The Columbine Manifesto: The Journals, Diaries and Writings of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold

Who were Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold? Why did they do what they did? Together these young men came to the world's attention when they laid siege to Columbine High School the morning of April 20, 1999. Before that day, they were just a couple of normal middle class American high school seniors just two weeks away from graduating... at least, that's what people who knew them thought.

Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold met sometime around the 7th or 8th grade at Ken Caryl Middle School. They shared many interests, including making and testing explosives, German industrial music and playing first-person shooter games such as Doom on their computers. They also had several mutual friends, including Brooks Brown, Klebold's friend since first grade and a neighbor who rode the same schoolbus as Harris, and Nathan "Nate" Dykeman, another boy from Ken Caryl, and Chris Morris, a member of the Trench Coat Mafia they worked with at Blackjack Pizza. All attended Columbine High School together.

For well over a year before the shooting, Klebold and Harris were making plans to attack their school. It started with playing-acting school shootings in their video projects, writing essays about similar attacks, and playing destructive pranks. Eventually this behavior crossed over into real-life terrorist plotting, including assembling an arsenal of weapons and constructing hundreds of bombs.

According to what they said in the hate-filled webpages, diaries, and videos they left behind, the pair wanted to take revenge on the people they accused of snubbing them and irritating them. More than that, though: They wanted to destroy the school. They wanted to punish the world for not giving them the respect and deference they felt they deserved.

While we will never know answers to all of the questions left in the wake of the tragedy, below you'll find a collection of documents, reports, photos, videos, diaries, and other info about the gunmen that will help. These files shed light on what happened before, during, and after the grim events of one of the world's worst school shootings.

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Eric Harris' online rants began as early as 1996 in the form of hate-filled journal entries broken up with bad jokes and dark lyrics from his favorite songs. After he threatened Brooks Brown on his website and the Browns reported it to the police (Guerra report), Eric turned to keeping his violently angry thoughts in hand-written journals dating back to April 1998. He kept notes about the Doom WAD levels he was creating, but mostly what he wrote about was how much he hated the human race and the world.

His writing explained that he and "V" (short for VoDkA, Dylan Klebold's internet handle and nickname) were different because they had "self-awareness". He wrote: "I will sooner die than betray my own thoughts, but before I leave this worthless place, I will kill whoever I deem unfit..." He documented that he wanted revenge against anyone who he thought had ever wronged him. At one point he complains bitterly about being unable to steal from the van he and Dylan broke into Jan. 30, 1998. Interestingly enough, in an essay he had to write as part of the juvenile diversion program he was sentenced to after getting busted for breaking into a van, he shows a completely different face. In it he talks about the moral lessons he's learned and how sorry he is for what he's done... right at the same time he's writing heatedly in his personal journal about how he should have the right to steal from a van if someone's dumb enough to leave stuff in it worth stealing.

On April 26, 1998, Eric writes about how he thinks society could be improved by boosting natural selection. He outlines plans for how he and "V" would do this, complete with a short weapons detail and tactics. It's a rough but violent fantasy, a foundation for future mayhem. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here, where he suggests crashing a plane in New York City.

* There's some contention over this date, as it does not appear in the Columbine Documents that were released to the public in 2006. This date was derived from a CNN article where I first obtained the scans of the rant in December 2001. You can see a copy of that article at CNN's website here. CNN had first access to the reports so they would know better than I where this date on the scan came from and why it doesn't appear on the version Jefferson County formally released to the public later.

October 1998: Eric predicts that someone is bound to ask, "What were they thinking?" to which he answers, "I want to burn the world, I want to kill everyone except about 5 people...if we get busted any time, we start killing then and there...I ain't going out without a fight."

November 1998: Eric writes in detail about how he wants to have violent sex with a woman, quoting Nine Inch Nails' song Closer (a song about having rough, animalistic sex). This heated entry dissolves into a gory description of how he would like to taste human flesh. The cannibalistic diary entry eventually wraps around to school where Harris shifts his attention from a woman to a freshman, going on in vivid detail about the twisted, violent things he'd like to do. He goes on to write about picking up guns with the help of "someone I won't name" who later turned out to be Robyn Anderson, a close friend of Dylan's. He specifies weapons that were eventually used at Columbine, saying they've reached the "point of no return" and this is what he wants to do with his life.

December 1998: Eric writes that he would have made a good Marine, that "it would have given me a reason to be good." It's hard to say whether he wanted to be a Marine because his father was in the military, because he admired the uniform, or because he thought it would be an easy way to kill people legally. He applied for enlistment in the Marine Corps, but the day the recruiter came to meet with him about his application, Eric's mother Kathy Harris came down into the basement and asked the recruiter if the medication Eric was prescribed for anger management (Luvox) would disqualify him. The recruiter asked to see a bottle, which Mrs. Harris provided. He took the empty bottle with him when he left. The recruiter told investigators that he had tried to contact Eric later about his application but had not reached him, and didn't leave a message about his approval one way or the other. However, according to Brooks Brown, Eric told him shortly after the interrupted meeting that he had been disqualified because he had lied on his application about taking Luvox and a chest condition he had. Eric never got the formal word that he wasn't going to be accepted, but was smart enough to have come to that conclusion himself.

There was only one journal entry for 1999. In it, Eric evaluated his and Dylan's preparations and munitions. He ended it with: "I hate you people for leaving me out of so many fun things." As with the videos he made, in his writings he excused his family of blame for what he was planning to do. "It's my fault! Not my parents, not my brothers, not my friends, not my favorite bands, not computer games, not the media, it's mine." In another entry he wrote, "I'm full of hate and I love it.".

In Klebold's 1998 yearbook Harris wrote, "God I can't wait till they die. I can taste the blood now - NBK" It's believed from other reference of NBK in both gunmen's writings that NBK stood for Natural Born Killers, a gory movie about a senseless killing spree. He went on: "You know what I hate? .....MANKIND!!!!...kill everything...kill everything..." He drew a gunman standing in a sea of dead bodies, with a caption quoted from KMFDM's 'Dogma', "The only reason your still alive is because someone has decided to let you live." He wrote in his own '98 yearbook as well, writing on the photographs of almost every student things like "worthless", "die", and "beat." Further in he simply put X's over the students he didn't like. Very few photos were unmarked. In his 1998/1999 academic day planner were lists of things to buy and "things left to do." On the page for Mother's Day 1999, Harris quoted Shakespeare: "Good wombs hath born bad sons.".

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The first written page of Dylan Klebold's 1997 journal, written was written on March 31, begins with a preface he wrote: "Fact: People are so unaware... well, Ignorance is bliss I guess... that would explain my depression."

The grim words set the tone for the rest of the personal diary. His journal and the things he wrote for school allow for an inside look at what the shooter's mindset was like in the weeks and years before the massacre at Columbine. Dylan describes not fitting in, being depressed, and generally hating his life and existence. In another entry later that year he wrote, "I swear -- like I'm an outcast, & everyone is conspiring against me...".

During one period Dylan's tone briefly changed. He described his 'first love' though it was an unrequited love. He listed several girls he claimed to love, but never said he told them about his feelings. In fact, whenever he brings up the subject of talking to a girl he has a crush on, the romantic prose often dissolves into self-hate. In one letter he wrote (but never delivered - it was found in his notebook) he claimed to love the person dearly. It starts out as a letter from a secret admirer, but quickly turns into a list of all the reasons why someone wouldn't want to be around him. He later wrote another letter to a girl (possibly the same one) that describes in veiled terms how he's planning to do something horrible soon and would understand if she didn't want to be involved. That undelivered letter, too, turns into another exercise in self-loathing.

In November of 1997, he penned out a fantasy about getting a gun and going on a killing spree. Most of his entries had less to do with wanting to hurt other people than himself. They also focused on not understanding why the world and his peers refused to give him the attention and affection he so badly craved. He seemed to hold himself largely at fault for it at times then at other times blames society for not being as smart as him, which would allow them to find common ground with him.

Klebold's 1997/1998 academic day planner is filled with what appear to be random thoughts and poems. One entry simply says, "The lonely man strikes with absolute rage."

In April of 1998, at the end of their junior year Harris and Klebold received their copies of the Columbine High School 1998 yearbook. A year before the rampage, Dylan made four entries in Eric's yearbook. One referred to "the holy April morning of NBK (Natural Born Killers)." Another says, in part: "killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January's incident will be godlike. Not to mention our revenge in the commons."
 

Their "revenge in the commons" was on April 20, 1999 when they tried to blow up the cafeteria and went on their brutal shooting spree. The January incident Dylan refers to in his writing was when he and Eric were caught breaking into a van. Dylan seemed to think that the crime and the juvenile diversion program he was sentenced to had branded him for life as a dangerous criminal. His view of how serious that particular crime was seems extreme considering how relatively minor it actually was. Neither he nor Eric were even sent to juvenile hall. They simply had to complete the diversion program, which they both did so well that they were released early. But to Dylan, this was the point of no return. He was a bad guy now.

In September 1998, Dylan wrote a school essay entitled The Mind and Motives of Charles Manson. He later turned in a paper to Creative Writing class (a class he shared with Eric Harris and Brooks Brown during 4th period) that his teacher, Judith Kelly, thought was inappropriate. She gave a written statement to police following 4-20-99 that detailed the nature of the story and her reaction to it. The story was about a man coming into town and killing all the popular kids. Ms. Kelly talked to Dylan's parents about it; Dylan dismissed it as "It's just a story.". In 2009 Dylan's mother, Susan Klebold, wrote an essay for O Magazine wherein she says that Ms. Kelly didn't actually show Dylan's parents the paper as she didn't have it with her during the meeting. With the Klebolds' consent the teacher said she would turn the writing assignment over to the guidance counselor and see if he thought it should be followed up from but Sue said that the counselor never called them about it.

There were about eight pages found in his notebook, apparently written the day before the assault on the school. One portion read: "About 26.5 hours from now the judgement will begin. Difficult but not impossible, necessary, nervewracking & fun. What fun is life without a little death? It's interesting, when i'm in my human form, knowing i'm going to die. Everything has a touch of triviality to it."