Columbine High School massacre

• 1. Introduction

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  The Columbine High School massacre was meant to be a bombing. On the 20th of April 1999, seniors Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried explosives into Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, expecting them to kill hundreds of classmates at lunch. The shooting was supposed to come second. The two had planned for roughly a year, and when their bombs failed to detonate, they turned to their guns. Thirteen students and one teacher were murdered, and both attackers died by suicide. Twenty people were wounded by gunfire. Since then, the school's name has become shorthand for a whole category of attack. This documentary asks how two teenagers prepared so openly without being stopped. It follows what the survivors endured inside the building, and why police waited outside for so long. It also asks why investigators, after all their work, say they still cannot explain the reason.

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• 2. Warning Signs

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  Eric David Harris was born on the 9th of April 1981 in Wichita, Kansas. His family moved often because his father flew transport planes for the US Air Force. In July 1993, after his father retired, the family moved from Plattsburgh, New York, to Littleton, Colorado. Dylan Bennet Klebold was born on the 11th of September 1981 in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents were pacifists who took the family to a Lutheran church, and he was named after the poet Dylan Thomas. As a young boy he joined a program for gifted students called CHIPS, short for Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students. The two met at Ken Caryl Middle School.

  In 1996-15-year-old Harris created a private website on America Online. He first used it to host video game levels he had built for Doom, Doom II and Quake. He also kept a blog, calling the vandalism and fireworks pranks he shared with Klebold "rebel missions" and the posts "mission logs". By early 1997 the entries showed anger at society. By the end of that year the site included instructions for making pipe bombs.

  In August 1997, Harris wrote on the blog: "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown." Brown was a friend and classmate. His parents read the site and contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office on the 7th of August 1997. An investigator drafted an affidavit asking for a search warrant for the Harris home, but it was never submitted to a judge.

  On the 30th of January 1998, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a white van parked near Littleton and stealing tools and computer equipment. A judge sentenced them to a 12-month juvenile diversion program. They took mandatory classes such as anger management and met with diversion officers. Both were released a month early.

  Soon after the court hearing, Harris changed his website back to hosting only Doom levels and began keeping a journal. Klebold had kept his own since March 1997. Schoolwork from both boys carried violent themes. In December 1997, Harris wrote a paper on school shootings titled "Guns in School". Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students, which worried his teacher enough that she alerted his parents. When confronted, Klebold called it "just a story".

  Nearly a year before the massacre, Klebold wrote in Harris's 1998 yearbook about killing enemies and blowing things up. He promised that his wrath over "January's incident" would be "godlike". He also mentioned revenge in "the commons", which was student slang for the cafeteria. Harris's journal sketched what might come after an attack, including fleeing to a foreign country or hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport and crashing it into a building in New York City.

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• 3. The Basement Tapes

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  On the 8th of December 1998, Harris and Klebold filmed a video called Hitmen for Hire. An economics class had asked Harris to make an advertisement for a business. The video was not released to the public until February 2004. In it, the pair portray members of the Trench Coat Mafia, a school clique that wore black trench coats and opposed jocks. They pretend to extort money for protecting preps from bullies. Investigators concluded the boys were not members themselves, though they were friends with some. Because they wore black trench coats on the day of the massacre, the video looks like a rehearsal. It shows them walking the school halls and shooting bullies outside with fake guns.

  That video was one of five tapes the pair kept, all recorded on school video equipment because both were enrolled in video-production classes. Only Hitmen for Hire, a tape called Rampart Range and part of a third called Radioactive Clothing have been released. Rampart Range shows target practice in nearby foothills, using weapons they later carried into the school. The other three tapes laid out their plans and reasons. They also explained how the boys hid their weapons and deceived their parents. Most were filmed in the Harris family basement, which is why they are known as the basement tapes. About thirty minutes before the attack, the pair recorded a last video saying goodbye and apologizing to friends and families. They claimed they would send copies to news stations but never did.

  Another recording was left behind on the Harris kitchen table. It was a micro cassette labeled "Nixon". On it, Harris said, "It is less than nine hours now," which places the recording at around 2:30 a.m. He went on to say, "People will die because of me," and "It will be a day that will be remembered forever."

  In December 1999, Time magazine published an article on the basement tapes before anyone outside the investigation had seen them. Victims' families threatened to sue Jefferson County. As a result, select victim families and journalists were allowed to watch them, and then the tapes were withheld from the public. In 2011 they were destroyed, out of fear that they might inspire future massacres. Transcripts survive online, along with a short clip that a victim's father recorded secretly.

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• 4. Guns and Bombs

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  On the 22nd of November 1998, a friend named Robyn Anderson bought a carbine rifle and two shotguns for the pair at the Tanner Gun Show. Harris and Klebold were too young to buy them legally. After the attack, Anderson told investigators she had believed they wanted the guns for target shooting and denied knowing of any plan. She was not charged.

  Klebold bought a TEC-9 handgun for $500 from Mark Manes at another gun show on the 23rd of January. The sale was arranged through Philip Duran, a coworker at the Blackjack Pizza where both boys held part-time jobs. After the massacre, Manes and Duran were prosecuted for supplying a handgun to a minor and for possessing a sawed-off shotgun. Both pled guilty. Manes was sentenced to six years in prison and Duran to four and a half.

  By the spring, the pair held two 9mm firearms and two 12-gauge shotguns. Harris had a Hi-Point 995 carbine, thirteen 10-round magazines for it, and a Savage-Springfield 67H pump shotgun. Klebold had a 9mm Intratec TEC-DC9 semi-automatic handgun with one 52-round, one 32-round and one 28-round magazine, plus a Stevens 311D double-barreled shotgun. They cut the shotguns down to about 26 inches and 23 inches, which is a felony under the National Firearms Act.

  The explosives were far more numerous than the firearms. Harris and Klebold built 99 bombs in all. These included 27 pipe bombs, 48 gunpowder-filled carbon-dioxide cartridges they called crickets, seven Molotov cocktails and 15 converted propane tanks. For the propane bombs they built timers from mechanical alarm clocks. On the day of the attack, they taped match strikers to their forearms so they could light the pipe bombs quickly.

  Neighbors of the plan, in a sense, kept glimpsing it. Harris's father once found one of his son's pipe bombs. Klebold scared coworkers by bringing one to work. The pair gave their pipe bombs nicknames, and two left in Klebold's bedroom were called "Vengeance" and "Atlanta", presumably after the Olympic Park bombing. Harris also experimented with napalm and imagined a backpack flamethrower. He and Klebold asked their friend and coworker Chris Morris, a member of the Trench Coat Mafia, to store the napalm at his house, and he refused. Harris also tried to recruit Morris as a third shooter, then passed it off as a joke when he was rebuffed.

  Two propane tanks were bought at a hardware store the weekend before the attack, and six more on the morning itself. A gas station security camera caught Harris buying one at 9:12 a.m. Each cafeteria bomb combined a single 20-pound tank with attached pipe bombs and gasoline canisters. Each car bomb used two 20-pound tanks, pipe bombs and gasoline. Eight pipe bombs went into Klebold's car and one into Harris's.

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• 5. Eleven Nineteen

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  Two duffel bags of propane bombs were set down in the Columbine cafeteria on the morning of the 20th of April, timed for the "A" lunch shift that began at 11:15 a.m. No witness recalled seeing them join the roughly 400 backpacks already there. A custodian was changing the security videotape at about 11:14, and police first guessed the bags were placed during that gap. Some internet sleuths claim the footage shows the placement at around 10:58 a.m. Deputy Neil Gardner, the school resource officer, normally ate lunch with students in the cafeteria. That day he was eating in his patrol car at the northwest corner of campus. Two backpacks of bombs had also been left in a field about 3 miles south, meant to draw firefighters away. Only the pipe bombs and one aerosol canister went off, and the small fire was quickly put out.

  As Harris pulled into the parking lot, he met Brooks Brown, who was smoking a cigarette and surprised to see him. Harris had missed a test that morning, and Brown scolded him for it. Harris replied, "It doesn't matter anymore." Then he said, "Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home." Brown walked away down South Pierce Street. Beneath his trench coat, Harris wore a white T-shirt reading "Natural Selection". Klebold wore a black shirt reading "Wrath". Investigators believe that if the cafeteria bombs had gone off, they would have killed or badly wounded the 488 students inside. They might also have collapsed the library into the room below.

  At 11:19 a.m., 17-year-old Rachel Scott and her friend Richard Castaldo were eating lunch on the grass by the west entrance. Klebold threw a pipe bomb that only partly detonated and gave off smoke, and several students took it for a prank. Harris shot Scott, who died at once. Castaldo was hit eight times and survived, paralyzed below the chest. Below the west staircase, Harris fired at Daniel Rohrbough, Sean Graves and Lance Kirklin, who thought they were seeing paintball guns. Rohrbough was killed. Teacher and coach Dave Sanders heard the shots from the cafeteria and began warning students.

  Kirklin lay wounded on the ground, calling weakly for help. Klebold said, "Sure. I'll help you," and shot him in the jaw. Kirklin survived. Graves, paralyzed below the waist, crawled into the cafeteria doorway and smeared blood on his face to play dead. He later remembered Klebold stepping over him and saying, "Sorry, dude." Klebold then briefly entered the cafeteria without firing, and officials speculated he went to check on the propane bombs.

  Inside, art teacher Patti Nielson had heard the commotion and walked toward the west entrance with student Brian Anderson. She meant to tell two students to "Knock it off", thinking it was a prank or a film shoot. The gunmen shot out the door windows, and flying glass cut Anderson while shrapnel hit Nielson's shoulder. They ran into the library, where Nielson told students to get under desks and stay silent. Transcripts show her 911 call was received at 11:25:18 a.m.

  At 11:29 a.m., Harris and Klebold entered the library, where 52 students, two teachers and two librarians were hiding. Kyle Velasquez, a disabled student, was the first killed there. The gunmen ordered everyone to stand and said "Anybody with a white hat or a sports emblem on it is dead." White caps were a tradition among Columbine athletes. Nobody stood, and several students tried to hide their hats. Students Isaiah Shoels and Matthew Kechter were killed under a table, after racial taunts, while Craig Scott lay still among his friends' blood and survived. Student Evan Todd, wearing a white hat, was spared after telling Klebold, "I don't want trouble." John Savage, an acquaintance of Klebold's, asked what they were doing. Klebold shrugged and said, "Oh, just killing people," then told him to run.

  Fifteen-year-old Daniel Mauser reportedly shoved a chair at Harris or grabbed at his leg, and Harris shot him in the face. The last person killed in the library was 17-year-old Corey DePooter, at 11:35. The ten dead there were Kyle Velasquez, Steven Curnow, Cassie Bernall, Isaiah Shoels, Matthew Kechter, Lauren Townsend, John Tomlin, Kelly Fleming, Daniel Mauser and Corey DePooter. Twelve more were wounded. At 11:36, the gunmen left. Ten injured and 29 uninjured survivors fled through the north emergency exit. Craig Scott helped Kacey Ruegsegger out, and she would likely have bled to death had she stayed.

  Elsewhere in the building, Sanders had led students from the cafeteria to the second floor. In the main south hallway he met the gunmen, who shot him twice, in the back and neck. Teacher Rich Long took him into a classroom holding 30 students. Student Aaron Hancey, called over by teacher Kent Friesen because he knew first aid, worked with student Kevin Starkey and teacher Theresa Miller. They used students' shirts to slow the bleeding and showed Sanders photos from a wallet to keep him talking. This went on for three hours.

  At 11:44 a.m., security cameras caught the pair back in the cafeteria. Harris crouched on the staircase and fired at the propane bombs without effect. Klebold lit a Molotov cocktail and threw it at one, and about a minute later its attached fuel ignited. The sprinklers put out the fire a few minutes afterward. They returned to the library at about 12:00 p.m. and again fired at police through the windows. By 12:05 the gunfire had stopped, and by 12:08 both were dead by suicide. In all, the two had fired 188 rounds. Harris fired 121 and Klebold 67. Counting the gunmen, the dead numbered 16, aged from 14 to 47. Steven Curnow was the youngest and Dave Sanders the oldest. Still in the library, unconscious and unable to move, were Patrick Ireland and Lisa Kreutz.

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• 6. Outside the Doors

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  At 11:24 a.m., Deputy Neil Gardner stepped out of his car in the senior lot and heard a call on the school radio: "Neil, there's a shooter in the school." Harris, at the west entrance, fired ten shots at him from 60 yards. Gardner leaned over his car and fired four rounds back, and Harris ducked inside. Harris returned and fired at least four more rounds, which hit two parked cars. No one was hurt. Motorcycle deputies Paul Smoker and Paul Magor had been writing a traffic ticket nearby. They rode across the grass toward the school, then switched to a patrol car with three other deputies. At 11:26 another exchange of fire broke out. Smoker fired three rounds from the hilltop, and again nobody was hit.

  By 12:00 p.m., SWAT teams were stationed outside and ambulances were taking the wounded to hospitals. Two SWAT teams went into the building at 1:09 p.m., more than an hour after the gunfire had stopped. They moved from classroom to classroom, finding hidden students and staff. They were slowed by old maps that did not show a recently added wing, and by the sound of the fire alarms. Police would be strongly criticized for not going in sooner.

  Families were told to gather at nearby Leawood Elementary School. Students, teachers and staff were questioned, offered medical care and bussed to meet their relatives there. Tom Mauser, father of Daniel Mauser, later described the scene in his book Walking in Daniel's Shoes. Law enforcement told several waiting families that another bus was on its way, but it never arrived. Whether this came from miscommunication or from an attempt to give frantic parents hope is unknown.

  At 2:15 p.m., student Mike Rotole placed a sign in a science room window reading "1 bleeding to death". Police first feared it was a trick by the shooters. A shirt had also been tied to the doorknob. Officers spotted it at 2:30 and had evacuated the students by 2:40. Hancey and Starkey were reluctant to leave Sanders behind. By 3:00 he had been moved to a more accessible storage room, where a paramedic found no pulse. He had died of his wounds before medical help reached him. He was the only teacher killed.

  At 2:38 p.m., on live television, Patrick Ireland pulled himself to a library window. He had slipped in and out of consciousness since being shot, and he was paralyzed on his right side. He meant to fall into the arms of two SWAT officers standing on an emergency vehicle but landed on its roof instead. He became known as "the boy in the window". The officers, Donn Kraemer and John Ramoniec, were later criticized for letting him drop more than seven feet without trying to break his fall.

  Lisa Kreutz was evacuated at 3:22 p.m., the last person pulled from the library. Patti Nielson, Brian Anderson and three library staff who had hidden nearby left with her. Officials found the bodies of the gunmen by 3:30. By 4:00, Sheriff John P. Stone estimated 25 dead and 50 wounded and called the attack a "suicide mission". Officers feared the gunmen's bodies were booby-trapped with pipe bombs. The school was declared safe at 4:30, but more explosives turned up in the parking lot and on the roof. By 6:15, a bomb was found in Klebold's car, rigged to ignite its gas tank. At 10:40 p.m., a bomb technician brushed a striking match on an undetonated pipe bomb against the wall of a disposal trailer. It exploded and injured no one. Klebold's car was later repaired and, in 2006, put up for auction. The bombs in the cafeteria itself were not found until the 22nd of April.

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• 7. The Unanswered Question

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  Sheriff John Stone and Undersheriff John A. Dunaway sent a letter with the report issued on the 15th of May. They wrote that they could not answer the most fundamental question, which was why. The attack was planned as a terrorist-style act meant to cause "the most deaths in US history". In the days after, the media proposed many motives. These included bullying, goth culture, video games, the singer Marilyn Manson, and a supposed targeting of jocks and minorities. All of them proved largely unsubstantiated. Some students also spread a false rumor that the pair were bullied for being gay.

  The FBI concluded that Harris was a clinical psychopath and that Klebold had depression. Dwayne Fuselier, the supervisor of the investigation, said: "I believe Eric went to the school to kill and didn't care if he died, while Dylan wanted to die and didn't care if others died as well." The most common theme in Klebold's journals was his wish to die and his despair about women, which he called an "infinite sadness". On the basement tapes, glancing away from the camera, he said: "Just know I'm going to a better place. I didn't like life too much." Dave Cullen drew on this view in his 2009 book Columbine, which cast Harris as a mastermind with a messianic sense of superiority. Critics point out that Klebold, not Harris, first wrote about a killing spree. They add that Harris was also depressed.

  Toxicology reports found fluvoxamine, sold as Luvox, in Harris's blood, while Klebold had no medication in his system. Harris had complained of depression, anger and suicidal thoughts, and he kept seeing a psychologist until a few months before the attack. Peter Breggin, an opponent of modern psychiatry, argues that the drugs may have worsened Harris's aggression. Other writers offered different diagnoses. Peter Langman considers Harris a psychopath and Klebold schizotypal. Professor Aubrey Immelman published a profile of Harris that described malignant narcissism.

  Bullying drew the most attention. Early stories claimed that teachers and administrators had long tolerated bullying by jocks. Brooks Brown's book No Easy Answers argued that teachers usually ignored it. Classmate Chad Laughlin described seniors pelting Klebold with "ketchup-covered tampons" in the commons, and Klebold told his mother it was the worst day of his life. Dave Cullen disputes the revenge theory. He says Harris was more often the bully than the victim. Harris's own journal says he would likely have attacked even if his peers had respected him more. A fact check by Gillian Brockell in The Washington Post, published on the 19th of April 2019, reached the same conclusion, as did Jeff Kass and Peter Langman.

  Isolation was another popular explanation. Harris's last journal entry says, "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things." Klebold wrote, "The lonely man strikes with absolute rage." Brooks Brown called the pair "the losers of the losers". Yet Cullen, Brockell and Langman all say they were not loners, and friends such as Chad Laughlin and Nathan Dykeman said they were not outcasts. They also were not part of the Trench Coat Mafia.

  Some of the most contested accounts concern faith. Evangelical Christians came to regard Rachel Scott and Cassie Bernall as martyrs. Richard Castaldo, the closest surviving witness to Scott's death, said Harris asked whether she believed in God and killed her after she answered, "You know I do." He later said he was not sure. Reports said Harris put the same question to Bernall, who answered yes. Emily Wyant, the closest surviving witness to her death, denied that any such exchange took place. Craig Scott said it was Bernall, but when asked where the voice came from, he pointed to where Valeen Schnurr was shot. Schnurr herself says she was the one who was asked.

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• 8. What Followed

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  On the 30th of April 1999, carpenter Greg Zanis set up fifteen wooden crosses, each 6 feet tall, on a hill in Clement Park. Fifteen trees were also planted. Daniel Rohrbough's father cut down the two crosses and two trees that stood for the gunmen. Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck had already become memorials, and impromptu gatherings were held in the park. The National Hockey League postponed the first-round playoff series between the Colorado Avalanche and the San Jose Sharks.

  The same day, senior Jefferson County officials met to decide whether to reveal that investigator Michael Guerra had drafted a search-warrant affidavit for the Harris home more than a year earlier. Because the draft lacked probable cause, they chose to say nothing at that day's press conference or afterward. Over the next two years, Guerra's draft and the related file were lost. A county investigator failed to find them in a secret search in September 1999. A second search in late 2000 found copies in the county archives. A grand jury later called the loss "troubling". The sheriff's office hid the file until September 2001, when an investigation by the television show 60 Minutes exposed it. The final grand jury report was released in September 2004.

  Classes resumed at nearby Chatfield Senior High for the last three weeks of the 1999 school year. In August 1999, students returned to Columbine, and principal Frank DeAngelis led a rally of students wearing "We are Columbine" shirts. The attack led police to adopt immediate action rapid deployment, a tactic for active-shooter situations in which officers enter at once rather than waiting. Schools adopted tougher security and zero-tolerance policies. Americans argued over gun culture and gun control, cliques, subcultures such as goths, outcasts, bullying, antidepressants, the Internet, and violence in video games and film. Columbine stood as the deadliest mass shooting at a K-12 school in the United States until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012. As of June 2025, it had inspired more than 70 copycat attacks, a phenomenon called the Columbine effect.

  The harm continued for years. Survivors, including students and teachers, reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Six months after the shooting, the mother of Anne Marie Hochhalter died by suicide. Greg Barnes, a 17-year-old who had seen Sanders shot and was a close friend of Matthew Kechter, died by suicide on the 4th of May 2000. Survivor Austin Eubanks became heavily medicated after his wounds and developed an opioid addiction. He overcame it and spoke publicly about it, then died of an accidental overdose on the 18th of May 2019, at 37. Hochhalter, paralyzed in the attack, died on the 16th of February 2025, aged 43. On the 13th of March 2025, the Jefferson County Coroner's Office ruled her death a homicide, which brought the number of victims who died to 14.

  Misinformation spread as fast as the facts. Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church and the televangelist Jerry Falwell Sr. each made unfounded claims about the pair's sexuality, though Falwell later retracted his. Others claimed the massacre was staged, that the pair were government agents, or that a mysterious third shooter was never identified. Alex Jones has called the shootings "100 percent false flag". Many media outlets also placed the school in Littleton. The school has a Littleton postal address but is outside the city limits, so the city became tied to the massacre in the public mind.

  In November 2021, audio tapes about the National Rifle Association's convention in Denver that year were leaked to NPR. In them, Wayne LaPierre and other leaders discussed raising one million dollars for the victims' families, and some inside the organization considered canceling the convention. Planning for a permanent memorial had begun in June 1999, and the Columbine Memorial opened to the public in September 2007.

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