Outsiders, even among the outsiders

Littleton killers didn't quite fit in, even with the "Trench Coat Mafia."

By Dave Cullen

Apr 22, 1999 | Six hours before they opened fire on classmates and teachers at Columbine High School, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were merrily bowling with their gym class at Belleview Lanes in nearby Englewood. Senior Dustin Harrison said they showed up bright and cheerful for the 6:30 a.m. session, and he laughed and joked with both of them. Even with hindsight, he could find nothing unusual about their behavior, no indication of what they had planned.

Harrison, who had been good friends with the pair since middle school, repeated the story that began emerging about Harris and Klebold on Wednesday: that they were newcomers to the school's Trench Coat Mafia, and were only cosmetically assimilated to the group -- adopting the black clothing and long dusters associated with the crowd, but none of its notoriously antisocial behavior.

They were, it seems, outsiders even in the outsider group, and no one could explain why they went on their killing spree Tuesday, a rampage that at last count had killed 14 students and one teacher and left 16 victims hospitalized, 11 in critical or serious condition.

While none of the dozens of students interviewed Wednesday was particularly surprised to hear the gunmen had come from the ranks of the Trench Coat Mafia, many were stunned to learn the killers were Harris and Klebold. "They were the nicest guys!" one student gushed, a sentiment echoed throughout the afternoon.

Students gathered outside the school to memorialize their fallen peers Wednesday afternoon were virtually unanimous in the clear distinctions they drew between the pair and the eight to 10 core Trench Coat Mafia members. Harris and Klebold, who do not appear in the 1998 yearbook picture of the group, had just joined this past fall, and were not yet assimilated, most students said.

Core Mafia members were described as standoffish, antisocial and isolationist, disdaining social contact with nonmembers and even refusing to participate in classes, students said. They were variously described as Goths, white supremacists, Marilyn Manson listeners and Adolf Hitler fans, but nobody could really describe a coherent worldview that distinguished the group, except their disdain for the mainstream.

"They set themselves completely apart," said senior Melissa Snow. "They didn't talk to anyone else. They had their own little world."

"They're anti-everything," said senior Brad Johnson, a strapping 6-foot-2-inch rugby player and tight end on the football team.

Dustin Harrison expressed frustration that Harris and Klebold had been placed within the group. He also said media reports were wrong to lump the two boys, indistinguishably, with one another. He described Dylan Klebold as an aggressive racist, routinely walking down the hall railing against "niggers" and "spics." He wore Gothic clothing lettered with German phrases, but wasn't into the "Nazi mentality," Harrison said. Several students talked about Klebold's sporadic and severe bouts of depression, though it was apparently not evident the morning of the massacre.

Eric Harris, by contrast, was described as bubbly and effervescent. He was a fierce proponent of Nazi principles, though curiously, Harrison insisted, not its racist elements. He reportedly interacted well with the handful of minority students at Columbine High School, and no one could recall him making any of the racist outbursts attributed to Klebold.

Both students were described by their peers as brilliant, particularly in math and computers. Klebold, who was studying calculus, was cited as possibly the best math mind in the school. Harrison said the two had only become good friends this school year, about the time they hooked up with the Trench Coat Mafia. He saw them daily both in gym and psychology class, where, ironically, they had just begun studying abnormal psychology on Monday.

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