The quest for answers continues, led by parents like Rohrbough, who lost a child, and Randy and Judy Brown, a couple whose son, Brooks, had been close to Dylan Klebold since childhood and friendly with Eric Harris. The search has been contentious, and like other recent major cases (JonBenet Ramsey, Kobe Bryant) investigated by small-town Colorado investigators, this one is dogged by the hobgoblins of incompetence and rumors of a coverup. Uncovering the truth became a crusade for Rohrbough, something he worked at every minute he could break free from his job installing high-end stereos in cars. But it doesn't appear to have erased the grief he feels over the death of his son, who was shot outside the school that April morning.

Some of Rohrbough's throbbing anger has been directed at law enforcement, some at the Jefferson County School District, and some at the Harris and Klebold families. Police interviewed Tom and Sue Klebold, but the results were never revealed. Wayne and Kathy Harris, unable to work out an immunity deal, refused to talk. "Who are these people who feel that they don't owe society anything?" says Judy Brown. "They owe society a lot."

Then, about nine months ago, all four of the killers' parents were deposed as part of civil lawsuits filed by some of the victims' families. But in a highly unusual decision, a Colorado magistrate ordered the deposition transcripts to be destroyed, and a federal judge barred any of the plaintiffs who witnessed the depositions from talking about them. Some of the material gathered, Rohrbough told me, "would be rather large news," the sort of stuff "people have never heard, are not expecting, and would be shocked to find out."

Other hints that the parents knew how dangerous their sons were have recently surfaced. At the evidence presentation in February, for example, were snippets of Wayne Harris' journal. In a green stenographer's notebook Harris had made notes about his suspicions that Eric had damaged a neighborhood tree with eggs and toilet paper, cracked the windshield of Brooks Brown's car with a snowball, and made harassing phone calls to the Brown home, a short distance from the Harris home in Littleton. Reviewed by investigators, the complete journal, a sort of diary of the father of a madman, has never been made public.

"As the years have gone by and we've unpeeled the layers, there is no possibility that either the Klebolds or Harrises didn't have very adequate information about what their kids were capable of," Rohrbough insists. "They rolled the dice. They decided, these kids are almost out of school -- once they get out they'll go their separate ways and we'll be done with it."

In January 1998, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a van and placed in a juvenile diversion program, but they continued to pal around together. That perplexes Rohrbough. "If your kid was caught breaking into a van with another kid, would you allow him to continue hanging out with that other kid at all hours of the night, running together, never knowing where they were, at 3 in the morning?" he asks. "These things don't make sense for a reasonable person. Bad parenting, yeah. Wicked families, absolutely, in my opinion."

Rohrbough also blames the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department for looking away from the menace Klebold and Harris had become. At its fairgrounds press conference, the department revealed that it had had no fewer than 15 contacts with Harris and Klebold in the two years leading up the killings. Besides the complaints about snowballs, prank calls, and the burglarized van, the police had been called twice about a Web site Harris had created, in which he threatened death and destruction. On the site, he openly discussed the testing of pipe bombs that he had built and named Atlanta, Pholus, Peltro and Pazzie. "Each has a 14' mortar shell type fuse," Harris wrote, at the age of 15. "Now our only problem is to find the place that will be 'Ground Zero.'" (In the days immediately after the shootings, Sheriff's Department officials would deny that they knew these Web pages even existed).

Not until 2001, two years after the shootings, did the Jefferson County sheriff's office reveal that in 1998 it had prepared a search warrant -- never executed -- to search the Harris home, a move that might well have prevented the bloodbath. And, only in February 2004 was it revealed that the earliest of the 15 contacts police had with Eric Harris dated back to 1997. This report had been mysteriously lost until late last October, when it was discovered tucked into a binder notebook left behind at the department by a departing deputy.

Rohrbough and other parents also remain exasperated with Jefferson County school officials, who conducted an investigation of their own almost immediately after the carnage, then compiled a 200-page report. It remains secret, however, because lawyers for the district have asserted attorney-client privilege. And much of what's in it may be lost to survivors forever, since an astonishing 80 percent of the 150 staff members on duty during the shooting have moved on.

The Columbine principal, Frank DeAngelis, told me he understood the district's action and, furthermore, worried that the report's release might "re-traumatize" those who were interviewed. Not surprisingly, Rohrbough disagrees. "They used taxpayer money to investigate and now they're claiming it's attorney-client privileged. They're hiding behind it. Someone close to this investigation told me a few years ago -- that's how I first learned about it -- 'You better get a copy of this. You won't believe what it contains.' I think I know what it contains, but I can't tell you. Anyone with decency would release it."

"The aftermath of Columbine should have been about the kids. It never has been about the kids. Not for one moment has it been about the kids."

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