Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold



Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 – April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennet Klebold (September 11, 1981 – April 20, 1999) were the high school seniors who committed the Columbine High School massacre. They killed 13 people and injured 24 others. Both Harris, 18 years old, and Klebold, 17, committed suicide after the killings.

Early lives
Eric David Harris was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. His parents were Wayne and Kathy Harris, and he had an older brother, Kevin. The family relocated often as Wayne Harris was a U.S. Air Force transport pilot; Kathy was a homemaker. The Harris family moved to the Littleton area in July 1993, when Wayne retired from the military.

The Harrises lived in rented accommodations for the first three years that they lived in the Littleton area, and it was during this time that Eric met and befriended Dylan Klebold. In 1996, the Harrises bought a house south of Columbine High School. Eric's brother Kevin attended college at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Dylan Bennet Klebold was born in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents, Thomas and Susan, and older brother Byron, attended a Lutheran church with their children, with the boys attending confirmation classes in accordance with Lutheran tradition. At home, the family also observed Jewish rituals in keeping with Susan's familial heritage. Susan's grandfather, Leo Yassenoff, was an influential builder and philanthropist. Dylan's father, Thomas, was raised by a brother 18 years his senior, as each of his parents had died while he was young.

The family had resided in Deer Creek Canyon, south of Lakewood, since 1990. Thomas ran a small real estate business from home, while Susan was an employment counselor. Dylan attended Normandy Elementary School (grades 1 and 2), then attended Governor’s Ranch Elementary School where he was part of the CHIPS (Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students) program.

High school
According to early accounts of the shooting, Harris and Klebold were unpopular and frequent targets of bullying at their high school. Some investigators assert that the notion they were outsiders was largely a myth, although the idea has become ingrained in popular accounts. Harris and Klebold were also said to have been part of a group who called themselves the Trenchcoat Mafia, although they had no particular connection with the group, and did not appear in a group photo of the Trenchcoat Mafia in the 1998 Columbine yearbook. Harris's father stated that Eric was "involved with the Trenchcoat Mafia" in a 911 call he made on April 20, 1999. Harris had a brief romantic relationship with a woman seven years older than him, Brenda Parker, about a year before the shootings. Klebold attended the high school prom three days before the shootings with a classmate named Robyn Anderson.

Soon after they became friends, Harris and Klebold linked their personal computers on a network and both played many games over the Internet. Harris created a set of levels for the game Doom which later became known as the "Harris levels." Harris had a web presence under the handle "REB" (short for Rebel) and other cyber aliases including "Rebldomakr," "Rebdoomer," and "Rebdomine," while Klebold went by the names "VoDKa" and "VoDkA." Eric's various websites hosted Doom and Quake files, as well as team information for those he gamed with online. The sites also openly spouted hatred for the people of their neighborhood and the world in general. When Eric and Dylan began experimenting with pipe bombs, they posted results of the explosions on the websites.

Harris was a fan of musical groups such as Rammstein, KMFDM, Orbital, and The Prodigy. Soon after the shooting, KMFDM posted material on their website condemning Harris and Klebold's violence and denying that their music had anything to do with it. Most notably, Marilyn Manson, which was not one of the groups that the boys listened to, was scorned viciously by the media immediately following the attack.

In March 1998, Jefferson County Sheriff's Office investigator Michael Guerra looked at Harris' website after the parents of Brooks Brown, a fellow student of Harris and Klebold, discovered Harris was making threats aimed at their son following a falling out between them. Guerra wrote a draft affidavit for a search warrant, but the affidavit was never filed. This information was not revealed to the public until September 2001 by 60 Minutes, though it was known by the police the entire time.

The two boys got into trouble with the law early for breaking into a locked van and stealing tools. In January 1998, they were charged with mischief, breaking and entering, trespassing and theft. Eric and Dylan left a good impression on the juvenile officers, who offered to delete the boys' criminal records if they agreed to attend a diversionary program to serve community service, receive psychiatric treatment, and stay out of trouble. Eric was forced to attend anger management classes where, again, he made a good impression. They were so well-behaved that their probation officer discharged them from the program a few months earlier than the due date. Of Eric, it was remarked that he was "a very bright individual who is likely to succeed in life," while Dylan was said to be intelligent, but "needs to understand that hard work is part of fulfilling a dream."

Despite these outward appearances of calm, as time went on, the boys' rage continued to grow. The two made a video for a school project that showed them pretending to shoot fake guns and "snuffing" students in the hallway of their school as "Hitmen for Hire". They both displayed themes of violence in their creative writing projects for school; his teacher said of a Doom-based tale by Harris, written on January 17, 1999, "Yours is a unique approach and your writing works in a gruesome way — good details and mood setting."

While having a cigarette at the start of lunch break, senior Brooks Brown saw Eric Harris arriving at school on the morning of the massacre and scolded him for skipping the morning bowling class, because Harris was always serious about his academics and being on time. Harris reportedly said, "Brooks, I like you. Get out of here. Go home." Having severed his friendship with him a year earlier due to Harris throwing a chunk of ice at his car windshield, Brown quickly evacuated the school grounds. Upon hearing the first gunshots after he had already walked some distance away from the school, he informed the police by a neighbor's cell phone.

Acquiring arms


Because Harris and Klebold were both underage at the time, Robyn Anderson, an 18-year-old Columbine student and old friend of Dylan Klebold's, made a straw purchase of two shotguns and Hi-Point 995 Carbine for Harris and Klebold. Anderson was never charged for her part in the straw purchase in exchange for her cooperation with the investigation that followed the shootings. After illegally acquiring the weapons, Harris and Klebold sawed off the barrels of the shotguns to a length below 18 inches, a felony under the National Firearms Act.

The shooters also possessed a TEC-DC9 semi-automatic handgun, which had a long history. The manufacturer of the TEC-DC9 first sold it to Miami-based Navegar Incorporated. It was then sold to Zander's Sporting Goods in Baldwin, Illinois in 1994. The gun was later sold to Thornton, Colorado firearms dealer Larry Russel. In violation of federal law, Russel did not keep records of the sale, yet he determined that the purchaser of the gun was twenty-one years of age or older. He was unable to identify the pictures of Klebold, Anderson, or Harris shown to him by police after the shooting. Two men named Mark Manes and Philip Duran were convicted of supplying weapons to the two boys. Early depictions of the TEC- DC9 claimed that it was a fully automatic weapon that fired continuously with one pull of the trigger. However, this was not the case. Their model was the closed bolt KG99-related variant, which would have proven virtually impossible to convert to fully automatic without access to firearm machining equipment and substantial expertise. The TEC- 9 is popularly known to be an automatic firearm.

The bombs used by the pair varied and were crudely made from carbon dioxide canisters, galvanized pipe, and metal propane bottles. The bombs were primed with matches placed at one end of the bomb. Both the boys had striker tips on their sleeves. When they rubbed against the bomb, the match head would instantly light the fuse. The weekend before the shootings, Harris and Klebold had purchased propane tanks and other supplies from a hardware store for a few hundred dollars. Several residents of the area claimed to have heard glass breaking and buzzing sounds from the Harris family's garage, indicating they were constructing pipe bombs. Tony Fatre, a fifth-grader who lived next door to Harris, later told authorities that "Eric was always in there with the door closed." Harris purchased more propane tanks on the morning of the attack.

More complex bombs, such as the one that detonated on the corner of South Wadsworth Boulevard and Ken Caryl Avenue, had timers. The two largest bombs built were found in the school cafeteria and were made from small propane tanks. Only one of these bombs went off, and that one only partially detonated. It has been estimated that had any of the bombs placed in the cafeteria actually detonated properly, the blast could have caused extensive structural damage to the school and resulted in casualties in the hundreds.

Motivations
Eric and Dylan wrote much about how they would carry out the massacre but far less about why. A journal found in Harris' bedroom contained almost every detail that the boys planned to follow after 5:00 a.m. on April 20, 1999. In journal entries, the pair often wrote about events such as the Oklahoma City bombing, Waco, and other events, including blurbs and notes on how they wished to "outdo" these events, especially what Timothy McVeigh did to Oklahoma City. They mention how they would like to leave a lasting impression on the world with this kind of violence. The fact that the shooters initially planned and failed to blow up Columbine, and not just shoot students, is an indication of how they instead wished to overshadow the events that had occurred, respectively, four and six years earlier. It is speculated that the original intended date of the attack may have been April 19, the preceding Monday, but due to problems with the creation of one of the bombs, lack of ammunition, or perhaps to avoid involving a close friend who was planning on being absent April 20, the date was changed.

Some people, such as Robyn Anderson, who knew the perpetrators initially stated that the pair were not obsessed with Nazism nor did they worship or admire Adolf Hitler in any way, as was speculated early on by the media. Anderson stated that in retrospect, there were many things the pair didn't tell friends. In his journal, Eric mentions his admiration of Natural Selection and how he would like to kick it up a few notches. He writes how he would like to put everyone in a super Doom game and see to it that anyone who is weak dies and anyone who is strong lives. On the day of the massacre, Eric wore a white t-shirt with the words "NATURAL SELECTION" printed in black.

Harris began keeping a journal in April 1998, a short time after Eric and Dylan were convicted of breaking into a van and each received ten months of juvenile intervention counseling and community service in January 1998. The plan began to formulate then, as reflected in their journals. They were released early from the program due to good behavior, a fact about which they later gloated in the memoirs they taped before the shootings. The journals contained notes on "good hiding places" and areas with poor lighting that could be utilized. The attack was to start at exactly 11:17 a.m., when Eric had calculated the largest possible number of students would be located in the cafeteria.

Harris wanted to join the United States Marine Corps, but his application was rejected shortly before the shootings because he was taking the drug Luvox (Fluvoxamine), an SSRI antidepressant, that he was required to take as part of anger management therapy. According to the recruiting officer, Eric never knew of this rejection. Though some of Eric's friends suggested that he had stopped taking the drug beforehand, the autopsy reports showed that he had at least some Luvox in his system at the time of death. Abrupt cessation of SSRI antidepressants has been found to interfere with normal social functioning in some patients.

A personality profile of Eric Harris, based on journal entries and personal communication, suggests behavior patterns consistent with a "malignant narcissism...(with) pathological narcissism, antisocial features, paranoid traits, and unconstrained aggression." The report notes that such a profile should not be construed as a direct psychodiagnostic evaluation based on face-to-face interviews, formal psychological testing, and collection of collateral information.

Dylan Klebold's role in the shooting had him surrounded in mystery for some time. In his journal Dylan wrote about how Eric and himself were god-like and more highly evolved than every other human being. His secret journal, however, records self-loathing and suicidal intentions. Although both Eric and Dylan had difficulty controlling their anger, Dylan was more likely to get angry and get into trouble than Eric. Dylan was well known to swear at teachers and fight with his boss at Blackjack pizza. After their arrest, which both recorded as the most traumatic thing the two had ever experienced, Dylan wrote a letter to Eric saying how they would have so much fun getting revenge and killing cops, and how his wrath from the January arrest would be god-like. On the day of the massacre Dylan wore a black t-shirt which had the word "WRATH" printed in red. It was speculated that revenge for the arrest was another possible motive for the attack and that the pair planned on having a massive gun battle with police during the shooting. Dylan also wrote about how life was no fun without a little death, and how he would like to spend the last moments of his life in nerve-wracking twists of murder and bloodshed. He concluded by saying how he would kill himself afterward in order to leave the world which he hated and go to a better place.

One official report suggests that Eric was a clinical psychopath and Dylan was a depressive. Investigators believe that their mental illnesses may have been the underlying cause for their rampage. This report suggests that all of the reasons the boys give for the shooting were justifications in order to present themselves as killers with a cause.

Some of Eric and Dylan's home recorded videos, called "The Basement Tapes", have been withheld from the public by the police. Eric and Dylan reportedly discuss their motives for the attacks in these videos as well as give instruction in bomb making. The police say the reason for withholding these tapes is because they could become "call-to-arms" and "how-to" videos which could inspire copycat killers.

Media confusion
Initially, the shooters were believed to be members of a clique that called themselves the "Trenchcoat Mafia", a small group of Columbine's "outcasts" who wore heavy black trench coats. The Trenchcoat Mafia was originally a group of gamers and geeks who hung out together, who started wearing trenchcoats after the mother of one of the members bought her son a cowboy duster for Christmas. They adopted the name "Trenchcoat Mafia" after jocks began to call them that. Investigation revealed that Harris and Klebold were only friends with one member of the group, Chris Morris, and that most of the primary members of the Trenchcoat Mafia had left the school by the time that Harris and Klebold committed the massacre. Most did not even know the shooters, apart from their association with Morris.

Sociological investigation into the high school subculture was conducted in response to the killings, with the desire to determine what factors led to the boys' actions and whether or not future massacres in other schools could be successfully prevented. In the aftermath of the attacks, some North American high school students attended compulsory seminars that encouraged tolerance and condemned bullying. The results of this have been debated. Some saw the increased emphasis on bullying prevention as helpful toward decreasing the chance of such an incident happening again. Others saw the programs as useless, either failing to lessen bullying or failing to decrease the chance of other school massacres. A third group of people saw the increased emphasis on bullying prevention as a beneficial result of the school shootings, but feel that bullying wasn't the sole cause of the shootings so seminars won't ultimately decrease the chance of another school shooting.

Harris and Klebold have affected U.S. culture in tangible ways. Marilyn Manson dubbed them "The Nobodies" in his song of that name from his 2000 album Holy Wood. Manson echoes the boys' reasons for their spree with lines such as "We are the nobodies, We wanna be somebodies, When we're dead, They'll know just who we are." Manson, who was blamed in the wake of the Columbine massacre by the media, criticized their coverage of the event with the lines "Some children died the other day, We fed machines and then we prayed, Puked up and down in morbid faith, You should have seen the ratings that day."

In his "multi-media manifesto," Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho referenced "martyrs like Eric and Dylan."

There was debate on whether the perpetrators should be memorialized. Some opposed, claiming that it glorified murderers, while others argued that the perpetrators themselves were victims, too. Crosses were erected for Harris and Klebold, but the father of Daniel Rohrbough cut them down, saying that murderers should not be memorialized in the same place as victims.

Eric and Dylan's rampage has sprung a cult-like following wherein many idolize and glorify the two shooters. Some school shooters utilized pipe bombs and propane tanks like the ones Eric and Dylan used.

Video games
Eric and Dylan created levels for the computer game Doom. An urban legend spread that these levels were designed to look like the halls of the high school, populated with representations of Harris's classmates and teachers, and that Harris "practiced" for Columbine by playing these levels over and over. In actuality, while Harris did design Doom levels (an activity not uncommon for fans of the game), there is no evidence that they were actually intended to be simulations of Columbine. Some of the Harris level packs have simple graphical modifications that 'enhance' the violent content of the game; generous supplies of monsters, ammunition, and weapons are some of the other features of the levels created by Eric Harris.

Film connection
Harris mentions the murder-themed film Natural Born Killers in his journal, referring to the "holy April morning of NBK". NBK was used as a codename for the attack. They were portrayed as Alex and Eric in the film Elephant by Gus Van Sant, as Cal and Andre in Zero Day by Ben Coccio, as Derwent and Derrick in Duck! The Carbine High Massacre by William Hellfire and Joey Smack, as Chance and Will in American Yearbook by Brian Ging, and an unnamed shooter in Home Room.

Sources and external links

 * A Columbine Site - Comprehensive, frequently updated information on the school shooting
 * OBE: Outcome Based Education, Cult of Death of New Age and the Columbine High School massacre
 * Crimelibrary feature
 * The Columbine Report - 11,000 page report on investigative findings
 * Makers of Luvox sued by victims' families

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