LITTLETON, Colo.-
The videos of gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold detailing their plans for the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School weren’t scary, even coming shortly after they killed 13 people.
As they sipped whiskey on a recliner, showed off their weapons and spouted their rage about others mistreating them, they appeared more like characters in the movie “Wayne’s World” than the team that was about to commit what was then the biggest school massacre in U.S. history.
Now, through their videos and rants on the Internet, they seem to have set the style that killers will use to explain their rampages, perhaps because they didn’t dare to confront people face to face.
Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho also chose to send his final message by video, which he sent to NBC.
“It is their own personal memorial. It doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact I made a bet on Monday that there would be a video, and I am batting 1000.00,” said Brooks Brown, the former Columbine student whose family tried repeatedly to warn sheriff’s deputies about Harris and his death threats.
“He probably didn’t have the time to upload it to youtube.com. Plus once you do that you are forced to go through with your plan or risk arrest,” said Brown.
Harris and Klebold discussed sending copies of their video to television stations but they never did. Although some reporters, investigators and victims and family members have been allowed to see the so-called “basement videos,” sheriff’s officials have not released them publicly over fears of copycats. Harris also talked of scanning his journal, which he called “The Writings of God,” and e-mailing it to unspecified persons, but again, never followed through.
Like Cho in his video, the Columbine killers showed off some of their weaponry and equipment, even posing. Some videos of the two killers, including some phony ones, are viewable online.
“You guys will all die, and it will be (expletive deleted) soon! I hope you get an idea of what we’re implying here. You all need to die! We need to die, too! We need to (expletive deleted) kick-start the revolution here!” said Harris.
Their tapes, some made in the Harris basement and some elsewhere, and the one made by Cho shared a hatred for rich people they felt had mistreated them and fellow students who picked on them. All three said their deaths were inevitable.
Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink, whose office handled the Columbine massacre, has offered any help he can provide in the Virginia investigation.
“You had a hundred billion chances and ways to have avoided today. But you decided to spill my blood. You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off,” Cho said in a tape he apparently mailed to NBC midway through the shootings.
“When the time came I did it, I had to,” said Cho.
At Columbine, the sheriff’s office reported that during the shootings Klebold and Harris told victims, “This is for what you did to us.” In the so-called “goodbye tape,” taken in the Harris kitchen before they went to the school, Klebold said: “I didn’t much like this life anyway. I am probably going to a better place anyway.”
In the Columbine videos, Harris talks about people, making fun of “my face, my hair, my shirts.” Klebold says: “You made me what I am. You’ve been giving us (expletive deleted) for years.”
“Your Mercedes wasn’t enough, you brats,” Cho said in the video mailed to NBC. “Your golden necklaces weren’t enough, you snobs. Your trust funds wasn’t enough. Your vodka and cognac wasn’t enough. All your debaucheries weren’t enough. Those weren’t enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.”
Harris, on a Web site full of profanities, wrote: “YOU KNOW WHAT I LOVE? When some rich ass stuck up piece of (expletive deleted) white trash person gets in a car wreck with their brand new car.”
Klebold drove a beatup old BMW and Harris drove a Honda.
Although all three killers complained of being mistreated, both Harris and Klebold lived in an upper-class neighborhood. Cho’s parents were of more modest means, working at a dry cleaners in Washington.
All three also said they had no choice but to launch attacks that were certain to result in their own deaths.
Classmates where Cho grew up said he was teased and picked on, apparently because of shyness and his strange, mumbly way of speaking.
A subsequent investigation determined the Columbine killers had been the victim of bullying at the high school.
“I’m sorry I have so much rage but you put it in me,” said Klebold. Harris commented that he planned to blow one youth’s face off and expected to be killed. “I imagine I will be shot in the head by a (expletive) cop.”
