Recalling the Slain and Their Slayers

One girl who knew Eric Harris said he was the sweetest guy she had ever met and that he solicitously attempted to cheer her up when she was depressed. The owner of a pizza store where Harris worked along with Dylan Klebold called them model employees who were highly intelligent.

But others describe the young men--who authorities say killed 13 people and took their own lives Tuesday at Columbine High Scool--as deeply troubled, pushed to the fringe of high school society and mired in a dark subculture that espouses violence and exalts militaristic images. Harris and Klebold, they say, were time bombs that could be heard, had anyone taken the time to listen.

The two portraits seem contradictory, but, in the complicated, territorial world of the suburban high school, just how these portraits overlapped isn’t easy to fathom.

Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, were close friends who spent much of their time together. Nick Baumgart hung out with both for several summers until “they started going in a direction I didn’t want to go,” he said. Harris and Klebold were highly computer literate and “obsessed with violent video games,” he said.

The youths had at least one scrape with the law. They were arrested together in January 1998 for breaking into a car. They were placed in a diversion program for juveniles, which they completed two months ago, according to the Jefferson County district attorney.

Denee Taylor, a senior, said she was friendly with the group known at school as the “Trench Coat Mafia,” to which Harris and Klebold belonged. She took a class with a boy she wouldn’t name but she identified as the leader of the group. His interests, she said, centered on guns.

“He really liked weapons,” Taylor said. “In economics class, we had to create a company and sell its products. I invented a comic book company. He created a weapons manufacturing plant.”

Dozens of students suggested that Tuesday’s horrific violence was the culmination of years of taunting the boys received from more popular students. The school, they say, was sharply divided along clique lines, often pitting the school’s athletes against a small band that perceived themselves as outcasts.

One senior, who asked not to be identified, said he recently dropped out of Columbine to escape the belligerence from jocks.

“The school is cliquey, extremely divided,” he said. “There is a lot of tension between groups. It was almost continuous conflict--anything from verbal abuse to physical attacks and violence. I think these guys eventually got sick of it.”

But according to Justin Alber, who is on the soccer team, everyone got along well. “I have friends who are jocks and preppies, but I also hang around with the ‘skaters.’ I think people get along pretty well.” He knew of the Trench Coat group, which he called scary.

The perspective from the adults who ran the school was still missing. Teachers and administrators have been largely silent.

Baumgart, 17, portrayed Klebold as a quiet and smart guy who changed after he fell under Harris’ more aggressive spell. Lydia Shofner, 17, knew both boys well and said they harbored anti-government sentiments, ideas generated from Harris.

“They were both kind of anti-everything,” she said. “They were against organized religion and governments and stuff. But I really liked them. Eric was really a nice guy. I know it sounds strange to say it--I mean, he killed all those people--but to portray him as this maniac isn’t right.”

Neighbors on the quiet cul-de-sac where Harris lived with his parents and college-age brother said they seldom saw Eric but frequently noticed Klebold’s car parked in front of the house.

That black BMW was detonated by a bomb squad Tuesday evening as it was parked in the school’s student lot. Authorities say the car was booby-trapped and the gas tank wired to explode.

Neighbors said the BMW was at Harris’ house Monday after school. Children playing in the street reported hearing noises like glass breaking and hammering coming from the garage.

Brent Wilde, who lives across the street from the Harris’ neat two-story home, said the family was quiet and kept to themselves. He said he and Wayne Harris, the boy’s father, would trade small talk about yard work. Several neighbors said the elder Harris is a retired military man.

“They seemed very nice; we could never expect this,” he said.

The Harris family issued a statement Wednesday saying: “We want to express our heartfelt sympathy to the families of all the victims and to all the community for this senseless tragedy. Please say prayers for everyone touched by these terrible events. The Harris family is devastated by the deaths of Columbine High students and is mourning the death of their youngest son, Eric.”

Harris and Klebold were among the handful of teenagers affiliated with the Trench Coat Mafia at Columbine High. Two years ago, members of the same group called themselves “The Anachronists,” a name that was lost when the original members graduated. It was the school’s jocks and trendily dressed “preppies” who coined the Trench Coat Mafia term.

The antipathy between the popular students at the affluent school and those who didn’t seem to fit in remained on a slow boil. One boy, who was a member of the Trench Coat Mafia but left after the members grew too violent, said it was common for the jocks to intimidate the group.

“The hazing was pretty intense,” he said, asking that his name not be used. “When we walked down the street, they would come flying by in their cars and scream stuff at us. They would key people’s cars and throw things at us. They thought it was cute to pick up handfuls of food and lob that in different directions in the cafeteria.

“It’s really fun having mashed potatoes thrown at you,” the boy added.

Denee Taylor, who had friends among the Trench Coat Mafia, said the popular students adopted a superior attitude toward everyone at Columbine.

“They were disrespectful to teachers; they talked back and got away with it,” she said. “They acted like no one was as good as they were. They wore their Abercrombie & Fitch clothes and acted real cool, like everyone else was crap.”

Pauline Colby, who was friends with the two youths, said she stopped hanging around them when their anger at the taunting escalated.

“After all these guys made fun of them, they would go and be angry for a long time,” she said. “They would all go and hang out at someone’s house after school almost every day and be angry.”

Some teenagers said things grew worse after an incident last April in which five prominent athletes were arrested on burglary charges. According to police records, four of the five were charged with felonies that were reduced to misdemeanors.

According to the teenagers, the jocks at school then began to act in defiance of authority.

Said one former Trench Coat Mafia member, “A lot of us were outraged. . . . It comes down to the same belief at a lot of schools: The jocks could get away with anything.”

Some teenagers said none of the teachers or staff seemed to notice.

As for their parents? Said Pauline Colby, “I don’t think anyone’s parents really knew because no one really talked to their parents that much.”

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Researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this story.