Columbine

by Jeff Kass

  Belknap said such findings have implications for preventing terrorism post-9/11. More metal detectors at airports may be one answer. But getting men to act like women may be another.

  Plan or Pretend?

  “Probably not” is Parent’s answer when asked if the boys would have gone through with the attack. “I don’t think we lacked sense that much.” He maintains that Vukodinovich’s drawings were an “outlet.”

  Meininger says they had no real motive to carry out the shootings. “If we were popular in ninth grade, why would we want to kill people?” Meininger also believes it’s better to pick up a pencil than a real gun. “It’s Alex,” he said of the drawings. “He’s an artist. He draws.”

  Vukodinovich, for his part, says it was about being noticed and being a leader. “I needed that attention,” he said. “Push it to the next level—’Yeah, you’re the boss man, Alex.’”

  But Vukodinovich was far from the boss as a SWAT team executed a search warrant while he played video tennis in his sister’s room. He would be charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, felony menacing (essentially threatening someone with a weapon) and aggravated juvenile offender (juveniles with felonies). He pleaded guilty to being a violent juvenile offender and two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. He was sentenced to between one and two years of juvenile detention and then two years’ probation.

  Parent was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. He pleaded guilty to being a violent juvenile offender and two counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. He was sentenced to between one and two years of juvenile detention and then two years of probation.

  Meininger was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, conspiracy to commit first-degree assault. He received two years’ probation.

  Hero Villainy

  The girls, however, were not done. Back at school, they were not heroes who staved off a school shooting (although they hadn’t sought that anyway), but were narcs, tattle-tales, and whores, in the words of their classmates. People shouted at them, flipped them off, threw pens, and sent anonymous notes. “Nobody ever had the guts to sign their notes,” Henry said. In other words, they were vilified by the same people whose lives they had meant to save.

  Some students wore homemade T-shirts that said things like The girls are liars and Kristin Lies, Save My Guys. “The girls made it a lot bigger than it was,” student Ben Stafford, who was among those wearing a T-shirt, later said.

  On the school’s “Unity Tree” where students could post their thoughts, they wrote, Free Alex and, Save Alex and Chad. George Doukas, a friend of the boys, recalled a message saying something to the effect of Thanks to Kristin, Samantha and Katie for rattin’ on the guys. Doukas also made a shirt expressing his thoughts. “I think (the boys) were just screwing around drawing,” he said. “They wouldn’t have done anything.”

  “We were Public Enemy No. 1, for sure,” said Prutzman. The irony, she added, is that “some of those people that were targeted by those guys were giving us dirty looks.”

  Preston Principal Rick Ramirez did not describe the case as an aborted attack. He called it, “the January incident.” He allowed students to wear the T-shirts because he saw it as nonviolent expression. “I just walked up to them and shook their hand, and said, ‘Thank you,’ for appropriately communicating their thoughts,” he recalled.

  If the girls did not receive the accolades that might have been expected, they got some support. Teachers offered to escort them to class. Ramirez disciplined some students for taunting the girls. Henry remembers they were told they could go home early.

  But once they returned to school, Henry, Maher, and Prutzman all quit Preston within two days. Tynan already had left because of an earlier falling out with Meininger and Vukodinovich.

  “I had to change schools, and I was treated horribly,” Maher said. “I guess it screwed me (up).”

  “I did not want every day to be wondering who was going to be yelling at me or wondering what they’re going to whisper,” said Henry. She didn’t blame school authorities for not doing enough “because it’s hard when you don’t know where it’s really from.”

  Friends in Unlikely Places

  If those most likely to applaud the girls—their classmates—shunned them, there was also plenty of irony between the suspects and girls. Some of the girls attempted to visit Parent and Vukodinovich while they were under home detention. A follow-up police report indicates Henry spoke with Parent over the Internet. “We just talked about life and how things were going, also about how neither of us hated each other and in fact that he was still my best guy friend and that I loved him,” Henry wrote. She added, “I think the reason Scott [Parent] talked to Kristin and I was that he was lonely and hurt; that he needed someone to talk to. Nothing was said really about the case or anything, and nothing harmful was said at all. I know it was wrong for us to talk (after the original police report) but I honestly think that it helped Scott.”

  Prutzman also continued to connect with the boys. “Even when all these people hated us—‘You ruined these kids’ lives’—I started to get emails from them (saying), ‘We forgive you.’”

  “I almost wanted to say thank you,” Meininger concurs. “Because I really did not like myself too much. I needed to grow up. I needed something to change me.”

  Years later, Maher said she had seen Meininger a few times and he gave her “evil looks.” She had not spoken with Vukodinovich, but said Parent called her as part of a twelve-step program and apologized. She ended up having breakfast with him at a Fort Collins restaurant.

  Parent at one point was not ready to thank the girls, but said, “I wouldn’t take back the experience, just because I’ve learned from it, and I’m a better person for it.”

  Tynan said Parent called her about two years after the charges were filed, as part of his probation, to apologize. He sounded genuine.

  “He was really nice. He’s over it,” she said. “He said, ‘I know it affected you.’”

  They talked about hanging out but never did.

  Tynan resumed a relationship with Vukodinovich while he was in jail. For a time, he was angry, she said. But she wrote as many as twenty-five letters, she said, and he wrote back. Letter for letter.

  The girls themselves mostly drifted apart, and when they reconnected, Preston Junior High was not their favorite topic. Prutzman had a scrapbook of news clippings and the instant messages Parent sent her. But she threw it out when she went to college. “It was time to clean house,” she explained. “Everything I didn’t need to remember.”

  She doesn’t have any regrets. “I always knew that I had done the right thing, and I had family and friends telling me I had done the right thing, and that’s one of the things that helped get me through.”

  Friendships among the boys waxed and waned during the judicial process and their hours of court-ordered therapy. But about three years after the charges, they had reconciled and bonded.

  “No fifteen-year-old should ever go through something like that,” Meininger said.

  “Once you go through something like that at that age, there’s something that’s created,” Vukodinovich said. He said the experience helped him. “It was my fault. I definitely take ownership for what I did. The girls did the right thing. It put a stop to that whole era of my life.”

  Vukodinovich stayed in touch with Tynan, with whom he said he has a “stronger bond” because they dated for more than a year, and said he has written to Preston’s principal apologizing for what he did.

  He also met with Preston teachers about preventing school violence.

  “That was definitely a healing process,” he said. “They cried, and I almost cried.”

  He had hoped to travel around Colorado—talking kid-to-kid—about the lessons he’d learned, but he said state budget cuts zapped the idea.

  Wh
at he would tell students and teachers is that troubled teens may need as little as an extra two-minute conversation with a teacher between classes. “Creating that one-on-one relationship is huge,” he said.

  Something like that might have put a dent in his own “negativity.” He didn’t do sports, schoolwork or after-school programs. He was surrounded by kids who said, “I hate life.” Even the Marilyn Manson music Vukodinovich termed rebellious worked against him.

  “When you’re fourteen, you’re just a sponge and everything you hear or feel or see affects you,” he said. “We were just fourteen-year-old kids out of touch with reality. . . . When you’re that young, you just get sucked into things. That’s what you think is reality.”

  That is why kids with seemingly everything would contemplate—or even commit—a school shooting. Kids who don’t come from abusive, broken, or drug-addled homes. Kids who don’t come from the inner-city. And yet the cliques and rivalries they face engender an all-encompassing reality. The school world—especially in isolated areas such as suburbs and small towns—is the only world they know.

  “I was just ungrateful for what I had,” Parent said. Loving friends. A loving family. Nice house. Nice things in my house.

  “I had it made. It took me everything to realize I had anything.”

  END

  This afterword was written with help from research assistant Charles Trowbridge.The story was adapted from “A Tragedy Averted—It All Seemed So Eerily Familiar: A Plan, A List and A School Threatened by Troubled Teens” by Jeff Kass, Rocky Mountain News (CO); Saturday, April 16, 2005.

  END NOTES

  Columbine documents released to the public by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office begin with JC001. The actual page numbers follow in six-digit sequence, so page one is JC001000001. The final page so far released is JC001026859. To avoid unneeded numbers, those pages are referred to here as JC and then the page number, so page one would be JC1.

  I used a PDF file for the latest round of documents—nearly 1,000—released by the sheriff’s office in 2006, so for those documents I have included the PDF page, which provides for much easier searches. The final page (JC001026859), for example, would be listed as JC26859 (PDF 946).

  When generally referring to someone’s interview with police, I cite the first page of the interview.

  Misspellings, poor grammar, lack of capital letters, all capital letters, bold, etc. were left intact in the diaries as much as possible given any formatting limitations such as translating handwriting to print.

  The drawings interspersed throughout this book come from Harris and Klebold documents released in 2006 from locations including their diaries, day planners, and computer files.

  The Jefferson County Sheriff’s 2000 report has officially been called the “Sheriff’s Office Final Report on the Columbine High School shootings.” It is, in fact, anything but final, and is referred to here as the official report.

  I have attempted to make the endnotes as extensive, and formal, as possible, although many documents and reports may be found on the Internet.

  One: Day One

  Evan Todd tells police Dylan looks like a clown. JC173.

  Official report and Dylan’s autopsy describe his clothes and facial hair the day of Columbine.

  The official report notes, “Based on comments Klebold and Harris made in their homemade videotapes, the investigation determined the two planned to shoot any surviving students able to escape from the cafeteria after the bombs exploded.”

  “Klebold and Harris also have bombs constructed with timers in their cars, set to go off once they go back into the school.”

  Peter Horvath set to be on lunch duty that day comes from interview with him at the school on 10 Jan. 2007.

  Eric and Dylan saying as the shooting starts, “This is what we always wanted to do,” is from official report, as is Gardner being told, “I need you in the back lot!” Gardner actions come from official report.

  Lance Kirklin himself recalls Dylan standing over him and shooting him. The Klebold/Lance Kirklin exchange comes from Kevin Vaughan and Lynn Bartels, “Brutal Klebold Emerges in Accounts—Survivors Say Teen Was No Meek Follower as He Methodically and Sadistically Killed,” Rocky Mountain News, Sunday, 6 June 1999 .

  Patti Nielson information comes from official report, police interviews with her, and my interview with her in 2008. Some of her information slightly contradicts the police accounts or appears to logically fill in blanks. Given the tradition of errors and lack of clarity in the police reports, I defer to this interview done directly with Nielson.

  What happened to Brian Anderson includes information from the official report, other police reports, Nielson interview, and Norm Clarke, “Bullet Just Bounced Off,” Rocky Mountain News, Friday, 23 April 1999.

  Official report says Smoker fired three rounds at Harris. A newspaper report indicates confusion on that, and the number may be four: Kevin Vaughan, “Questions Linger Concerning Columbine Ballistics Reports—Origin of Some Bullets Remains a Mystery as Weapon They Were Fired From Cannot be Identified,” Rocky Mountain News, Friday, 28 Dec. 2001.

  Jon Curtis and Jay Gallatine actions come from official report.

  Number of people in library from official report.

  Harris kills five in the library, and Klebold two. Together, they kill an additional three at JC11141.

  Peggy Dodd and Carol Weld information comes from their police interviews, JC322 and JC596, respectively.

  Accounts of what Eric and Dylan did in the library come from official report, the “Columbine Task Force Library Team Executive Summary” (JC-11139), and individual reports of those in the library, including Peter Ball, Patricia Blair, Jennifer Doyle, Lindsay Elmore, Andrew Fair, Makai Hall, Sara Houy, Heather Jacobson, Heidi Johnson, Byron Kirkland, Lisa Kreutz, Joshua Lapp, Nicole Nowlen, Kathy Park, Rebecca Parker, Bree Pasquale, Diwata Perez, Kacey Ruegsegger, John Savage, Valeen Schnurr, Dan Steepleton, Evan Todd, and Aaron Welsh.

  The official report appears to have depended on the “Executive Summary,” which is far more detailed.

  Evan Todd says it appears Eric Harris had a broken nose; his face was also bloody and he was dizzy and wobbly. JC173. According to the official report, “Investigators believe Harris broke his nose as a result of the ‘kick’ from the shotgun when he bent to fire under the table.” (After killing Cassie Bernall.) Official report also says Bree Pasqual thought Harris was disoriented.

  Official report talks of shotgun pellet grazing Tomlin’s chest.

  Evan Todd and the official report talk of Dylan shooting the television before leaving the library.

  Circumstances of how Sanders is shot comes from official report, Sanders autopsy, and daughter Angela Sanders’ lawsuit.

  “Ballistics cannot positively identify the bullets or the weapon used to shoot Sanders,” according to the sheriff’s official report. “Evidence indicates that both Klebold and Harris at some point fired their weapons south down the library hallway.” Yet JC11869 says Harris shot Sanders with his carbine rifle.

  “We are here for the living and the walking” comes from Sanders lawsuit. See also Jeff Kass, “Teacher Struggled to Live—Sanders Was Shot Early During Attack, Survived for Hours,” Rocky Mountain News, Wednesday, 21 Aug. 2002.

  After the library, “The gunmen did not appear to witnesses to be overly intent on gaining access to any of the rooms,” the official report says. “Their behavior now seemed directionless.”

  11:44 a.m. cafeteria movements come from sheriff report. At 11:46 a.m., the sheriff concludes that a fiery explosion that fills the screen is a partial detonation of the propane bomb.

  I recalculated the number of shots the official report says Eric and Dylan each fired because the El Paso County Sheriff investigation into Dan Rohrbough’s killing later found that Eric, not Dylan, shot Rohrbough.

  “A thor
ough investigation by a CBI arson investigator determined that there was evidence on the table and around the gunmen’s bodies indicating that the gunmen took their own lives before the fire occurred on the table,” according to the sheriff’s final report.

  Guerra’s comments the day of Columbine come from State of Colorado Department of Law Office of the Attorney General [Ken Salazar], Report of the Investigation into Missing Daily Field Activity and Daily Supervisor Reports Related to Columbine High School Shootings, 16 Sept. 2004. Guerra follow-up interview, 2. That is actually the second report filed by Salazar when he was attorney general. The first is Report of the Investigation into the 1997 Directed Report and Related Matters Concerning the Columbine High School Shootings in April 1999, 26 Feb. 2004.

  Two: The Wild West

  Devon Adams, Dylan’s parents via their police interview, and some news clips are among the accounts that say what was in Dylan’s room.

  U.S. Census puts the county’s residents at 87% white.

  Lack of crime centers in the suburbs comes from Mark Baldassare, Trouble in Paradise (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 13.

  Dylan’s University of Colorado application being incomplete comes from author’s interview with University of Colorado spokeswoman Bobbi Barrow on 6 Sept. 2000.

  Some of the information on Buffalo Bill comes from the PBS website,

  http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/a_c/cody.htm.

  Also, “William Frederick Cody” by Paul Fees, Former Curator Buffalo Bill Museum at http://www.bbhc.org/edu/readyReference_01.cfm.

  Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave, at http://www.buffalobill.org/history.htm.

  Youth suicide and firearms:

  http://www.pbs.org/thesilentepidemic/riskfactors/guns.html.

  http://www.safeyouth.org/scripts/facts/suicide.asp.

  http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/81868.php.

  Chivington information comes from Robert G. Athearn, The Coloradans (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), 74-75.