Killers_ The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time - Cawthorne, Nigel [119]
But Columbine, it seemed, had got off lightly. According to their video-taped testimony, Harris and Klebold had planned to blow up a sizeable part of the school with hundreds of students in it. As it was it took several days for the authorities to find and defuse all the bombs they had left behind them. The bomb-making factory in Harris’s garage had turned out over thirty pipe bombs as well as the two larger propane devices. Examining their diaries and websites, the police learned that the two had originally conceived a larger plan to reduce the school to rubble, then blow up a plane over New York City. They wanted a film made of their story and discussed who should direct, Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino.
The couple left videotapes to assist with the production. In one, Harris appeared with a sawn-off shotgun he called Arlene, after his favourite character in the video game Doom.
‘It’s going to be like f***ing Doom,’ he said. ‘Tick, tick, tick… Ha! That f***ing shotgun is straight out of Doom.’
They also idolised Hitler. But the motivation for the killings was not clear. One survivor recalled that Harris and Klebold ordered all the jocks who had harassed them to stand up.
‘We’re going to kill every one of you,’ they said.
But in the end the killings were blindly indiscriminate.
‘They shot at everybody,’ said one survivor, ‘including the preps, the jocks and the people who wore Abercrombie and Fitch clothes. But it would be hard to say they singled them out, because everybody here looks like that. I mean, we’re in white suburbia. Our school’s wealthy. Go into the parking lot and see the cars. These kids have money. But I never thought they’d do this.’
In another tape Harris and Klebold also thanked Mark Manes and Phillip Duran for supplying them with the weapons they needed.
Manes was later charged, under a Colorado state law forbidding the sale of handguns to a juvenile, with selling a Intrac TEC-9, 9mm pistol to Klebold for $500. He was also charged with possession of a dangerous or illegal weapon as he had gone shooting with Harris and Klebold in March 1999 and had fired one of their sawn-off shotguns. He supplied one hundred rounds of 9mm bullets to Harris on the night of 19 April. Pleading guilty, he was sentenced to six years in a state penitentiary.
Phillip Duran, who worked with Harris and Klebold at Blackjack Pizza, was charged with brokering the deal with Manes and handling a sawn-off shotgun during target practice. He was sentenced to four-and-a-half years in jail. Both Duran and Manes denied any knowledge of Harris and Klebold’s plans.
Eighteen-year-old Robyn Anderson, a friend of Harris and Klebold, also admitted accompanying Harris and Klebold to a gun show in late 1998 and buying two shotguns and one rifle which were later used in the killings. But as the purchase had been made from a private individual rather than a licensed gun dealer, no law had been broken.
Some attempt was made to blame their parents, but both the Harrises and Klebolds seem to have provided an exemplary family life. Both boys felt remorse for their parents.
‘It f***ing sucks to do this to them,’ said Harris on one of the tapes they left behind. ‘They’re going to be put through hell once we do this.’ Speaking directly to them, he added: ‘There’s nothing you guys could’ve done to prevent this.’
Klebold told his mother and father that they had been ‘great parents’ who had taught him ‘self-awareness, self-reliance… I always appreciated that.’ He added: ‘I am sorry I have so much rage.’
In an attempt to explain what they were about to do, Harris quoted Shakespeare’s The Tempest, saying: ‘Good wombs hath borne bad sons.’
On the morning of the shootings, just before they set