He didn't mean just his church. He meant the vast Evangelical community worldwide. And to a large extent, he was right. Book sales continued briskly. A vast array of Web sites sprang up to defend the story. Others just repeated it, without even mentioning that it had been debunked.

Jeffco also faced a series of embarrassing leaks. Investigators had let the video get loose to CBS and had revealed the truth about Cassie Bernall; lead investigator Kate Battan had broken her silence and spoken to one reporter; and the first passages from Eric's journal had slipped out. And yet the department maintained its official silence. It delayed the report again.

The victims' families were furious. The sheriff's department's credibility plummeted. Its officers had done a thorough job of detective work on the case, but the public had no way to see that. Jeffco expressed shock and bewilderment at the leaks; officials offered flimsy excuses and assurances. A spokesman insisted that only two copies of Eric's journal existed, when in fact it had been run through photocopiers repeatedly, and no one had a clue how many copies were floating around.

Then the undersheriff let a Time Time reporter watch the Basement Tapes. He had assured the families repeatedly they would be the first to see the videos. reporter watch the Basement Tapes. He had assured the families repeatedly they would be the first to see the videos.

The magazine ran an expose cover story shortly before Christmas. Stone and Undersheriff John Dunaway posed in their dress blues with white gloves, armed with the killers' semiautomatics.

Many families were aghast. Several called for Stone to resign. Charges of cowardice against the SWAT teams resurfaced. Prominent law enforcement officials joined the chorus. Stone insisted that his department would be exonerated by the final report--which was delayed again.

Turbulence was expected that fall. Everyone knew they would face anniversaries and hearings. No one foresaw the string of aftershocks. The school was sued over a craft project gone awry--the Rohrboughs charged infringement of their religious expression. Brian Rohrbough repeated the crosses incident at a memorial garden created at Cassie's church: his group picketed Sunday services and then chopped down two of the fifteen trees in front of the horrified youth group that had planted them. They inadvertently chose the tree symbolizing Cassie.

Bomb threats were a regular occurrence, but one gained traction in the wake of the Time Time story. The school was shut down until after Christmas. Finals were canceled. Legal battles over the Basement Tapes began. story. The school was shut down until after Christmas. Finals were canceled. Legal battles over the Basement Tapes began.

"When will it end?" a local pastor asked. "Why us? What is happening in our community?"

The new year began, and it got worse. A young boy was found dead in a Dumpster a few blocks from Columbine High. On Valentine's Day, two students were shot dead in a Subway shop two blocks from the school. The star of the basketball team committed suicide.

"Two weeks ago they found the kid in the Dumpster," a friend of the Subway victims told reporters. "Now--I kind of want to move. This is worse than Columbine." Students had grudgingly come to adopt their school's name as the title of a tragedy.

Some events were unrelated to the massacre or even the school. But much of the community had lost the ability to distinguish. Perspective was impossible. A fight with your girlfriend, a car crash, a drought... it was all "Columbine." It was a curse. Kids were calling it the Columbine Curse.

Appointments at the mental health facility set up for Columbine survivors rose sharply through the fall. "Many come in after they've tried everything they know how to do," a psychologist on the team said. Utilization peaked about nine months after the tragedy and held steady until a year and a half out. At any given time during that period, case managers were following about fifteen kids on suicide watch. Gradually, each one came down from the brink, but another took that kid's place. Substance abuse spiked. The area experienced a marked increase in traffic accidents and DUIs.

"By definition, PTSD is a triad of change for the worse, lasting at least a month, occurring anytime after a genuine trauma," wrote PTSD pioneer Dr. Frank Ochberg. "The triad of disabling responses is: 1) recurring intrusive recollections; 2) emotional numbing and a constriction of life activity; and 3) a physiological shift in the fear threshold, affecting sleep, concentration, and sense of security."

Response to PTSD varies dramatically. Some people feel too much, others too little. The over-feelers often suffer flashbacks. Nothing can drive away the terror. They awake each morning knowing it may be April 20 all over again. They can go hours, weeks, or months without an episode and then a trigger--often a sight, sound, or smell--will take them right back. It's not like a bad memory of the event; it feels like it is the event. Others protect themselves by shutting down altogether. Pleasant feelings and joy get eliminated with the bad. They often describe feeling numb.

It was a rough year. The football team offered a respite. Matthew Kechter had been a sophomore when he was killed in the library. He had played JV on the defensive line in the 1998 season and had hoped to make varsity this fall. At his parents' request the team dedicated the season to Matt. Each player wore Matt's number on his helmet and Matt's initials, MJK, on his cap. They finished the season 12-1. They came from 17 behind in the fourth quarter to win the first playoff game. The players wept on the field. They chanted MJK! MJK! MJK! MJK!

They were heavy underdogs for the state championship. Denver powerhouse Cherry Creek High had taken five of the last ten titles. Columbine had made it to the big game only once: a loss two decades back.

Supporters flew in from around the world. Eight thousand people packed the stadium. The media were everywhere. The New York Times New York Times covered the game. The temperature dropped below freezing. Patrick Ireland sat in the front row, trying to keep warm. covered the game. The temperature dropped below freezing. Patrick Ireland sat in the front row, trying to keep warm.

Cherry Creek went ahead early. Columbine tied it up at the half, and then their defense came on strong. They allowed just two first downs in the second half, and a third touchdown put it away. Columbine won 21-14. Fans rushed the field. The familiar chant thundered through the stands. We are... COL-um-BINE! We are... COL-um- We are... COL-um-BINE!

The school held a victory rally. A highlight reel of the game was projected, ending with a picture of Matt. "This one's for you," it said. A moment of silence was held for all thirteen.

Some kids seemed immune to the gloom. Others fought private battles on completely different chronologies. Patrick Ireland made steady improvements, kept his 4.0 average that fall, and made sure valedictorian was still in sight. But a more significant problem loomed.

Patrick had had his life pretty well figured out junior year. Before he got shot, he was going to be an architect. His grandfather had been a builder, and Patrick had taken to drawing in his junior high drafting class. He lined up that T-square against the drafting table and he could feel it. He liked the precision. He enjoyed the artistry. At Columbine, he worked with sophisticated computer-aided design software. While Eric and Dylan finalized their plot, Patrick was deep into research on college programs and had started investigating internships.

He was still going to be an architect. Patrick clung to the dream straight through outpatient therapy. He took breaks for three out-of-state campus visits, at schools with leading architecture programs. They all accepted him. But they stressed how rigorous the work would be. Architecture programs are known for their massive workloads: five years of relentless all-nighters. All night was not an option for Patrick. He could cheat himself out of a couple hours' sleep, but his brain would take years to recover. He would slow his progress by taxing it too hard, and possibly even bring on seizures.

In March, he took a school trip to England. The jet lag was tough. Kathy went with him, and Friday night she noticed his face went blank and his eyeball fluttered for a few seconds. "Did you do that on purpose?" she asked.

"Do what?"

Kathy believes it was a precursor to the event two days later. Patrick was walking through London and collapsed in the middle of a street. He shook violently, made it almost to the curb, and called out to a friend for help.

A London doctor prescribed antiseizure medication. The family confirmed the treatment back home, and Patrick will be on it for life.

Architecture school wasn't going to work. John and Kathy understood that from the start, but they waited for Patrick to accept the situation. He opted for Colorado State, just over an hour away. He would try business school for a year. CSU had an architecture program, too. If, a year later, he felt he could handle it, he could transfer.

Despite the cloud over his future, Patrick regained his bearing through the year. Socially, he was having the time of his life. Patrick had always been a catch. He'd been bright, charming, handsome, and athletic. He had been a little short on confidence, from time to time. Laura would have given anything to go to the prom with Patrick. She might have become his girlfriend if he had asked. The shotgun blasts had robbed him of some of his best assets, but he was a star. He was the most celebrated figure to live through the tragedy. And he had put up an incredible fight. Girls flirted unabashedly.

But Patrick wanted Laura. That first summer, he told her how much he wanted her--how deeply and how long.

God, me too, she said.

What a relief. Finally, after all this time, it was out in the open.

Laura confessed everything: all those nights flirting on the phone, hinting her heart out for him to ask. If only he had asked her to the prom.

OK, Patrick said: I like you, you like me, let's do something about it. I like you, you like me, let's do something about it. Too late. She was dating the prom dude. Too late. She was dating the prom dude.

That didn't seem like an obstacle. Do you want to be with me? Yes. Then break up with him. She said she would do it.

He gave her time. He asked again. When are you going to do it? She said it would be soon. But nothing happened.

Girls were fighting for the chance to date him, so he got tired of waiting and asked one out. Then he asked another one. And another--this was fun!

Things grew strained with Laura. They never went out. They began avoiding each other. It was fourth grade all over again.

46. Guns

Eric named his shotgun Arlene. He acquired her on November 22, 1998, and declared it an important date in the history of Reb. "we.......have........ GUNS!" he wrote. "We fucking got em you sons of bitches! HA!!"

Eric and Dylan had driven into Denver for the Tanner Gun Show the day before. They'd found some sweet-ass weapons. A 9mm carbine rifle and a pair of 12-gauge shotguns: one double-barreled and one pump-action single. They'd tried to buy them, and that was a great big no go. Eric's charm was not getting them over this hurdle. No ID, no guns. They drove back to the suburbs.

Eric would be eighteen shortly before their attack date in April. They could have just waited, but Eric wanted real firepower to keep the plan on track. There was one more day in the gun show. Who did they know who was eighteen? Plenty of people. Who would do it for them, who could they trust? Robyn! Sweet little church girl Robyn. She was nuts about Dylan; she would do anything for him. Wouldn't she?

The following day, it was done.

In his journal, Eric labeled this "the point of no return." Then he waxed nostalgic about his dad. He'd had a lot of fun at the gun show, he wrote: "I would have loved it if you were there, dad. we would have done some major bonding. would have been great. Oh wait. But, alas, I fucked up and told [my friend] about the flask." That had been the end of good relations with Wayne for a while. Now his parents were on his ass more than ever about his future. What do you want to do with your life? What do you want to do with your life? That was easy. NBK. "THIS is what I am motivated for," he wrote. "THIS is my goal. THIS 'is what I want to do with my life.'" That was easy. NBK. "THIS is what I am motivated for," he wrote. "THIS is my goal. THIS 'is what I want to do with my life.'"

Eric and Dylan sawed the barrels off their new shotguns--cut them way below the legal limit. The first week in December, they took the rifle out and fired it. A bullet erupted in the chamber, and the butt slammed into Eric's bony shoulder. Wow! That thing packed a lot of power. This wasn't a pipe bomb in his hands. This could kill somebody.

Psychopaths generally turn to murder only when their callousness combines with a powerful sadistic streak. Psychologist Theodore Millon identified ten basic subtypes of the psychopath. Only two are characterized by brutality or murder: the malevolent psychopath and the tyrannical. In these rare subtypes, the psychopath is driven less by a greed for material gain than by desire for his own aggrandizement and the brutal punishment of inferiors.

Eric fit both categories. His sadistic streak permeated the journal, but a late autumn entry suggests the life Eric might have led had Columbine not ended it. He described tricking girls to come to his room, raping them, and then proceeding to the real fun.

"I want to tear a throat out with my own teeth like a pop can," he wrote. "I want to grab some weak little freshman and just tear them apart like a fucking wolf. strangle them, squish their head, rip off their jaw, break their arms in half, show them who is god."

Eric had not given up on the twenty-three-year-old. For months, he kept calling Brenda. She told him she had a new boyfriend, but he persisted. Late in the year, she met him at a Macaroni Grill. "He was really bummed out," she said. She thought he was bummed because she'd dumped him. He denied it, but offered no explanation. She never saw him again.

Just before Christmas, Eric celebrated his last final, ever. He laughed at his classmates, who assumed they had another batch ahead.

The next day, Eric ordered several ten-round magazines for his carbine rifle. Those would do some damage. He could peel off 130 rounds in rapid succession.

There was a problem. Eric gave Green Mountain Guns his home number. They called just before New Year's, and his dad answered.

"Your clips are in," the clerk told him.

Clips? He didn't order any gun clips.

Eric overheard the conversation. Oh God. He described the incident in his journal: "jesus Christ that was fucking close. fucking shitheads at the gunshop almost dropped the whole project." Luckily, Wayne never stopped to ask the guy if he had the right number. And the guy never asked any questions either. That could have been the end of it right there. If either one of them had handled that phone call a little differently, the entire plan might have come crashing down, Eric said. But they didn't.

But Wayne was suspicious.

"thank god I can BS so fucking well," Eric wrote.

Once they got the guns, Eric lost interest in "The Book of God." It was on to implementation. After New Year's, he would leave just one final installment, a few weeks before they did the deed.

Eric was raring to go; Dylan continued to waver. "Existences" had been silent for five months, since he said good-bye. But on January 20, Bob Kriegshauser called Dylan in for an important meeting. Dylan resumed his journal the same day.

"This shit again," he began. He didn't want to be writing this again, he wanted to be "free," meaning dead. "I thought it would have been time by now," he wrote. "The pain multiplies infinitely. never stops." Eric's plan offered the solace of suicide: "maybe Going 'NBK' (gawd) w. eric is the best way to be free. i hate this." Then more hearts and love. He hardly seemed committed to the plan. But he appeared to be putting up a good front to Eric. Neither boy ever recorded a suggestion of Dylan's resistance, but Eric seemed to be doing most of the work.

Eric was also working hard to get laid. He made a final stab with Brenda, leaving a string of messages on her answering machine. "I'm sorry I lied to you," he said. "There's something we need to talk about. I'm seventeen." He was through lying, he said--he wanted to take their relationship to the next level. And she could keep the Rammstein CDs he'd left at her house. He wouldn't be needing them anymore.

The last part made her nervous. She called back to make sure he was all right. And she reiterated one more time that they were just friends.

Eric wasn't bothered. He was working another chick. Kristi was the girl he had passed notes with in German class. Lately she seemed interested in more. So they tried a sort of informal group date to Rock'n' Bowl night at Belleview Lanes.

Kristi liked him, but she was conflicted. There was this other guy, a friend of Eric's, Nate Dykeman. Bastard!

Eric turned on the charm, and Kristi went for it--just not enough. It was sex he really wanted; he had no interest in a real relationship, and maybe Kristi picked up on that.

Nate moved in on Kristi fast. They started dating, got serious, and Eric turned on Nate.

As Eric wrapped up plans for April 20, Dylan was laying into his journal in a frenzy. They were short entries and erratic, tossing aside all his conventions. Several ran half a page or less. He was expressing himself more and more in pictures, all his old icons returning, linked together in wild, feverish strokes. Fluttering hearts were everywhere, filling up entire pages, blasting out the road to happiness, bursting with stars and powered by an engine shaped like the symbol for infinity. Dylan was focused on one topic now: love. Up until his final week, Dylan wrote privately of almost nothing else.

47. Lawsuits

Ten days before the first anniversary, Brian Rohrbough threw a Hail Mary. The cops had been stonewalling, and litigation looked like the only answer. Families could sue for negligence or wrongful death, and use the process to force out information. The verdict would be less important than discovery.

Should they sue? How could they know? It all rested on Jeffco's final report. If Jeffco released all the evidence, most families would be satisfied. If Jeffco held back, they were going to court. No one had anticipated that the report would take this long. Way back in the summer of 1999, Jeffco had said its report was six to eight weeks away. It was April now, and officials were still saying they had six to eight weeks to go.

The investigators had wrapped up most of their work in the first four months, but Jeffco was skittish about presenting the information. Yet the longer they waited, the more leaks they risked, the more rebukes, and the higher the stakes to get every sentence right.

Even the school administration was frustrated. "We keep getting ready," Mr. D told a magazine in April. "I keep telling the community, 'OK, we're about two weeks away, we're two weeks away.' There's only so many times you can get so wound up saying, 'Oh, I'm ready now, I'm ready,' and then all of a sudden, 'No!' There's a level of frustration."

The delays were maddening, but a practical problem was also arising. The first anniversary coincided with the statute of limitations. By delaying the report past April 20, 2000, Jeffco forced the families to trust them or sue. That was an easy choice. On April 10, the Rohrboughs and the Flemings filed an open records request demanding to see the report immediately--one last option to avoid a lawsuit. Since they were filing, they asked for everything, including the Basement Tapes, the killers' journals, the 911 calls, and surveillance videos. Rohrbough wanted to compare the raw data to the narrative under construction by Jeffco. He predicted a chasm.

"They lie as a practice," he said.

District Judge R. Brooke Jackson read the request. He said yes. Over furious objections from Jeffco, three days before the anniversary, he allowed the plaintiffs to read the draft report. He also granted them access to hundreds of hours of 911 tapes and some video footage. He agreed to begin reading the two hundred binders of evidence himself, but noted that would take months.

The ruling stunned everyone. But it was too little, too late. Fifteen families filed suits against the sheriff's department that week. They would add additional defendants later.

The Klebolds chose not to sue. Instead they issued another apology letter. The Harrises did the same.

The lawsuits were expected to fail. The legal thresholds were too high. In federal court, negligence was insufficient; families needed to prove officers had actually made the students worse off. And that was only the first hurdle. But the main strategy was to flush out information.

The one suit with a plausible chance came from Dave Sanders's daughter Angela. She was represented by Peter Grenier, a powerhouse Washington, D.C., lawyer. They charged that Jeffco officials went beyond neglecting Dave Sanders for three hours: they impeded his movement and prohibited others from getting him out of there. They deceived volunteer rescuers with false claims about an imminent arrival, to discourage them from busting out a window or taking him down the stairs. By doing so, the suit argued, Jeffco accepted responsibility for Dave and then let him die. In legal terms, they'd denied his civil rights by cutting off all opportunities to save him when they were not prepared to do it themselves.

The Rohrboughs and others followed similar logic. The library kids could have escaped easily, they said, unencumbered by police "help." It looked ugly. But legal analysts were skeptical about any case holding up. "It's going to be tough to ask a jury to say we know better than a SWAT team how to handle this situation," said Sam Kamin, law professor at the University of Denver.

In legal circles, the lawsuits had been expected, but their ferocity shook the community. The anniversary was overwhelmed by animosity again, and media were everywhere. Many of the Thirteen left town. The school closed for the day and conducted a private memorial. A public service was held in Clement Park.

A few days after the anniversary, Judge Jackson ordered the sheriff's department to release its report to the public by May 15. He also released more evidence, including a video that drew a lot of heat. For months, Jeffco had referred to it as a "training video" created by the Littleton Fire Department. It was based on footage shot in the library shortly after the bodies were removed. It would be the families' first look at the gruesome scene. It would be "difficult" to watch, Jackson's ruling stated, but that was no reason to suppress it.

"There is no compelling public interest consideration that requires that the video or any part of it not be disclosed under the Open Records Act," Jackson wrote.

The next day, Jeffco began duplicating the tape and selling copies for $25. Spokesmen said the fee was to defray copying costs. The families were aghast. Then they saw the tape. There was no instruction, no narration, no attempt at "training." It was someone's ghastly attempt at commemoration: grisly crime scene footage set to pop music, Sarah McLachlan's "I Will Remember You." McLachlan's record company threatened to sue for copyright infringement. Jeffco removed the music. Sales remained strong.

Brian Rohrbough had broken through Jeffco's armor. Judge Jackson kept ordering releases. In May, he unleashed all the 911 tapes and a ballistics report. For a while, everything he read, he released. The killers' families tried to stop him. On May 1, they filed a joint motion to keep materials seized from their homes private. That would include the most vital evidence: the journals and the Basement Tapes.

Jeffco released its report on May 15, as ordered. The focus of the package was a minute-by minute timeline of April 20, 1999, in great detail. It dramatically illustrated how fast everything happened: just seven and a half minutes in the library, all the deaths and injuries in the first sixteen minutes. How convenient, critics said. The cops' report was dedicated to illustrating that the cops had never had a chance.

As expected, the report ducked the central question of why. why. Instead, it provided about seven hundred pages of Instead, it provided about seven hundred pages of what,how, what,how, and and when when. The logistics were useful, but they were hardly what people had been waiting for.

There were three paragraphs about advance warning by the Browns: one paragraph summarizing and two defending. The department claimed it had been unable to access Eric's Web site, despite the fact that officials had printed the pages, filed them, and retrieved them within minutes of the attack on April 20, and had cited them at length in the search warrants issued before the bodies were found. But a year after the murders, Jeffco was still suppressing the file and the search warrants. So the families suspected a lie, but they couldn't prove it.

Jeffco was ridiculed for its report. Officials seemed truly bewildered by the response. Privately, they insisted they were just acting the way they always did: building a case internally, keeping their conclusions to themselves. Communicating the results was the prosecutors' role. It wasn't their job. They still couldn't grasp that this was not any normal case.

As the battles intensified, compassion fatigue set in. Hardly anyone said it out loud.

Chuck Green, a Denver Post Denver Post columnist and one of Denver's nastier personalities, broke the ice. He stunned the families with a pair of columns, charging them with "milking" the tragedy. columnist and one of Denver's nastier personalities, broke the ice. He stunned the families with a pair of columns, charging them with "milking" the tragedy.

They had gotten millions, he wrote. "It has been an avalanche of anguish never before witnessed, yet the Columbine victims still have their hands out for more."

The Parents Group was caught unaware. They'd had no idea. They were more stunned by the support for Green's ideas. "All of us are sick and tired of the continued whining," a reader responded. Another said those sentiments had been circulating for quite a while--"whispering in small circles, amongst clouds of guilt."

It was out in the open now.

The anniversary also offered a window of political opportunity. Tom Mauser had been energized at the NRA protest and devoted himself to the cause. "I am not a natural leader, but speaking out helps me because it carries on Daniel's life," he said. Tom took a one-year leave of absence to serve as chief lobbyist for SAFE Colorado (Sane Alternatives to the Firearms Epidemic). They supported several bills in the Colorado legislature to limit access to guns for minors and criminals. Prospects looked good, especially for the flagship proposal to close the gun-show loophole. It was narrowly defeated in February. A similar measure bogged down in Congress.

So a week before the anniversary, President Clinton returned to Denver to encourage survivors and support SAFE's new strategy: to pass the same measure in Colorado with a ballot initiative.