in her upper rear hip; the bullet exited the abdomen.
Columbine High School
Perpetrators – Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris
Background
Dylan Klebold was born September 11, 1981, in Lakewood, Colorado, to Thomas and Susan Klebold. Thomas Klebold was a geophysicist turned realtor and ran a small real estate business from home. Susan Klebold worked for the State of Colorado, administering training programs for the disabled.
Eric Harris was born April 9, 1981 in Wichita, Kansas, to Wayne and Katherine Harris. His father was a US Air Force Transport Pilot and his mother a homemaker. They moved to Columbine, Colorado, in 1996 where Eric met Dylan in Junior High.
Preliminary Activities
In 1996, Eric Harris created a private website on America Online. The site was originally set up to host Doom levels that he and Dylan Klebold had created, mainly for friends. The blog postings, however, began to show the first signs of Harris' ever-growing anger against society. Harris's site had few visitors, and caused no concern until late 1997, when Dylan Klebold gave the address to Brooks Brown, Harris's former friend. Brown's mother had filed numerous complaints with the Jefferson County Sheriff's office about Eric Harris, believing him to be dangerous.
The website was filled with death threats towards Brooks, and Dylan knew that if Brooks had the address, it would eventually be seen by his mother, and possibly result in problems for Harris. Indeed, Brooks Brown's parents contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, and investigator Michael Guerra was notified of the site. Guerra discovered the website contained violent threats directed at the students and teachers of Columbine High School. Other material included blurbs Harris had written concerning his hatred of society in general, and his desire to kill those who annoyed him. Harris began noting the completion of pipe bombs on his site, and included a gun count and hitlist of individuals he wished to target. He never, however, detailed his overall plan. As Harris had admitted to having explosives, Guerra wrote a draft affidavit for a search warrant of the Harris household, but it was never filed.
In early 1998, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were caught with tools and equipment they’d stolen moments earlier from a parked van near Littleton, Colorado. Both were arrested and attended a joint court hearing where they pleaded guilty to the felony theft. The judge sentenced them to juvenile diversion where they attended various classes together, including a class on anger management. Harris started attending therapy with a psychologist, and continued to do so for about a year. Harris and Klebold were eventually released from diversion several weeks early due to their good behavior, although they remained on probation.
At a meeting with his psychiatrist, Harris complained of depression, anger, and suicidal thoughts, and was prescribed the anti-depressant Zoloft. He complained about restlessness and a lack of concentration to his doctor, and in April was switched to a similar drug, Luvox. At the time of his death, Harris had therapeutic Luvox levels in his system. Some analysts have argued that one or both of these medications may have contributed to Harris's actions as these drugs have a noted side-effect of causing increased aggression, loss of remorse, depersonalization, and mania, in some people.
In the months prior to the attacks, Harris and Klebold acquired two 9mm semi-automatic handguns and two 12-gauge shotguns. A rifle and the two shotguns were bought by a friend, Robyn Anderson, at the Tanner Gun Show in December, 1998. Harris and Klebold later bought a handgun from another friend, Mark Manes, for $500. Manes was jailed after the massacre for selling a handgun to a minor, as was Philip Duran, who had introduced the duo to Manes.
With instructions from the Internet, Harris and Klebold built ninety-nine improvised explosive devices (IEDs) of various designs and size, and sawed the barrels and butts from their shotguns to make them easier to conceal. Numerous felony violations of state and federal law, including the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act of 1968, were conducted even before the massacre began.
Harris and Klebold both began keeping journals of their progress soon after their arrests, and documented their arsenal with video. Journal entries revealed that the pair had an elaborate plan for a major bombing rivaling that of the Oklahoma City bombing, plans drawn up for ways to escape to Mexico, a plot that involved hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport to crash it into a building in New York City, as well as details for the school attacks. The pair envisioned that after setting off bombs in the cafeteria at the busiest time of day, killing many hundreds of students, they would use their guns to shoot survivors as they fled from the school. Then, as police cars, ambulances, fire trucks, and reporters came to the school, bombs in the boys' cars would explode, killing emergency personnel, media, and law officers. This original plan failed when their main explosives did not detonate.
The boys kept videos that documented the explosives, ammunition, and weapons they had acquired illegally. In these videos, the shooters revealed all the elaborate and creative ways they had thought up to hide their arsenals in their own homes, as well as how they misled their parents. Some videos contained footage of the pair doing target practice in nearby foothills, and shots of the high school they planned to attack. On April 20, approximately thirty minutes before the attack, they shot a final video saying goodbye, and apologizing to their friends and families.
The Weapons
During the shootings, Harris fired the following weapons:
* 12 gauge Savage-Springfield 67H pump-action shotgun; twenty-five rounds fired.
* Hi-Point 995 Carbine 9mm semi-automatic rifle; fired 96 times.
Harris committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with his shotgun.
Klebold fired the following weapons:
* 9mm Intratec TEC-9 semi-automatic handgun; fifty-five rounds fired.
* 12-gauge Stevens 311D double-barreled sawed-off.
Klebold committed suicide with a shot to the left temple with the TEC-9.
The Massacre
