by Jeff Kass
The punishment that was meted out didn’t deter Eric and Dylan. In fact, it spurred them—not to do a better crime, but a bigger one. They were now pushing back against the cops, and their classmates. Their vengeance grew.
∞
As Eric and Dylan became juniors in the fall of 1997, Columbine’s longtime boys and girls soccer coach, Peter Horvath, was beginning his two-year stint as a dean of students. It would be Horvath’s first, and last, tour of duty, in part because the job was hardly uplifting. “You were in charge of discipline and attendance. Basically all you did is bust kids every day, suspend kids, track kids’ attendance and you know, have kids come in every day and lie to your face about things and, you know, that gets old after a while,” Horvath says, in his first media interview.
Horvath, tall and thin with short hair, was thirty-seven when Columbine hit and seems to get jittery when discussing Eric and Dylan, who were among his first clients, and no doubt his most infamous. Horvath first came across Eric and Dylan when one student reported a couple missing items from a locker, including a camera, and another student said he got a threatening note in his locker warning him to back off Devon Adams.
Horvath described Eric and Dylan as “brilliant” but ended up suspending them along with Devon and her boyfriend, Zach Heckler, on October 2 for hacking into the school’s computer system to get locker combinations. Zach, considered the mastermind, got five days, Horvath recalls. Eric and Dylan each got three days (although another document indicates Dylan got five).
Devon says they did it because Columbine did not challenge them. “Because we were all just bored. When you get bored, you act out.”
After serving their suspensions, Horvath met with Eric, Dylan, and their parents. “You know, in front of your parents you’re agreeing to you’re going to start walking a fine line now,” Horvath explains.
Horvath sensed that Tom Klebold, in general, opposed the idea of suspensions, and the Harrises did not agree with Eric’s three days. But the parents also accepted the punishments. On the bottom page of Eric’s suspension sheet, it appears one of his parents made notations: “Called Mr. Horvath. What will be on Eric’s records? In-house only because police were not involved. Destroyed upon graduation.”
Eric and Dylan’s ability to hack into the lockers was a result of their special access granted through Rich Long’s computer class. The incident soured the teacher, who had been trying to get Eric an internship with a computer company. It not only ended Long’s respect for Eric, but apparently any respect Wayne Harris had for Long.
Long had met Eric and Dylan’s parents seven to eight times over the years at back to school nights, and he was typically full of compliments for the boys. As a U.S. Army vet himself, Long picked up on Wayne Harris’ posture, mannerisms, and stark sense of right and wrong that denoted a military background. He saw the Harrises as strict but caring. He felt they wanted Eric to have more extracurricular activities but let him slip into a more secret existence. But after the hacking incident, Wayne blamed Long. “You trusted my son too much,” he said, according to Long.
∞
One month after the suspensions, on November 3, 1997, the first mention of a killing spree comes in Dylan’s diary:
All people I ever might have loved have abandoned me. My parents piss me off & hate me . . . want me to have fuckin ambition!! How can I when I get screwed & destroyed By everything?!!! I have no money, no happiness, no friends . . . Eric will be getting further away soon . . . I’ll have less than nothing . . . how normal. I wanted to love . . . .I wanted to be happy and ambitious and free & nice & good & ignorant . . . everyone abandoned me . . . I have small stupid pleasures . . . my so called hobbies & doings . . . those are all that’s left for me . . . nobody will help me . . . only exist w/ me if it suits them. i helped, why can’t they? [name blocked out] will get me a gun, I’ll go on my killing spree against anyone I want. more crazy . . . the meak are trampled on, the assholes prevail, the gods are decieving, lost in my little insane asylum w/ the nuthouse redneck music playing . . . wanna die & be free w/ my love . . . if she even exists. She probably hates me . . . finds a redneck or a jock who treats her like shit . . . I have lost my emotions . . . People eventually find happiness. I never will. Does that make me a nonhuman? YES. The god of sadness . . .
Eric was channeling school shootings at almost the same time. Although it was in an eerie, albeit uncharacteristically low-key manner. A class paper dated December 10, 1997 came one month after Dylan’s journal entry. “In the past few weeks there has been news of several shootings in high schools,” Eric begins.
The research paper is about two pages long, titled “Guns in Schools.” Eric notes that “it is just as easy to bring a loaded handgun to school as it is to bring a calculator.” He never hints that the essay might be autobiographical, but adds, “Students bring guns to school for many reasons. Some for protection, some for attacking, and even some to show off. However, a school is no place for a gun. Solutions for this problem are hard to come by and often too expensive for most schools to even consider. However metal detectors and more police officers are two very good solutions.”
∞
Eric and Dylan rang in 1998 by landing in their most documented trouble ever (aside from Columbine), although it seems more to do with boredom than violence.
On Friday, January 30, Eric, Dylan, and Zach were in a car at a local church listening to music, according to written statements Eric and Dylan later gave police. Around 8:30 p.m. Eric and Dylan left in Eric’s gray Honda Prelude to go home but stopped on a gravel road near a white van and red truck.
Dylan says Eric set off some fireworks. Eric says, “We got out of my car and looked around for something to do. We found some beer bottles and we broke those for about 15 minutes.”
The two went back to Eric’s car. Eric, possibly showing a psychopathic trait, tries to displace blame and says it was Dylan’s idea to break into the white van belonging to Denver-based Westover Mechanical Services and loot the equipment inside. “At first I was very uncomfortable and questioning with the thought,” Eric magnanimously wrote. “I became more interested within about 5 minutes and we then decided to break the passenger window with our fists.”
Dylan put it like this: “Then, almost at the same time, we both got the idea of breaking into this white van. We hoped to get the stuff inside.”
A white car came to the area, someone got out, went in the red truck, and both the car and truck drove away. Eric looked out for more cars, and at one point, got in his Honda in case they had to make a quick getaway. Dylan slipped a ski glove on his left hand and punched the van’s passenger side window three times. Nothing gave. So Eric took the right ski glove—foreshadowing how the two would split a pair of gloves the day of Columbine—and gave the same window a punch. Still nothing.
They decided to try a rock. Dylan lifted one that was about ten to twelve inches around, so large he had to use both hands, according to Eric. Dylan broke the window after about six tries, and the rock fell into the front seat. Eric helped clear the rest of the glass off the window.
They took gauges, a meter, a calculator, a socket tool set, black sunglasses, a mini flashlight, a checkbook, and other items. It took about fifteen minutes as Dylan placed the loot in the back seat of the Honda, Eric said. Total value was $1,719. The two drove to nearby Deer Creek Canyon Park. Deputy Timothy S. Walsh saw the car when he drove into the park at about 9:20 p.m. The park had closed one hour after sunset, around 6:15 p.m.
Walsh got out of his patrol car and stood behind the Honda. The dome light was on. Eric and Dylan appeared to be listening to music and looking for a CD. Walsh saw Dylan, in the passenger seat, take a yellow meter, later identified as a stolen item, and push the buttons. Eric looked on, intently. The meter lit up, and they became excited, yelling “cool.” Dylan grabbed a small, black flashlight, also identified as a stolen item, and flicked
it on. “Wow! That is really bright,” Eric said.
It appears Eric then grabbed the stolen video control pad and said, “Hey, we’ve got a Nintendo game pad.” As the two continued looking at the items in the back seat, Eric said, “Hey, we better put this stuff in the trunk.” He released the trunk door from the inside and got out of the car. Walsh introduced himself.
Eric told Walsh they were “messing around” where the van had been parked when they found the items neatly stacked in the grass. Walsh asked to see the items, and Eric said, “Sure.”
Eric and Dylan took eleven items out of the car and put them on the trunk. Walsh asked again how they found the stuff. Klebold said the same thing: They found it in the grass near Deer Creek Canyon Road. Walsh told the boys he would send a deputy to the area to see if any cars were broken into. Someone leaving this much property around was suspicious. Walsh asked them to be honest.
Eric looked at Dylan, and a short silence followed. Dylan told the officer what they had done. Walsh took them into custody and separated them. Eric went with Walsh, who called another car for Dylan. Police dispatch contacted the parents and had them meet the kids at the sheriff’s south substation.
Walsh met with Wayne and Kathy Harris and read Eric his Miranda rights in front of them. Eric waived his rights and talked. According to Eric’s account, Dylan spotted the property inside the van and said, “Should we break into it and steal it? It would be nice to steal some stuff in there. Should we do it?”
“Hell no,” Eric claims he replied.
They then discussed it, and Eric agreed to do the break-in. “Yeah, we’ll try it,” Eric concluded.
The Klebolds first consulted with an attorney, who is not named in the police report, before allowing Dylan to talk. Walsh took Eric and Dylan to the Jefferson County jail, where they were “booked through” and released to their parents. The kids had no prior records. Eric’s father, Wayne, later returned to the sheriff’s department to get a movie rental that had been collected as evidence, Event Horizon, about a spaceship that returns from hell with a demon and threatens to bring with it back to hell the rescue crew sent to investigate.
∞
After the van break-in, Eric said his family was “shocked” and that “all trust is lost.” Eric felt he could turn to friends and co-workers for help, and outwardly he was the tough anarchist. But he also confided that he was having problems with anger, depression, and suicidal thoughts. He would blow up, lash out, and punch walls, especially if people he didn’t respect, which seemed to be almost everyone, told him what to do. His head was filled with disorganized thoughts and too many inside jokes. He was anxious, stressed, suspicious, jealous, and moody. He hated too many things to have many friends. He wanted to kill people.
In February 1998 he started seeing psychologist Kevin Albert at the Colorado Family Center in Littleton. Albert has declined all interview requests but a rare view into Eric’s treatment is provided by a somewhat obscure court filing written by psychiatrist Peter Breggin, a critic of psychiatric drugs and maybe best-known for his 1995 book Talking Back to Prozac. Breggin, as might be expected, blames the drug Eric was on by the time of Columbine, Luvox, for the shootings. Breggin says Eric suffered from “Mood Disorder with Depressive and Manic Features that reached a psychotic level of violence and suicide.”
The vast majority of the medical establishment stands behind such drugs for improving peoples’ lives and allowing them to function in society. Yet part of Breggin’s analysis, citing Eric’s pharmacy and medical records, also appears to be a straightforward retelling of Eric’s treatment. The visits were once or twice a month, and sometimes Eric’s family met with Albert. Albert initially recommended that Eric be put on an antidepressant. In a visit to his general physician, Eric’s medical records indicate “possible depression” and “mild/minimal depressive symptoms.” But he was “not suicidal/homicidal.”
Eric was prescribed the antidepressant Zoloft, although a notation also indicates it was for ADD, attention deficit disorder. Zoloft is an SSRI, or “selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor.” It increases the amount of serotonin, sometimes called the “feel good” chemical, in the brain.
But as of April 15, 1998, Albert had a message for Eric’s medical doctor, Jon Cram, who was able to prescribe medicine: “Eric’s depression leads to negative thinking and he cannot stop this process—his thinking is a bit obsessional,” according to Breggin’s report. Eric was taken off Zoloft, and put on Luvox, another SSRI, which is indicated for obsessive compulsive disorder. The first Luvox prescription listed by Breggin comes on April 25, 1998 for twenty-five milligrams. It was doubled to fifty milligrams just over a month later, and doubled again another month later, in early July. Breggin writes that three and a half months before Columbine, the prescriptions indicate Eric’s dose was increased. Breggin also writes that on March 13, 1999, just over one month before Columbine, the medical record notes, “It’s ‘OK’ to increase the dose to 200 mg. per day.”
Breggin’s report does not make clear whether Cram or Albert thought the medication and therapy were working. In a law enforcement evaluation shortly after beginning therapy, Eric wrote that his treatment was “nice” and that “it helps me realize things.” But he wrote in his diary on April 21, 1998:
My doctor wants to put me on medication to stop thinking about so many things and to stop getting angry. well, I think that anyone who doesnt think like me is just bullshitting themselves. try it sometime if you think you are worthy, which you probly will you little shits, drop all your beliefs and views and ideas that have been burned into your head and try to think about why your here. but I bet most of you fuckers cant even think that deep, so that is why you must die. how dare you think that I and you are part of the same species when we are sooooooo different. you arent human you are a Robot. you dont take advantage of your capabilites given to you at birth. you just drop them and hop onto the boat and head down the stream of life with all the other fuckers of your type. well god damit I wont be a part of it! I have thought to much, realized to much, found out to much, and I am to self aware to just stop what I am thinking and go back to society because what I do and think isnt “right” or “morally accepted” NO, NO, NO, God Fucking damit NO! I will sooner die than betray my own thoughts. but before I leave this worthless place, I will kill who ever I deam unfit..,
∞
Dylan called the van break-in the most traumatic experience of his life. He wrote that the impact on his family of the “unethical” act was “a bad one.” He was grounded for a month, and prohibited from seeing Eric. “My parents were devastated as well as I,” he added.
Days later, on February 2, 1998, he used for the first time in his diary “NBK,” the initials of one of his and Eric’s favorite movies, Natural Born Killers, which became a code for the shootings. The 1994 Oliver Stone film was a natural fit for Eric and Dylan given its murderous rampages imbued with irony and social commentary. The film follows the over the top violence of an escaped criminal and his highly charged girlfriend. Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis play the hell-bent lovebirds. This is the end-game, the film seems to say, when America becomes fascinated with violence.
As in the movie, Dylan lists a partner in crime in his diary. And as in the movie, it may be a girl. “Either I’ll commit suicide, or i’ll get w/ [name deleted] & it will be NBK for us,” Dylan wrote that February. “My hapiness, her hapiness, NOTHING else matters. I’ve been caught w/ most of my crimes—xcpt drinking, smoking, & the house vandalism, & the pipe bombs.”
But unlike the boyfriend and girlfriend pair in the movie, Eric and Dylan never had any girlfriends. Sequestered in their own dark friendship, they morph into the NBK couple.
On February 2 Dylan also writes about a suicide bombing if a certain girl doesn’t love him: “id slit my wrist & blow up [the homemade pipe bomb] atlanta strapped to my neck.”
“Society is tightening it
s grip on me,” he later adds, and he “will snap.” “I didn’t want to be a jock . . . I hated the happiness that they have & I will have something infinitely better . . . ” he writes on the side of the page, and then, “By the way, some zombies are smarter than others, some manipulative . . . like my parents . . . I am GOD. zombies will pay for their arrogance, hate, fear, abandonment, & distrust.”
To an unnamed girl he says: “My mind sometimes gets stuck on its own things, I think about human things—all I try to do is imagine the happiness between us. That is something we cannot even conceive in this toilet earth.”
There is an undated letter, maybe to the same girl:
(Please don’t skip to the back: read the note as it was written)
You don’t consciously know who I am, & doubtedly unconsciously too. I, who write this, love you beyond infinince. I think about you all the time, how this world would be a better place If you loved me as I do you. I know what you’re thinking: “(some psycho wrote me this harrassing letter).” I hoped we would have been together . . . you seem a lot like me. Pensive, quiet, an observer, not wanting what is offered here. (School, life, etc.) You almost seem lonely, like me. You probably have a boyfriend though, & might not have given this note another thought. I have thought you my true love for a long time now, but . . . well . . . there was hesitation. You see I can’t tell if you think of anyone as I do you & if you did who that would be. Fate put me in need of you, yet this earth blocked that with uncertainties. I will go away soon, but I just had to write this to you, the one I truly loved. Please, for my sake, don’t tell anybody about this, as it was only meant for you. Also, please don’t feel any guilt about my soon-to-be “absence” of this world. It is solely my decision: nobody else’s . . . the thoughts of us . . . doing everything together, not necessarily anything, just to be together would have been pure heaven. I guess it’s time to tell you who I am. I was in a class with you 1st semester, & was blessed w. being with you in a report. I still remember your laugh. Innocent, beautiful, pure. This semester I still see you—rarely . . . To most people, I appear . . . well . . . almost scary, but that’s who I appear to be as people are afraid of what they don’t understand. Anyway, you have noticed me a few times. I catch every one of these gazes w/ an open heart . . . Even if you did like me ever the slightest bit, you would hate me if you knew who I was. I am a criminal, I have done things that almost nobody would even think about condoning. The reason that I’m writing you now is that I have been caught for the crimes I comitted, & I want to go to a new existence. You know what I mean. (Suicide) I have nothing to live for, & I won’t be able to survive in this world after this legal conviction. However, if it was true that you loved me as I do you . . . I would find a way to survive. Anything to be with you. I would enjoy life knowing that you loved me. 99/100 chances you prob. think I’m crazy, & want to stay as far away as possible. If that’s the case, then I’m very sorry for involving an innocent person in my problems, & please don’t think twice. However, If you are who I hoped for in my dreams & realities, then do me a favor: Leave a piece of paper in my locker, saying anything that comes to you. Well, I guess this is it—goodbye, & I love(d) you.
