| Revision as of 07:58, 25 November 2003 view sourceWhisperToMe (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users663,043 edits +Tuesday← Previous edit | Revision as of 07:59, 25 November 2003 view source WhisperToMe (talk | contribs)Autopatrolled, Extended confirmed users663,043 edits +Middle namesNext edit → | ||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
| '''Eric Harris''' (], ] - April 20, 1999) and '''Dylan Klebold''' (], 1981 - April 20, 1999) were the perpetrators of the ] in ] on ], ], ], resulting in the deaths of many of their classmates. 18-year old Harris and 17-year old Klebold committed suicide after they killed the students. | '''Eric David Harris''' (], ] - April 20, 1999) and '''Dylan Bennet Klebold''' (], 1981 - April 20, 1999) were the perpetrators of the ] in ] on ], ], ], resulting in the deaths of many of their classmates. 18-year old Harris and 17-year old Klebold committed suicide after they killed the students. | ||
| ==Eric Harris== | ==Eric Harris== | ||
Revision as of 07:59, 25 November 2003
Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 - April 20, 1999) and Dylan Bennet Klebold (September 9, 1981 - April 20, 1999) were the perpetrators of the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, resulting in the deaths of many of their classmates. 18-year old Harris and 17-year old Klebold committed suicide after they killed the students.
Eric Harris
Eric Harris was born in Wichita, Kansas. His parents, Wayne Harris and Kathy Harris were both born in Colorado. However, the two moved around quite a bit, as Wayne was a US Air Force transport pilot. The three had lived in Ohio, Michigan, and New York. As soon as Wayne retired, they settled in Littleton in 1996. After the move, Wayne worked at the Flight Safety Services Corporation in Engleton, Colorado. Kathy worked at a catering company in the area. Eric soon bonded with a boy named Dylan Klebold Some neighbors described the Harrises as supportive of their son. Earlier in his childhood, Eric was in the little league and served as a Boy Scout. Eric wanted to be in the Marine Corps, but was rejected from the Corps several days before the shooting due to the fact that he was taking Luvox, an antidepressent.
Dylan Klebold
Dylan Klebold was born in Lakewood, Colorado. He was a resident of Littleton for many years. His parents were Sue Klebold and Tom Klebold. He also had an older brother named Bryon Klebold. Tom Klebold was a former geophysicist who operated from the family home. Sue worked at the State Consortium of Community Colleges. Her job was to provide accessibility for disabled students. Dylan's neighbors felt that he lived in a good family, yet they saw the power the influence of his friend Eric had on him after 1996.
The friendship
Soon after they became friends, the two boys linked their personal computers on a network. They both played a lot of games over the internet. They enjoyed the film The Matrix and they also
In the past, the two boys got into trouble for breaking into a car and snatching tools. In March 1998, the boys were arrested on felony charges for criminal tresspass and theft. The boys left a good impression on the juvenile officers and they were offered to have their criminal records cleared if the boys attended a diversionary program and to stay out of trouble. Harris was forced to attend anger management classes. He too made a good impression there.
Fermenting frustration
The boys became pheripheral members of a group of boys called the "Trenchcoat Mafia", a small clique which they and several friends formed in which they wore heavy black trenchcoats, possibly inspired by the films The Matrix or the Basketball Diaries. The boys generally embraced a goth culture, obsessed with death and violence. They were said to be fans of Marilyn Manson and violent video games such as Doom.
The two were upset at the life around them. They blamed jocks for harassing them by "riduculing" them and "calling them outcasts". They even made a video for school project that showed them wielding guns and killing students in the hallway of their school. The two boys were upset when the teacher barred the video from being shown upon finding of its graphic nature. Eric Harris often displayed themes of violence in his creative writing projects. Some of the teachers saw that they were sympathetic to the Nazi caused and that they were depressed and angry. Nothing happened to the boys despite the fact that the teachers complained about the boys, although one of them was suspended for the rest of the school year for cracking into the school computer system.
Eric Harris maintained a website that openly showed hatred for the people of Littleton, especially teachers at his high school, Columbine High School. As early as March 1998, words such as "God, I can't wait until I can kill you people," and "I'll just go to some downtown area in some big (expletive) city and blow up and shoot everything I can". The two boys were experimenting with pipe bombs and posting results of the bombs' explosions on the website.
The two families never knew of the boys' violent tendencies, due to a lack of communication between school and the families.
Armed to the teeth
The boys possessed several guns. Harris legally owned two shotguns and a rifle, since he turned 18 less then two weeks prior to the shooting. Yet the TEC-DC9 semiautomatic was illegally possessed, since the age cutoff was 21 for that gun.
An 18-year old student at Columbine named Robyn K. Anderson purchased the two shotguns and rifle for Dylan Klebold at a Denver-area gunshow. She was close friends with Klebold and they both attended the school prom, which was three days before the shooting. The two were not in love. Anderson, who planned to be a Valedictorian, was not a suspect, as she did not know of Klebold's and Harris' plans.
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. He didn't 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 found to have supplied weapons to the two boys. Before one of the men confessed at the police station, police suspected that Chris Morris, a member of the "Trenchcoat Mafia" and an employee of a pizza parlor that Harris worked at supplied the gun.
Text from Eric Harris' website indicated that two other boys, one codenamed "Vodka", found to be Dylan Klebold, and an unidentified boy named "KiBBz", conspired in the shooting. The website contained vivid detail on the rage that Harris felt towards his peers, as well as accounts of the experiments that the three boys conducted with bombs. At least 12 detnations in Jefferson County, Colorado may have been the work of the conspirators.
Police did not divulge the specific details on many of the bombs that the boys constructed, yet the ingredients were easily found at hardware stores. A sales clerk at a hardware store claimed that Klebold and Harris bought five large propane tanks, nails, wire, screws, and duct tape one week before the incident, as well as that two other boys accompanied the perpetrators in an automobile.
Some of the bombs that the boys made were crude and made with carbon dioxide canisters, galvanized pipe and metal propane bottles. The powerful bombs were primed with matches placed at one end of the bomb. The boys had striker tips on their sleeves. When they rubbed against the bomb, the match head would light the fuse. More complex bombs, such as the one that detonated on the corner of South Wadsworth Boulevard and Ken Caryl Avenue had timers. The largest bomb built was found in the cafeteria. It was made of a pipe bomb and several smaller fuel cylinders. When the bomb failed to go off in the attacks, the boys shot at it, yet the bomb still didn't blow up. Up to three hundred students may have perished if the bomb went off.
Ambitious plans
A journal found in Harris' bedroom stated almost every detail that the boys planned to follow after 5:00 a.m. on April 20, 1999 was written in the journal. The journal found in Harris' bedroom stated that the two teenagers planned to kill upwards of five hundred students in their school using homemade bombs and guns. The attack was to start at 11:00 a.m. as the highest number of students would be located in the cafeteria at the time. They were then to run into the neighborhood and massacre neighbors there. Finally, they would hijack an airplane, probably departing from Denver International Airport, and crash it someplace in New York City.
The Columbine Massacre
The two killed 12 students and a teacher, before each shooter shot himself in the head after it became apparent that they would not be able to make it out of the building scot-free. No drugs and alchohol were found in Eric Harris' body post-mortem. The boys had planted from 30 to 50 bombs all over the school.
For more details, see: Columbine High School massacre