Columbine Flashback: Harris and
Klebold Obsessed With Satanism
22/April/1999
Bloody revenge of misfits obsessed
with Satan and Nazis
Telegraph.co.uk
AMERICA was in mourning last night for
the 15 people killed in the Denver school
massacre carried out by two teenagers
obsessed with satanism and the Nazis.
The carnage began when Eric Harris,
18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, marched into
Columbine High in Littleton, Colorado,
armed with guns and bombs and, laughing
and shouting, began to execute their
schoolmates. The teenage gunmen, dressed
in black trenchcoats, deliberately
targeted black students and school
athletes, according to terrified
witnesses. Anyone wearing a sporting logo
on their shirt or cap was gunned down.
One girl was shot as she prayed.
As Swat team members moved into the
school, the two youths turned their guns
on themselves. Their bodies had been
booby-trapped with pipe bombs which bomb
squad officers later detonated. A total
of 30 bombs - some timed to explode later
or when they were moved - were found at
the school, in the gunmen's cars and at
their homes.
When the massacre was over, 14 pupils
and one teacher lay dead. Another 24 were
injured. Survivors telling their tales of
horror yesterday described the gunmen as
Nazi-obsessed members of a group calling
themselves the Trenchcoat Mafia. Police
say they might have picked Tuesday for
the slaughter because it was the 110th
anniversary of Adolf Hitler's birth.
During the killing spree, the pair
shouted that they were taking revenge on
those who had made fun of them. While
some students managed to escape, about
200 others hid in classrooms, offices and
lavatories. As television broadcast the
live pictures and sounds of gunfire and
explosions, frantic parents jammed the
roads to the school desperate for news of
their children. Screaming and crying
women swarmed to the police barricades
before being taken to a nearby school
where they were reunited with the
survivors who escaped injury.
Police and federal agents yesterday
moved into the school in the wake of bomb
squad and Swat team officers to begin an
investigation that they say will take
some time. The Sheriff's spokesman, Steve
Davis, said: "We expect it will take
at least several days as they want to be
as thorough as possible in collecting the
evidence. We still don't have a motive
but they couldn't have gone in and
created this carnage without a lot of
planning."
Police and bomb squad officers
yesterday taped off the streets near
where Harris and Klebold lived and their
homes were searched. Two explosive
devices were detonated at Harris's home.
The killers' parents were being
questioned by FBI agents at secret
addresses. Neighbours described Harris as
a quiet, unassuming teenager but his
schoolmates saw a different side of him
and his fellow Trenchcoat Mafia members.
Students who knew them said Harris and
Klebold often wore German swastikas on
their clothes, were devoted to violent
computer games and were fans of the
"shock rocker" Marilyn Manson
and of German techno music. "They
sang Marilyn Manson songs and joked about
killing people," said one student
who described them as brooding outsiders
and misfits. "They were into Nazism
and took pride in Hitler. They were
really creepy."
Several students said the two youths
had shown interest in the occult and had
talked of mutilations and decapitations.
Websites the group had set up contained
poems called "The written works of
the Trenchcoats" and had themes of
"isolation, rage and
apocalypse". Greg Barnes, a school
basketball player, said: "They used
to joke about shooting people but no one
took them seriously. That was a
mistake."
Throughout yesterday, students brought
flowers, notes and teddy bears to a
makeshift memorial set up outside the
school. A "prayer corner" was
set up on a nearby basketball court.
Hundreds of sightseers and mourners
gathered outside the school, some of them
hugging each other and others holding
their heads in grief. More than 2,000
people packed into the nearby Light of
the World Catholic Church for a memorial
service. Grief counsellors descended on
the Denver area to help bereaved parents
and bewildered students deal with the
brutal reality of the massacre.
Churches were filled with praying,
sobbing teenagers as police and
paramedics began the grim task of
removing the bodies from the school.
Chaplains from the Police and Fire
Department mingled with the shaken
officers offering them help and
encouragement. The Jefferson County
Sheriff, John Stone, said: It's a very
stressful situation. We have some very,
very tough guys in there but you can tell
by the looks on their faces they are
finding it hard to deal with."
Mr Davis had tears in his eyes as he
said: "It's impossible to know when
something like this is going to
happen." He said that although some
bodies remained in the school last night,
all the parents whose children had been
killed had been notified.
President Clinton, speaking in
Washington, said he was "profoundly
shocked and saddened" by the
killings and urged that more be done to
curb youth violence. He said:
"Surely people will recognise that
they have to be alive to the possibility
that it can occur in any community in
America. And maybe that will help us to
keep it from happening again."
"Disappeared off the face of the
earth!"
