No Easy Answers (27 page)

It was still illegal in Jeffco, before Columbine, to create pipe bombs. My parents and I reported a Web page where Eric laid out detailed plans about these pipe bombs. His names for them. What he wanted to do with them. And on there, he wished that he could kill me.

We reported it, but somehow Eric got away with it. They would probably jump on it now, if they had a second chance; they probably wouldn't want all of this egg on their face. But it still happened back then. They did prepare a search warrant; thanks to
60 Minutes II,
we did find that. But we don't know why it was stopped. Why all of that happened is a question that I personally want answered.

I heard the first speaker say this, and it's something that was rather upsetting. They said that Eric and Dylan wished they would get this kind of fame.

Eric and Dylan are dead. They lost. They died that day. And if you're religious, they are in hell. Having a bad time. They did not win.

What we are to do is to come away from this and learn things from it. We are to learn what happened beforehand. What led up to it. That includes the school. That includes bullying. I know when I spoke with Representative Lee before, he mentioned that he wanted to talk to some of the students without any subpoenas, so as not to re-traumatize them. I thought that was great. I could get him a number of students who could do it. They want to talk about how that school was. They want people to know. They just don't want to be called a murderer, or “hateful.” It's not that fun.

Richie will never get closure. I will never get closure. This will be a mark on my future forever. Kids died. They were shot. Other kids ran over their bodies. Other kids had to lie there and watch their friends die. This isn't something you get closure for. This is something that you learn to deal with.

There is hate of the government. It's starting with teens, and you see it all over the place. There is a distrust. We watched on April 20 as cops stood outside while kids died inside. While a teacher died inside. We see this, and we see them give out medals.

There is something wrong in this police department. And that is why I hope, Representative Lee, that you push this through. Because there is a lot to be learned. Thank you.

The chairman opened the floor to questions. Representative Shawn Mitchell pointed out that my concerns about Columbine were more expansive than what the proposed committee would cover. He
asked if I still felt the committee would be worthwhile if it didn't address those questions.

“I completely understand that,” I replied. “But my feelings are that once you get into one part of it—as I'm sure anyone who has gone into the pages in-depth has—you will find that one thing leads to another, which leads to another, which leads to another. And it kind of snowballs, and you slowly see how this huge thing built up. While it may be extremely expansive, it's all there. And you'll see it.”

There were no further questions. My testimony concluded, I sat down as my father took his place before the committee.

“Today, you were all lied to by the Jefferson County attorney,” he said. “And I can prove that.”

My father described his long battle to extract information from the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. He talked about filing requests for police maps through the Freedom of Information Act, and being told that he was being given every map available. Later, in a conference room, he saw maps that he had not been given, and photographed them. Now my father presented those photographs to the committee as proof that the police had lied.

My father went on to say:

I believe that Jefferson County has withheld a great deal of information. To document that further, we have a photograph of John Kiekbusch with 300 notebooks, instead of the pitifully small amount shown here. We also have another attorney for another lawsuit, who says that Jefferson County has told him that there are 54 “banker boxes” of evidence files. You see before you approximately five.

Distrust of the government is the main key here. I'm forty-nine years old. I'm a taxpayer. I no longer trust Jefferson County
in anyway. I have been lied to by so many people there that there are very few people there I would trust with any result. And I believe it's possible that if I feel that way, then many other people feel that way. That possibly, Columbine is going to have the end result of losing public confidence in the government in general.

Until somebody does something—and gentlemen, that's your job. It will happen right here, or it won't happen.

My mother spoke before the committee next. She described the ordeal our family had been through ever since we found Eric's Web pages, and noted that nowhere in the released Columbine files is there any record of her meeting with Detective Hicks. She argued that a legislative committee would have the subpoena power necessary to get to the bottom of what happened:

My questions are: What happened to my report? What happened to every report? What do I need to do differently as a citizen? Should I still call the police? Should I still assume they are doing their job? I want to know what I can do differently; to this day, I do not know.

When people call me—when parents call me because they know I was in this situation, and they ask me what should they do—I don't know what to tell them. Would I trust the police? Absolutely not. I would not trust the police. I don't know what to do, and that's wrong.

Before all of this happened, I put all of my faith—I put my son's life—in the hands of the police. Now, my son is here today, and I am very fortunate that my sons are here. But there are other people behind me whose kids are NOT here, and this is wrong.
And if you don't find this important enough to find out what happened in this police department, so that we can know and be assured these corrections can be made . . . If they will not address what happened to our stuff—how can we know that the police are following up on these things? How do we know that changes are being made?

Committee member Alice Madden tried to sympathize with my mother, telling her she worried that the families “wouldn't walk away with the truth.”

“I think the worst thing that could happen is to go through this and not give you the answers that you want,” Madden said. “I worry about a political body in an election year, doing this . . .”

“This may be our last hope,” my mother quickly replied. “I think it would be worthwhile if you could get at least some of the things out. A lot of important changes could be made. We really need to get into the deeper issues, and find out the truth. We need to find out what happens when a citizen goes to the police, and what they should expect. . .

“We're telling kids, ‘Report it.’ For what? What are they going to do? We don't have answers, and it's been almost three years. In truth, I don't know where to go next.”

The first of the Columbine victims' parents to speak was Dawn Anna, mother of Lauren Townsend.

“The worst action you could take today is inaction,” she told them. “Ladies and gentlemen, if you don't try, we may never know the truth about what happened. You represent me. Us. People of Colorado. Does that also include children?”

Mrs. Anna brought up questions about how her daughter had died in the library, and asked why the police had made no move to stop it:

I have serious questions about the timeline where my daughter is concerned, as well as other children who were killed. . .

I have questions when there is an open line recording the murders one by one, and the injuries occurring in the library one by one, and we know the location of the two murderers in the library. We know what they're doing: they are injuring and murdering children.

They have a specific location... and then, as the two murderers leave the library, the children who are able to get up and run out. They run to a door that leads to the exterior, to the outside. They come through that door and into the waiting arms of uniformed officers. And many of them are telling those officers two very important things: that there are children injured and possibly dead in that room, and that the two murderers [have] left, and that is why they were able to escape.

Yet those same policemen do not go through the doors those children just safely exited. In fact, the library is one of the last places [the police reached]. I don't know why. I have heard that they thought the door was booby-trapped. Yet all these children who survived that attack just ran through that door.

I have heard that they thought bodies were booby-trapped. Danny's body, Rachel's body, were moved. The children coming out of that library who said the murderers were gone said nothing about booby-trapped bodies. Yet it takes four hours to get into that library.

These are serious, serious questions that I have. And your body, with subpoena power, can bring forth some of those
policemen who are wanting to testify and provide that kind of information. They've never been able to provide it.

Mrs. Anna noted that many of the families are in therapy, and that the only way to truly find closure is to understand what happened. She argued:

We have to face what happened that day, and in the days following, so that then we can progress down the road to recovery.

How can we do that with the truth still hidden, rewritten, destroyed, and covered up?

You don't have to know exactly what to do with the information you uncover during this investigation. You simply need to begin the process. A process—the only one so far—with subpoena power, to allow those who have been waiting to be deposed and come forward and testify, and let the truth out. The courts, the judges, the lawyers, the therapists, the educators can take whatever information you find to the next level, so that all of those processes can begin to finally heal our community, and heal our nation.

Please don't let the costs of this investigation be your motivating factor in deciding whether you do this investigation. In fact, they should not be a factor at all. The cost of NOT doing this investigation will be incalculable. The lack of faith and trust in our legislators will be a high toll. The cost of the next massacre, wherever that may occur, will be immeasurable. I do not want to be the one who tells people like those of Santee, California, that an investigation could have led to the prevention of the murders at that school, but the cost was too high.

Am I reaching too far with this reasoning? You know I am not. There will be more tragedy in our schools. Why? Because we have no answers here. Our past will be, because it has already become, our future, if we don't change. If we don't act.

Brian Rohrbough followed Mrs. Anna. He told the committee, “All I want is the truth,” and detailed the discrepancies over his son's death. “When we asked them questions about it, they absolutely refused to answer,” he said of the police. “We asked for additional meetings; they refused. Our only answers came from going to court in an open-records case, and by filing a lawsuit. And we should not have had to do that.”

Mr. Rohrbough also brought up the search warrant, adding that it might have kept the entire Columbine incident from ever happening. He wanted to know why it had never been served.

“One or two people who are dishonest can discredit an entire agency,” he said. “And I would like you to put faith back in government. To show the people that the police really are accountable. I think this committee can do that.”

Kyle Velasquez's father, Al, also spoke to the committee about his son. The police had told him that Kyle was killed instantly in the library, and that he had no idea what was happening. Yet Mr. Velasquez learned later that his son was found curled up underneath a table in the library, hiding from Eric and Dylan.

“Can you imagine what happens to us when we find out the truth?” he said. “It's like it happened again.

“I honestly believe that you are our last hope,” he continued. “I'm asking you, please. In the memory of our kids, help us.”

The committee took a brief recess while the rest of us stood outside, not knowing what would happen. By now, we had heard three hours of testimony. Every aspect of the case, from Eric and Dylan's motives to the immediate police response to Sheriff Stone's behavior in the years afterward, had been laid out on the table. It was in the committee's hands.

Discussion of the proposal was very brief. Lee defended it one last time, arguing that, while Columbine had been investigated before, a legislative committee would grant the subpoena power necessary to extract new information.

“There have been a lot of issues raised today,” he said. “And I'm not saying that I think this committee is going to get into those specifics. But through the documents that we obtain, and the testimony of people who thus far have either been less inclined to testify because of litigation, or have not been totally open, it gives us an opportunity.”

The committee members responded with nothing but doubts.

“I guess my fear is that this task force is going to create false hopes that we will be able to deal with all these issues,” said Representative Betty Boyd.

“You've had no answers in the past,” added Representative Jim Snook. “You have a lot of questions. You haven't been satisfied with the answers you got, or else you got no answers. I'm of the judgment that the answers you're going to get, if this committee is successful, will be vague answers.”

The chairman put the resolution to vote as the room fell silent.

“Bacon.”

“No.”

“Boyd.”

“No.”

“Jahn.”

“No.”

“Johnson.”

“No.”

“Madden.”

“No.”

“Snook.”

“No.”

“Stengel.”

Stengel took a moment. “This is the hardest vote I ever gave. No.”

The recorder turned to Representative Lee and called his name.

“Yes,” Lee said, the defeat in his voice apparent.

“Mr. Chairman.”

“Yes.”

Even as he offered the only other favorable vote, Chairman Shawn Mitchell knew it was already over. “That motion fails, 7 to 2,” he said. “There is a motion to postpone indefinitely the resolution, forwarded by Representative Madden and seconded by Representative Bacon. Please call the roll.”