Columbine High School massacre

On April 20, 1999, twelfth-grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 students and one teacher in a school shooting and attempted bombing at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. Their gunshots injured 20 more people; three others were injured while trying to escape. The attack ended when Harris and Klebold died by suicide. The Columbine massacre was the deadliest mass shooting at a K–12 school in U.S. history until the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in December 2012. It remains among the most infamous massacres in the United States and the deadliest mass shooting in Colorado. As of June 2025, it had inspired more than 70 copycat attacks, a phenomenon dubbed the Columbine effect, and Columbine has become a byword for modern school shootings.

Harris and Klebold, who planned for roughly a year, intended the attack to be primarily a bombing and only secondarily a shooting. The pair launched a shooting attack after the homemade bombs they planted in the school failed to detonate. Their motive remains uncertain. The police were slow to enter the school and were heavily criticized for not intervening during the shooting. The incident resulted in the introduction of the immediate action rapid deployment (IARD) tactic, which is used in active-shooter situations, and an increased emphasis on school security with zero-tolerance policies. The violence sparked debates over American gun culture and gun control laws, high school cliques, subcultures (e.g. goths), outcasts, and school bullying, as well as teenage use of pharmaceutical antidepressants, the Internet, and violence in video games and film.

Many makeshift memorials were created after the massacre, including ones using victim Rachel Scott's car and John Tomlin's truck. Fifteen crosses for the victims and the shooters were erected on top of a hill in Clement Park. The crosses for Harris and Klebold were later removed after controversy. The planning for a permanent memorial began in June 1999, and the resulting Columbine Memorial opened to the public in September 2007.

Perpetrators

Eric Harris

Eric David Harris (April 9, 1981 – April 20, 1999) was born in Wichita, Kansas. The Harris family relocated often, as Harris's father was a US Air Force transport pilot. The family moved from Plattsburgh, New York, to Littleton, Colorado, in July 1993, when his father retired from military service.

Harris attended Ken Caryl Middle School, where he met Klebold. In 1996, the Harris family purchased a house south of Columbine High School (CHS). Harris's older brother attended college at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Dylan Klebold

Dylan Bennet Klebold ( KLEE-bohld; September 11, 1981 – April 20, 1999) was born in Lakewood, Colorado. His parents were pacifists and attended a Lutheran church with their children. Both Dylan and his older brother attended confirmation classes in accordance with the Lutheran tradition. Klebold was named after poet Dylan Thomas.

Klebold attended Normandy Elementary for first and second grade before transferring to Governor's Ranch Elementary, and became part of the CHIPS ("Challenging High Intellectual Potential Students") program.

Background

Criminal history

In 1996, 15-year-old Harris created a private website on America Online (AOL), initially to host video game levels (known as WADs) that he created for the first-person shooter games Doom, Doom II, and Quake. On the site, Harris began a blog, which included details of mischief and vandalism, such as lighting fireworks with Klebold and others. Harris referred to these acts as "rebel missions" and the blog posts as "mission logs". In early 1997, the blog posts showed signs of Harris's anger against society. By the end of the year, the site contained instructions on how to make explosives (specifically pipe bombs). In August 1997, Harris wrote on the blog "All I want to do is kill and injure as many of you as I can, especially a few people. Like Brooks Brown." Brown was a friend and classmate of his. After Brown's parents viewed the site, they contacted the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office on August 7, 1997. An investigator drafted an affidavit requesting a search warrant for the Harris household, but it was never submitted to a judge.

On January 30, 1998, Harris and Klebold were arrested for breaking into a white van parked near Littleton and stealing tools and computer equipment. In a joint court hearing they pled guilty to felony theft. The judge sentenced them to a 12-month juvenile diversion program. As a result, they both attended mandatory classes such as anger management and met with diversion officers. They were both released from the program a month early.

Writings

Shortly after the court hearing for the van break-in, Harris reverted his website back to just hosting user-created levels of Doom and began keeping a journal. Klebold had already been keeping a personal journal since March 1997. In both their journals, Harris and Klebold later plotted the attack. Harris's plan for an attack included possibly escaping to a foreign country or hijacking an aircraft at Denver International Airport and crashing it into a building in New York City.

Klebold and Harris both made entries in their journals on topics related to sexuality. Klebold expressed shame for his sexual interests, which included bondage and foot fetishism, stating that, "My humanity has a foot fetish, & bondage exteme [sic] liking. I try to thwart it..." Harris described his desire for raping and torturing women in his bedroom. Harris also expressed interest in cannibalism, stating that he would like to dismember a woman with whom he could have "animalistic sex" and eat her flesh.

Harris and Klebold's schoolwork displayed themes of violence. In December 1997, Harris wrote a paper on school shootings titled "Guns in School", and a poem from the perspective of a bullet. Klebold wrote a short story about a man killing students which worried his teacher so much that she alerted his parents, when Klebold was confronted about it, he said it was "just a story". For one project, Harris wrote a paper on Nazi Germany and Klebold wrote a paper on Charles Manson. In a psychology class, Harris wrote that he dreamed of going on a shooting spree with Klebold. Harris's journals described several experimental bomb detonations.

Nearly a year before the massacre, Klebold wrote a message in Harris's 1998 yearbook: "killing enemies, blowing up stuff, killing cops!! My wrath for January's incident will be godlike. Not to mention our revenge in the commons"; "the commons" was slang for the school cafeteria.

Tapes

Basement tapes

Harris and Klebold were both enrolled in video-production classes and kept five video tapes that were recorded with school video equipment. Only two of these, "Hitmen for Hire" and "Rampart Range", and part of a third known as "Radioactive Clothing", have been released. The remaining three tapes detailed their plans and reasons for the massacre, including the ways they hid their weapons and deceived their parents. Most were filmed in the Harris family basement, and are thus known as the basement tapes. Thirty minutes before the attack, they made a final video saying goodbye and apologizing to their friends and families.

In December 1999, before anyone besides investigators had seen them, Time magazine published an article on these tapes. The victims' family members threatened to sue Jefferson County. As a result, select victim families and journalists were allowed to view them, though the tapes were then withheld from the public and, in 2011, destroyed for fear of inspiring future massacres. Transcripts of some of the dialogue and a short clip recorded surreptitiously by a victim's father still exist, with the transcripts being online via various resources. The pair claimed they were going to make copies of the tapes to send to news stations but never did so.

When an economics class had Harris make an ad for a business, he and Klebold made a video called Hitmen for Hire on December 8, 1998, which was released in February 2004. It depicts them as part of the Trench Coat Mafia, a clique in the school who wore black trench coats and opposed jocks, extorting money for protecting preps from bullies. Klebold and Harris themselves were apparently not a part of the Trench Coat Mafia but were friends with some of its members. They wore black trench coats on the day of the massacre, and the Hitmen for Hire video seemed a kind of dress rehearsal, showing them walking the halls of the school, and shooting bullies outside with fake guns.

A video was released showing the pair doing target practice in nearby foothills known as Rampart Range, with the weapons they would use in the massacre.

Nixon tape

Before the massacre, Harris left a micro cassette labeled "Nixon" on the kitchen table. On it, Harris said "It is less than nine hours now," placing the recording at some time around 2:30 a.m. He went on to say "People will die because of me," and "It will be a day that will be remembered forever."