Dave Cullen - Columbine

Eric grew quiet. He said his parents had probably noticed him withdrawing. That was intentional—he was doing it to help them. “I don’t want to spend any more time with them,” he said. “I wish they were out of town so I didn’t have to look at them and bond more.”

Dylan was less generous. “I’m sorry I have so much rage, but you put it in me,” he said. He got around to thanking them for self-awareness and self-reliance. “I appreciate that,” he said.

The boys insisted their parents were not to blame. “They gave me my fucking life,” Dylan said. “It’s up to me what I do with it.”

Dylan bemoaned the guilt they would feel, but then ridiculed it. He pitched his voice to mimic his mom: “If only we could have reached them sooner. Or found this tape.”

Eric loved that. “If only we would have asked the right questions,” he added.

Oh, they were wily, the boys agreed. Parents were easy to fool. Teachers, cops, bosses, judges, shrinks, Diversion officers, and anyone in authority were pathetic. “I could convince them that I’m going to climb Mount Everest,” Eric said, “or that I have a twin brother growing out of my back. I can make you believe anything.”

Eventually, they got tired of the talk show and moved on to a tour of their arsenal.

Eric outdid Dylan with the apologies. To the untrained eye, he seemed sincere. The psychologists on the case found Eric less convincing. They saw a psychopath. Classic. He even pulled the stunt of self-diagnosing to dismiss it. “I wish I was a fucking sociopath so I didn’t have any remorse,” Eric said. “But I do.”

Watching that made Dr. Fuselier angry. Remorse meant a deep desire to correct a mistake. Eric hadn’t done it yet. He excused his actions several times on the tapes. Fuselier was tough to rattle, but that got to him.

“Those are the most worthless apologies I’ve ever heard in my life,” he said. It got more ludicrous later, when Eric willed some of his stuff to two buddies, “if you guys live.”

“If you live?” Fuselier repeated. “They are going to go in there and quite possibly kill their friends. If they were the least bit sorry, they would not do it!”

This is exactly the sort of false apology Dr. Cleckley identified in 1941. He described phony emotional outbursts and dazzling simulations of love for friends, relatives, and their own children—shortly before devastating them. Psychopaths mimic remorse so convincingly that victims often believe their apologies, even from a state of ruin. Consider Eric Harris: months after his massacre, a group of experienced journalists from the top papers in the country watched him perform on the Basement Tapes. Most reported Eric apologizing and showing remorse. They marveled at his repentance.

The boys got the camera rolling again three nights later. Same place, same setup, same time frame.

They laughed about how easy it was to build all the stuff. Instructions for everything were right there on the Internet—“bombs, poison, napalm, and how to buy guns if you’re underage.”

In between the logistics, they tossed in more bits of philosophy: “World Peace is an impossible thing…. Religions are gay.”

“Directors will be fighting over this story,” Dylan gushed. They pondered whom they should trust with their material: Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino?

Agent Fuselier watched the tapes dozens of times. In one respect, they were a revelation. While the journals explained motive, the tapes conveyed personality. There was ample testimony about them from friends, but there’s nothing like meeting a killer in person. The tapes offered the best approximation.

Fuselier understood that the Basement Tapes had been shot for an audience. They were partially performance—for the public, for the cops, and for each other. Dylan, in particular, was working his heart out to show Eric how invested he was. To laymen, Dylan appeared dominant. He was louder, brasher, and had much more personality. Eric preferred directing. He was often behind the lens. But he was always in charge. Fuselier saw Dylan gave himself away with his eyes. He would shout like a madman, then glance at his partner for approval. How was that?

The Basement Tapes were a fusion of invented characters with the real killers. But the characters the killers chose were revealing, too.

Eric had a new idea. Columbine would remain the centerpiece of his apocalypse, but maybe he could make it bolder. Trip bombs and land mines? Nothing fancy, just simple explosives.

Expansion would require additional manpower. Eric began recruitment plans.

Around the end of March, Eric approached Chris Morris. What if they strung up a trip bomb right there behind Blackjack? That hole in the fence would be perfect—kids crawled through there all the time.

Chris was unenthusiastic. A bomb for pesky kids? Sounds a little extreme, he said.

Eric backpedaled. The bomb would not actually hit the kids, just scare the shit out of them.

No, Chris said. Definitely not.

Chris was starting to worry. Eric and Dylan were making a lot of bombs. They had blown a bunch off. And he was hearing stories from all kinds of kids about them getting guns.

Chris noticed a change in Eric. He was acting aggressive all of a sudden, picking fights with people for no good reason. Nate Dykeman saw something, too, in both Eric and Dylan: cutting classes more, sleeping in class, acting secretive. No one said anything.

Eric made at least three attempts to recruit Chris Morris, though Chris did not grasp that at the time. Some of the overtures came in the form of “jokes.”

“Wouldn’t it be fun to kill all the jocks?” he asked in bowling class. Why stop there, why not blow up the whole school? How hard would it be, really? Chris assumed Eric was joking, but still.

Come on, Eric said. They could put bombs on the power generators—that ought to take out the school.

Chris had enough. He turned to talk to someone else.

That is a standard recruitment technique for aspiring mass murderers, Fuselier explained. They toss out the idea, and if it’s shunned it’s a “joke”; if the person lights up, the recruiter proceeds to the next step.

When news of Eric’s crack about killing the jocks was reported, many took it as confirmation of the target motive. Eric was a much wilier recruiter than that. He always played to the audience in front of him. He nearly always gauged their desires correctly. Suggesting the jocks didn’t mean he wanted to single them out, it indicated he thought the idea would appeal to Chris.

Of course Eric would enjoy killing jocks, too, along with niggers, spics, fags, and every other group he railed against.

Dylan was leaking indiscriminately now. He made several public displays of the pipe bombs. These grew far more frequent as NBK came within sight. A lot of people knew about the guns. And the pipe bombs. Eric and Dylan were setting off more and more of them, getting bolder with whom they let in on it.

In February or March, Eric spilled something even scarier: napalm. It happened at a party at Robyn’s house. Eric had not been friends with Zack since their falling out the past summer, but Eric needed something. He could not get the napalm recipes off the Web to work. Zack was good with that kind of thing. Eric had a pretty good idea that Zack was the man to help him.

Eric walked up to Zack good-naturedly, asked him how he was doing, chatted him up awhile. They talked about their futures.

Zack and Eric left the party at the same time, and drove separately to a supermarket, King Soopers. Zack bought a soda and a candy bar, and waited for Eric back in the parking lot. Eric came out and showed him a soda and a box of bleach. Bleach? What was the bleach for? Zack asked.