No Easy Answers

by Merritt, Rob, Brown, Brooks

  I had been invited to participate in a group talk with President Bill Clinton in early June. The discussion, called “Kids and Guns,” would have Clinton presiding over a panel of teens from around the country. It would be televised on ABC's Good Morning America.

  The night before I was going to get on a plane for Washington, D.C., the network called to rescind my invitation. I had been removed because as “a witness in an active investigation,” I would not be allowed to enter the White House. A different student from Columbine wound up attending in my place.

  When they told me that, I just laughed. That was all I could do.

  The day after our appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show aired, graduation ceremonies were held for the Class of 1999. We tried to make it seem as normal as possible. My family posed for photos with me in my robe before we left for the ceremony. My parents told me how proud they were.

  Still, there was no getting past the shadow that hung over that day. The ceremony was being televised nationally. Everyone was watching us.

  Principal DeAngelis gave a speech to the 437 kids that were graduating that day.

  “Two of the graduating seniors of the Class of 1999 and one of the faculty members are no longer with us,” he said. “Their lives were cut down too short. Their lives were full of courage and hope and enthusiasm. We will never forget that they loved us as much as we loved them. Each of us will carry the spirit of Isaiah Shoels, Lauren Townsend, and Dave Sanders into the future.”

  Valeen Schnurr, Jeanna Park, and Lisa Kreutz, all of whom had been wounded at Columbine, were there to receive their diplomas. Lauren Townsend's family walked across the stage to accept her diploma.

  I felt drained afterwards. My parents gave me a hug, and then I stepped away for a moment, to be alone with my thoughts. When I did so, I became aware of someone standing behind me. It was Principal DeAngelis.

  I hadn't spoken to him since the shootings.

  “How are you, Brooks?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “I'm doing.” Seeing as how the administration had asked me not to return to school, I really didn't feel like talking to him.

  “What did you think of my speech?” he asked.

  I paused and looked at him.

  “I thought it was bad,” I said after a moment.

  DeAngelis looked taken aback. “What?”

  “Look, fifteen people died that day,” I said. “Not just the kids that you named up there. We lost people that day that you didn't even count. That your school cost the lives of. Avoiding the truth doesn't change it.”

  “I just thought it would make it nicer for these kids,” DeAngelis said. “Easier to deal with.”

  “You're wrong,” I said. I turned and walked away.

  DeAngelis followed me. He'd been reading the papers; he knew my family had been speaking out against the atmosphere at Columbine. “What did I do?” he asked me. “Why are you and your parents so upset with me?”

  I could have told him. For four years, the administration had turned a blind eye to the torment the unpopular kids suffered every day. They had allowed that atmosphere of hate and cruelty to exist. And now—even as DeAngelis gave speech after speech about Columbine being “full of love”—the school had asked me and the rest of Eric and Dylan's friends to just “go away” after the shootings. The words he had said to the cameras did not reflect reality.

  I didn't feel like fighting with him about it, though. Graduation was over. I was done with that school now.

  I walked away from DeAngelis and rejoined my family.

  At the same time students were graduating from Columbine, Sheriff Stone told the Denver Post he was “bowing out of the media maelstrom.”

  Stone's accusation against Brooks wasn't the only thing he'd done that was attracting criticism. From the beginning, Stone made blunders and comments to the media that were either uninformed or flat-out incorrect.

  On the day of the shooting, Stone said there were “up to twenty-five dead,” even though parents were still at Leawood Elementary waiting for word on their children. Stone claimed that Eric and Dylan tried three times to escape the school and were turned back by gunfire each time. The official report from the sheriff's office later indicated that no such thing had happened.

  Early in the investigation, Stone spoke about how he believed the parents of Eric and Dylan should be held accountable. Those words might have scared off the Harrises from cooperating with investigators; they demanded immunity from prosecution before they would consent to police interviews, and when that immunity was denied, they refused to talk.

  He also implied that three students who were detained outside of the school on the day of the shooting might be involved. The three students identified themselves as the “Splatter Punks.” They said they were only there because they had heard about the shootings on the radio and come to the school out of curiosity.

  Stone told authorities he suspected them “because the shootings were not on the radio at that time.” Yet his department's own official spokesman pointed out that the students had already been cleared. Stone wound up holding a midnight press conference to tell reporters that what he'd said earlier that day was wrong.

  In a May 7, 1999 article, “Colorado Sheriff to Stop Talking to Reporters,” Washington Post writer Tom Kenworthy shared concerns from local authorities about Sheriff Stone.

  “To some senior law enforcement officials here, none of whom will comment publicly, Stone is violating a cardinal rule of criminal investigations: Don't say anything that might tip off possible subjects or potentially jeopardize future prosecutions,” Kenworthy wrote. “Stone's sometimes ill-considered public statements, they suggest, reflect his lack of senior lawenforcementexperience and training, and underscore howfar removed he is now from his days as a policeman in suburban Lakewood.”

  By the time I graduated, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department had already conducted three interviews with me. So it wasn't a surprise to my mom when they called again in July for another conversation.

  The police said they had my backpack. When we got back to my house on April 20 and I saw my brother run out of the house, I jumped out of the car and ran to hug him; I left my backpack behind. It had never occurred to me to go back for it, so it had remained in Ryan Schwayder's backseat.

  On May 18, Detective Jon Watson interviewed Ryan about what had happened. Watson asked at length about my actions that day; Ryan explained that he and Deanna had picked me up, and I had told them there was a shooting. According to Watson's report, Ryan's mom commented that my bag was still in the Jeep. Watson chose to take it.

  Over those next two months, the police went through the contents of my backpack, looking for something that would connect me to Columbine. Now they were calling my parents for a fourth interview—and they had a “revelation” in store.

  When she answered the phone, Judy Brown said, the officer on the other end was very polite and friendly. He said the police had Brooks's backpack, and that they were going to bring it over to the house.

  “You don't have to do that,” she said. “We'll come down and get it.”

  “No, no,” the officer replied. “I want to do this for you, because I'm sure you and Mr. Brown have questions for me, and we want to answer every question you have.”

  “Okay, then,” Judy said. “Just drop on by.”

  “No, I want to make an appointment,” the officer said. “Andyou're sure Mr. Brown will be there, too?”

  That seemed like an odd request to Judy, if the officers were simply bringing a book bag over. Later that day, two officers sat down at her kitchen table and pulled out several of Brooks's notebooks. They had looks of “grave concern” on their faces, Judy said.

  “We have some things that are really going to upset you, Mr. and Mrs. Brown,” they told Randy.

  The other leaned in close. “We think you're in danger.”

  I came home in time to see my parents at the table with the police. At first it didn't strike me as an
ything unusual; we'd had so many conversations with the police and the FBI that it had become common to see them around. However, I quickly noticed that this time, they were being a lot more confrontational than before.

  They had one of my old notebooks, with my poem about Robert Craig in it. I had written that poem the year before, shortly after Robert had committed suicide. The poem was from Robert's point of view; it talked about depression and death, and his desire to murder his father. The police had read the poem and interpreted it to mean that I was plotting against my own parents.

  Trying to keep my cool, I pointed out that underneath the poem, I had written “Dedicated to Robert Craig.” They asked me about other poems in my notebook that also dealt with dark subjects. “Look, I write a lot, and it isn't happy all the time,” I said.

  The police had pages of song lyrics that I had printed out from my computer. The police believed I had written them myself, and that they were all about anger and killing. I took one look at them and immediately pointed out which Insane Clown Posse album they were from. Anyone with knowledge of contemporary music or computers would have recognized that the lyrics had been printed from the Internet. These police officers, however, didn't understand that.

  The police pulled out “eyewitness reports” suggesting that I had known about Eric's pipe bombs. One lady had told them she “saw my white car parked over at Eric's house all the time.” My parents pointed out that I don't have a white car.

  Next, they had a neighbor who said he'd been jogging one evening when he saw Eric and me together. According to this witness, I was on a red bike, wearing a black trench coat, and Eric and I were “lighting something.”

  I don't own a black trench coat, nor do I have a red bike. “Go ahead and look in our garage,” my mom said. “See if there's a red bike there.”

  My parents asked when this “incident” had supposedly happened.

  “It was around March or April of 1998,” the officer replied.

  My parents argued that at that time Eric and I had not even been speaking. In fact, Eric had wanted me dead and posted threats against me. My parents reminded the investigators about Eric's Web pages.

  “We're not here to talk about that,” the officers replied.

  The interview went on for three hours. They kept repeating, “We want Brooks to take another lie detector test. We want our own test.” Even though we had rebuttals for every piece of “evidence” they pulled out of my bag, they weren't backing down.

  Finally my dad said, “You know what? This interview is over. Don't come back unless you really have something.”

  The officers left. They had come to prove to my parents that I was a killer, and left looking like fools. Nonetheless, the fact that this had happened almost three months after Stone's original accusation showed that the sheriff wasn't letting up.

  16

  the families

  A QUESTION I STRUGGLED WITH IN THE MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK was how to deal with the families of the victims. On the one hand, I wanted to be able to extend my sympathies to them. On the other, I knew they were being fed information from the police that I'd been involved. Because of that, I never knew how to approach them.

  I didn't always know when I was going to run into them. One time, I was spending the day with Kevin Larson, who had been the lead singer of our band the summer before. He had started dating a girl named Erin Fleming. The two of us went over to her house; as I was sitting in her living room, I looked around and noticed pictures all over the walls of Kelly Fleming, who had died in the Columbine library. Shaken, I realized that Erin Fleming was Kelly's sister.

  I spoke to her mother briefly, telling her who I was and how I knew Erin. We didn't talk about Kelly at all. To be honest, once I had made the connection, I felt really uncomfortable being there. Her parents were very nice, but it was an awkward situation.

  I tried to e-mail Tom Mauser a few times. Since I had mentored his son Danny on the debate team, I felt like I should say something now that Danny was gone. Mr. Mauser never wrote me back.

  I understand what must have been going through his mind, considering what the sheriff was saying about me. Still, it's hard when you want to tell a dad how special you thought his kid was, and you can't, because he's been told that you had something to do with his son's death.

  Like many of the other parents, Rich Petrone, Daniel Rohrbough's stepfather, wasn't sure what to think about me. But my dad, who knew Rich from the real estate business, managed to talk with him, explaining that the Web pages we had reported to the media were real, and that we were willing to share them. In fact, he said, we were willing to share anything they wanted to see.

  This was important, because the deadline for filing lawsuits over the shootings was approaching. Mr. Petrone knew that if we could prove we had reported Eric's Web pages to the police, it would show that the police had had prior warning. So Mr. Petrone arranged for us to meet with Daniel's father, Brian Rohrbough.

  Brian Rohrbough has neversettled for easy answers. From the moment his son Danny was killed at Columbine, he demanded information from the police about what had happened and why.

  Danny had been killed on the steps outside Columbine High School. He was clearly visible in helicopter footage from TV news reports; the next day, his parents saw a giant photo of his body in the newspaper. It was the first real confirmation they'd had of his death; no one from the sheriff's office had notified them. In fact, Danny's body wasn't moved from that sidewalk for well over a day. The police claimed there were fears of the bodies being “booby-trapped,” and that's why they were left on the ground for so long. Rich Petrone had even offered to sign a waiver saying he didn't care if he got blown up, “but he wasn't going to let Danny's body stay on that sidewalk for another day.”

  In the first few months of the investigation, Rohrbough sought constant updates on any conspirators in the attack.

  “While I wasn't jumping to any conclusions, I was trying to learn about all of Harris and Klebold's acquaintances,” he says. “I had heard the sheriff say Brooks Brown was a suspect. And at the time, I had no reason to not believe what police were saying.”

  Six weeks after Stone's comments about Brooks, Rohrbough went to the sheriff and asked what was going on. “I said to him, ‘You told me this Brown kid was a suspect. When are you going to arrest him?’” he recalls. “Stone told me that Brooks wasn't involved. I didn't think much about that until later, when I realized, ‘Wait a minute. The sheriff told me he's not involved, yet his name is still being thrown around in public.’ That was when I first realized that there was something wrong.

  “Even so, I still honestly didn't know what was going on,” he said. “I wasn't jumping to any conclusions. I was just waiting for evidence.”

  Now, months later, the Petrones had arranged a meeting between Rohrbough and Brooks's parents. The meeting would take place at the Petrones' home.

  “It was very uncomfortable when we first walked in,” Judy Brown recalls. Brian had not arrived yet, and there was a period of tension while they waited with Sue Petrone, Danny Rohrbough's mother. However, once Rohrbough arrived, the Browns started showing the families printouts of Eric's Web pages. Rohrbough was stunned by what he saw.

  “Many of the people who tried to offer help didn't have any information I could use,” he says. “They'd heard something from their neighbor, or something like that, and there would be no way to confirm it. When I met with the Browns, though, it was interesting—because not only did they know something, they had documentation. They gave me close to two hundred pages of Web printouts, transcripts, and handwritten notes. There was definitely something there.”

  The Browns carefully explained their history with Eric Harris, and the report they had made to the police the year before.

  “You could see the confusion,” Judy Brown recalls. “And then, in Brian's face, you could see it hit him: ‘Oh, my God, the police have been lying to us about this.’”

  Rohrbough was am
azed to learn that the police had never taken Brooks's computer. They had never searched his house. They had never searched his car. They hadn't even questioned him until six days after the attack. “If he's such a big suspect, why didn't they investigate him?” he asked.

  Judy Brown made Rohrbough an offer. If he wanted, he could be alone in a room with Brooks—no attorneys, no family members to inter-fere—and ask him anything. The offer impressed Rohrbough.

  “From a parent's point of view, that would be one of the first things you would offer if your son has nothing to hide,” Rohrbough said.

  However, Rich Petrone made another suggestion: perhaps it would be better for Brooks to show Rohrbough in person where he was on the day of the attack. The families agreed to meet at Columbine High School, to walk the route Brooks had taken that day.

  I was scared to meet Brian. I really was. My friends had been responsible for Danny Rohrbough's death. I felt so ashamed of that, and I didn't know what his father, who had been angry enough to tear down the memorial crosses that had been erected for Eric and Dylan, would say to me. On top of that, it would be the first time I'd ever retraced my steps from April 20. I didn't know what to expect.

  My parents went with me to Columbine, where we met the Petrones and the Rohrboughs. I thought I had steeled myself for anything; I didn't know if Danny's parents would be rude to me, or if they believed I was to blame. What I hadn't expected was my own reaction when I saw Mr. Rohrbough for the first time. I started to cry.

  “He looks like his son,” I said to my mom.

  I led the group over to the spot where I'd seen Eric pull into the parking lot. From there, we walked down Pierce, where I heard the first shots. I explained that they had sounded like nail guns, and Brian nodded. Brian was asking questions the entire way, wanting to know what I did at each point along the way. I didn't know it at the time, but he was timing us as we walked. He wanted to make sure my account matched up with everything else he'd heard.