Columbine (32 page)

Dylan accepted joint blame. "Almost at the same time, we both got the idea of breaking into this white van," he said.

The boys were taken to county jail. They were fingerprinted, photographed, and booked. Then they were released into the custody of four furious parents.

36. Conspiracy

A
fter the murders, the detective team sought convictions. It 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 hadn't even tried to cover their tracks. And the primary living suspects were juveniles. Most of the friends had withheld something crucial: Robyn had helped purchase three of the guns, Chris and Nate had seen pipe bombs, and Chris and Zack 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. Fuselier had several solid agents on the case. He knew they could sniff out a liar.
How are the suspects responding?
he asked.
Do they seem deceptive?
Not at all. 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 agreed to polygraphs. That usually meant they had nothing left to hide.

Two friends, Robert Perry and Joe Stair, had been identified by witnesses as shooters or at least present at the scene. They were both tall and lanky--and therefore matched a common description for Dylan. 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'd 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'd described.

The physical evidence was even less damning. All the friends' houses were searched. No weapons were found. No ammo, no ordnance, no refuse of any pipe bomb assembly. Zack 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 a bust. There was an extraordinary amount of material: guns, ammo, gear, unused pipe bombs, strips of duct tape, and dozens of components from the big bombs. All of it was covered with the killers' prints; nobody else's. The same was true at the killers' 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 stores' files and credit card records. All signs indicated that the killers had purchased everything.

For months, Sheriff Stone publicly espoused a conspiracy theory. Fuselier could feel the conspiracy slipping away the first week. Within two, he knew it was remote. The most telling evidence came 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 leaked their plans in countless way, but there's no indication that anyone close to them ever breathed a word. Their friends' e-mails, IMs, day planners, and journals were searched, along with every paper the investigators could find; there was no sign that any of the friends had known.

Rumors about a third shooter have 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 or 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 and two in trench coats. "As soon as I learned Eric's coat was left outside on the landing, I knew what had happened there," Fuselier said. Witnesses exchanged stories, and 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. Their gunfire shattered windows and ricocheted off walls, ductwork, and stairs. Many kids heard crashes or explosions and positively identified the 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 the air-conditioning unit.

So what accounted for all the confusion? "Eyewitness testimony, in general, is not very accurate," one investigator explained. "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." 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--did he have scraggly hair? It fits together, and she connects it. Soon the killer is wearing the dirty blue T-shirt as well. Moments later, and forever after, she is convinced that's exactly what she saw.

Investigators identified nearly a dozen common misperceptions among library survivors. Distortion of time was rampant, particularly chronology. Witnesses recalled less once the killers approached them, not more. Terror stops the brain from forming new memories. A staggering number insisted 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 ones hit. Survivors also clung to reassuring concepts: that they were actually hiding by crouching under tables in plain sight.

Memory is notoriously unreliable. It happens even with the best witnesses. Six years later, Principal DeAngelis described the shooting as if he had just experienced it. He retraced his steps through the building, pausing at the exact spot where he first saw Dylan Klebold fire his shotgun. Mr. D pointed out Dylan's position and described everything Dylan was wearing: white T-shirt, military harness, ball cap turned around backward. But he has two entirely different versions of how he got there.

In one version, he learned of the shooting in his office. That was unusual: normally he would have been in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub. But Tuesday he was held up by an appointment. He had a meeting with a young teacher working on a one-year contract. Mr. D had been happy with the teacher's performance and was about to offer him a permanent position. They had just shaken hands and sat down when Frank's secretary's face slammed into the glass on the top half of his door. She had run to warn him so frantically that she'd failed to turn the knob completely and had hurtled right into the door. A moment later, she burst in shouting.

"Frank! They're shooting!"

"What?"

"Gunshots! Downstairs, there are gunshots!"

He bolted up. They ran out together--into the main foyer, just past the huge hanging trophy case. Dylan fired, and the case shattered behind Frank.

It was two or three years after the fact that Frank's secretary recounted that version for him. He told her she was nuts. He had no memory of that.

"In my version, I'm walking out calmly going to lunch," he said. "We've finished the meeting, I've offered him the job. He's happy."

DeAngelis had planned to offer the job. He liked the teacher and had pictured his joyful acceptance. Mentally, it had already happened. The actual events--gunfire in the hallway, his charge toward the girls' gym class, and the desperation to hide them--wiped out everything in his mental vicinity. His secretary's appearance was unimportant, and it conflicted with his "memory" of offering the job. One memory had to go.

Mr. D checked with the teacher. No job offer--they'd just sat down. Other witnesses had seen him run alongside his secretary. He came to accept that version of the truth, but he can't picture it. His visual brain insists that the false memory is real. Multiply that by nearly two thousand kids and over a hundred teachers and a precisely accurate picture was impossible to render.

____

Investigators went back to interview the killers' closest friends several times. Each new interview and lead would raise more questions about the killers' associates. Sometimes new evidence revealed lies.

An FBI agent interviewed Kristi Epling the day after the murders. Kristi was connected to both killers, particularly Eric. They were close, and she was dating his buddy Nate Dykeman. She didn't seem to know much, though. 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. Kristi did not mention any of his notes in her possession.

Like most of the killers' friends, Kristi was exceptionally smart; she was headed to college on an academic scholarship. She played it 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. Kristi was careful: no return address on the envelope. The friend went to the police. She did not inform Kristi.

The pages included notes passed back and forth between Kristi and Eric in German class--a rambling conversation, conducted in German. They mentioned a hit list. That was old news to investigators--most of the school was on one of Eric's lists. But they had withheld that information from the public. Kristi had been hiding it; maybe she was hiding more. Detectives returned to question her. They asked about German class, and Kristi said she had exchanged notes with Eric 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. Kristi also said Nate had fled to Florida, to stay with his father and avoid the media hounds. They had talked on the phone that morning.

The detectives asked Kristi what should happen to someone who had helped the killers. "They should go to jail forever," she said. "It was a horrible thing." And what about someone who withheld information after the attack? "I don't know," Kristi said. "It would depend on what it was." They should probably get counseling, she suggested, but some sort of punishment, too.

They asked again: Did she 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 that offer, and finally she went for it. OK, 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 she did not want to destroy them. If she could just get them somewhere far, far away, she hoped to retrieve them someday when everything was more clear.

Once she copped to the truth, Kristi was forthcoming. She agreed to turn over her PC and her e-mail 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. Kristi had just been afraid. She'd thought she had something incriminating, and she'd panicked. No evidence of a conspiracy. Another dead end.

Nevertheless, Dr. Fuselier learned a great deal from the German conversation. It revolved around Kristi's new boyfriend; she'd had a short-lived romance with a sophomore named Dan. Eric couldn't believe she was going out with that little fuck.
Why, what was wrong with Dan?
she asked. For one thing, the prettyboy had punched him in the face last year, Eric said. Eric, in a fistfight? That surprised her. 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.

Kristi worried about Eric getting even. She asked her boyfriend about it, and he said he was afraid Eric might kill him.

Kristi decided to play peace broker. She took it up with Eric in German class again. She told him straight out how scared Dan was. She used the phrase "kill him." That made Eric nervous. He was in the juvenile Diversion program because of the van break-in, and threats like that could get him in trouble. Kristi said she'd be 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.
Seriously?
Seriously.