After we had finished the walk, I was badly in need of a cigarette. I shook his hand and stepped away so he could talk to my parents.
In a way, it felt good to talk with one of the victims' parents at length. Now they knew me as a person, rather than just a name they'd heard from the police. At the same time, though, I just felt overwhelmed, especially after taking that walk again. It made the memories way too fresh.
While the walk had been difficult, it was helpful for Brian Rohrbough to finally receive a firsthand account of that day's events. Also, Brooks's explanation matched what Rohrbough had already learned. Matt Houck, who had been in the backseat of Ryan Schwayder's car when Brooks called 911, had also talked to Rohrbough about what had happened that day.
“What Brooks was saying fit the scenario, it fit the surroundings, and it fit what we had already heard from other people,” Rohrbough says. “At the time, there wasn't much information available, so you never knew what to believe. But when you get stories that start to match, there's a much greater chance that they're right.”
Today, Rohrbough believes Brooks was being used by the police.
“It became pretty obvious that Brooks was a convenient person to blame, because of what his father was saying [about the Web pages],” Rohrbough said. “The easiest way to shut his dad up was to say, ‘Well, he's trying to protect his kid, because his kid's involved.’ And that's what most of the press believed. I sat in on a meeting with a group of reporters who were talking about how mad they were, because they believed what the sheriff was telling them off the record . . . Clearly, the easiest way to shut up somebody is to go after their kid. And that's what the police were doing.”
The Rohrboughs and the Petrones were the first parents that I had the chance to talk extensively with. Later, I received a call from Darrell Scott, Rachel Scott's father.
Mr. Scott had already co-authored a book about his daughter, entitled Rachel's Tears. Now he was putting together a tribute video, made up of comments from people who had known her. He had a photo of me studying with Rachel before a debate competition, and he knew that she and I had been friends. So he asked me to participate.
I agreed. I wanted to do it for Rachel.
Mr. Scott and I went to Clement Park, and when he turned on the camera I just started talking. I said that if Eric and Dylan had thought they were getting back at all the people who had made fun of them, they had made a horrible mistake by killing Rachel. If there was one person who would have accepted them, it was her. I talked about our first discussion on faith. I wanted to make it clear that Rachel had never judged people by their beliefs, despite what Bruce Porter had said at her funeral.
Rachel Scott was one of the most beautiful people I've ever known, and being able to speak in her memory gave me one small piece of closure. I thank her family for giving me that chance.
To this day, it's still awkward when I'm around the families of the people Eric and Dylan wounded or killed. No matter how nice they are to me, I know that somewhere deep down, they're looking at me and thinking, “I lost my child to those two sick bastards, and this guy was their friend.” It's hard to approach them. It's hard to talk to them.
Still, once I get to talking with them, they understand that I really didn't have any clue about what was going to happen. They realize that I lost people that day, too. I'm not a conspirator. I'm just another person, and the friends I thought I knew betrayed me.
17
the videotapes
ON THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL IN THE FALL OF 1999, COLUMBINE HELD a “Take Back the School” ceremony. It was the first time classes had resumed at the building since April 20. Repair crews had spent the summer removing all evidence of Eric and Dylan's rampage. Ceiling tiles were replaced, water damage from the fire sprinklers was repaired, and bullet holes and broken glass were removed. A wall of lockers was installed in front of the entrance to the library, which had been permanently sealed.
Brooks's brother Aaron, a junior, had to return to Columbine. He remembers the bizarre atmosphere of the first day. Media trucks filled nearby Clement Park. Principal Frank DeAngelis's welcoming speech was carried live by CNN. Parents stood side by side in front of the entrance to shield students from the media as they entered the school.
Once inside, though—where cameras were banned—things were more subdued.
“Things were better at Columbine, as far as how people treated one another,” Aaron recalls. “At least, that's how it was for the first month or so. But by two or three months after we got back, things were back to the way they had been before. The name-calling started up all over again. Some people had changed a lot, but others hadn't changed at all.”
I was worried about my brother when he went back into that school. Principal DeAngelis repeatedly denied to the media that he saw any bullying going on. He kept making “We Are Columbine” speeches and talking about how the school was coming together. The administration wasn't facing the fact that kids were still as cruel to one another as ever.
Meanwhile, different organizations were using Eric and Dylan to promote their causes. Gun-control advocates arguing for more restrictive gun laws rose up against legal gun owners, starting with a protest outside the National Rifle Association's convention in Denver shortly after Columbine.
But tougher gun laws wouldn't have stopped Eric and Dylan. They went around one law by using Robyn Anderson to buy weapons at a gun show, and broke another entirely by buying their TEC-9 from a friend. All that gun-control advocates were doing was punishing law-abiding gun owners for Eric and Dylan's misdeeds.
Some tried to say Eric and Dylan were out to kill minorities, because they called Isaiah Shoels a “nigger” and then killed him. It's true Eric posted criticisms of other races on his Web site from time to time, and I have no doubt that they did call Isaiah what they did. However, they also killed twelve other people who were white. It seems clear that racist feelings weren't the motivating force behind the shootings.
Rather, I think Eric and Dylan were determined to humiliate all their victims, no matter who they were. Library witnesses said they made fun of another kid because of his glasses. They said they wanted to kill “anyone with a white hat,” because athletes wore white hats. They found some way to mock or degrade each person before they fired the fatal shot. It was one big game to them.
Along the same lines, it doesn't seem that Eric and Dylan specifically targeted people because of their religion. Witnesses remember them asking several people whether they “believed in God” before shooting them. Those stories were repeated throughout the media.
As a result, religious organizations quickly picked up on Columbine. They tried to make people believe the shooting represented a “crisis of faith,” that Eric and Dylan had gone into Columbine for the sole purpose of killing as many Christians as possible.
One of the best-known examples they held up is Cassie Bernall, who was killed in the library. More than one witness there claimed that Eric and Dylan asked Cassie if she believed in God, and that when she said yes, she was shot. Her parents wrote a book entitled She Said Yes: The Unlikely Martyrdom of Cassie Bernall, which became a bestseller.
However, according to the Rocky Mountain News, a student named Emily Wyant—who was crouched down next to Cassie underneath a table—told police that the exchange never happened.
Another library witness, Craig Scott (Rachel's brother), was one of the kids who told police he had heard Cassie say yes. According to a December 14 Rocky Mountain News article, “Inside the Columbine Investigation,” police took Craig into the library and asked him what direction the question had come from.
“When he revisited the library, he realized the voice had come from another direction—from the table where student Valeen Schnurr had been shot,” Dan Luzadder and Kevin Vaughn wrote. “Investigators came to believe it was probably Valeen, who survived, who told the gunmen of her faith in God.”
Author P. Solomon Banda of the Associated Press wrote a Dec. 27,
1999 article entitled “Who Said ‘Yes’ To Columbine Gunmen? Faithful Say It's Immaterial.” In the article, Schnurr said she was “blown out from underneath a table by a shotgun blast” from Eric or Dylan.
“One of the gunmen asked her if she believed in God and she said ‘yes,’ crawling away as he reloaded,” Banda wrote.
TIME Magazine shared a different scenario in its Dec. 20, 1999 cover story, “The Columbine Tapes.” Author Tim Roche wrote, “When Harris found Cassie Bernall, he leaned down. ‘Peekaboo,’ he said, and killed her. His shotgun kicked, stunning him and breaking his nose.”
Yet even when these doubts surfaced, there were some who said the question was irrelevant. Banda wrote:
“It doesn't matter who said it or if no one said it,” [church volunteer Sara] Evans said. “But if people believe in God, that's what's important.”
Doug Clark, director of field ministries of San Diego-based National Network of Youth Ministries, said he encourages other students to follow the teens' example of boldness. “Mincing words over what was said in the library is a minor part,” Clark said. “The greater part is how they lived their lives, and it's not going to change anything.”
Religious experts said attempts to clarify the confusion surrounding the stories of Christian faith actually could help embed the story in religious circles.
“This rethinking can be chalked up to media scrutiny, which I think the faithful would dismiss as a cynical attempt to debunk the story,” said Randall Balmer, professor of American Religious Studies at Barnard College. “In some ways, it may make the faithful dig in a little bit deeper and resist those attempts.” (“Who Said ‘Yes’ To Columbine Gunmen?” P. Solomon Banda, Associated Press, 12/27/99)
Balmer's assessment was accurate. On the Web site cassiebernall.org, Christian author Wendy Murray Zoba posted an article entitled “Did She or Didn't She?” with a clear slant against any reporter who questioned the story. She criticized Salon.com writer Dave Cullen for airing doubts, writing, “In fact, it is Cullen's piece—and the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department information office—that should be called into account.”
Zoba's article showed a clear double standard. On the one hand, she tried to debunk witnesses like Emily Wyant by quoting trauma recovery expert Dee Dee McDermott:
[McDermott] says, “Some people have a great capacity for processing the trauma and are able to stay, what we call, ‘fully present.’ They have a high level of recall. Other students are so traumatized, they do not have the capacity to process all the information. Those students would be the ones who would have what we would call memory blocks. A diagnosis for this is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. There was smoke [in the library] which was disorienting, and they were in study [carrels] with hard wood sides. . . . People who are interviewing these kids need to understand the dynamics of what trauma does and how they're processing it.” (‘Did She or Didn't She?” Wendy Murray Zoba, cassiebernall.org.)
In other words, library witnesses like Emily were suffering from “stress disorder” that affected their memory.
On the other hand, witnesses like Craig Scott and Josh Lapp, whom she cited as remembering the exchange, suffered from no such disorien-tation—except that Scott was “disoriented” when he heard the question come from Valeen Schnurr's direction rather than from Cassie Bernall's. Zoba quoted Craig Scott as saying, “The whole world can say Cassie never said ‘yes’ to the gunmen, and I'd still stand by my knowledge that she did.”
People were turning my high school's tragedy into a tool for their political causes. Zoba was not an objective third party. She was the associate editor for Christianity Today and the author of their Oct. 4, 1999 cover story, “Do You Believe In God? How Columbine Changed America.” She has written an entire book about faith in regard to Columbine, entitled Day of Reckoning.
I'm not claiming that Eric and Dylan didn't have a certain hatred for religion. They did. In fact, we had many discussions about how difficult it could be for a non-Christian at Columbine. Many Littleton residents equate Christianity with being a good person, and they look down on those who are not members of the church. It was hard for Eric and Dylan to watch self-proclaimed “Christians” who pushed other kids around, shoved them into lockers and call them faggots, then got up later and talked about how “important” their faith was. I know for a fact that things like that made Eric and Dylan angry.
Yet, even if it is true that Cassie and Rachel said “yes,” it doesn't mean Eric and Dylan's sole intention was to kill Christians. Eleven other people were shot without even being asked the question. Also, there were no stories of kids who said no and were allowed to live.
Zoba concluded her article with the following quote from investigator Gary Muse: “If Cassie's exchange with the gunmen is not germane to the investigation—and I don't believe it is—why are people so interested in debunking the account?”
My answer is simple: It isn't anti-Christian to have questions about Cassie's exchange. It's insulting to suggest that I shouldn't be allowed to seek clarity, in the wake of all the controversy surrounding the story. Cassie was my classmate. I have a right to try to learn the reasons for her death.
By December we would get our first glimpse of those reasons—from Eric and Dylan themselves.
That fall, we learned that TIME Magazine was working on an in-depth story about the Columbine investigation. Reporter Tim Roche, who wanted to know more about Eric's Web pages, contacted my family.
Roche conducted several interviews with us at our home. When he came over for the last one, he had a stunned look on his face. “You're not going to believe what the cops just showed me,” he said.
Roche had just viewed Eric and Dylan's basement videotapes.
The tapes, which were found by the police in Eric's home on the day of the massacre, had been a well-guarded secret in the months since then. We knew they existed, and the police had read excerpts from them during a sentencing hearing for one of the gun suppliers, but when members of the media and the families of the victims asked to view them, they were denied. Now, however, Roche had seen them.
Apparently his access was very generous. On December 20, 1999, TIME printed its exclusive story, “The Columbine Tapes: The Killers Tell Why They Did It.” The story featured extensive quotes from the videos, as well as Roche's assessment of them:
The tapes were meant to be their final word, to all those who had picked on them over the years, and to everyone who would come up with a theory about their inner demons. It is clear listening to them that Harris and Klebold were not just having trouble with what their counselors called ‘anger management.’ They fed the anger, fueled it, so the fury could take hold, because they knew they would need it to do what they set out to do. “More rage. More rage,” Harris says. “Keep building it on,” he says, motioning with his hands for emphasis.
Harris recalls how he moved around so much with his military family and always had to start over, “at the bottom of the ladder.” People continually made fun of him—“my face, my hair, my shirts.” As for Klebold, “If you could see all the anger I've stored over the past four f—ing years...” he says.... As far back as the Foothills Day Care center, he hated the “stuck-up” kids he felt hated him. “Being shy didn't help,” he admits. “I'm going to kill you all. You've been giving us s—for years.” (“The Columbine Tapes,” TIME, 12/20/99)
Sheriff Stone came under heavy criticism for having ignored repeated pleas from the families to see the videotapes but allowed a reporter from TIME to see them. Stone countered by claiming that Roche had agreed never to quote from them, and had broken the agreement.
TIME denied that any such agreement had ever been entered into. Roche told my mother that the accusations were not only false, but were ruining his credibility as a journalist, because now people believed that he was willing to burn a source for the sake of a story. I knew he would not have lied about how things happened. He was a great guy, and an honest reporter. The police were rolling over
him to protect themselves—just like they'd done with me.
Stone made another attempt at damage control. This time, he said he hadn't yet viewed the tapes himself, so he didn't know what they contained when he gave Roche permission to see them. This was hardly a good way to avoid criticism; as Denver Post columnist Chuck Green pointed out, “Although he is in charge of the Columbine investigation, Sheriff Stone hadn't taken the time to sit in a chair and watch the remarkable videotapes of Harris and Klebold planning the crime.”
After it became known that Stone had allowed a reporter to view the tapes, other members of the media demanded the right to see them as well. In a last-ditch effort to defuse the situation, Stone proposed two screenings of the videos—one for the media and the other for the families. My parents got wind of this, and they headed over to the sheriff's office to see the tapes for themselves.
Randy and Judy Brown followed the arrows that led them through the Dakota Building, near the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, until they reached the room where the videos were to be screened. As the tapes were about to begin, the police asked to see press credentials.
“We don't have any,” Judy said.
The officer demanded their names. When the Browns told him, he replied that they couldn't be there.
“Yes, we can,” Randy replied. “We're citizens and we're going to see those tapes.”
“No, you're not,” the officer replied.
Randy didn't back down. “Are you going to arrest me if I go in that room?” he asked. Behind the officer, members of the press were watching the exchange with interest.
“No,” the officer replied after a moment.
With that, Randy marched past. “Rather than have a knock-down drag-out fight with them, we allowed them in,” Deputy Wayne Holverson told Holly Kurtz and Lynn Bartels of the Denver Rocky Mountain News. “They wanted to watch the tapes, and we figured this was as good a time as any.”
No Easy Answers Page 17
