Columbine

This chapter’s premiere focus is to explain the origins of the Trench Coat Mafia, a group of students in which media erroneously included Eric and Dylan. A student, Eric Dutro, bought “a long black duster at Sam’s Club” as part of a Halloween outfit. Dutro was called “a freak and a faggot” by other kids at Columbine, and starting dressing in a more non-standard fashion to “give [the other students] a hell of a freak show” (147). Dutro and some of his friends begin wearing the black dusters on a regular basis. The group earns the nickname the Trench Coat Mafia. Cullen states that while Eric and Dylan knew the kids comprising the Trench Coat Mafia, “they were not among them”; however, he adds, “After the TCM heyday was over, Eric got himself a trench coat. Dylan followed. They wore them to the massacre…the choice would cause tremendous confusion” (148).

In Chapter 28, Cullen delves into how Eric and Dylan were erroneously linked to the Trench Coat Mafia following the Columbine mass shooting. He begins the chapter noting, “The Trench Coat Mafia was mythologized because it was colorful, memorable, and fit the existing myth of the school shooter as outcast loner. All the Columbine myths worked that way.” He adds,“We remember Columbine as a pair of outcast Goths from the Trench Coat Mafia snapping and tearing through their high school hunting down jocks to settle a long-running feud. Almost none of that happened. No Goths, no outcasts, nobody snapping. No targets, no feud, and no Trench Coat Mafia. Most of these elements existed at Columbine—which is what gave them such currency. They just had nothing to do with the murders” (149).

Cullen comments that one of the first pieces of journalism about the shooting—written by journalists at the Rocky Mountain News—was “the first story to get the essence of the attack right—and one of the last” (149). Harris and Klebold, wrongly linked to the Trench Coat Mafia, were presented as “homosexual Goths in makeup, orchestrating a bizarre death pact for the year 2000” (150). More incorrect information would follow, and students themselves would be influenced by media mention of the Trench Coat Mafia, effectively getting students to believe that it had to be the TCM who was behind the shooting. Cullen adds that the media did a poor job of questioning the TCM’s possible involvement: “In those first five hours, not a single person on the CNN feeds asked a student how they knew the killers were part of the Trench Coat Mafia” (151).

By the end of the week, only the Rocky Mountain News and Washington Post refused to buy in to the theory of Harris and Klebold targeting both athletes and non-whites during the school shooting. While media bought in to the targeting theory, law enforcement knew it was not true. Diane Sawyer, on television news show 20/20, runs a segment that vilifies the entire Goth subculture. Other right-wing publications label the boys—incorrectly—as gay. Cullen states, “The only real problems [with these types of reports] were that Goths tended to be meek and pacifist; they had never been associated with violence, much less murder; and, aside from the long black trench coats, they had almost nothing in common with Eric and Dylan” (156).

Here, Cullen details vandalizing “missions” carried out by Eric, Dylan, and friend Zack Heckler during the boys’ sophomore year. They also have a run-in with friend Brooks Brown, with Eric denting Brown’s car with a chunk of ice. Things escalate, and parents get involved. Harris confronts Brown’s mom while the Browns are on their way to talk to Eric’s parents. Eric makes threats on Brooks’ person and the police get involved. Wayne Harris begins to keep a journal of his son’s actions. 

Eric’s death threats toward Brooks Brown, taken from Eric’s website, reach law enforcement in charge of the shooting around noon on April 20 (the day of the shooting). Cullen notes that “Jeffco officials quoted Eric’s site extensively in [their] search warrants but then denied ever seeing [the site]” (165). Cullen continues, “A few days after the massacre, about a dozen local officials slipped away from the Feds and gathered clandestinely in an innocuous office in the county Open Space Department building. It would come to be known as the Open Space meeting…The meeting was kept secret…for five years (166).

Officials would deny having seen Eric’s website, and the threats on it, as well as denying finding pipe bombs that Eric talked about on his site. Cullen says, “The cover-your-ass meeting was a strictly Jeffco affair, limited mostly to senior officials. Most of the detectives on the case—including the Feds and cops from local jurisdictions—were unaware of the cover-up” (166).

An ATF agent gets Kyle Duran to admit hewas the middleman for Harris and Mark Manes, the person who sold them the TEC-9 firearm that Dylan used during the shooting. Manes is arrested and confesses.

The chapter then switches focus to FBI Agent Dwayne Fuselier watching the boys’ Basement Tapes videos, over and over, looking for motive. Fuselier hears an ATF agent quoting a line from Eric’s journal, “‘I hate the fucking world’” (169). Cullen remarks that Eric’s journal “was angry but deeply reflective … and infinitely more candid about the urges driving Eric to kill.” Cullen concludes the chapter by saying that “Eric would prove the easier killer to understand. Eric always knew what he was up to. Dylan did not” (170).