Dave Cullen - Columbine

In one version, he learned of the shooting in his office. That was unusual: normally he would have been in the midst of the cafeteria hubbub. But Tuesday he was held up by an appointment. He had a meeting with a young teacher working on a one-year contract. Mr. D had been happy with the teacher’s performance and was about to offer him a permanent position. They had just shaken hands and sat down when Frank’s secretary’s face slammed into the glass on the top half of his door. She had run to warn him so frantically that she’d failed to turn the knob completely and had hurtled right into the door. A moment later, she burst in shouting.

“Frank! They’re shooting!”

“What?”

“Gunshots! Downstairs, there are gunshots!”

He bolted up. They ran out together—into the main foyer, just past the huge hanging trophy case. Dylan fired, and the case shattered behind Frank.

It was two or three years after the fact that Frank’s secretary recounted that version for him. He told her she was nuts. He had no memory of that.

“In my version, I’m walking out calmly going to lunch,” he said. “We’ve finished the meeting, I’ve offered him the job. He’s happy.”

DeAngelis had planned to offer the job. He liked the teacher and had pictured his joyful acceptance. Mentally, it had already happened. The actual events—gunfire in the hallway, his charge toward the girls’ gym class, and the desperation to hide them—wiped out everything in his mental vicinity. His secretary’s appearance was unimportant, and it conflicted with his “memory” of offering the job. One memory had to go.

Mr. D checked with the teacher. No job offer—they’d just sat down. Other witnesses had seen him run alongside his secretary. He came to accept that version of the truth, but he can’t picture it. His visual brain insists that the false memory is real. Multiply that by nearly two thousand kids and over a hundred teachers and a precisely accurate picture was impossible to render.

Investigators went back to interview the killers’ closest friends several times. Each new interview and lead would raise more questions about the killers’ associates. Sometimes new evidence revealed lies.

An FBI agent interviewed Kristi Epling the day after the murders. Kristi was connected to both killers, particularly Eric. They were close, and she was dating his buddy Nate Dykeman. She didn’t seem to know much, though. Her FBI report was brief and unremarkable. She said Nate was in shock, the TCM connection was silly, and Eric had probably been the leader. Kristi did not mention any of his notes in her possession.

Like most of the killers’ friends, Kristi was exceptionally smart; she was headed to college on an academic scholarship. She played it cool about the notes during her FBI interview, then mailed them to a friend in St. Louis who was unconnected to Columbine and unlikely to be questioned. Kristi was careful: no return address on the envelope. The friend went to the police. She did not inform Kristi.

The pages included notes passed back and forth between Kristi and Eric in German class—a rambling conversation, conducted in German. They mentioned a hit list. That was old news to investigators—most of the school was on one of Eric’s lists. But they had withheld that information from the public. Kristi had been hiding it; maybe she was hiding more. Detectives returned to question her. They asked about German class, and Kristi said she had exchanged notes with Eric but had thrown them away months ago. She assured them repeatedly that Eric had never made any threats. She would have told a teacher, she insisted. Kristi also said Nate had fled to Florida, to stay with his father and avoid the media hounds. They had talked on the phone that morning.

The detectives asked Kristi what should happen to someone who had helped the killers. “They should go to jail forever,” she said. “It was a horrible thing.” And what about someone who withheld information after the attack? “I don’t know,” Kristi said. “It would depend on what it was.” They should probably get counseling, she suggested, but some sort of punishment, too.

They asked again: Did she know anything more? No. Had she destroyed any notes from Eric? No. They kept repeating the questions, assuring her that she could disclose anything now without repercussions. No, there was nothing. They continued questioning her, repeated that offer, and finally she went for it. OK, there were notes, she admitted. And Nate was not in Florida; he was staying with her. He was there in the house right now. She said the notes had been very painful to hold on to but she did not want to destroy them. If she could just get them somewhere far, far away, she hoped to retrieve them someday when everything was more clear.

Once she copped to the truth, Kristi was forthcoming. She agreed to turn over her PC and her e-mail accounts and to take a polygraph. Beyond that, she didn’t know anything significant. She told them about some things Nate had confessed to, but detectives knew about them already. Kristi had just been afraid. She’d thought she had something incriminating, and she’d panicked. No evidence of a conspiracy. Another dead end.

Nevertheless, Dr. Fuselier learned a great deal from the German conversation. It revolved around Kristi’s new boyfriend; she’d had a short-lived romance with a sophomore named Dan. Eric couldn’t believe she was going out with that little fuck. Why, what was wrong with Dan? she asked. For one thing, the prettyboy had punched him in the face last year, Eric said. Eric, in a fistfight? That surprised her. He always seemed so rational. He got mad when kids made fun of his black clothes or all his German crap, but he always kept his cool. He would calmly figure out how to get even.

Kristi worried about Eric getting even. She asked her boyfriend about it, and he said he was afraid Eric might kill him.

Kristi decided to play peace broker. She took it up with Eric in German class again. She told him straight out how scared Dan was. She used the phrase “kill him.” That made Eric nervous. He was in the juvenile Diversion program because of the van break-in, and threats like that could get him in trouble. Kristi said she’d be careful about it. But how could Dan make it up to him?

How about if he let me punch him in the face, Eric suggested. Seriously? Seriously.

Dr. Fuselier was not surprised by the notes. Very cold-blooded. Any kid could get in a fight. Dan had gotten really angry, and in the heat of a fistfight had clocked Eric. Eric was planning his punch. He wanted Dan to stand there defenseless and let him do it. Complete power over the kid. That’s what Eric craved.

As the conspiracy theory crumbled, far from the eyes of the public, a new motive emerged. The jock-feud theory was accepted as the underlying driver, but that had supposedly gone on for a year. What made the killers snap? Nine days after the murders, the media found yet another trigger. The Marines. The New York Times and the Washington Post broke the story on April 29. The rest of the media piled on quickly.

They learned that Eric had been talking to a Marine recruiter during the last few weeks of his life. They also discovered he’d been taking the prescription antidepressant Luvox—something that would typically disqualify him (because it implied depression). A Defense Department spokesman verified that the recruiter had learned about the medication and rejected Eric. The media was off to the races, again.

Luvox added an extra wrinkle, as it functioned as an anger suppressant. The Times cited unnamed friends of Eric’s as saying that “they believe that he may have tried to stop taking the drug, perhaps because of his rejection by the Marines, five days before he and his best friend, Dylan Klebold, stormed onto the Columbine campus with guns and bombs.”