Dave Cullen - Columbine

The churches organized informal services at night. In the daytime, they just opened their doors and gave the kids the run of the place. A handful saw a recruiting opportunity. Anyone who drove to Clement Park and stayed a few hours would find several flyers stacked under their wiper blades: “WE’RE HERE TO LISTEN AND ASSIST YOU,” “If you need: prayer, counseling, meals prepared…,” “FREE!! HOT CHOCOLATE COFFEE COOKIES, COME BE WARM AT CALVARY CHAPEL.” Boxes of pocket-sized Bibles were trucked to the park and distributed to passersby. Scientologists handed out Way to Happiness booklets to mourners filing past Rachel Scott’s car—still abandoned in the parking lot where she’d left it.

Eventually, investigators would escort dozens of witnesses back through the school to help re-create the attack. Mr. D was the first. A few days after the massacre, detectives walked him down the main hallway. Dr. Fuselier was with them. They passed the remnants of the trophy case and DeAngelis described it exploding behind him. They proceeded down the corridor and he indicated where he’d intercepted the girls’ gym class.

He re-created everything: the shouts, the screams, the acrid smell of the smoke. None of that fazed Frank DeAngelis. He was cried out by this time, as stoic as the boys he was hoping to open up.

They turned the corner, and Frank saw bloody smears on the carpet. He knew Dave Sanders had gone down there. He had not anticipated the stains. “You could see the knuckle prints,” he said. “He actually was on all fours and there were his knuckle prints—he was struggling. It tore me up.”

A trail of blood traced Dave’s path around the corner and down the hall. Detectives led Frank DeAngelis to Science Room 3. Nothing had been disturbed.

“They took me into where Dave died,” Frank recalled. “And there were sweatshirts there full of blood. That got to me.” In the science room, Frank broke down again. He turned to Fuselier. “I was glad he was here,” DeAngelis said later. “Most FBI guys wouldn’t have done anything. Dwayne gave me a hug.”

Aside from witnesses, the best hope for cracking the case seemed to lie in the physical evidence: the guns, first and foremost. Dylan was a minor; Eric had just turned eighteen. They had probably gotten help securing the weapons. Whoever turned up at the front end of those acquisitions would likely be co-conspirator number one.

Investigators worked parallel tracks hunting them down. ATF agents took the technical angle: they came up with a solid lifespan on the semiautomatics. Eric’s carbine rifle was less than a year old; it had been sold originally in Selma, Alabama, and had made its way to a gun shop in Longmont, Colorado, less than an hour from Denver. They traced Dylan’s TEC-9 through four different owners between 1997 and 1998, but then the records disappeared. The third owner said he’d sold it at the Tanner Gun Show but had not been required to keep sales records at that time. The shotguns were a bigger problem. They were three decades old, before serial numbers were required. They were impossible to trace.

The bomb squad disassembled and studied the big bombs. The centerpiece of Eric’s performance was a complete mess. “They didn’t understand explosive reactions,” the deputy fire marshal said. “They didn’t understand electrical circuitry.”

Officials refused to be more specific, arguing that they didn’t want to give copycatters any hints. The deputy marshal summarized the primary mistake as “defective fusing.”

Detectives were having more luck working the suspects. Chris Morris had implicated Phil Duran the first day. If they could believe Morris, that could explain several guns, possibly all four. Duran was playing innocent, but they knew they could crack him. And then they heard from Robyn Anderson.

Unloading her secret to Kelli on Tuesday night had not appeased Robyn’s conscience. Wednesday morning, she called Zack again. This time, she told him. And she told him another small lie—that he was the only one who knew. Then she told her mom.

Robyn’s mom brought her down to the school. Jeffco had setup its Columbine Task Force inside the crime scene, headquartered in the band room. Detectives interviewed Robyn, with her mom by her side. Two detectives traded off questioning—one from the DA’s office, one from a nearby suburb’s police force. They videotaped the session. And they were harsh. The first time they asked about the guns, Robyn “visibly recoiled,” according to the detective’s synopsis of the videotape. And she looked to her mom for support. Did she buy the guns? they asked. No, she did not. She went to the show with them, but they bought the weapons . Why did they want them? Dylan lived out in the country, so she assumed they wanted to hunt. No, they never talked about hunting people, not even as a joke.

Detectives asked her about the prom, the Trench Coat Mafia, the killers’ personalities, and then returned to the guns. It was a private dealer, she said. The boys paid cash. They didn’t try to bargain, they just paid the asking price—somewhere around $250 to $300 apiece. No one signed anything, and she never showed an ID. The shotguns had very long barrels, but the dealer said they could cut them down.

The detectives began to press her harder: Dylan and Eric didn’t really seem like hunters, did they? Dylan lived in the mountains, there were deer all over the place. And her dad owned a gun—he never used it, but he had one. Lots of people have gun collections. Eric and Dylan were into that kind of stuff—why wouldn’t they want one? She’d actually asked the boys if they were going to do something stupid with the guns, she said. They’d assured her they would never hurt anyone.

Did Eric and Dylan tell you to keep the guns secret? the detectives asked. Yes. And that didn’t raise your suspicions? They were underage. It was illegal. They had to hide it from their parents. And where did they hide them? She didn’t know about Eric. Dylan dropped him off first, and Eric put his guns in the trunk of his Honda. She assumed he stashed them in the house later. Dylan tried to hide his in his bottom dresser drawer, but it was too big. He stuck it in the closet, but he told her later that he cut the barrel down and made it fit in the drawer .

And that didn’t arouse her suspicions? No, because the gun dealer had already suggested it .

Robyn said she never saw the guns again. The detectives moved on. They asked about a wide range of subjects; eventually, they got to the explosives. Had she seen any, had she helped make any, had any of Eric and Dylan’s friends assisted them? No, no, and… maybe Zack Heckler . Zack? Why Zack? Zack had told her he knew more of what was going on . She told them about the call with Zack, about his admission that he knew about the pipe bombs.

How strange, the detectives said—Eric and Dylan went bowling with her every week, Dylan called her every other night, they confided in her about the guns, and yet they never said a word about the pipe bombs. They must not have wanted me to know . Come on! the detectives said. You’re lying! Over and over, they mocked her about the disparity—the boys told Zack about the pipe bombs, but they never told her? No, no, never. That’s what they were like. When they wanted you to know something, you knew. When they wanted you in the dark, you stayed there. They could get very secluded about it, very isolated.

They kept on her. The guns were an isolated incident, she said. And Zack—he didn’t know much either. He knew they were making bombs, but he had no idea what they were up to.