and the cops had done nothing. After Eric went through with his threats, the Browns were fingered as accomplices instead of heroes. They couldn't believe it. They told the
New York Times
they had contacted the sheriff's department about Eric fifteen times. Jeffco officials would insist for years that the Browns never met with an investigator--despite holding a report indicating they had.

The officers knew they had a problem, and it was much worse than the Browns realized. Thirteen months before the massacre, Sheriff's Investigators John Hicks and Mike Guerra had investigated one of the Browns' complaints. They'd discovered substantial evidence that Eric was building pipe bombs. Guerra had considered it serious enough to draft an affidavit for a search warrant against the Harris home. For some reason, the warrant was never taken before a judge. Guerra's affidavit was convincing. It spelled out all the key components: motive, means, and opportunity.

A few days after the massacre, about a dozen local officials slipped away from the Feds and gathered clandestinely in an innocuous office in the county Open Space Department building. It would come to be known as the Open Space meeting. The purpose was to discuss the affidavit for a search warrant. How bad was it? What should they tell the public?

Guerra was driven to the meeting, and told never to discuss it outside that group. He complied.

The meeting was kept secret, too. That held for five years. March 22, 2004, Guerra would finally confess it happened, to investigators from the Colorado attorney general. He described it as "one of those cover-your-ass meetings."

District Attorney Dave Thomas attended the meeting. He told the group he found no probable cause for the investigators to have executed the draft warrant--a finding ridiculed once it was released. He was formally contradicted by the Colorado attorney general in 2004.

At a notorious press conference ten days after the murders, Jeffco officials suppressed the affidavit and boldly lied about what they had known. They said they could not find Eric's Web pages, they found no evidence of pipe bombs matching Eric's descriptions, and had no record of the Browns meeting with Hicks. Guerra's affidavit plainly contradicted all three claims. Officials had just spent days reviewing it. They would repeat the lies for years.

Several days after the meeting, Investigator Guerra's file on his investigation of Eric disappeared for the first time.

____

The cover-your-ass meeting was a strictly Jeffco affair, limited mostly to senior officials. Most of the detectives on the case--including the Feds and cops from local jurisdictions--were unaware of the cover-up. They were trying to crack the case.

Police detectives continued fanning out across Littleton. They had two thousand students to interview--no telling where the truth might be tucked away. They all reported back to the leadership team in the Columbine band room. It was chaos. Guys were coming in with notes on scraps of paper and matchbook covers.

At the end of the week, Kate Battan took control of the situation. She called everyone into the band room for a massive four-hour debriefing and information exchange. At the end of the meeting, three crucial questions remained: How had the killers gotten all the guns? How had they gotten the bombs into the school? Who had conspired to help them?

Battan and her team had a good idea where the conspiracy lay. They had nearly a dozen chief suspects. They pitted two against each other. Chris Morris claimed he was innocent. Prove it, they said. Help us smoke out Duran.

Chris agreed to a wiretap. On Saturday afternoon, he called Phil Duran from FBI headquarters in Denver, while federal agents listened in.

They commiserated about how rough it had gotten. "It's pretty crazy, man," Phil said.

"Yeah. The media's going psycho."

Chris went for the kill too soon. He had heard Duran had gone out shooting with the killers, and someone videotaped it. He mentioned the tape, but Duran brushed it off. For fourteen minutes, they spoke. Chris kept circling back to it; Duran deflected as many times. "I have no clue, dude," he said.

Finally, Chris got an admission that Duran had been out shooting with Eric and Dylan. He got a name: the place was called Rampart Range.

It didn't sound like much. It was leverage.

____

On Sunday, an ATF agent paid Duran a visit. Duran told him everything. Eric and Dylan had approached him about a gun. He'd put them in touch with Mark Manes, who'd sold them the TEC-9. Duran admitted to relaying some of the money but said he'd earned nothing on the deal. Every bit of that was true.

Five days later, detectives hauled Manes into ATF headquarters in downtown Denver, with attorneys for defense and prosecution. Manes made a full confession. Duran had introduced him to Eric and Dylan on January 23 at the Tanner Gun Show--the same place the killers had bought the three other guns. Duran identified Eric as the buyer, and he did the talking. Manes agreed to sell the gun on credit. Eric would pay $300 now, $200 more when he could raise it.

It was Dylan who showed up at Manes's house that night. He handed over the down payment and picked up the gun. Duran delivered the $200 a couple of weeks later.

Detectives asked Manes repeatedly about the killers' ages. Eventually, he admitted that he'd assumed they were under eighteen.

Manes had bought the TEC-9 at the same show, about six months earlier. He'd used his debit card. Later, he produced a bank statement, showing he'd paid $491. He'd made nine dollars on the deal. It could cost him eighteen years.

____

Dr. Fuselier didn't think much about motive the first few days. It was kind of a moot point, and they had a conspiracy to rope in. Every minute, evidence could be vanishing, alibis arranged, cover stories coordinated. But curiosity soon intruded, and refused to be dented. His mind kept returning to the critical question of
why?