By Marilyn Robinson, Mark Obmascik and Peggy Lowe
Denver Post Staff Writers
April 24 - As 150 investigators swapped leads in their hunt for new suspects, authorities speculated Friday the two teenage killers could have planted their homemade bombs during Columbine High School's after-prom party last Saturday night.
"If they wanted to plant explosives, they could have done it then. They would have access to the school during the after-hour prom party that they attended,'' Jefferson County Sheriff's Lt. John Kiekbusch told The Denver Post.
Meanwhile, authorities said they haven't identified a third suspect but they believe Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had help in the plotting and carrying out of Tuesday's schoolhouse murders.
"There's plenty of indications from the witness interviews that there are other people who very likely had knowledge of this and may have had some degree of involvement short of another gunman,'' Kiekbusch said.
"We don't know if there's a third gunman, but we're not discounting it.''
Jefferson County officials said the discovery of at least 30 bombs, including a powerful 20-pound device found in the kitchen Thursday, suggests the two killers were assisted in their rampage that killed 15, hospitalized 22 and shocked the world. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
Just how the killers smuggled in their mass arsenal is another aspect of investigators' work and speculation arose Friday that Harris and Klebold had obtained school keys. But Kiekbusch said "we have nothing definitive to indicate they had keys.''
"We're going to try to check out the keys, one of the thousands of things we need to check into,'' he said.
Since Tuesday, several students have talked of a third suspect. The role of another possible suspect was obscured further by the release Friday of 911 tapes from the murders.
Though many witnesses said Harris and Klebold wore black trench coats during their killing spree, the 911 tape released Friday shows one of the first police officers on the scene reporting a shooter who "had a white T-shirt on with some kind of a holster vest something.'' It's unclear whether the two identified killers changed clothes, or took off their trench coats, during the rampage.
The 911 tapes offered the first public look at the panic, agony and sheer terror of the high school attack. The most harrowing account came from an unidentified teacher trying to protect students huddled in the library.
"He's upstairs! He's right outside of here! He's outside this hall!'' the teacher pleaded to a police emergency dispatcher. "Kids - JUST STAY DOWN!''
Sometime after the teacher called police, the library became the scene of the most savage attack, where the two laughing killers later would execute 10 students before turning their guns to their own heads. "My God, its... (Sounds: Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.) My God, the gun is right outside my door. OK, I don't think I'm going to go out there. We're not going to go to the door. I've got the kids on the floor. I've got all of the kids in the library on the floor.''
Police still have no motive for the killings, but students say Klebold and Harris yelled that they were seeking revenge for being teased and insulted.
Gov. Bill Owens toured the school Thursday night and emerged visibly shaken.
"It was a scene of devastation,'' Owens said Friday. "I went into the library and I never want to see a room like that again in my life. The destruction and damage throughout the area of the school where this occurred was... stunning.''
"The explosion in the cafeteria was so hot it melted the ceiling tiles, but nobody was killed in the cafeteria. The reason is, the teachers got them out. It gave them that split-second.'' Columbine students will return to the classroom Thursday, taking half-day courses at cross-town rival Chatfield High School.
Also on Friday, 150 federal, state and local crime investigators gathered for an all-day meeting to evaluate evidence in the case. In the three days since the murders, more than 500 interviews have been conducted, though a lack of coordination had investigators questioning some people two or three times, officials said.
Meanwhile, prosecutors and law enforcement agents went to court to try to keep secret at least three search warrants and affidavits in the case. The affidavits contain the names of witnesses and acquaintances of the two murderers, and some may be accomplices who helped plot and carry out the rampage, officials argued.
"We are very, very early in the investigation,'' Jefferson County prosecutor Donna Skinner Reed. This is "a mammoth investigation with a volatile crime scene.''
Confusion from such a massive investigation also led police to make several in accurate statements, later retracted, about the crime, including the number of people killed in the attack and the number of bombs found by investigators Thursday.
On Friday, Jefferson County Sheriff's Department spokesman Steve Davis corrected a police statement from the previous day about security-camera coverage at the school. Police now say there was no video camera in the library, where most murders took place. Still, police said they have recovered tape from cameras in the rest of the school.
Kiekbusch said the tapes will be sent to FBI headquarters in Quantico, Va., to be enhanced before investigators review them. "We don't want to do anything to compromise those tapes. We have no idea what they're going to show,'' he said.
"Ideally they would show the movement and also the actual placement perhaps of some of the explosive devices, prior to the incident. If that's the case we have got just very important evidence,'' Kiekbusch said.
In Washington, President Clinton announced $1.5 million in federal aid to help victims pay for funerals, medical expenses, lost wages and counseling.
Meanwhile, federal agents tracing the history of the four guns used in the attack so far have found no evidence that any law was broken in the chain of sales that put those guns in the hands of the two killers.
Harris, who had just turned 18, was old enough to legally buy the two shotguns and Hi-Point semiautomatic carbine police found on the dead suspects at Columbine High.
Legally, he could not buy a TEC-9 lookalike handgun from a firearms dealer before his 21st birthday. But he could have bought it legally from a private individual in Colorado on his 18th birthday, with no record of the sale.
And federal investigators believe all the weapons found at Columbine High had been privately sold and resold.
"We're trying to find out who they were sold to, who they then went to from person to person,'' said Special Agent Larry Bettendorf of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. "Hopefully we won't hit a missing link.''
The carnage at Columbine High School led the district attorney to call for a national soul-searching mission to stop the culture of violence.
Too many children grow up in a society with too little respect for life, attend schools with too few rules, watch movies with too many murders and play video games that glorify too much gore and mayhem, the district attorney said. "These deaths cannot be in vain,'' Thomas said. "I want this to be known as a place where we started a change in this society... If we as Americans can't seize the moment, I'm not sure what else can possibly wake us up.''
Thomas said he asked Attorney General Janet Reno to help set up a non-governmental campaign, joined by Columbine survivors and other Americans horrified by the 15 killings, to change the nation's turn toward bloodshed. He said it may be time to review the open-campus policy at many high schools, where students come and go as they please.
Meanwhile, thousands of people continue to stream through the park near Columbine High School, turning the area into an ever-growing shrine of flowers, poems, balloons and banners.
About 15 members of Smoky Hill High School's lacrosse team, which was supposed to play Columbine on Friday, brought a banner to the site with words "Our thoughts and prayers are with you.''
Scott Hoppe, 32 of Superior, planted 13 trees on a bluff overlooking the school. He was digging through the snow into the dirt to plant the 13 Burr Oak trees.
He says that although the bouquets of flowers will eventually fade and die, "I thought it would be nice to have something that would be here for years.''
A six-foot high cedar cross also was planted into the ground on the bluff, and parents and kids made pilgrimages to the top of the hill all day.
"It probably doesn't have name,'' said Rod Keiscome, who'd made the pilgrimage. " 'Calvary' would work.''
Also contributing to this story were Denver Post staff writers Kirk Mitchell, Mike Soraghan, Ann Schrader, Mike McPhee, and Howard Pankratz.