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Eric pressed his luck. He was crazy for a prom-night date, but he waited till early evening to call Susan. He was confident. Girls liked him. He asked her to come over for a movie. She swung by around seven. His parents had just left, out to dinner to celebrate their anniversary. Eric wanted to show Susan Event Horizon, a low-budget gorefest about a spaceship transported back from hell. It was his all-time favorite. They watched it straight through, then sat around his basement bedroom talking.
Eric's parents came home and went down to meet her. It was lots of aimless chitchat, like Eric's dad telling her he got his hair cut at Great Clips. They seemed friendly, Susan thought. They all got along well. After Eric's parents left, he played her some of his favorite tunes. It was mostly banging and screaming to her ear, but then he would mix in some New Age stuff like Enya. He put his arm around her once but didn't go for a kiss. He did lots of thoughtful things, like offering to warm up her car when she had to get home. She stayed until eleven--half an hour after she should have. Eric kissed her on the cheek and said good night.
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Prom was the standard affair. They crowned a queen, they crowned a king, Mr. D breathed a sigh of relief that they had come through it alive. Dylan and Robyn had fun, but joy wasn't really the objective. Prom was more about acting out some weird facsimile of adulthood: dress up like a tacky wedding party, hold hands and behave like a couple even if you've never dated, and observe the etiquette of Gilded Age debutantes thrust into modern celebrity: limos, red carpets, and a constant stream of paparazzi, played by parents, teachers, and hired photo hacks.
For enjoyment, someone invented afterprom. Peel off the cummerbund, step out of the two-inch pumps, forget the stupid posing, and indulge in actual fun. Like gambling. The Columbine gym was outfitted with row after row of blackjack, poker, and craps tables. Parents in Vegas costumes served as dealers. They had ball-toss contests, a jump castle, and a bungee cord plunge. It stayed active till dawn. Afterprom had its own theme: New York, New York. Some parents had built a life-sized maze you had to follow to get into the school, and the entranceway was festooned with cardboard mock-ups of the Empire State Building and the Statue of Liberty. Some of the boys barely saw their dates at afterprom. Some didn't have one. Eric joined Dylan and his limo group. They spent hours in the casino losing fake money. Patrick Ireland hung out nearby. They never met. Dylan kept talking about college, about his future. He kept saying he could hardly wait.
7. Church on Fire
This is a church on fire. This is the heart of Evangelical country. This is Trinity Christian Center, an ecstatic congregation crying out for Jesus in a converted Kmart half a mile from Columbine. As the casino shut down in the school gym, the faithful rose across the Front Range. They spilled out into the aisles of Trinity Christian, heaving and rumbling like an old-time tent revival. The frenzied throng thrust two hundred arms toward the heavens, belting out the spirit their souls just couldn't contain. The choir drove them higher. It ripped through the chorus of Hillsong's burning anthem and the crowd surged.
This is a church on fire...
We have a burning desire...
No one had the fever like a sunburned high school girl, radiating from the choir like the orchids splashed across her sundress. She threw her head back, squeezed her eyes shut, and kept singing, her lips charging straight through the instrumental jam.
Since pioneer days and the Second Great Awakening, Colorado had been a hotbed on the itinerant ministry circuit. By the 1990s, Colorado Springs was christened the Evangelical Vatican. The city of Denver seemed immune to the fervor, but its western suburbs were roiling. Nowhere did the spirit move more strongly than at Trinity Christian Center. They had a savior to reach out to and The Enemy to repel.
Satan was at work in Jefferson County, any Bible-church pastor would tell you so. Long before Eric and Dylan struck, tens of thousands of Columbine Evangelicals prepared for the dark prince. The Enemy, they called him. He was always on the prowl.
Columbine sits three miles east of the foothills. Closer to the peaks, property values rise steadily, in tandem with decorum. In comparison to Trinity Christian, upscale congregations like Foothills Bible Church mount Broadway productions. Foothills Pastor Bill Oudemolen took stage like the quintessential televangelist: blow-dried, swept-back helmet hair, crisp tie, and tailored Armani suit in muted earth tones. But the stereotype dissolved when he opened his mouth. He was sincere, sharp-witted, and intellectual. He rebuked ministry-for-money preachers and their get-saved-quick schemes.
West Bowles Community Church lay between other megachurches geographically, socioeconomically, and intellectually. Like Oudemolen, Pastor George Kirsten was a biblical literalist. He was contemptuous of peers obsessed with a loving Savior. His Christ had a vengeful side. Love was an easy sell--that missed half the story. "That's offensive to me," Kirsten said. He preached a strict, black-and-white moral code. "People want to paint the world in a lot of gray," he said. "I don't see that in the Scripture."
Religion did not mean an hour a week on Sundays to this crowd. There was Bible study, youth group, fellowship, and retreats. The "thought for the day" started the morning; Scripture came before bed. West Bowles kids roamed the halls of Columbine sporting WWJD? bracelets--What Would Jesus Do?--and exchanging Christian rock CDs. Occasionally, they witnessed to the unbelievers or argued Scripture with the mainline Protestants. The Columbine Bible Study group met at the school once a week; its major challenges were resisting temptation, adhering to a higher standard, and acting as worthy servants of Christ. Its members kept a vigilant eye out for The Enemy.
Pastors Kirsten and Oudemolen spoke of Satan frequently. Reverend Oudemolen called him by name; Kirsten preferred The Enemy. Either way, Satan was more than a symbol of evil--he was an actual, physical entity, hungry for compliant souls.
He snatched the most unlikely targets. Who would have expected Cassie Bernall to fall? She was the angelic blond junior who'd dressed up for a function at the Marriott on Saturday instead of prom. She was scheduled to speak at her church's youth group meeting on Tuesday. Cassie's house sat right beside Columbine property, but it was only her second year at the school. She'd transferred in from Christian Fellowship School. She had begged her parents to make the move. The Lord had spoken to Cassie. He wanted her to witness to the unbelievers at Columbine.
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Monday morning was uneventful. Lots of bleary eyes from Saturday's all-nighter, lots of chatter about who did what. All Mr. D's kids had made it back. A handful peeked through his doorway with big grins. "Just wanted you to see our bright, shining faces," they said.
Supervisory Special Agent Dwayne Fuselier was a little on edge Monday. He headed the FBI's domestic terrorism unit in Denver, and April 19 was a dangerous day in the region. The worst disaster in FBI history had erupted six years earlier and retaliation followed exactly two years after. On April 19, 1993, the Bureau ended a fifty-one-day standoff with the Branch Davidian cult near Waco, Texas, by storming the compound. A massive fire had erupted and most of the eighty inhabitants burned to death--adults and children. Agent Fuselier was one of the nation's foremost hostage negotiators. He spent six weeks trying to talk the Davidians out. Fuselier had opposed the attack on the compound, but lost. Just before storming in, the FBI gave Fuselier one final chance. He was the last person known to speak to Davidian leader David Koresh. He watched the compound burn.
Speculation raged about the FBI's role in the blaze. The controversy nearly ended Attorney General Janet Reno's career. Waco radicalized the anti-government militia movement, made April 19 into a symbol of perverse authority. Timothy McVeigh sought vengeance by bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. His explosion killed 168 people, the largest terrorist attack in American history to that point.
8. Maximum Human Density
It's a safe bet that Eric and Dylan watched the carnage of Waco and Oklahoma City on television, with the rest of the cou
ntry. Those atrocities were particularly prominent in this region. McVeigh was tried in federal court in downtown Denver and sentenced to death while the boys attended Columbine in the suburbs. The scenes of devastation were played over and over. In his journal, Eric would brag about topping McVeigh. Oklahoma City was a one-note performance: McVeigh set his timer and walked away; he didn't even see his spectacle unfold. Eric dreamed much bigger than that.
Judgment Day, they called it. Columbine would erupt with an explosion, too. Eric designed at least seven big bombs, working off The Anarchist Cookbook he found on the Web. He chose the barbecue design: standard propane tanks, the fat, round white ones, eighteen inches tall, a foot in diameter, packing some twenty pounds of highly explosive gas. Bomb #1 employed aerosol cans for detonators, each wired up to an old-fashioned alarm clock with round metal bells on top. Step one was planting them in a park near Eric's house, three miles from the school. That bomb could kill hundreds of people but was intended for only stones and trees. The attack was to begin with a decoy: rock the neighborhood and divert police. Every free minute raised the potential body count. The boys were going to double or triple McVeigh's record. They estimated the damage variously as "hundreds," "several hundred," and "at least four hundred"--oddly conservative for the arsenal they were preparing.
Eric may have had another reason for the decoy plan. He was uncannily perceptive about people, and Dylan had been wavering. If Dylan was reticent, the decoy would help ease him in. It was a harmless explosive, no one would be hurt by it, but once they drove off, Dylan would be committed.
The main event was scripted in three acts, just like a movie. It would kick off with a massive explosion in the commons. More than six hundred students swarmed in at the start of "A" lunch, and two minutes after the bell rang, most of them would be dead. Act I featured two bombs, using propane tanks like the decoy. Each was strung with nails and BBs for shrapnel, lashed to a full gasoline can and a smaller propane tank, and wired to similar bell clocks. Each bomb fit snugly into a duffel bag, which Eric and Dylan would lug in at the height of passing-period chaos. Again, Dylan was eased into killing. Clicking over the alarm hinge was bloodless and impersonal. It didn't feel like killing--no blood, no screams. Most of Dylan's murders would be over before he faced them.
The fireball would wipe out most of the lunch crowd and set the school ablaze. Eric drew detailed diagrams. He spaced the bombs out but located them centrally, for maximum killing radius. They would sit beside two thick columns supporting the second floor. Computer modeling and field tests would later demonstrate a high probability that the bombs would have collapsed some of the second floor. Eric apparently hoped to watch the library and its inhabitants crash down upon the flaming lunchers.
As the time bombs ticked down, the killers would exit briskly and flare out across the parking lot at a ninety-degree angle. Each boy was to head for his own car, strategically parked about a hundred yards apart. The cars provided mobile base camps, where they would gear up to unleash Act II. Pre-positioning ensured optimal fire lanes. They had drilled the gear-ups repeatedly and could execute them rapidly. The bombs would detonate at 11:17, and the densely packed wing would crumble. As the flames leapt up, Eric and Dylan would train their semiautomatics on the exits and await survivors.
Act II: firing time. This was going to be fun. Dylan would sport an Intratec TEC-DC9 (a 9mm semiautomatic handgun) and a shotgun. Eric had a Hi-Point 9mm carbine rifle and a shotgun. They'd sawed the barrels off the shotguns for concealment. Between them, they'd carry eighty portable explosives--pipe bombs and carbon dioxide bombs that Eric called "crickets"--plus a supply of Molotov cocktails and an assortment of freakish knives, in case it came down to hand-to-hand combat. They'd suit up in infantry-style web harnesses, allowing them to strap much of the ammo and explosives to their bodies. Each had a backpack and a duffel bag to hump more hardware into the attack zone. They would tape flint matchstriker strips to their forearms for rapid-fire pipe-bomb attacks. Their long black dusters would go on last--for concealment and for looking badass. (Later, the dusters were widely referred to as trench coats.)
They planned to advance on the building as soon as the bombs blew. They'd be set back far enough to see each other around the corner--and just barely avoid the blast. They had devised their own hand signals to communicate. Every detail was planned; battle positions were imperative. The 250,000-square-foot school had twenty-five exits, so some survivors would escape. The boys could remain in visual contact and still cover two sides of the building, including two of the three main exits. Their firing lines intersected on the most important point: the student entrance, adjacent to the commons and just a dozen yards from the big bombs.
Positioning yourself at a right angle to the objective is standard U.S. infantry practice, taught to every American foot soldier at the Infantry School in Fort Benning, Georgia. Interlocking fire lanes, the military calls it. The target is constantly under fire from two sides, yet the assault team's weapons are never pointed at confederates. Even if a shooter turns sharply to peg an escaping enemy, his squad mates are safe. From their initial positions, Eric and Dylan could sweep their gun barrels across a ninety-degree firing radius without endangering each other. Even if one shooter advanced more quickly, he would never violate his partner's fire lane. It is both the safest and the most effective assault pattern of modern small-arms warfare.
This was the phase Eric and Dylan were savoring. It was also when they expected to die. They had little hope of witnessing Act III. Forty-five minutes after the initial blast, when the cops declared it was over, paramedics started loading amputees into ambulances, and reporters broadcast the horror to a riveted nation, Eric's Honda and Dylan's BMW would rip right through the camera crews and the first responders. Each car was to be loaded with two more propane devices and twenty gallons of gasoline in an assortment of orange plastic jugs. Their positions had been chosen to maximize both the firepower in Act II and the carnage in Act III. The cars would be close to the building, near the main exits--ideal locations for police command, emergency medical staging, and news vans. They would be just far enough from the building and each other to wipe out most of the junior and senior parking lots. Maximum body count: nearly 2,000 students, plus 150 faculty and staff, plus who knows how many police, paramedics, and journalists.
Eric and Dylan had been considering a killing spree for at least a year and a half. They had settled on the approximate time and location a year out: April, in the commons. They finalized details as Judgment Day approached: Monday, April 19. The date appeared firm. The boys referred to it twice matter-of-factly in the recordings they made in the last ten days. They did not explain the choice, though Eric discussed topping Oklahoma City, so they may have been planning to echo that anniversary, as Tim McVeigh had done with Waco.
The moment of attack was critical. Students liked to eat early, so "A" lunch was the most popular. The maximum human density anywhere, anytime in the high school occurred in the commons at 11:17. Eric knew the exact minute because he had inventoried his targets. He'd counted just 60 to 80 kids scattered about the commons from 10:30 to 10:50. Between 10:56 and 10:58, "lunch ladies bring out shit," he wrote. Then lunch door 2 opened, and a "steady trickle of people" appeared. He recorded the exact moment each door opened, and body counts in minute-by-minute increments. At 11:10, the bell rang, fourth period ended, students piled into the hallways. Moments later, they rushed the lunch lines, fifty more every minute: 300, 350, 400, 450, 500-plus by 11:15. Eric and Dylan's various handwritten timelines show the bombs scheduled to explode between 11:16 and 11:18. The final times are followed by little quips: "Have fun!" and "HA HA HA."
Eric and Dylan expected their attack to puzzle the public, so they left an extraordinary cache of material to explain themselves. They kept schedules, budgets, maps, drawings, and all sorts of logistical artifacts, along with commentary in notebooks, journals, and Web sites. A series of videos were specifically designed to explain their att
ack. They would come to be known as the Basement Tapes, because the bulk were shot in Eric's basement. Even more illuminating was Eric's twenty-page journal devoted to his thinking. Both chronicles are revealing, but also maddeningly contradictory. They were so disturbing that the sheriff's department would choose to hide them from the public, concealing even the existence of the Basement Tapes for months. Eric and Dylan's true intentions would remain a mystery for years.
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The date was the first element of Eric's plan to fail---apparently because of ammo. On Monday, he had nearly seven hundred rounds for the four guns. He wanted more. He had just turned eighteen, so he could buy his own, but that fact somehow escaped him. He was used to relying on others, and he thought Mark Manes could help. Manes was a drug dealer who ran some guns and ammo on the side. He had come through with the TEC-9 in January, but he was dragging ass on the ammo. Thursday night, Eric began hounding him to come up with the stuff. Four days later, Eric remained empty-handed.
They could have gone ahead without the extra ammo, but their fire-power would have been impaired. Shotguns are not built for rapid-fire assault. The TEC-9 took twenty-and thirty-round magazines. Dylan could release one with the flick of a button and pop in a new mag with a single sweep of the hand. Real gun aficionados hate the thing. It's too big and bulky for a professional and way too unreliable--a poor man's Uzi. Dealers complain of slapdash design, frequent misfeeds, and a lousy sighting mechanism that is often misaligned and can't be adjusted. "Cheap construction and marginal reliability," says a major Russian gun dealer's Web site. But it was available.
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Eric and Dylan had a mostly uneventful Monday. They got up before sunrise to make bowling class by 6:00 A.M. They cut fourth hour for an extended lunch at Blackjack, and attended their other classes as usual. That evening, Manes suddenly came through with the ammo. He'd gotten it at Kmart: two boxes, with fifty rounds apiece. Together, they cost twenty-five bucks.