This was incorrect, too. My family did not request to remain anonymous. We asked that the Harris family not be given our name, but my father offered to sign a police report; he was told that would not be necessary. Also, my parents were told in their meeting with Detective Hicks that there were reports of bomb activity in our area, so “reports of pipe bomb detonations” were substantiated. And if the police were having problems accessing Eric's Web site, they could have called us back and asked for help. They never did.
The Sheriff's Report was supposed to answer all of the public's questions about Columbine. Instead, the more I read, the angrier I became.
Sheriff Stone and the Jefferson County Police Department continued to infuriate survivors of Columbine as the summer progressed. In June, Sheriff Stone was asked to testify before the Columbine Review Commission, an investigative panel assembled by GovernorOwens. Stone originally said he would, but the day before his scheduled testimony in June, he changed his mind.
Stone told reporters he had “no choice” because of the lawsuits his department was facing from the victims' families. He had been advised by attorneys not to testify. He stood by that decision, even as Governor Owens himself urged Stone to change his mind.
Stone also refused to hand over Danny Rohrbough's clothing to his parents, even though other parents had received their children's possessions long ago. The police told Brian Rohrbough that Danny's shirt was a biohazard. Then they claimed that they wouldn't hand it over because the case was still open. This seemed odd to observers; after all, by now the police had publicly stated that Eric and Dylan had been the only ones involved in the killings. However, as long as the case wasn't closed, the police weren't obligated to hand over evidence.
Frustrations such as these motivated the Browns—with the blessing of several of the victims' families—to launch a recall effort against Sheriff Stone. By June 9, 2000, theirrecall petition was approved by the Jefferson County Clerk's Office. They would have sixty days to gather at least 42,000 signatures from registered voters.
The petition listed four reasons for Stone's recall:
Because Sheriff Stone has lost our confidence and trust.
Because he has put his political career ahead of the interests of the citizens of Jefferson County.
Because he has mismanaged the Columbine investigation.
Because he has mismanaged the sheriff's department during his term in office.
Randy Brown pointed to the TIME debacle, the suspicion cast on Brooks, and the behavior of police at Columbine on April 20 as examples of inexcusable behavior by Stone.
“Why aren't people mad?” Randy Brown told the Rocky Mountain News. “Don't they get it? They let children die. Innocent, defenseless children were murdered while they waited outside, and that was a command decision by Sheriff Stone.”
However, the recall effort proved too daunting a task for the Browns and the handful of volunteers who joined them. While the Browns gathered a substantial number of signatures, they couldn't reach their goal by the time the sixty-day period was up.
Even though their effort had fallen short, the Browns still wanted to make a statement. Fearing retribution by Stone against those who had signed the petition—including officers in his own department—the Browns chose not to turn those names in. Instead, they chose to leave just two names on the final petition. Their own.
My family's battle with Sheriff Stone taught me an important lesson about politics. When my parents were circulating that petition, people would say to them, “If he weren't doing his job, he would be fired.” People have to understand that when it comes to elected officials, we, the public, are their bosses. We hire them through our votes. We are also the only ones who can fire them.
Too many people ignore politics in their lives, refusing to vote or get involved in the process. Yet even the smallest and most unimportant elected official will affect them.
For elected officials, character has to matter, because they are setting an example for the rest of us. The President of the United States sets that standard. Yet who was President when Columbine happened? It was Bill Clinton, who was embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky scandal, getting oral sex from an intern in the Oval Office and then lying under oath about it. If that's the example we get from the highest elected official in the land, and he suffers no real penalty, then why would anyone bat an eye if Sheriff Stone lies to parents about what happened to their children at Columbine?
Young people see adults lying and getting away with it on a regular basis. That's the example being set for us.
That's why people in our country must pay attention to what's happening in the world around them. I don't see how anyone who reads up on Columbine would come away believing the police did nothing wrong. Yet for many, when it comes to difficult issues, it's easier to just look the other way.
19
the truth comes out
UNHAPPY WITH THE LACK OF INFORMATION IN THE SHERIFF'S REPORT, families of Columbine victims continued to push for the release of all information related to the investigation. In November of 2000, that wish was granted.
Judge Brooke Jackson ordered the release of over 11,000 pages of investigative files on November 21. Jackson outlined specific exceptions to that instruction: crime scene photos, autopsy reports, and material seized from Eric and Dylan's homes were not to be released. Neither were details about the bombs, or Eric's “hit list” of people he wanted dead. However, all other material was to be handed over.
The Jeffco Sheriff's Office charged $602 for each copy of the materials, claiming that the charge would cover printing costs. My parents obtained one of the sets and immediately pored over it, hunting for new information.
There were some surprises among the pages. We learned that while the Klebold family had given an extensive interview to police, there was no report of an interview with the Harrises. The police said that they hadn't gleaned enough information from their sole interview to write up a report.
In addition, we read that the Harrises had resisted the arrival of police at their home on April 20, 1999. At first, they barred officers from their home. Then they tried to stop them from going down into the basement, where Eric's bedroom was.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harris were afraid of retaliation from the parents [whose] children were killed at [the] high school,” read part of the report.
There were reports of more warning signs from Eric and Dylan before the attack. According to the report, Dylan was fired from his job at Blackjack Pizza for bringing a pipe bomb to work. Yet store owner Bob Kirgis told police that Eric brought a pipe bomb to work in April of 1997 and talked about detonating it; Kirgis took no action against him.
The report contained a short story written by Dylan in our creative writing class. I had never seen it before. In the story, Dylan described a man dressed in a black overcoat who “looked ready for a small war with whoever came across his way.” The man confronted a group of “college-preps,” one of whom he described as a “power-hungry prick.” The man then drew weapons on the group and began shooting. “The shining of the streetlights caused a visible reflection off the droplets of blood as they flew away from the skull,” Dylan wrote.
The final portion gave a glimpse of what was going on in Dylan's mind:
The man then pulled out of the duffel bag what looked to be some type of electronic device. I saw him tweak the dials, and press a button. I heard a faint, yet powerful explosion, I would have to guess about six miles away. Then another one occurred closer. After recalling the night many times, I finally understood that these were diversions, to attract the cops.
The last prep was bawling and trying to crawl away. The man walked up behind him. I remember the sound of the impact well. The man came down with his left hand right on the prep's head. The metal piece did its work, as I saw his hand buried about 2 inches into the guy's skull. The man pulled his arm out and stood, unmoving, for about a minute. The town was utterly still, except for the faint wail of police
sirens.
The man picked up the bag and his clips, and proceeded to walk back the way he came. I was still as he came my way again. He stopped, and gave me a look I will never forget. If I could face an emotion of god, it would have looked like this man. I not only saw in his face, but also felt eminating [sic] from him power, complacence, closure and godliness. The man smiled, and in that instant, through no endeavor of my own, I understood his actions.
The thousands of new pages of evidence would prove to be an invaluable resource in researching what happened at Columbine. However, there was little new information on my family, or Eric's Web pages, in that massive report. Despite the 11,000 pages of material, we suspected that the police were still withholding information from the public.
On the morning of Columbine's two-year anniversary, I was driving through Clement Park with a friend on our way to the memorial ceremony. My friend noticed a camera operator unloading equipment from the back of his truck.
“Hey, look—media guy,” my friend joked. “How many points do I get if I aim for him?”
I shook my head. “I have no problem with the media,” I said. “Where would Martin Luther King have been if there weren't any cameras?”
I know it's popular in many circles to bash the media; people in Littleton do it all the time. I won't join them. I've met a countless number of reporters in the three years since Columbine; not only did most of them prove to be great people, but we would never have uncovered the information we did without them.
It was the media that showed us what Eric and Dylan said on their basement videotapes. It was the media that kept constant pressure on the police to release more information. And when the media reported Sheriff Stone's comments about my “involvement” in the murders early on, they also gave my family plenty of chances to respond on the same day. They treated us with fairness.
In fact, I owe a debt of gratitude to the producers of CBS's 60 Minutes II. Thanks to their work, it was finally proved—after two years of doubt—that my family had been telling the truth from the beginning.
Producers from 60 Minutes II arrived in Littleton sometime between January and February of 2001. They were aware of the many new developments in the Columbine case, and wanted to dedicate a full hour to reporting on it—an unusual move, since they usually have three or four different stories per show.
Much of their report was dedicated to the police response to Columbine, and whether more could have been done. In interviews with Ed Bradley, I recounted the story of Eric's Web pages yet again.
While 60 Minutes II was in town, my parents received a letter from Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas. We had asked for an internal investigation of Columbine back in October, and he was writing to tell us that the investigation would not happen; one reason he listed was that he had seen an affidavit for a search warrant of the Harris home in 1998, and it was not enough reason for a new investigation.
We were taken aback. No search warrant had been released among the 11,000 pages of police reports. If one existed, it would prove that everything my parents had been saying for the past two years was true. The police had insisted that there had been no follow-up investigation, that the Web site couldn't be accessed, and that my parents had never met with Detective Hicks or with the bomb squad. If a search warrant was out there, it was imperative that we get hold of it to prove them wrong.
My parents faxed a copy of the letter to 60 Minutes II. From there, CBS took the ball and ran with it. The show's attorney went to Jeffco with the letter in hand and demanded that the search warrant be released. With their help, we uncovered the truth.
The release of the search warrant was major news in Denver. For the Browns, it marked vindication after two years of being told they were lying.
The affidavit was prepared by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in March of 1998. According to the affidavit, a pipe bomb that had been found in a field one month before matched Eric Harris's description of his homemade bombs on his Web site.
Bomb squad member Mike Guerra wrote in the affidavit that “the size (of the bombs) is consistent with the devices labeled by Harris as ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Phobus.’” Yet the proposed search warrant had never been presented to a judge.
“I'm happy to learn more of the truth,” Brian Rohrbough told CNN on April 10. “They had denied this application existed. Columbine should never have happened. It begs the question, ‘Why did you deceive everyone?’”
A month later, Sheriff Stone would claim that “there was no attempt to hide documents” showing that investigators wanted to search Eric Harris's home in 1998. “I thought it was fairly well known,” he said in a television interview. “We weren't trying to hide anything. . . . Nobody asked for it.”
Stone's assertion was false. Judge Brooke Jackson had ordered the sheriff's department to release all of its Columbine files, except for those the judge specifically wanted withheld. By not releasing the affidavit, police had directly disobeyed the judge's order.
“People criticize the media for being negative,” Randy Brown says today. “I'll tell you, the Sheriff's Department was lying to us for two years, and none of this would have gotten out if it weren't for the media. Without them, we would be nowhere.”
It meant everything to my family to finally have proof that we'd been telling the truth. But at the same time, it was hard to be happy when we saw that search warrant. Had the warrant been approved by a judge, I believe everything would have been different. The police would have found the pipe bombs. They would have found Eric's journals, and the violent writings on his computer. He would have been stopped.
Instead, that chance slipped through the cracks.
20
final hope
OVER A YEAR AFTER JUDGE BROOKE JACKSON ORDERED THE RELEASE of all Columbine material, the new revelations kept coming.
In March of 2002, crime-scene photos from the Columbine murders were leaked to the media. The Rocky Mountain News published a detailed account of the photos, but spared the public from the sight of them; however, the paper also cautioned that the photos were circulating throughout Denver. The Denver Post warned that it was only a matter of time before the photos were picked up by a tabloid or posted on the Internet.
Randy Brown condemned Stone for the mistake, saying that if his office couldn't even keep crime scene photos under wraps, he should resign. Parents of the victims were horrified; Tom Mauser told the Rocky Mountain News, “If it was their child that was murdered, would they want that picture shown to other people? It's beyond me.”
It wasn't the first such leak. In November 2001, the journals of Eric Harris were also leaked to the media. Those journals contained detailed plans by Harris to attack Columbine High School, as well as an entry that described in detail what Harris wanted to do to Brooks. Harris had been plotting to break into the Brown home on the morning of the attack, kill Brooks and his family, and burn down their house before moving on to Columbine and continuing the slaughter there.
Had the search warrant drafted by the police been served, these writings probably would have been found as well.
In late 2001, a witness came forward to say that a member of the SWAT team at Columbine feared he had “accidentally shot a student” during the attack. According to Brian Rohrbough, that student was his son Daniel. Bullet shells from police were found all around Daniel's body, and investigators recovered only one of the three bullets that killed him. Furthermore, police officer Jim Taylor told Brian Rohrbough that he had seen Daniel killed while running from Eric and Dylan—which didn't explain how Daniel was shot from the front, at the angle of someone below him.
Daniel's parents tape-recorded this conversation. When the police issued a statement from Taylor saying he had never told Brian he'd seen Daniel shot, Brian produced the tape. Taylor was placed on leave the next day.
Despite these new revelations, in November 2001 U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock threw out all of the Columbine families' lawsuits except that o
f Angela Sanders. The judge described the slow police response to dying teacher Dave Sanders as “shocking to the conscience of this federal court.”
However, he wrote in response to the other suits that “holding police officers liable in hindsightforeveryinjurious consequence of their actions would paralyze the functions of law enforcement.”
Under pressure, Sheriff Stone asked investigators from the nearby El Paso CountySheriff's Office to conduct theirown investigation of Rohrbough's death. However, the investigation would be conducted behind closed doors, with no involvement from the families—and no promise of new information.
With the support of Colorado Governor Bill Owens, the victims' families requested that a grand jury be convened to investigate Columbine. That request was denied. The families were told by U.S. Attorney John Suthers that even if there was evidence linking a police officer with Daniel Rohrbough's death, Suthers still wouldn't see reason to call for such an investigation.
The families had one option left. They pressed for a legislative investigation of the Columbine massacre at the state level. They received backing from State Representative Don Lee, who proposed a bill creating a committee that would have full subpoena powers.
This would be the first-ever investigation to have that ability; the Columbine Review Commission had been unable to force Sheriff Stone or other responding officers to testify. The committee would also be able to subpoena records that were not available to the general public.
On March 8, 2002, survivors and their families went to the state capital for a hearing to determine whether such a panel would be created. The House Civil Justice and Judiciary Committee conducted the hearing.
The lawsuits had been thrown out. Open-records requests had failed. This was the families' last chance to learn the truth about what had happened at Columbine.
No Easy Answers Page 19
