Teens Planned Assault for a Year, Diary Says

LITTLETON, Colo. —  The teenage gunmen behind the Columbine High School massacre began planning their attack a year ago, working with a campus map, setting specific dates and times for their assault, and even designing intricate hand signals to help ensure a high body count when they stormed the building, authorities announced Saturday.

On the day of the first funeral, for 17-year-old Rachel Scott, police disclosed the recovery of a yearlong, hand-written diary. In it, they said, Eric David Harris and Dylan Bennett Klebold monitored which classrooms were best lit, where and when large groups of students congregated, and the most convenient places for the gunmen to hide inside the school.

Further, the diary is laden with Nazi epithets and racial slurs, strengthening the theory that the teenagers selected April 20 for their firestorm because it is the birthday of Adolf Hitler.

“They were going for a big kill,” said Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone, who is leading the multi-agency investigation that is attempting to determine whether others may have helped Harris and Klebold kill 12 students and a teacher before fatally shooting themselves in the head.

“They had it down to ‘Day One we do this, Day Two we do this, Day Three we do this,’ ” the sheriff said. “They had it all the way down to the time, 11:15 or 11:20 in the morning, and then it’s rock ‘n’ roll time.”

Stone added that Harris and Klebold began planning the assault and collecting weapons last spring, around the time that a group of school athletes was given what some considered to be special treatment after being arrested for burglary.

Central to their anger was their frustration over being harassed and picked upon by athletes and other students, according to the diary.

“They were targeting people . . . because they weren’t respected, because they were made fun of,” Stone said. “And looking at the shooting patterns when they were in the school, they shot anyone they thought was a jock.

“They wanted to do as much damage as they could, and destroy as many kids as they could, and destroy this school.”

The diary was recovered from Harris’ house, police sources said. Hate and Nazi literature was also found during searches of the teenagers’ homes, but police did not disclose whether it was in both.

‘The Parents Should Have Known’

Stone noted that in a search of one of their homes, police found bomb-making components, as well as a barrel sawed off from a shotgun on a dresser in the youth’s bedroom. The barrel matched a weapon used in the attack, police said, and much of the literature was left out in the open, police said.

“A lot of this stuff was laying out very visibly in the house,” Stone said. “The parents should have known it. You could see it walking right into one of the kids’ bedroom.”

The parents of Harris and Klebold have retained attorneys. On Saturday, the Klebold family issued a statement saying they had buried their son and that their “sadness and grief over his death and this tragedy is indescribable.” They again apologized to those who lost loved ones and said they were praying for the recovery of those who were injured.

Although Sheriff’s Deputy Steve Davis said Saturday that none of the weapons belonged to either set of parents, Stone suggested that the parents could be held legally responsible for some form of criminal reckless endangerment.

“I think parents should be accountable for their kids’ actions,” he said. “But I don’t know what we’re going to be doing in this case.”

After initially interviewing the parents, police said they did not believe they knew what their sons were up to. But Harris’ father, through an intermediary, called police during the siege and offered to help talk his son safely out of the school.

The teenage Harris had not yet been identified as a gunman.

Neighbors, however, were suspicious of the two youths, and some later reported hearing strange noises from one of their garages, including the shattering of glass that could have been used as shrapnel in the making of more than 30 small explosives and one large, 20-pound propane tank bomb planted around the campus.

Stone said there could be as many as half a dozen others who helped prepare for the shooting and who helped bring explosives into the school. He said they could be fellow teenagers but could be charged as adults if they are over 18.

Harris was 18; Klebold was 17.

Description of Gunman in Dispute

In the first moments of the attack on the school, one police officer described seeing a gunman in a white T-shirt outside the building while shots were being heard inside.

However, many students recalled that Harris and Klebold were wearing dark trench coats.

The 911 emergency tapes of police communications included this exchange: Dispatcher: “Attention all units: [officer designated as] 71 is under fire. He advises the suspect just ran into the building.”

Officer: “. . .Southwest corner.”

Dispatcher: “Is this the party in the trench coat?”

Officer: “Yes. He had a white T-shirt on with some kind of holster vest something.”

Davis said Saturday that the body of one of the two gunmen--he would not say whether it was Harris or Klebold--was wearing a white T-shirt.

But, Davis added, “it is also my understanding that when he was found dead, he had shed the trench coat. So now we’re confused as to maybe we’re back to two suspects instead of a third, white-shirted suspect.”

His boss, Stone, said the diary makes it clear that Harris and Klebold were willing to risk their own lives in the attack. “They expected to die,” he said.

Police said Harris and Klebold used a school map and jotted down notations on when the lunchroom was most crowded and where there were safe places to hide. “They had this map for quite a period of time,” Stone said.

The diary, he said, “is a timeline that comes all the way down to the day of the attack.”

The sheriff wouldn’t say whether the diary mentioned other people, but he did say it contained nicknames for Harris and Klebold, one of whom was referred to as “Vodka.”

Some of the diary was written in German.

“It was Hitler’s birthday, that appears to be it,” Stone said of the reason Tuesday was selected for the shooting. “There was a lot of German literature, German words used. It was a Nazi kind of thing going on.

“It appeared the whole thing of this was hate.”

Stone said it seemed as though Harris and Klebold were saying: “We want to be different. We want to be strange. We don’t want jocks putting us down.”

Stone said the diary was started last April, which is about the time tensions between the so-called Trench Coat Mafia--to which Harris and Klebold belonged--and the school’s jocks reportedly began escalating.

A group of five popular Columbine students, among them four athletes, had been charged with felony burglary, but the charges against four of the students were reduced to misdemeanors.

The fifth student, a champion wrestler and football player, pleaded guilty to felony second-degree burglary.

A former Trench Coat Mafia member, who asked not to be identified, said the incident sent a message to athletes that they could act with impunity and was interpreted by the Trench Coat Mafia as a warning to protect themselves.

“They got away with it, basically,” the youth said. “A lot of jocks assumed they could get away with anything at school because they were on sports teams. A lot of them [Trench Coat Mafia] were outraged.”

After that, he said, the Trench Coat Mafia members became so aggressive that he left the group.

Police also revealed Saturday that they had retrieved an anonymous e-mail message claiming responsibility for the attack and warning that another incident--perhaps a bomb--was rigged to go off Monday.

Police first announced that they were taking the e-mail as a “serious” threat and believed it hadbeen posted by one of the two gunmen before the school rampage.

“Precautions have been taken, schools are being locked, and security is being beefed up,” said Davis, the deputy.

The e-mail blamed teachers and parents, saying the shooting “comes as a result of YOUR CHOICES. Parents and Teachers, YOU . . . UP.”

The e-mail ended with: “You may think the horror ends with the bullet in my head--but you wouldn’t be so lucky. All that I can leave you with to decipher what more extensive death is to come is ‘12Skitzo.’ You have until April 26th. Goodbye.”

But later in the day, police said it appeared the e-mail was a hoax produced after the shooting. The “12Skitzo” reference appeared to be related to the musical group Insane Clown Posse and one of its songs, “12,” and Skitzo is identified as a rapper on the group’s Web site.

The Insane Clown Posse is, according to its Web site, a Detroit-based group that founded Psychopathic Records. The two members wear elaborate but distorted clown makeup. Their songs speak of violence, retribution and sex. A selection of song titles includes “17 Dead,” “Amy’s in the Attic,” “Carnival of Carnage” and “Guts on the Ceiling.”

In another development Saturday, police said Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies did not come here at the invitation of local authorities to assess how the SWAT teams responded to the school. Rather, they said, the Los Angeles officers came to learn for themselves how they could improve their own SWAT operations.

Saturday also marked the first of the funerals for the victims. Scott, a vivacious aspiring actress, was remembered for her courage and kindness. The elaborately produced, multimedia memorial service, broadcast live on television, gave voice to a grieving community’s sadness and outrage. Her white casket was placed at the front of the church, signed by scores of students who used felt tip pens to write final messages to their fallen friend.

Students rose to speak in impromptu eulogies about Scott’s sense of fun and her concern for others. A teenage musical group sang a song expressly written for the service, “Why Did You Have to Leave?”

Amid the outpouring of love was also a scathing indictment of the lack of decency and morality in American life.

“What has happened to us and how did we get here?” asked Pastor Bruce Porter of the Trinity Christian Center. “We’ve removed prayer from our schools and we’ve replaced it with violence, hatred and murder.”