Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold carried out the Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, on the 20th of April 1999. They killed 13 students and one teacher and wounded 23 others. Then both died by suicide in the school library. In the media frenzy and moral panic that followed, the name of their school became a byword for school shootings, and the attack stood among the most infamous mass shootings.

  This documentary asks who the two teenagers were before that morning, and what the adults around them saw and missed. It asks which early explanations turned out to be wrong, and why the real motive is still described as inconclusive. And it asks what happened to the idea of Columbine in the years afterward, among grieving families, courtrooms, filmmakers and later attackers.

  123573

• 2. Two Boys

  ›

  Eric David Harris was born on the 9th of April 1981 in Wichita, Kansas. His father flew transport planes for the United States Air Force, and his mother worked part time as a caterer. An older brother, Kevin, had been born in 1978. Military life meant constant relocation: Dayton, Ohio, when Eric was two, then Oscoda, Michigan, in 1989, and Plattsburgh, New York, in 1991. In 1993 the family settled in Littleton, Colorado, after his father retired from service.

  In a 1997 English assignment, Harris wrote about leaving his friends in Plattsburgh and said he “felt alone, lost and even agitated.” On one of the recordings later nicknamed the Basement Tapes, he blamed his father for the moves. He said they forced him to “start out at the bottom of the ladder.” Soon after arriving in Littleton, he had two operations for pectus excavatum, a condition in which the breastbone sinks into the chest.

  Dylan Bennet Klebold was born on the 11th of September 1981 in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents, Sue and Thomas, had met at Ohio State University and married in 1971. Their first son, Byron, was born in 1978. Decades later, Sue described a fleeting feeling at Dylan's birth, “like a shadow,” which she took as a warning that her child might bring her great sorrow. In 1989 the family moved to a large home in the Deer Creek Mesa foothills. Both parents were described as non-religious pacifists who opposed weapons, though the family attended a Lutheran church for a time and also observed Passover.

  At Governor's Ranch Elementary School, Klebold joined a program for gifted children called CHIPS. He was a Cub Scout alongside Brooks Brown, a friend since first grade. He loved baseball, played in a fantasy league and often wore a Boston Red Sox cap. Classmates remembered him as bright but somewhat sheltered, and middle school was a hard transition. His parents reportedly saw such struggles as typical for young adolescents.

  The two boys became friends at Ken Caryl Middle School. They entered Columbine High School together in 1995, soon after a major renovation. With a close circle of friends, they bowled, shot pool, carpooled, watched films and played video games. After their sophomore year, people described them as nearly inseparable. Judy Brown, Brooks's mother, believed Harris leaned on Klebold more, because Klebold was more widely liked. Klebold's own writings, though, spoke of not feeling loved or accepted. Sue Klebold has said she believes her son's self-destructive tendencies and Harris's anger fed each other in an unhealthy way.

  Online, Harris went by REB, short for Rebel, a nod to the Columbine mascot. Klebold used VoDKa, a play on the drink and his initials. In 1996 Harris began building custom levels for the game Doom II, which later became known as the Harris levels. He ran websites that hosted his game files, and America Online shut them down hours after the shootings and preserved them for the FBI.

  813142426

• 3. Missed Signals

  ›

  In the early months of 1997, Harris, Klebold and their friends spent weekends on nighttime mischief that Harris called “rebel missions.” They set off explosives, stole street signs, vandalized the homes of classmates they disliked and drank alcohol afterward. In October 1997, Harris, Klebold and their friend Zack Heckler lost their roles as school computer assistants. They were suspended after gaining unauthorized access to students' locker combinations.

  In February 1997, Brooks Brown had ended his friendship with Harris after Harris damaged the windshield of Brown's car with a chunk of ice during an argument. Brown told Harris's parents about their son's secret alcohol collection and persuaded them to make Harris apologize in person. Humiliated, Harris began posting death threats about Brown on his website. One read, “All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown.”

  On the 7th of August 1997, an anonymous citizen reported that website to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office, and the Browns were notified. In March 1998 the Browns went back to police after learning Harris had posted pipe bomb instructions on another site. It was revealed in 2001 that Sheriff's detective Mike Guerra had drafted an affidavit for a search warrant on the Harris home in April 1998. The warrant was never submitted to a judge.

  On the night of the 30th of January 1998, Harris and Klebold broke into a parked van at Deer Creek Canyon Park and stole electronic equipment. Deputy Tim Walsh found them parked down the road after the park had closed, and Harris confessed to the theft. The two pleaded guilty to criminal mischief, breaking and entering, trespassing and theft. In exchange for the later expungement of their records, they entered a diversion program with restitution, community service, anger-management classes and counseling.

  At their March 1998 intake, juvenile officers found both boys cooperative. On a form listing behavioral issues, Harris checked fourteen boxes, including “anger,” “depression,” “suicidal thoughts” and “homicidal thoughts.” Klebold checked just two, “finances” and “jobs.” Harris also wrote the van's owner a letter of regret, yet he bragged about the theft in his private diary.

  On the 3rd of February 1999, the two were released from the program several months early for good behavior. Their case officer called Harris “likely to succeed in life as long as he stays on task and remains motivated.” Of Klebold, the officer wrote that he was “intelligent enough to make any dream a reality, but needs to understand hard work is part of it.”

  Klebold was accepted to several colleges for computer science, and toured the University of Arizona in Tucson with his parents in late March 1999. Harris applied to the Marine Corps. He was informally turned down on the 15th of April 1999 because he was taking fluvoxamine, an antidepressant prescribed during his court-ordered anger-management therapy.

  On the 17th of April 1999, Klebold attended the senior prom with his date, Robyn Anderson, and a group of friends. Harris joined the afterparty later that night. Numerous accounts say both boys seemed happy and looked forward to life beyond graduation. At the afterparty, Klebold made plans with Devon Adams and another friend to see The Matrix on the evening of Wednesday, the 21st of April.

  3536376976

• 4. Writing the Plan

  ›

  Harris began keeping a journal in April 1998, soon after the van burglary charge. The journals suggest the two began shaping a plan around then under the codename NBK, a reference to the 1994 film Natural Born Killers, reportedly a favorite of both. By May 1998 the planning appears to have been underway, nearly a year ahead of the attack. Over the following eleven months they secretly built explosives and gathered weapons, aiming for April 1999, just weeks before graduation.

  Klebold had started writing earlier. His journal, titled A Virtual Book: EXISTENCES, opens with an entry dated the 31st of March 1997, written at age 15, about depression and thoughts of suicide. He later described himself and Harris as “god-like” and more evolved than other people, yet the same pages recorded self-loathing. Many pages were covered with hearts, drawn for a fellow Columbine student whose feelings did not match his. On the 3rd of November 1997, he first mentioned a shooting spree, imagined with that student's help.

  The writings say far more about how than why. Klebold drafted an outline for the 20th of April, and a slightly different version turned up in a journal in Harris's bedroom. In a computer entry, Harris cited the Oklahoma City bombing of the 19th of April 1995 and wrote that he wanted to surpass its death toll. The original date may have been the 19th. Harris had asked Mark Manes for more ammunition, and it did not arrive until that evening.

  Violence also surfaced in schoolwork. In December 1997, Harris wrote a paper on school shootings titled “Guns in School,” and later a poem from the perspective of a bullet. For a December 1998 economics project, the two produced a video called Hitmen for Hire, released publicly in February 2004. It shows them as contract killers protecting weaker “preps” from bullies, and it has been described as a dress rehearsal.

  In January 1999, Harris wrote a story built on the game Doom. His teacher replied that it was a unique approach and that the writing worked “in a gruesome way.” In February 1999, Klebold submitted an English paper about a tall, left-handed man in a trench coat who kills nine “college preps.” When teacher Judith Kelly confronted him about the violence, Klebold replied, “It's just a story.” The paper reached his counselor and was discussed at a parent-teacher conference, but no further action followed.

  In November 1998, Klebold asked Robyn Anderson, then 18, to buy firearms for them, because both boys were too young to purchase guns legally. She was not charged, in exchange for cooperating with investigators after the shootings. Mark Manes and Philip Duran were later convicted of supplying weapons to the pair.

  Harris and Klebold meant their journals and recordings to be seen widely and to inspire followers. Most of that material has never been released. Some home videos filmed from the 15th of March 1999 until the morning of the attack are known as the Basement Tapes, and only transcripts have been made public. Law enforcement officials say the tapes were withheld to keep them from becoming a call to arms or a how-to guide. Others argue that releasing them could help psychologists identify traits of future perpetrators.

  3814879398

• 5. Tuesday Morning

  ›

  At 6 a.m. on the day of the attack, neither Harris nor Klebold was marked present for a bowling class at the Belleview AMF lanes in Englewood. Less than five weeks remained before graduation. Before 11:00 a.m., the two left duffel bags holding propane bombs in the cafeteria, set for the A lunch shift that began at 11:15. Then they returned to Harris's house to change into tactical gear and record a final message.

  At about 11:10 a.m., Brooks Brown was smoking during his lunch break when he saw Harris pull into the junior parking lot. The two had reconciled a few months earlier, reportedly at Klebold's urging, and had eaten at McDonald's with classmates the day before. Brown jokingly scolded Harris for skipping a morning test. Harris answered, “It doesn't matter anymore,” and seconds later added, “Brooks, I like you now. Get out of here. Go home.” Brown drifted off school grounds. At 11:19 a.m., he heard the first gunshots and reported the encounter to police from a neighbor's cell phone.

  The plan counted on the 11:15 a.m. lunch shift. The two would wait at their cars and attack students fleeing the blast. At noon, bombs in their own cars were meant to hit first responders. Only one cafeteria bomb went off, and only partly. Investigators later estimated that properly working cafeteria bombs could have caused extensive structural damage and hundreds of casualties. When the plan failed, the two went inside and began shooting.

  At 11:29 a.m., Harris and Klebold entered the library, where ten people died. Of the 56 people there, 34 were unharmed and escaped after the pair first left the room. Investigators concluded the shooters had enough ammunition to kill every hostage.

  The dead were Rachel Scott, Daniel Rohrbough, Anne Marie Hochhalter, teacher Dave Sanders, Steven Curnow, Cassie Bernall, Isaiah Shoels, Kelly Fleming and Daniel Mauser. Also killed were Kyle Velasquez, Matthew Kechter, Lauren Townsend, John Tomlin and Corey DePooter. Hochhalter was left paraplegic and died of her injuries in 2025.

  At 12:02 p.m., after nearly an hour of shooting, the two returned to the library, probably to watch their car bombs go off at noon. The bombs did not detonate. They fired at police from the west windows, and no one was hurt. By 12:08 p.m., both had died by suicide. Their bodies were found at about 3:30 p.m. By 6:15, officials had found a bomb in Klebold's car, and a bomb squad disarmed it. The car was later repaired and, in 2006, put up for auction.

  132344792

• 6. Searching for Motive

  ›

  In a 9-1-1 call on the day of the shooting, Harris's father mistakenly called his son a member of the “Trenchcoat Mafia.” Jocks had coined that name for students who wore black trench coats and were said to rebel against the school's norms. Harris and Klebold wore black trench coats too, but they were not members and do not appear in the group's photo in the 1998 yearbook. They were friends with some of its members. Most of the group's core had left Columbine by 1999, and none was a suspect.

  Marilyn Manson was blamed in the media after the shooting. Asked in a 2001 interview with Michael Moore what he would say to the Columbine community, he answered that he would say nothing and would only “listen to what they have to say, and that's what no one did.” Two German industrial bands, KMFDM and Rammstein, also drew heavy scrutiny because both boys were fans. Harris had a large Rammstein sticker on his car and posted KMFDM lyrics on his website. The attack fell on the release date of the KMFDM album Adios, a coincidence Harris noted in his journal. KMFDM's Sascha Konietzko issued a statement rejecting violence, fascism and Nazi beliefs.

  The attack also fell on Adolf Hitler's birthday, which fed speculation in the media. Robyn Anderson, who knew both boys, said they were not obsessed with Nazism and did not admire Hitler. She added that there were many things they never told their friends. Harris did write admiringly of what he imagined to be natural selection, and on the day of the attack he wore a white T-shirt printed with those words. A Washington Post article of the 22nd of April 1999 described them as hating jocks, admiring Nazis and scorning normalcy. Early reports also wrongly spoke of swastikas and a neo-Nazi cult.

  Bullying was the explanation parents and school staff gave first, and some called it rampant. Chad Laughlin, a classmate, recalled that Klebold told his mother about a day of humiliation by jocks that he called the worst of his life. Brooks Brown described students squirting ketchup packets over the pair in the commons while teachers watched. In his 2002 book No Easy Answers, Brown also wrote that Harris's chest condition drew intense ridicule.

  But Harris wrote in his journal that even if his peers had respected him more, the attack would likely still have happened. He also told readers not to blame the school administration. On the tapes, both boys said repeatedly that no one was to blame. Authors and researchers including Jeff Kass, Peter Langman and Dave Cullen reject bullying as the cause. Former principal Frank DeAngelis denied it was an issue at Columbine at all.

  After their January 1998 arrest, which both had called the most traumatic thing they had experienced, Klebold wrote Harris a yearbook message about taking revenge. On the day of the attack he wore a black T-shirt printed with “WRATH” in red. Some have speculated that revenge for the arrest was a motive, and that the pair expected a large gun battle with police.

  In May 2000, the FBI concluded that Harris showed psychopathic traits, including narcissism, unconstrained aggression and a lack of empathy. It described Klebold as an angry depressive with a vengeful attitude toward people he felt had mistreated him. Dwayne Fuselier, the FBI's lead Columbine investigator and a clinical psychologist, said Harris hid those traits behind deception. Peter Langman saw signs of schizotypal personality disorder in Klebold, citing his odd manner and unusual use of language. Because neither was formally diagnosed in life, these conclusions have been criticized and remain debated.

  Harris's autopsy showed fluvoxamine at low therapeutic or normal levels, roughly 0.0031 to 0.0087 mg/mL, though some friends thought he had stopped taking it. Peter Breggin, a critic of contemporary psychiatry, claimed the drug may have worsened his aggression. In October 2001, five Columbine families sued the maker, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, arguing the drug pushed Harris toward homicidal psychosis. By October 2002 only survivor Mark Taylor remained, and in February 2003 he settled after Solvay agreed to donate $10,000 to the American Cancer Society.

  56155263

• 7. Reckonings

  ›

  Autopsies on the 22nd of April 1999 ruled both deaths suicides. Klebold was cremated on the 24th of April after a short funeral for family and friends. According to Jeffrey Toobin's 2023 book Homegrown, Harris was also cremated, and his ashes were kept in an evidence locker in the Denver office of private investigator H. Ellis Armistead.

  On the 27th of April, master carpenter Greg Zanis put up fifteen large wooden crosses on a hill near the school. They honored everyone who had died, including the shooters. Controversy over memorializing Harris and Klebold began at once. Some feared it would glorify them, while others said they were victims too. More than 125,000 people visited over the following days and left expressions of sympathy at the crosses, some directed at the two boys. On the 30th of April, the father of victim Daniel Rohrbough cut down the crosses bearing their names in front of the media. He said they should not be honored in the same place as the victims.

  On the 19th of April 2001, families of more than 30 victims shared in a $2,538,000 settlement. The Harris and Klebold parents contributed $1,568,000 from their homeowners insurance policies. Mark Manes contributed $720,000 and Philip Duran $250,000. One family had filed a $250-million lawsuit in 1999 and did not accept the settlement. In June 2003, a judge ordered that family to take $366,000. Two months later, families of five other victims received undisclosed settlements from the Harrises and Klebolds.

  In October 1999, Sue Klebold watched the Basement Tapes. Until then she had believed, among other things, that Harris had manipulated her son. After viewing the tapes she came to terms with Dylan's role in the attacks. Ten years later, in an essay in the October 2009 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine, she wrote, “For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused.” She said she had no knowledge of his intentions. After seeing his journals, it was clear to her that he entered the school intending to die there.

  In Andrew Solomon's 2012 book Far from the Tree, Sue Klebold recalled the moment she learned her son was one of the shooters. While every other mother in Littleton prayed that her child was safe, she said, she had to pray that hers would die before he hurt anyone else.

  In February 2016, she published a memoir, A Mother's Reckoning, co-written with Laura Tucker and introduced by Andrew Solomon. It reached number two on The New York Times Best Seller list. That month she also gave her first televised interview, to Diane Sawyer, for an ABC News special on 20/20. She told Sawyer that people like to believe “if anything were wrong with my kids, I would know,” but she did not know, and could not stop her son from hurting others or himself.

  On the 2nd of February 2017, she delivered a TED Talk titled “My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story.” As of February 2026, it had been viewed more than 26 million times. In July 2021, she appeared on an episode of the BBC documentary series Storyville, alongside other American parents whose children had committed school shootings.

  2421222961

• 8. Echoes

  ›

  Michael Moore's documentary Bowling for Columbine, released in 2002, focused on a perceived American obsession with guns and their role in schools. It included interviews with survivors and with people who knew the killers. In 2004, the History Channel series Zero Hour dramatized the attack, with Ben Johnson and Josh Young playing Harris and Klebold. The 2003 Gus Van Sant film Elephant depicts a fictional school shooting that borrows details from Columbine. In one scene, a young killer pauses in an evacuated cafeteria to sip a drink someone left behind, as Harris did.

  On the sixth anniversary of the massacre, game designer Danny Ledonne released Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, in which the player takes the roles of Harris and Klebold. The game met heavy backlash. The father of one victim told the press, “It disgusts me. You trivialize the actions of two murderers and the lives of the innocent.”

  Online, a fandom calling itself the “Columbiners” formed, mainly on the blogging site Tumblr. A few members have a scholarly interest in the pair, but most, largely young women, express sympathetic and at times sexual interest. The fandom has faced intense criticism for glorifying Harris and Klebold and for allegedly inspiring plots such as the Halifax mass shooting plot. Some members, according to the news site All That's Interesting, feel nothing positive about the massacre and instead see themselves in the pair's troubled inner lives.

  Sociologist Ralph Larkin studied twelve major American school shootings up to 2008. In eight of them, the perpetrators made explicit reference to Harris and Klebold. Larkin wrote that Columbine set a “script” for later shootings. A 2015 CNN investigation identified more than 40 people charged with “Columbine-style plots.” ABC News counted at least 17 attacks and another 36 alleged plots or serious threats tied to the massacre. Another count found 60 mass shootings whose perpetrators referred to the pair at least once. Psychiatrist E. Fuller Torrey, of the Treatment Advocacy Center, pointed to the attack's “allure to disaffected youth.”

  Seung-Hui Cho, who carried out the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007, called the pair “martyrs.” Steven Kazmierczak, behind the February 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University, was reportedly obsessed with them, especially their “ability to create chaos with the propane tank bombs.” Writing for The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell likened the pattern to a threshold model, a “slow-motion, ever-evolving riot” in which each new participant reacts to those before. Threats of repeat attacks have at times closed entire school districts. In December 2024, Natalie Rupnow carried out the Abundant Life Christian School shooting in Madison, Wisconsin, wearing a KMFDM shirt like Harris's, which suggested she may have meant to emulate him.

  25962863