Year-Old Clues Led to Columbine Searches
Hours after Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris killed 13 people at Columbine High School, authorities obtained search warrants for their homes using year-old evidence.
Sheriff’s officials had said in 1998 that there wasn’t enough evidence of a crime to pursue reports that Harris and Klebold were threatening others and making bombs.
After the two killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves on April 20, 1999, at the school near Denver, those 1998 reports were used to obtain search warrants, according to documents released Friday under court order.
They show for the first time that a warning about Harris from Randy and Judy Brown had been used to get permission to search Harris’ and Klebold’s homes. In March 1998, the Browns gave authorities violent writings from Harris’ Web site, including a death threat against their son, Brooks, and descriptions of pipe bombs.
Investigators drafted an affidavit to justify a search of Harris’ home, but they never showed it to a judge and eventually dropped the case.
“The longer I think about it, the madder I get,” Judy Brown said of the documents.
Sheriff’s spokesman Jim Shires said Friday that the value of the Browns’ report may not have been clear until after Columbine.
“Obviously, anything that’s going to be in hindsight is 20/20.”
Start your day right
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.
