“Yeah.”
“Mr. Sanders. He came into the room and he had been shot a couple times. He was
bleeding from his mouth, took one or two steps, and just fell down. Then we knew something was
going on, something serious, something immediate… They kind of locked us in the room… We
sat there, people tried to take care of Mr. Sanders. I guess he had been shot in the back a couple
times and one of the bullets went through his neck and out his mouth. He’s bleeding out his
mouth and his teeth… got shot out kinda. After a few minutes of being bunkered down in silence
we heard Eric and Dylan come through the science wing making a bunch of noise. Shooting
windows and stuff like that. We didn’t know what was going on. I guess they broke the door
down and busted a window in the neighboring room and threw in a Molotov cocktail. One of the
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teachers disappeared for awhile and put out the fire. We turned out the lights, sat there and
waited, and waited. After awhile someone turned on the TV and we were watching it on the news.
There were phones in the classrooms and someone was calling… I don’t know if we called out
first or they called in first, but they were talking to SWAT. We told them where we were and
what our situation was. Then it was just a matter of time. Finally SWAT came in, yelled at us,
gathered us. They bunched us in a corner and explained that we were all suspects, because they
didn’t know who’d done this. Any of us could have a gun right now, so do what you’re told. We
finally made it out of the school and they bussed us somewhere else. I stepped out of the car, and
there’s press, and hundreds of worried parents everywhere. My dad was the first person that I
saw. That was the biggest sigh of relief that you could ever imagine.”
“How were your friends?”
“I didn’t lose anyone super-close to me. Daniel Mauser was a friend of a friend. We’d
hung out a couple times. When I got home that day, there’s a list of 50 people you need to call
because you know their worried. So you call everyone and tell them you’re not dead. I guess my
mom didn’t worry too much because my brothers had got out right away and one of them had told
her that he’d seen me, even though I was still in the science room. My mom was like ‘oh great,
everyone’s out.’ But I still hadn’t shown up for four hours (laughs). For the next couple weeks
you just got together with whoever you needed. We just sat around and pouted. A few days later,
everyone in the school met at a church. It was crazy. You’d seen a list of everyone who’d died
and been injured. So you know all your friends are ok, but still every time you saw them it was
like, ‘oh my god, he’s not dead, he’s ok.’ That happened a thousand times. There was one kid,
just before the science test we had been joking. I was like ‘you’re a fag.’ That was the last thing I
said to him because the class started right after that. For some reason it really hit me. What if that
was the last thing I’d said to him? So when I saw him, I just burst into tears. I was like ‘bro, I
called you a fag.’ And he’s like, ‘you did what now?’ (Laughs). It had been bothering me for
days, but he obviously didn’t remember.”
“How long was it before the initial shock wore off?”
“It was a pretty slow process. I was lucky because I talked to my friends. Some people
just shut down and never said anything. Some of those people are still my friends but their
messed up and still freaked out when they get locked in a room and they hear loud noises. It took
months before you were back to normal. Do you remember Golden Eye for the N-64?”
“Oh yeah.”
“That game was red-hot back then. I couldn’t play it for a long time. I just played Mario
Kart, no games with blood. And even the Star Wars movie that just came out, The Phantom
Menace, when Qui Gon Jinn gets a light-saber in the gut. There’s not an ounce of blood… I
couldn’t watch anything like that. When you’d mess with your friends and you’re like, ‘I’m
gonna kill you.’ No, you don’t do that anymore. It’s weird… You kind of have to go back to your
naive view, back to taking stuff for granted a little or you’re totally paranoid.”
“What do you have to say about Eric Harris? Did you know them at all?”
“Nope… My brother had a gym class with Klebold. I knew of Eric because he was in the
German class ahead of me. Never talked to him at all.”
“What was the summer of ‘99 like? Do you think kids that were failing were just
pushed through graduation?”
“Yeah, especially the year after that. We spent it at Chapfield, our rival school. It wasn’t
school anymore. It was getting up and doing stuff so you’re back in a routine. A lot of the classes
we’d be watching movies.”
“Did many students want them to tear Columbine down? Did you think it was
necessary to go back and confront what happened to get over it?”
“That was kind of an option. But everyone I knew thought it was important. The entire
community came together. That what was different about ’99, everyone was friends. There were
no bullies anymore. Everyone was nice to everyone. It was important to say, ‘you haven’t taken
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anything from us.’ When we went back they walled up the library and put a bunch of lockers in
front of it. That was weird for us though. It was hard the first time I went back into the science
room.”
“I was curious as to the image of the Trench-coat Mafia, the kids that used to hang out
with them. Did any of that particular group go back at all or did they drop out…”
“I think most of them were seniors. I’m sure you wouldn’t be allowed to wear a trench-
coat after that. I think there were a few underclassmen that knew them that did come back. A few
were asked not to come back.... You heard of Brooks Brown?”
“He was the one that Harris told to go home.”
“Yeah, they were about to shoot and they were friends the first couple years of high
school, before they had a falling out. They just started getting along again. That day Harris told
him to go home. Brooks was telling the authorities that there was proof of this violent behavior
and they should have been doing something, He wrote a book about all sorts of stuff that makes it
really fishy. Like the police have covered up things I had no idea about.”
“Have you studied any of the conspiracy stuff? People have claimed that others were
involved. What’s your attitude towards these kind of websites?”
“I had a friend, my best friend at the time. When I was in science class he was at lunch
where the shooting started, and he swears up and down that one of the guys with the guns was not
Eric, was not Dylan. His name was Robert Perry.”
“Yeah, we heard about him…”
“Really?”
Jesus: “I’ve read there were over 50 students that said there was another guy, that his
name was Robert Perry, that he didn’t look anything like Harris or Klebold. There’s testimony
about how they had a girl, and they had pictures of people cut out of their yearbooks…”
“I wonder what the truth is behind those scenarios. Perry was one of the guys that would
walk around school in a trench-coat. How much of it is your brain playing tricks on you, I don’t
know… He was pretty recognizable -- tall, real lanky, he had bad skin, and the trench really made
him stand out. Personally I believe it was only Eric and Dylan.”
“There are all these police reports that have been sealed for 25 years. It is fishy…
“Exactly. I heard SWAT shot one of the kids. I can’t remember what the result of that
was. I think he said he may have shot one of the kids accidentally…”
Jesus: “One student in particular, they did an autopsy and the bullets came from the guns
consistent with the officers. Nothing’s been released, his autopsy hasn’t been released…”
“Does anyone know what happened to this Robert Perry guy?”
“I saw him the next day. I went to the comic shop and Robert Perry was there. I
instinctively thought he was one of the shooters, ‘cause I hadn’t been following it. It was really
weird how it hit me. I can’t remember seeing him at all in the next two years.”
“Shortly after Columbine, when they were making accusations about police shooting
kids, there were these two kids that went to the school. They worked at a Subway or something,
and someone shot them while they were at work.”
“That was a year later. I don’t think the police were involved. It seemed like it was drug
related. Those kids were into drugs and probably dealing. The girl was just a friend and she
happened to be there and get wasted too.”
“Being a little out of the norm with the red Mohawk and whatnot, I was wondering
how that played itself out -- do you think people were persecuted here? I’m from Detroit and
when it happened I was the first trench-coat mafia sort of kid from my area. I had experiences
where cops were harassing kids for information about me, pulling people over and digging
through their cars because they admitted knowing me. It was pretty raw…”
“I don’t think I personally witnessed it too much. Brooks Brown said he experienced it.
Not so much from authorities but he’d be walking down the street and people would drive by and
yell things at him. Everyone knew that he was their friend. A lot of people assumed he knew.
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Other than that I haven’t heard too much. I didn’t dress like the dark metalhead or the goth kid. I
had a couple Metallica shirts, stuff like that, but I didn’t stand out enough to look like a target.”
“What did you think of the Michael Moore movie?”
“It took me awhile before I watched it, because I didn’t want to know everything in it. He
made some good points. I recommended it to people.”
“What do you say about the kids that wear t-shirts with Harris and Klebold, or try to
make them into superstars? You don’t see too much of that around here I assume.”
“No man, never. The good portion of license plates are Columbine plates. I see it on
MySpace though. There’s a lot of sixteen year olds that treat them like heroes. They’ll get on the
Columbine bulletin board and say things just to make people mad. I mean what can you say to
someone like that? There already so far off if they think that it’s a good thing or its something to
admire.”
“What do you think could have been to maybe avert what happened? I know there were
people that used to walk by them, spit in their face, punch them or call them fags. And I know
the school newsletter was approved by the principal that went on calling them ‘faggots’
publicly.”
“Wow, I didn’t hear about that… Probably the first thing is parent involvement. If they
felt they could talk to their parents… Any talking is good therapy. Maybe their parents didn’t
realize how miserable they were and could have even taken them to another school, home-school
or something. It’s hard to say ‘cause I never personally experienced much bullying. I certainly
didn’t bully people.”
“What do you feel might be something positive that came from this all?”
“I’ve thought about that a few times. A couple times I’ve said, ‘well that’s a good thing,’
but it certainly wasn’t worth it. I would say that personally, it changed me for the better. I didn’t
make any conscious effort, it wasn’t a ‘if I get out of this alive’ thing. All of a sudden I was
getting straight A’s. It made me realize when I did mess around with my friends I’d get rough
sometimes. I’d say I’m gentler, more sensitive to people. I have a friend who has post-traumatic
stress and she can’t take fireworks or being locked in small rooms. She isn’t in a better place at
all. She’s bitter about it -- she can’t really have a discussion about it without getting mad or
defensive. She’s mad about the memorial they’re building because she wants to bury it all. I did
have a healthy recovery, mentally…
“What are you going to name your son?”
“Logan.”
“Is he named after Wolverine?”
“(Laughs) No, it was kind of an accident. We didn’t want to name him Xavier though.
The middle name has to be Charles, my dad’s name. It’s been that way for six generations. It’d be
really weird to call him Xavier Charles…”
* * * * *
Both Jesus and Parsons jet because they are on lunch breaks, and I hang outside smoking a
cigarette after one of the most intense interviews I’ve ever done. Eric drives by on his way out
and looks at me with a disturbed glance that is partially relief and part “what the fuck have I
done?” I get a call from the Leeds Lads who unfortunately can’t join my quest to the infamous
bowling alley because they’re scooting out to Boulder.
I bail on Bowl-A-Rama and hop the freeway, climbing an avalanche of snow to a
monorail platform. I jump the rails and sneak on hoping no trolley cop tickets me. Two exits
down and the cop is checking all ticket stubs on the next car, so I hop off again and wait in the
snow. 30 minutes later the next train is smooth, the passing scenery gives a dead winter appeal to
the industrial outskirts. Harris must have ridden this thing a 1000 times over. What a dreary,
bland existence. Suffocated by factories and military complex’s…
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The train drops me off next to a closed amusement park with icicles hanging like
stalactites over the Carnival Wheel. I walk a few blocks and am back in the Pike District. The free
shuttle bus takes you everywhere down Mall Street, which is a labyrinth of Starbucks and Virgin
Records. Packed, snowing, and everyone is so normal. It’s so clean. Everyone rushing forward
into blind consumerism, all of them looking perpetually terrified…
One block from the library a SWAT team armada were blocking off National City Bank.
All of the employees were on the front steps without coats in sub-zero weather, like a shooting
just happened. The only other people paying attention on the street are from The Czech Republic.
I attempt to shoot the shit over LAIBACH, and one guy raises an uneasy fist and goes “Jah,
Slovenia ist guut…”
THE DENVER THEORY
Friday afternoon, last grueling day on the street. The homeless know me well now, and none
haggle change anymore. Anytime I think of Denver I’ll now envision an army of vagrants
devouring piles upon piles of books. No bands, no PIT, no money, no XXX girl