Wednesday, Jul 9, 2008
Tuesday's release included more than 500 detailed pages about killers Harris and Klebold -- offering a far richer portrait than anything else yet released about the pair.
A graphically violent English-class essay by Klebold portrays a protagonist in a black trench coat with a duffel bag brutally executing "college preps." His creative writing teacher, Judy Kelly, described it as "the most vicious story I have ever read." Kelly met with a guidance counselor and Klebold's parents to discuss it. She was recently added to a lawsuit charging that various officials were warned of the coming attack.
The release provides the first direct windows into the responses of the killers' parents. Several investigators, including lead investigator Kate Battan, decried the widespread blaming of the parents, particularly the Klebolds, in September 1999. "It really does begin with the family," Battan told Salon News at the time. "But I'm here to tell you, I sat down and I've spent a lot of time with the Klebolds, and they're nice people. It's not like they're these monsters that raised a monster. I mean, they truly are clueless about any warning signs that this was going to happen." However, the parents remained in seclusion, and investigators remained mum on discussions with the families. The new documents detail the interviews conducted during that time with the families. They present a portrait of the Klebolds as immediately cooperative, and the Harrises as far more wary.
The documents also reveal a whole new level of detail as to how the case was investigated, and the way witnesses were questioned. Many of the reports are short and unenlightening, but others, like Nielson's, chart how information was revealed gradually over the course of a lengthy interview.
"As Patty Nielson continued to reflect on the incident in the library she began to recall additional details," the report states, "...at one point during the incident she remembered hearing a boy being confrontational with [the killers]." Nielson stated that the confrontation was strictly verbal, but remembered hearing the unidentified male student state words to the effect of "that's enough, he's dead."
While the release may help dispel some of the major Columbine myths, the victims' families will concentrate on lingering questions about the law enforcement response that they have made the focus of litigation:
Could authorities have prevented the attack in advance? Were the SWAT teams negligent in responding? Was student Daniel Rohrbough killed by a law enforcement officer as the lawsuit filed by his family alleges? Did authorities know whether it was safe to save teacher Dave Sanders, who bled to death in the three hours it took police to get to him.
Those were the key charges brought by more than a dozen families last April, in a flurry of lawsuits against the sheriff's department. Several other families later signed on to these cases as plaintiffs and named other county officials as defendants -- most notably Columbine Principal Frank DeAngelis. The sherriff's department has adamantly, and sometimes angrily, denied all counts.
But doubts have persisted. Skepticism over the investigators' vindication of the way in which law enforcement officers handled the attack lingers. And the department's steadfast refusal to release the majority of the documents, testimony and evidence collected in the investigation -- has also raised suspicions.
The department's major report was delayed at least six months, and finally released only by court order, a full 13 months after the massacre. The Columbine Report ran several hundred pages and was dominated by a detailed timeline of the attack on the afternoon of April 20, 1999. It provided only scattered witness testimony and sketchy information on most of the hotly-contested issues.
Brian Rohrbough believes the department has engaged in a full-scale cover-up, a charge that was also leveled last spring by attorneys for the Sanders family.
"There's no question about it that they're covering up," he says. "They've been doing that since day one. This report will be the best opportunity to look through some of the facts as they happened."
Observers have widely assumed that much of information on the Columbine attack will never come out until the discovery phases of the various lawsuits mandate the release. "We know we're not going to get discovery for what looks like years now," Rohrbough says. "They're hoping everyone will forget. They're hoping everyone will lose interest. That's why this report is so very important. I'm absolutely certain things are missing from the report, but I still expect it will shed some light on some things."
Rohrbough and the family of victim Kelly Fleming set the release in motion last April, when they filed suit demanding the release of nearly every category of information they could identify. The one-year statute of limitations was about to expire on filing suits against the sheriff's department, and the families were still trying to build their case.
Judge Jackson granted the families almost immediate access to the draft report, and ordered its public release by May 15. Over the following months, Jackson continued to release additional information as he reviewed it, including several hours of 911 tapes, ballistics reports, cafeteria surveillance tapes and other information. Jackson ruled on Sept. 5 that the latest material be released. Several rounds of editing were performed in the interim, to remove certain sensitive data -- such as bomb assembly instructions, names of students on the so-called "hit lists" and names of certain witnesses and suspects.
While this release dwarfed all others in sheer volume, several crucial items remain under seal -- most notably Eric Harris' infamous journal. Harris had written about the attack for more than a year, documenting apparent plans and motives in great detail. But Tuesday's documents only included requested material, and attorneys amended their request to delete information seized from the killers' homes. Rohrbough explains that the families involved in the suits were cooperating, and others asked for the deletion, partly because of the pain it would cause. He says it may be requested at a later date, but that it may be unnecessary.
Between the witness testimony, written documents and especially the so-called "Suicide Videos," we know a great deal about the killers' intentions, Rohrbough says.
What the Rohrboughs would most like to get hold of is the clothing their son died wearing, which they believe will prove unequivocally that Daniel was shot by a law enforcement officer and not Klebold or Harris. "We know what happened to Dan," Rohrbough says. "We want his clothes back because they will tell the absolute truth about what happened to him." The family has been trying to obtain the clothes since September 1999.
The sheriff's department is making copies of the newly released documents available to the press and the public for $602, plus shipping charges. Contact the Jefferson County Public Information office at (303) 271-8512, or 100 Jefferson County Parkway, Suite 5530, Golden, Colo. 80419.
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