Columbine (44 page)

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Eric manufactured three more pipe bombs: the Charlie batch. Then he halted production until December. What he needed was guns. And that was becoming a problem.

Eric had been looking into the Brady Bill. Congress had passed the law restricting the purchase of most popular semiautomatic machine guns in 1993. A federal system of instant background checks would soon go into effect. Eric was going to have a hard time getting around that.

"Fuck you Brady!" Eric wrote in his journal. All he wanted was a couple of guns--"and thanks to your fucking bill I will probably not get any!" He wanted them only for personal protection, he joked: "Its not like I'm some psycho who would go on a shooting spree. fuckers."

Eric frequently made his research do double duty for both schoolwork and his master plan. He wrote up a short research assignment on the Brady Bill that week. It was a good idea in theory, he said, aside from the loopholes. The biggest problem was that checks applied only to licensed dealers, not private dealers. So two-thirds of the licensed dealers had just gone private. "The FBI just shot themselves in the foot," he concluded.

Eric was rational about his firepower. "As of this date I have enough explosives to kill about 100 people," he wrote. With axes, bayonets, and assorted blades, he could maybe take out ten more. That was as far as hand-to-hand combat would get him. A hundred and ten people. "that just isn't enough!"

"Guns!" the entry concluded. "I need guns! Give me some fucking firearms!"

45. Aftershocks

M
ilestones were hard. First day of school, first snowfall, first Christmas, first anything. All the ugly memories, all the feelings of helplessness swelled back to the surface.

The six-month anniversary was unnerving. Surveillance video of the killers roaming the cafeteria had just been leaked to CBS. The network led its national news broadcast with the first of footage inside the building during the attack. Eric and Dylan strolled around brandishing their weapons. They picked up abandoned cups from the tables and casually enjoyed a few sips. They shot at the big bombs, and terrified kids scurried away.

"It's one thing to hear or read about it, and another thing to see it," Sean Graves's mother said. She cried while she watched. She made herself sit through it--she needed to know. She was coming to terms with inevitability. "I wish it wasn't out," she said. "But I knew that it was going to come out. It was just a matter of time."

Her son took a pass. Sean did his homework in the other room.

Sean was semiparalyzed--one of the critically injured kids. Everyone was watching their progress. Anne Marie Hochhalter was struggling. She went to school for physics class, and a tutor taught her the rest at home. Her family had just moved into a new house, outfitted by volunteers to accommodate her wheelchair. Anne Marie was fighting her way toward walking again. A few days before the six-month anniversary, she finally moved her legs--one at a time, three to four inches high. It was "a tremendous, tremendous achievement," her dad, Ted, said. But the pain was still excruciating.

The six-month anniversary jitters made it harder. Rumors were rampant:
Eric and Dylan couldn't have done it alone. The TCM is still active--they could strike again at any moment.

October 20, the six-month mark, seemed like the perfect moment. On October 18, a fresh rumor surfaced: a friend of Eric and Dylan's who had worked on their school videos told someone he was going to "finish the job."

The next day, police raided his house, searched the premises, and arrested him. His parents cooperated. He was charged with a felony and held on a $500,000 bond. He was put on suicide watch. He was seventeen.

The kid made a brief appearance in juvenile court on Wednesday, in leg shackles and a green prison uniform. He faced Magistrate John DeVita, the same man who'd sentenced Eric and Dylan a year and a half earlier. Because the suspect was a minor, his name was withheld and the record sealed. But DeVita confirmed the police had found an incriminating journal. "That was the basis for the allegation," he said. A diagram of the school was also recovered, but no signs of activity to carry anything out. In the twelve-page diary, the boy lamented his failure to help Eric and Dylan with their troubles. He contemplated suicide. He wrote about it. He talked about it when they came to arrest him.

That same day, the six-month anniversary, 450 kids called in sick. Why set foot in that deadly school? More drifted out all day. By the closing bell, half the student body was gone. Three of the critically injured kids, Richard Castaldo, Anne Marie Hochhalter, and Patrick Ireland, stuck it out. Sean Graves stayed home and baked chocolate chip cookies with friends. "I didn't want to risk it," he said.

Thursday, 14 percent were still out. The normal absentee rate was 5 percent.

The tension subsided. On Friday, attendance was back near normal. Anne Marie Hochhalter and her dad went to Leawood Elementary that morning to thank fund-raisers and accept donations raised on her behalf. Around ten
A.M.
, Anne Marie's mother walked into an Alpha Pawn Shop south of Denver. She asked to see a handgun. The clerk offered several options; she looked at them through the glass case. She settled on a .38-caliber revolver.
That one.
While he got started on the background check, she turned her back to the counter and loaded. She had brought the ammo with her. First she fired at the wall. The second shot entered through her right temple.

Paramedics rushed Carla June to Swedish Medical Center, the same hospital that had treated Anne Marie. Carla June died a few minutes later. A counselor who had worked with the family came by the house to notify the family. Anne Marie answered the door, and the counselor asked to talk to Ted. "I started to breathe really fast," Anne Marie said later. "I just had an ominous feeling."

"I hate to be the bearer of bad news," the counselor said. "Carla's dead."

Ted Hochhalter crumpled.

"No!" Anne Marie said. "No! No! No!" Her dad pulled up and hugged her. It took him a few minutes to compose himself, and the counselor explained how it had happened.

"We just broke down again," Anne Marie said. "The look on my dad's face will be etched in my memory forever. It was just a look of sorrow and horror."

____

Columbine's mental health hotline was flooded with calls on Saturday. Several distraught messages were cued up on the machine when counselors arrived. They added an extra weekend shift. "It's been a hard week," a Jeffco official said. "They're sad and depressed and they want to talk."

Parents had watched their kids sputtering on the brink for months. Especially this month. Other parents had no idea what their kids were thinking. Were they getting that desperate, too? Would Carla's choice seem like a way out? Some kids fought the same thoughts about their parents.

"I just can't take it," Steve Cohn told the Associated Press. "I can't believe someone killed themselves over those idiots."

Steve's boy Aaron had made it out of the library unscathed physically, but the stress was wrenching the family apart. "I drive by the school and I'm looking behind every tree," Steve said. "I feel like a cop. I want to prevent it before it happens again."

Steve and his son had both gone to counseling, but that was useless while Aaron was shut down. "Until he opens up, there's nothing we can do," his dad said.

Connie Michalik was especially rattled. She'd spent months beside Carla at Swedish Medical Center, watching their children recover. Connie was Richard Castaldo's mom. Neither child was expected to walk again. "This just destroyed her," Connie said. "You'd look in her eyes and see she was lost. It didn't seem like she was there anymore. She was sweet and loving and kind, but it was too much for her."

Connie had felt herself waver, too. "When it first happened, [Carla] was just like any other parent," she said. "We were all depressed and devastated. There was a time where I thought I had nothing to live for. She was no different from us."

Connie worked past it; Carla could not. "We kind of saw her slipping," Connie said. "I saw her slide downhill." But Connie never foresaw that deep a plunge. She assumed Carla would pull out of it, especially when Anne Marie moved her legs.

What most people in the community did not know was that Carla was at the end of a long struggle with mental illness.

The Hochhalter family wanted the public to understand that. After her death, they released a statement saying she had been battling clinical depression for three years. She had been suicidal in the past. She had been on medication. A month earlier, Ted had called the authorities at three
A.M.
to report her missing. She walked into a local emergency room the next day, seeking treatment for depression. She was hospitalized for a month. Eight days before her suicide, she was transferred to an outpatient program.

The family later revealed that Carla had been diagnosed as bipolar. Columbine aggravated Carla's depression horribly. She may or may not have gone over the edge without it, but the Columbine tragedy was not the underlying cause.

____

The school suspended the boy who'd made the anniversary threat, pending expulsion. That made eight expulsion proceedings in Jeffco since April, for a variety of gun threats and bomb scares. Everything was zero tolerance now. No one was taking chances.

The boy spent seven weeks in jail, through Thanksgiving. It was during this period that the community learned of his plan. He'd intended to fill his car with gasoline canisters and plow into the school as a suicide bomber. In December, he pleaded down to two minor charges and was sentenced to a one-year juvenile Diversion program, just as Eric and Dylan had been. Other charges were dropped, including theft. He had stolen a hundred dollars from the video store he worked at, to run away to Texas. He had begun seeing a psychiatrist and taking medication. The sentence required both to continue. "This is a troubled young man, and he will be getting the help he needs," the prosecutor said.

____

The half-year anniversary also brought a deadline. Colorado law requires that anyone who wants to sue a government agency for negligence must file an intent notice within 180 days. Twenty families filed. Notices came from families of the dead, families of the injured, and the Klebolds.

Tom and Sue Klebold charged Stone's department with "reckless, willful and wanton" misconduct for failing to alert them about its 1998 investigation into Eric's behavior, particularly his death threats. That warning "would more likely than not have caused the Klebolds to become aware of dangers of which they were not aware and demand that their son, Dylan, be excluded from all contacts with Eric Harris," the filing read. The failure "caused the Klebolds to be subject to substantial damage claims, vilification, grief and loss of enjoyment of life." The notice said the family expected to be sued by victims, and sought damages from Jeffco equal to those eventual settlements.

The Klebolds had cause for concern. The two families still topped most blame lists.

The filing took the community by surprise. No one had heard from the Harrises or Klebolds in months.

The harshest rebuke came from Sheriff Stone. "I think it's outrageous," he said. "It's their parenting thing, not our fault for their kid doing this thing."

He also lamented the tragedy degenerating to "an ugly stage."

Brian Rohrbough took the Klebolds' move in stride. It surprised him at first, he said, but on reflection, "it seems reasonable." He directed his outrage at Sheriff Stone's response. "We felt that it was really ugly April 20th," Brian said.

____

Wayne and Kathy finally agreed to meet with investigators without immunity, October 25. It was a brief session led by Sheriff Stone. There is no record of it being documented in a police report.

____

Only two people would be charged with a crime: Mark Manes, who'd sold the TEC 9, and Phil Duran, who'd brokered the deal. Months earlier, Agent Fuselier had predicted that the two would be savaged--with both legitimate and displaced anger.

"Those two guys stepped in front of a freight train," he said.

He was right. Manes was up first. He copped to a plea agreement and was sentenced on November 11. It was ugly. Nine families spoke at the hearing. Every one of them demanded the maximum.

"I ask you clearly to make a statement," Tom Mauser, one of the Thirteen, implored.

"If we had our way, the defendant would never be allowed on the streets again," the Shoels family said.

The testimony lasted for two hours. Manes hung his head. Videos made by two families hit especially hard. The court reporter passed boxes of Kleenex around the gallery.

Manes's lawyer described a rough childhood: his client had gotten in trouble, then mended his ways. Manes had gotten off drugs, gone to college, and obtained a steady job in the computer field. "His character today is exemplary," he said.

That infuriated the relatives. "Having that attorney talk about how wonderful Mark Manes is, that was tough," Dave Sanders's daughter Coni said. "He wasn't misunderstood. He was in the wrong."