Brian took charge of his tragedy that day. He discovered the power of being Danny Rohrbough's dad. From that day forward, he would not hesitate to wield it.

But this particular battle was just getting under way. The carpenter drove back from Chicago and pulled out the thirteen remaining crosses. Now Brian Rohrbough was really fuming. The cruelest man of the aftermath had returned to tear down the monument to his son. Rohrbough also sensed opportunism. "I question his motives," he said.

Brian had good instincts. The carpenter had made a family business out of similar stunts. He returned with a new set of crosses, and a pack of media on his heels. The highlight was a joint appearance with Brian on The Today Show The Today Show. The showman apologized profusely and offered a series of solemn vows: he would never build another cross for the killers, or for any any killer, and he would drive around the country removing several he had erected in the past. killer, and he would drive around the country removing several he had erected in the past.

He broke every promise. He built fifteen new crosses and took them on a national tour. He milked his celebrity for years. Brian Rohrbough returned to cursing him: "The opportunist, the great [carpenter], the most hateful, despicable person who would come to someone else's tragedy."

The world forgot the carpenter. Few had noted his name. Most never knew what a huckster he was, or the lies he told, or the pain he inflicted. But they remember his crosses fondly. They recall the comfort that they found.

35. Arrest

Eric was a thief now. He had a set of Rent-a-Fence signs. He liked the feeling, he wanted more. Junior year, the boys got right to work. Eric and Dylan and Zack hacked into the school computer and commandeered a list of locker combinations. They began breaking in. They got sloppy. On October 2, 1997, they got caught. They were sent to the dean, who suspended them for three days.

The Harris and Klebold parents responded the way they always did. Wayne Harris was a pragmatist. He would make Eric regret what he'd done. With outsiders he was focused on containment; Eric's future was at stake. He called the dean and argued that Eric was a minor. The dean was unmoved. What would show up on Eric's records? Wayne asked. He jotted down the answer in his journal: "In-house only because police were not involved. Destroyed upon graduation." Good. Eric had a promising future ahead.

The Klebolds addressed the situation intellectually. Dylan had demonstrated a shocking lapse of ethics, but Tom disagreed with suspensions on philosophical grounds. There were more effective ways to discipline a child. The dean had rarely met such a thoughtful, intelligent parent, but the judgment stood.

Eric and Dylan were each grounded for a month and were forbidden contact with each other or with Zack. Eric also lost his computer privileges. Eric and Dylan weathered the punishment and remained close. Zack began drifting away, particularly from Eric. The tight threesome was over. From that day forward, Eric and Dylan committed their crimes as a pair.

Fuselier considered Eric's psychological state at this point, a year and a half before the murders. Eric was not a depressive like Dylan, that was for sure. And there were no signs of mental illness. No signs of anything to predict murder. Eric's Web site was obscenely angry, but anger and young men were practically synonymous. The instincts that would lead to Columbine were surely in place by now, but Eric had yet to reveal them.

Dylan fixated on Harriet. Fifty minutes a day, for one class period, Dylan lolled around in heaven. Harriet was in his class.

Sometimes she would laugh. What a darling little laugh she let out. So innocent, so pure. Innocence--what an angelic quality. Someday Dylan would speak to her.

One day Dylan saw his chance. He had a group project for the class, a report to work on together, and Harriet was on his team. Blessed day. This was it.

He did nothing.

Dylan described his trajectory as a downward spiral. He borrowed the phrase from Nine Inch Nails's gripping concept album, which documents a fictional man unraveling. It climaxes with him killing himself with a gun to the mouth.

Oliver Stone's satirical film Natural Born Killers Natural Born Killers would become the pop culture artifact most associated with the Columbine massacre. That was reasonable, since Eric and Dylan used "NBK" as shorthand for their own event, and the film bears considerable resemblances. It also captured the flavor of Eric's egotistical, empathy-free attitude, but it bore no relation to Dylan's psyche. It certainly wasn't where he saw his life headed, at least not until the final months. For the first eighteen to twenty months of his journal, Dylan identified with two powerful characters to convey his torment: the protagonists of would become the pop culture artifact most associated with the Columbine massacre. That was reasonable, since Eric and Dylan used "NBK" as shorthand for their own event, and the film bears considerable resemblances. It also captured the flavor of Eric's egotistical, empathy-free attitude, but it bore no relation to Dylan's psyche. It certainly wasn't where he saw his life headed, at least not until the final months. For the first eighteen to twenty months of his journal, Dylan identified with two powerful characters to convey his torment: the protagonists of The Downward Spiral The Downward Spiral and David Lynch's film and David Lynch's film Lost Highway Lost Highway.

After the murders, controversies raged about the role of violent films, music, and video games. Some columnists and talk-radio hosts saw an easy cause and effect. That seems simplistic for Eric--who was a gifted critical thinker with a voracious appetite for the classics--and absurd for his partner. Dylan identified with depressives on the brink of suicide. He focused on fictional characters mired in the hopelessness he already felt.

Eric got sloppy. He allowed the worst imaginable person to discover one of his pipe bombs: his dad.

Wayne Harris was beside himself. Firecrackers were one thing, but this was too much. He wasn't even sure what to do with it. Eric told several friends about the incident, and their accounts of Wayne's response varied. Zack Heckler said Wayne could not figure out how to defuse the bomb, so he went outside with Eric and detonated it. But Nate Dykeman said Wayne had merely confiscated the bomb. Sometime later, Eric took Nate into his parents' bedroom closet and showed it to him. Wayne Harris never referred to the incident in his journal on Eric, which was dormant at this time.

Eric swore up and down to his parents that he would never make a bomb again. They apparently believed him. They wanted to. Eric probably shut down production for a while, and he definitely covered his tracks better. Eventually, he got back to business. At some point, he showed Nate two or three of his later products, which he was storing in his own room.

Dylan felt abandoned. He was grounded for the locker scam, home alone, and lonelier than ever. Then his older brother, Byron, was kicked out for drugs. Tom and Sue understood the tough love would cause an upheaval, so they went to family counseling with Dylan. That didn't change their son's outlook. He got a new room out of it, and he put his own stamp on the place: two black walls and two red ones, posters of baseball heroes and rock bands: Lou Gehrig, Roger Clemens, and Nine Inch Nails. Also, some street signs and a woman in a leopard bikini.

"I get more depressed with each day," he complained. Why did friends keep deserting him? They did not, actually, but Dylan perceived it that way. He fretted about Eric dumping him, too. "wanna die," he repeated. Death equaled freedom now; death offered tranquillity. He began using the words interchangeably.

Then he weighed the other option: He named a friend and said he "will get me a gun, ill go on my killing spree against anyone I want."

It was Dylan's second allusion to murder. The first had been ambiguous; this was overt. And now it was a spree.

He changed the subject immediately. That was unusual. As a rule, Dylan hammered ideas relentlessly. He would drill for two straight pages on the "Everlasting Struggle" or his destiny as a seeker. Murder was different. For the second time, he tossed in a single line, at the peak of despair, and promptly returned to his own destruction.

The idea was germinating, a year and a half out. Dylan appeared to be exploring a spree. With Eric? Probably. But the details of this critical moment are lost. Neither boy ever mentions those conversations in the paper trail they left behind. Eric recorded his actions: he was building bigger bombs. Coincidence? Unlikely. Eric's thinking had been evolving steadily in one direction since freshman year.

Late in 1997, Eric took notice of school shooters. "Every day news broadcasts stories of students shooting students, or going on killing sprees," he wrote. He researched the possibilities for an English paper. Guns were cheap and readily available, he discovered. Gun Digest Gun Digest said you could get a Saturday night special for $69. And schools were easy targets. "It is just as easy to bring a loaded handgun to school as it is to bring a calculator," Eric wrote. said you could get a Saturday night special for $69. And schools were easy targets. "It is just as easy to bring a loaded handgun to school as it is to bring a calculator," Eric wrote.

"Ouch!" his teacher responded in the margin. Overall, he rated it "thorough & logical. Nice job."

The last day of school before Christmas, something extraordinary happened. Dylan's true love waved at him. Finally! Dylan was ecstatic; then he began to wonder. Had she waved? At him? Maybe not. Probably not. Definitely not. Just delusional, he decided. Again.

He sat down and considered who loved him. He listed their names on a page in his journal. He drew little hearts beside three. Nineteen people. Nineteen failures.

A few weeks later, Eric made it with a real woman. Brenda was almost twenty-three. She had no idea he was sixteen. "He acted a lot older," she said. When he told her he was in school, she took it to mean college. They met at the mall, and he drove to her house. They started going out: bowling, drag racing, driving into the mountains to get drunk. He taught her about the computer, he told her how great she looked, and she could not have been more charmed. She described it to reporters later as "a friendship but more than a friendship."

Sometimes Dylan would hang out with them. He was too shy to speak.

Eric and Dylan got cockier. They stole more valuable merchandise and started testing their pipe bombs. Outwardly, they seemed like responsible kids. Teachers trusted them and granted them access to the computer closet. They helped themselves to expensive equipment. At some point, Eric may have started a credit card scam. In his notebook, he listed eight steps to complete the scam, though there's no evidence that he carried them out. He later claimed he had.

Dylan was no good at deception. He kept getting caught. Eric did not. Tom Klebold noticed Dylan had a new laptop. Eric could have weaseled out of that one without missing a beat--it was a friend's... he'd checked it out of the computer lab. Dylan just confessed. His dad made him turn himself in. Eric and Dylan both had a penchant for picking on underclassmen, but Dylan got caught. In January 1998, he got sent to the dean for scratching a slur about "fags" onto a freshman's locker. He got another suspension and paid $70 to get the locker fixed.

The boys were shooting off their pipe bombs by then, and man, were those things badass. They bragged to Nate Dykeman and then brought him along for a demo. Eric was in charge where bombs were concerned, so everything went according to plan. They waited until Super Bowl Sunday, when the streets of metro Denver were deserted. The Broncos were underdogs in their fifth shot at the championship, and everyone was watching the game. Eric took advantage of the lull. He brought Nate and Dylan out to a quiet spot near his house, dropped the bomb in a culvert, and let her rip. Whoa! Whoa! Nate was appropriately impressed. Nate was appropriately impressed.

On January 30, three days after Dylan's meeting with the dean, a crime of opportunity presented itself. It was a Friday night, and the boys were restless.

Eric and Dylan drove out into the country, pulled onto a gravel strip, and got out to break stuff. There was a van parked there, with lots of electronic gizmos inside. How cool would it be to steal it? The boys had no idea what they might use the stuff for, but they were sure they could get away with it. No witnesses and no fingerprints. Eric had a pair of ski gloves to mask detection.

"Everything seemed so easy," he wrote later. "No way we would get caught." Eric took guard duty and gave Dylan the dirty work. Dylan put one ski glove on and tried to punch out a window. They had no idea how solid a car window was. He hit it again and again. Nothing. Eric took over. Just as useless. Dylan went for a rock. He hauled up a boulder, hurled it into the glass, and even that was deflected. It took several blows before the rock crashed through. Dylan put the other glove on, reached in to unlock the door, and started digging through the pile like crazy. Eric again left Dylan to commit the act. He ran back to man the getaway car. Dylan grabbed anything that looked interesting. He flung everything else all over the van. By his count, he nabbed "one briefcase, one black pouch, one flashlight, a yellow thing, and a bucket of stuff."

Dylan ran armloads of loot back to the Honda. Eric continued to "guard." Another car approached. Dylan froze; the car passed. Unfazed, Dylan ran back to grab more. Eric had grown wary. "That's enough!" he ordered. "Let's go."

They drove deeper into the country, over the hogback, to Deer Creek Canyon Park, a vast preserve that ran for miles up into the mountains. The park was deserted; it closed an hour after nightfall, and the sun had set four hours ago. They pulled into the parking lot, killed the engine, and checked out the take.

They cranked some tunes to enjoy themselves, then flipped on the dome light to hunt for another CD. Dylan reached back and hauled out his favorite item: a $400 voltmeter, the yellow thing with buttons along the base and black and red probes hanging off it. Dylan poked at the buttons; Eric watched intently. When the meter lit up, the boys went wild. Cool! Dylan pulled out the flashlight and switched it on. "Wow!" Eric howled. "That is really bright!" Then he spotted something cooler: "Hey, we've got a Nintendo game pad!"

They rummaged a bit more before Eric realized they had grown sloppy: time to resume precautions. "We better put this stuff in the trunk," he said. He popped the latch and stepped out.

That's when Jeffco Sheriff's Deputy Timothy Walsh decided to make his presence known. He had been standing outside the car for several minutes, watching and listening to the entire exchange. You can see for miles out in the country; a lone vehicle in an empty lot in a closed state park just asked for intervention. The boys had been so immersed, they'd failed to see his car, hear his engine or his footsteps, or notice his tall frame looming right over the rear window.

When Eric stepped out, Deputy Walsh blinded him with a flashlight beam. What were they up to? the deputy asked. Whose property was all this? "Right then I realized what a damn fool I was," Eric wrote later. He would claim remorse, but he didn't show any, even then.

Eric thought fast but lied poorly. He was off his game that night. He said they had been messing around in a parking lot near town and had stumbled onto the equipment stacked neatly in the grass. He gave a precise location and described it vividly. Details were the key to a good lie. Good tactics, bad choice: he depicted the actual robbery location.

Walsh was incredulous. He asked to see the property. "Sure," Eric said. He kept playing it cool. He kept doing the talking. Dylan shut up and went along. Walsh had the boys stack the goods on the trunk and tried again: Where did you find this property? Dylan summoned up his nerve. He parroted Eric's story. Walsh said it looked suspicious. He would radio another deputy to check on any break-ins.

Eric was confident. He looked over at his partner. Dylan folded.

Wayne and Kathy Harris were waiting when Eric arrived at the police station. Tom and Sue Klebold were close behind. They couldn't believe their boys could do something like this. The boys could be charged with three felonies, including a Class V, which carried up to a $100,000 fine and one to three years in prison. Eric and Dylan were questioned separately. With their parents' consent, they waived their rights. Each boy gave oral and written statements. Eric blamed Dylan. "Dylan suggested that we should steal some of the objects in the white van," he wrote. "at first I was very uncomfortable and questioning with the thought." His verbal account was more adamant. He said Dylan looked into the van and asked, "Should we break into it and steal it? It would be nice to steal some stuff in there. Should we do it?" Eric claimed he responded, "Hell no." He said Dylan kept pestering him and eventually wore him down.

Dylan accepted joint blame. "Almost at the same time, we both got the idea of breaking into this white van," he said.

The boys were taken to county jail. They were fingerprinted, photographed, and booked. Then they were released into the custody of four furious parents.

36. Conspiracy

After the murders, the detective team sought convictions. It had three possible crimes to uncover: participation in the attack, participation in the planning, or guilty knowledge. At first it looked easy. The killers had been sloppy; they hadn't even tried to cover their tracks. And the primary living suspects were juveniles. Most of the friends had withheld something crucial: Robyn had helped purchase three of the guns, Chris and Nate had seen pipe bombs, and Chris and Zack had heard about napalm. They all broke quickly. They were kids; it was easy. But they broke only so far. They admitted to knowing details, but claimed to be clueless about the plan.

Detectives pushed harder. The suspects didn't push back; they just threw up their hands. Fuselier had several solid agents on the case. He knew they could sniff out a liar. How are the suspects responding? How are the suspects responding? he asked. he asked. Do they seem deceptive? Do they seem deceptive? Not at all. His team leader described them as wide-eyed and understandably anxious. Most had begun by hiding something, and it had been painfully obvious. They were awful actors. But once they spilled it, they just seemed relieved. They were calm, peaceful--all the signs of someone coming clean. Most of the suspects agreed to polygraphs. That usually meant they had nothing left to hide. Not at all. His team leader described them as wide-eyed and understandably anxious. Most had begun by hiding something, and it had been painfully obvious. They were awful actors. But once they spilled it, they just seemed relieved. They were calm, peaceful--all the signs of someone coming clean. Most of the suspects agreed to polygraphs. That usually meant they had nothing left to hide.

Two friends, Robert Perry and Joe Stair, had been identified by witnesses as shooters or at least present at the scene. They were both tall and lanky--and therefore matched a common description for Dylan. Both boys produced alibis. Perry's was shaky: he had been sleeping downstairs until his grandmother woke him with news of the shooting. He said he walked upstairs, stumbled out onto the porch, and cried. Did anyone see him, other than his grandmother? No, he didn't think so. But Perry had been seen by others--he'd just been too upset to notice them. Within a week, a neighbor who was interviewed described driving up around noon and seeing Perry crying just the way he'd described.

The physical evidence was even less damning. All the friends' houses were searched. No weapons were found. No ammo, no ordnance, no refuse of any pipe bomb assembly. Zack had a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook, The Anarchist Cookbook, but there was no sign that he had used it to build anything. Fingerprints at the crime scene were all a bust. There was an extraordinary amount of material: guns, ammo, gear, unused pipe bombs, strips of duct tape, and dozens of components from the big bombs. All of it was covered with the killers' prints; nobody else's. The same was true at the killers' houses: nothing on the journals, videotapes, camcorders, or bomb-assembly gear. No one appeared in the killers' records. Eric had been a meticulous planner and recorder of dates, locations, and receipts. Detectives searched the stores' files and credit card records. All signs indicated that the killers had purchased everything. but there was no sign that he had used it to build anything. Fingerprints at the crime scene were all a bust. There was an extraordinary amount of material: guns, ammo, gear, unused pipe bombs, strips of duct tape, and dozens of components from the big bombs. All of it was covered with the killers' prints; nobody else's. The same was true at the killers' houses: nothing on the journals, videotapes, camcorders, or bomb-assembly gear. No one appeared in the killers' records. Eric had been a meticulous planner and recorder of dates, locations, and receipts. Detectives searched the stores' files and credit card records. All signs indicated that the killers had purchased everything.

For months, Sheriff Stone publicly espoused a conspiracy theory. Fuselier could feel the conspiracy slipping away the first week. Within two, he knew it was remote. The most telling evidence came from the killers themselves. In their journals and videos, they cop to everything. They never mention outside involvement, except, derisively, when they talk about hapless dupes. The killers leaked their plans in countless way, but there's no indication that anyone close to them ever breathed a word. Their friends' e-mails, IMs, day planners, and journals were searched, along with every paper the investigators could find; there was no sign that any of the friends had known.

Rumors about a third shooter have continued right up to the present day, but publicly, it didn't take long for investigators to put them to rest. Eric and Dylan were correctly identified by witnesses who knew them. No one else turned up on the surveillance videos or the 911 audio. Witnesses' accounts were remarkably consistent about a tall shooter and a short one--but there seemed to be two of each: two in T-shirts and two in trench coats. "As soon as I learned Eric's coat was left outside on the landing, I knew what had happened there," Fuselier said. Witnesses exchanged stories, and reports of two guys in T-shirts and two in trench coats quickly turned into four shooters. Dylan's decision to leave his coat on until he reached the library made for more combinations, and the number multiplied over the afternoon. The killers also lobbed pipe bombs in every direction. Their gunfire shattered windows and ricocheted off walls, ductwork, and stairs. Many kids heard crashes or explosions and positively identified the location as the source of activity rather than the destination. Several witnesses insisted that they had spotted a gunman on the roof. What they had seen was a maintenance man adjusting the air-conditioning unit.

So what accounted for all the confusion? "Eyewitness testimony, in general, is not very accurate," one investigator explained. "Put that together with gunshots going off and just the most terrifying situation in their life, what they remember now may not be anywhere near what really happened." Human memory can be erratic. We tend to record fragments: gunshots, explosions, trench coats, terror, sirens, screams. Images come back jumbled, but we crave coherence, so we trim them, adjust details, and assemble everything together in a story that makes sense. We record vivid details, like the scraggly ponytail flapping against the dirty blue T-shirt of the boy fleeing just ahead. All the way out of the building, a witness may focus on that swishing hair. Later, she remembers a glimpse of the killer: he was tall and lanky--did he have scraggly hair? It fits together, and she connects it. Soon the killer is wearing the dirty blue T-shirt as well. Moments later, and forever after, she is convinced that's exactly what she saw.

Investigators identified nearly a dozen common misperceptions among library survivors. Distortion of time was rampant, particularly chronology. Witnesses recalled less once the killers approached them, not more. Terror stops the brain from forming new memories. A staggering number insisted they were the last ones out of the library--once they were out, it was over. Similarly, most of those injured, even superficially, believed they were the last ones hit. Survivors also clung to reassuring concepts: that they were actually hiding by crouching under tables in plain sight.

Memory is notoriously unreliable. It happens even with the best witnesses. Six years later, Principal DeAngelis described the shooting as if he had just experienced it. He retraced his steps through the building, pausing at the exact spot where he first saw Dylan Klebold fire his shotgun. Mr. D pointed out Dylan's position and described everything Dylan was wearing: white T-shirt, military harness, ball cap turned around backward. But he has two entirely different versions of how he got there.

In one version, he learned of the shooting in his office. That was unusual: normally he would have been in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub. But Tuesday he was held up by an appointment. He had a meeting with a young teacher working on a one-year contract. Mr. D had been happy with the teacher's performance and was about to offer him a permanent position. They had just shaken hands and sat down when Frank's secretary's face slammed into the glass on the top half of his door. She had run to warn him so frantically that she'd failed to turn the knob completely and had hurtled right into the door. A moment later, she burst in shouting.

"Frank! They're shooting!"

"What?"

"Gunshots! Downstairs, there are gunshots!"

He bolted up. They ran out together--into the main foyer, just past the huge hanging trophy case. Dylan fired, and the case shattered behind Frank.

It was two or three years after the fact that Frank's secretary recounted that version for him. He told her she was nuts. He had no memory of that.

"In my version, I'm walking out calmly going to lunch," he said. "We've finished the meeting, I've offered him the job. He's happy."

DeAngelis had planned to offer the job. He liked the teacher and had pictured his joyful acceptance. Mentally, it had already happened. The actual events--gunfire in the hallway, his charge toward the girls' gym class, and the desperation to hide them--wiped out everything in his mental vicinity. His secretary's appearance was unimportant, and it conflicted with his "memory" of offering the job. One memory had to go.

Mr. D checked with the teacher. No job offer--they'd just sat down. Other witnesses had seen him run alongside his secretary. He came to accept that version of the truth, but he can't picture it. His visual brain insists that the false memory is real. Multiply that by nearly two thousand kids and over a hundred teachers and a precisely accurate picture was impossible to render.

Investigators went back to interview the killers' closest friends several times. Each new interview and lead would raise more questions about the killers' associates. Sometimes new evidence revealed lies.

An FBI agent interviewed Kristi Epling the day after the murders. Kristi was connected to both killers, particularly Eric. They were close, and she was dating his buddy Nate Dykeman. She didn't seem to know much, though. Her FBI report was brief and unremarkable. She said Nate was in shock, the TCM connection was silly, and Eric had probably been the leader. Kristi did not mention any of his notes in her possession.

Like most of the killers' friends, Kristi was exceptionally smart; she was headed to college on an academic scholarship. She played it cool about the notes during her FBI interview, then mailed them to a friend in St. Louis who was unconnected to Columbine and unlikely to be questioned. Kristi was careful: no return address on the envelope. The friend went to the police. She did not inform Kristi.

The pages included notes passed back and forth between Kristi and Eric in German class--a rambling conversation, conducted in German. They mentioned a hit list. That was old news to investigators--most of the school was on one of Eric's lists. But they had withheld that information from the public. Kristi had been hiding it; maybe she was hiding more. Detectives returned to question her. They asked about German class, and Kristi said she had exchanged notes with Eric but had thrown them away months ago. She assured them repeatedly that Eric had never made any threats. She would have told a teacher, she insisted. Kristi also said Nate had fled to Florida, to stay with his father and avoid the media hounds. They had talked on the phone that morning.

The detectives asked Kristi what should happen to someone who had helped the killers. "They should go to jail forever," she said. "It was a horrible thing." And what about someone who withheld information after the attack? "I don't know," Kristi said. "It would depend on what it was." They should probably get counseling, she suggested, but some sort of punishment, too.

They asked again: Did she know anything more? No. Had she destroyed any notes from Eric? No. They kept repeating the questions, assuring her that she could disclose anything now without repercussions. No, there was nothing. They continued questioning her, repeated that offer, and finally she went for it. OK, there were notes, she admitted. And Nate was not in Florida; he was staying with her. He was there in the house right now. She said the notes had been very painful to hold on to but she did not want to destroy them. If she could just get them somewhere far, far away, she hoped to retrieve them someday when everything was more clear.

Once she copped to the truth, Kristi was forthcoming. She agreed to turn over her PC and her e-mail accounts and to take a polygraph. Beyond that, she didn't know anything significant. She told them about some things Nate had confessed to, but detectives knew about them already. Kristi had just been afraid. She'd thought she had something incriminating, and she'd panicked. No evidence of a conspiracy. Another dead end.

Nevertheless, Dr. Fuselier learned a great deal from the German conversation. It revolved around Kristi's new boyfriend; she'd had a short-lived romance with a sophomore named Dan. Eric couldn't believe she was going out with that little fuck. Why, what was wrong with Dan? Why, what was wrong with Dan? she asked. For one thing, the prettyboy had punched him in the face last year, Eric said. Eric, in a fistfight? That surprised her. He always seemed so rational. He got mad when kids made fun of his black clothes or all his German crap, but he always kept his cool. He would calmly figure out how to get even. she asked. For one thing, the prettyboy had punched him in the face last year, Eric said. Eric, in a fistfight? That surprised her. He always seemed so rational. He got mad when kids made fun of his black clothes or all his German crap, but he always kept his cool. He would calmly figure out how to get even.

Kristi worried about Eric getting even. She asked her boyfriend about it, and he said he was afraid Eric might kill him.

Kristi decided to play peace broker. She took it up with Eric in German class again. She told him straight out how scared Dan was. She used the phrase "kill him." That made Eric nervous. He was in the juvenile Diversion program because of the van break-in, and threats like that could get him in trouble. Kristi said she'd be careful about it. But how could Dan make it up to him?

How about if he let me punch him in the face, Eric suggested. Seriously? Seriously? Seriously. Seriously.

Dr. Fuselier was not surprised by the notes. Very cold-blooded. Any kid could get in a fight. Dan had gotten really angry, and in the heat of a fistfight had clocked Eric. Eric was planning his punch. He wanted Dan to stand there defenseless and let him do it. Complete power over the kid. That's what Eric craved.

As the conspiracy theory crumbled, far from the eyes of the public, a new motive emerged. The jock-feud theory was accepted as the underlying driver, but that had supposedly gone on for a year. What made the killers snap? Nine days after the murders, the media found yet another trigger. The Marines. The New York Times New York Times and the and the Washington Post Washington Post broke the story on April 29. The rest of the media piled on quickly. broke the story on April 29. The rest of the media piled on quickly.

They learned that Eric had been talking to a Marine recruiter during the last few weeks of his life. They also discovered he'd been taking the prescription antidepressant Luvox--something that would typically disqualify him (because it implied depression). A Defense Department spokesman verified that the recruiter had learned about the medication and rejected Eric. The media was off to the races, again.

Luvox added an extra wrinkle, as it functioned as an anger suppressant. The Times Times cited unnamed friends of Eric's as saying that "they believe that he may have tried to stop taking the drug, perhaps because of his rejection by the Marines, five days before he and his best friend, Dylan Klebold, stormed onto the Columbine campus with guns and bombs." cited unnamed friends of Eric's as saying that "they believe that he may have tried to stop taking the drug, perhaps because of his rejection by the Marines, five days before he and his best friend, Dylan Klebold, stormed onto the Columbine campus with guns and bombs."

The story added a bit of evidence that seemed to confirm it: "the coroner's office said no drugs or alcohol had been found in Mr. Harris's body in an autopsy, but it would not specify whether the body had been screened for Luvox." It was finally coming together: the Marines rejected Eric, he quit the Luvox to fuel his rage, he grabbed a gun and started killing. It all fit.

Fuselier read the stories. He shuddered. All the conclusions were reasonable--and wrong. Eric's body had not initially been screened for Luvox. Later it had: he'd remained on a full dose, right up to his death. And investigators had talked to the Marine recruiter the morning after the murders. He had determined Eric was ineligible. But Eric had never known.

By this time, Fuselier had already read Eric's journal and seen the Basement Tapes. He knew what the media did not. There had been no trigger.

April 30, officials met with the Klebolds and several attorneys to discuss ground rules for a series of interviews. Kate Battan was aggravated that she could not question the family directly. So she asked them to tell her about their son. They were still dumbfounded. They described a normal teenage boy: extraordinarily shy but happy. Dylan was coping well with adolescence and developing into a responsible young adult. They entrusted him with major decisions when he could articulate his rationale. Teachers loved him and so did other kids. He was gentle and sensitive until the day he died. Sue could recall seeing Dylan cry only once. He came home from school upset, and went up to his room. He pulled a box of stuffed animals out of the closet, dumped them out, burrowed under, and fell asleep surrounded. He never did reveal what disturbed him.

His parents granted Dylan a measure of privacy in his own room. The last time Tom recalled being in there was about two weeks before the murders, to turn off the computer Dylan left on. Otherwise, they monitored Dylan's life aggressively, and forbade him from hanging out with bad influences.

Tom said he was extremely close to Dylan. They shared Rockies season tickets with three other families, and on his nights, Tom usually took one of his sons. Tom and Dylan hung out all the time together. They played a lot of sports until Tom developed arthritis in the mid-1990s. Now it was a lot of chess, computers, and working on Dylan's BMW. They built a set of custom speakers together. Dylan didn't like doing repair work with Tom, though, and sometimes he got testy and snapped off one-word responses. That was normal. Tom considered Dylan his best friend.

Dylan had a handful of tight buddies, his parents said: Zack and Nate, and of course Eric, who was definitely closest. Chris Morris seemed like more of an acquaintance. Dylan had fun with Robyn Anderson--a sweet girl--but definitely nothing romantic. He hadn't had a girlfriend yet, but had been kind of group dating. His friends seemed happy. They sure did laugh a lot. They were always polite and seemed laid back--pretty immune to social pressure, they said.

Eric was the quietest of the group. Tom and Sue never felt they knew what was going on in that head. Eric was always respectful, though. They were aware Judy Brown had a different opinion. "Judy doesn't like a lot of people," Sue said.

Tom and Sue didn't perceive Eric to be leading or following their son. But they did notice that he got angry at Dylan when he "screwed something up."

Before they left, detectives asked the Klebolds if they had any questions. Yes. They asked to read anything Dylan had written. Anything to understand.

Battan left frustrated. "I didn't get to ask any questions," she said later. "All I got was a fluff piece on their son." She documented the interview, which remained sealed for eighteen months. The series of interviews never occurred. Lawyers demanded immunity from prosecution before they would talk. Jeffco officials refused. The Harrises took the same position. Battan didn't even get a fluff piece from them.