Dylan got fired up just listening. He faced the camera and addressed his tormenters. “If you could see all the anger I’ve stored over the past four fucking years,” he said. He described a sophomore who didn’t deserve the jaw evolution gave him. “Look for his jaw,” Dylan said. “It won’t be on his body.”
Eric named one guy he planned to shoot in the balls, another in the face. “I imagine I will be shot in the head by a fucking cop,” he said.
No one they named would be killed.
It went back so much further than high school. From prekindergarten, at Foothills Day Care center, Dylan could remember them: all the stuck-up toddlers sneering at him. “Being shy didn’t help,” he said. At home it was just as bad. Except for his parents, his whole extended family looked down on him, treated him like the runt of the litter. His brother was always ripping on him; Byron’s friends, too. “You made me what I am,” Dylan said. “You added to the rage.”
“More rage, more rage!” Eric demanded. He motioned with his arms. “Keep building it.”
Dylan hurled another Ericism: “I’ve narrowed it down. It’s humans I hate.”
Eric raised Arlene, and aimed her at the camera. “You guys will all die, and it will be fucking soon,” he said. “You all need to die. We need to die, too.”
The boys made it clear, repeatedly, that they planned to die in battle. Their legacy would live. “We’re going to kick-start a revolution,” Eric said. “I declared war on the human race and war is what it is.”
He apologized to his mom. “I really am sorry about this, but war’s war,” he told her. “My mother, she’s so thoughtful. She helps out in so many ways.” She brought him candy when he was sad, and sometimes Slim Jims. He said his dad was great, too.
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 materiaclass="underline" 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.