Authors: Brooks Brown Rob Merritt
That seemed like an odd request to Judy, if the officers were simply bringing a book bag over. Later that day, two officers sat down at her kitchen table and pulled out several of Brooks's notebooks. They had looks of “grave concern” on their faces, Judy said.
“We have some things that are really going to upset you, Mr. and Mrs. Brown,” they told Randy.
The other leaned in close. “We think you're in danger.”
I came home in time to see my parents at the table with the police. At first it didn't strike me as anything unusual; we'd had so many conversations with the police and the FBI that it had become common to see them around. However, I quickly noticed that this time, they were being a lot more confrontational than before.
They had one of my old notebooks, with my poem about Robert Craig in it. I had written that poem the year before, shortly after Robert had committed suicide. The poem was from Robert's point of view; it talked about depression and death, and his desire to murder his father. The police had read the poem and interpreted it to mean that I was plotting against my own parents.
Trying to keep my cool, I pointed out that underneath the poem, I had written “Dedicated to Robert Craig.” They asked me about other poems in my notebook that also dealt with dark subjects. “Look, I write a lot, and it isn't happy all the time,” I said.
The police had pages of song lyrics that I had printed out from my computer. The police believed I had written them myself, and that they were all about anger and killing. I took one look at them and immediately pointed out which Insane Clown Posse album they were from. Anyone with knowledge of contemporary music or computers would have recognized
that the lyrics had been printed from the Internet. These police officers, however, didn't understand that.
The police pulled out “eyewitness reports” suggesting that I had known about Eric's pipe bombs. One lady had told them she “saw my white car parked over at Eric's house all the time.” My parents pointed out that I don't have a white car.
Next, they had a neighbor who said he'd been jogging one evening when he saw Eric and me together. According to this witness, I was on a red bike, wearing a black trench coat, and Eric and I were “lighting something.”
I don't own a black trench coat, nor do I have a red bike. “Go ahead and look in our garage,” my mom said. “See if there's a red bike there.”
My parents asked when this “incident” had supposedly happened.
“It was around March or April of 1998,” the officer replied.
My parents argued that at that time Eric and I had not even been speaking. In fact, Eric had wanted me dead and posted threats against me. My parents reminded the investigators about Eric's Web pages.
“We're not here to talk about that,” the officers replied.
The interview went on for three hours. They kept repeating, “We want Brooks to take another lie detector test. We want our own test.” Even though we had rebuttals for every piece of “evidence” they pulled out of my bag, they weren't backing down.
Finally my dad said, “You know what? This interview is over. Don't come back unless you really have something.”
The officers left. They had come to prove to my parents that I was a killer, and left looking like fools. Nonetheless, the fact that this had happened almost three months after Stone's original accusation showed that the sheriff wasn't letting up.
A QUESTION I STRUGGLED WITH IN THE MONTHS AFTER THE ATTACK was how to deal with the families of the victims. On the one hand, I wanted to be able to extend my sympathies to them. On the other, I knew they were being fed information from the police that I'd been involved. Because of that, I never knew how to approach them.
I didn't always know when I was going to run into them. One time, I was spending the day with Kevin Larson, who had been the lead singer of our band the summer before. He had started dating a girl named Erin Fleming. The two of us went over to her house; as I was sitting in her living room, I looked around and noticed pictures all over the walls of Kelly Fleming, who had died in the Columbine library. Shaken, I realized that Erin Fleming was Kelly's sister.
I spoke to her mother briefly, telling her who I was and how I knew Erin. We didn't talk about Kelly at all. To be honest, once I had made the connection, I felt really uncomfortable being there. Her parents were very nice, but it was an awkward situation.
I tried to e-mail Tom Mauser a few times. Since I had mentored his son Danny on the debate team, I felt like I should say something now that Danny was gone. Mr. Mauser never wrote me back.
I understand what must have been going through his mind, considering what the sheriff was saying about me. Still, it's hard when you want to
tell a dad how special you thought his kid was, and you can't, because he's been told that you had something to do with his son's death.
Like many of the other parents, Rich Petrone, Daniel Rohrbough's stepfather, wasn't sure what to think about me. But my dad, who knew Rich from the real estate business, managed to talk with him, explaining that the Web pages we had reported to the media were real, and that we were willing to share them. In fact, he said, we were willing to share anything they wanted to see.
This was important, because the deadline for filing lawsuits over the shootings was approaching. Mr. Petrone knew that if we could prove we had reported Eric's Web pages to the police, it would show that the police had had prior warning. So Mr. Petrone arranged for us to meet with Daniel's father, Brian Rohrbough.
Brian Rohrbough has neversettled for easy answers. From the moment his son Danny was killed at Columbine, he demanded information from the police about what had happened and why.
Danny had been killed on the steps outside Columbine High School. He was clearly visible in helicopter footage from TV news reports; the next day, his parents saw a giant photo of his body in the newspaper. It was the first real confirmation they'd had of his death; no one from the sheriff's office had notified them. In fact, Danny's body wasn't moved from that sidewalk for well over a day. The police claimed there were fears of the bodies being “booby-trapped,” and that's why they were left on the ground for so long. Rich Petrone had even offered to sign a waiver saying he didn't care if he got blown up, “but he wasn't going to let Danny's body stay on that sidewalk for another day.”
In the first few months of the investigation, Rohrbough sought constant updates on any conspirators in the attack.
“While I wasn't jumping to any conclusions, I was trying to learn about all of Harris and Klebold's acquaintances,” he says. “I had heard the sheriff say Brooks Brown was a suspect. And at the time, I had no reason to not believe what police were saying.”
Six weeks after Stone's comments about Brooks, Rohrbough went to the sheriff and asked what was going on. “I said to him, ‘You told me this Brown kid was a suspect. When are you going to arrest him?’” he recalls. “Stone told me that Brooks wasn't involved. I didn't think much about that until later, when I realized, ‘Wait a minute. The sheriff told me he's not involved, yet his name is still being thrown around in public.’ That was when I first realized that there was something wrong.
“Even so, I still honestly didn't know what was going on,” he said. “I wasn't jumping to any conclusions. I was just waiting for evidence.”
Now, months later, the Petrones had arranged a meeting between Rohrbough and Brooks's parents. The meeting would take place at the Petrones' home.
“It was very uncomfortable when we first walked in,” Judy Brown recalls. Brian had not arrived yet, and there was a period of tension while they waited with Sue Petrone, Danny Rohrbough's mother. However, once Rohrbough arrived, the Browns started showing the families printouts of Eric's Web pages. Rohrbough was stunned by what he saw.
“Many of the people who tried to offer help didn't have any information I could use,” he says. “They'd heard something from their neighbor, or something like that, and there would be no way to confirm it. When I met with the Browns, though, it was interesting—because not only did they know something, they had documentation. They gave me close to two hundred pages of Web printouts, transcripts, and handwritten notes. There was definitely something there.”
The Browns carefully explained their history with Eric Harris, and the report they had made to the police the year before.
“You could see the confusion,” Judy Brown recalls. “And then, in Brian's face, you could see it hit him: ‘Oh, my God, the police have been lying to us about this.’”
Rohrbough was amazed to learn that the police had never taken Brooks's computer. They had never searched his house. They had never searched his car. They hadn't even questioned him until six days after the attack. “If he's such a big suspect, why didn't they investigate him?” he asked.
Judy Brown made Rohrbough an offer. If he wanted, he could be alone in a room with Brooks—no attorneys, no family members to inter-fere—and ask him anything. The offer impressed Rohrbough.
“From a parent's point of view, that would be one of the first things you would offer if your son has nothing to hide,” Rohrbough said.
However, Rich Petrone made another suggestion: perhaps it would be better for Brooks to show Rohrbough in person where he was on the day of the attack. The families agreed to meet at Columbine High School, to walk the route Brooks had taken that day.
I was scared to meet Brian. I really was. My friends had been responsible for Danny Rohrbough's death. I felt so ashamed of that, and I didn't know what his father, who had been angry enough to tear down the memorial crosses that had been erected for Eric and Dylan, would say to me. On top of that, it would be the first time I'd ever retraced my steps from April 20. I didn't know what to expect.
My parents went with me to Columbine, where we met the Petrones and the Rohrboughs. I thought I had steeled myself for anything; I didn't know if Danny's parents would be rude to me, or if they believed I was to blame. What I hadn't expected was my own reaction when I saw Mr. Rohrbough for the first time. I started to cry.
“He looks like his son,” I said to my mom.
I led the group over to the spot where I'd seen Eric pull into the parking lot. From there, we walked down Pierce, where I heard the first shots. I explained that they had sounded like nail guns, and Brian nodded. Brian was asking questions the entire way, wanting to know what I did at each point along the way. I didn't know it at the time, but he was timing us as we walked. He wanted to make sure my account matched up with everything else he'd heard.
After we had finished the walk, I was badly in need of a cigarette. I shook his hand and stepped away so he could talk to my parents.
In a way, it felt good to talk with one of the victims' parents at length. Now they knew me as a person, rather than just a name they'd heard from the police. At the same time, though, I just felt overwhelmed, especially after taking that walk again. It made the memories way too fresh.
While the walk had been difficult, it was helpful for Brian Rohrbough to finally receive a firsthand account of that day's events. Also, Brooks's explanation matched what Rohrbough had already learned. Matt Houck, who had been in the backseat of Ryan Schwayder's car when Brooks called 911, had also talked to Rohrbough about what had happened that day.
“What Brooks was saying fit the scenario, it fit the surroundings, and it fit what we had already heard from other people,” Rohrbough says. “At the time, there wasn't much information available, so you never knew what to believe. But when you get stories that start to match, there's a much greater chance that they're right.”
Today, Rohrbough believes Brooks was being used by the police.
“It became pretty obvious that Brooks was a convenient person to blame, because of what his father was saying [about the Web pages],”
Rohrbough said. “The easiest way to shut his dad up was to say, ‘Well, he's trying to protect his kid, because his kid's involved.’ And that's what most of the press believed. I sat in on a meeting with a group of reporters who were talking about how mad they were, because they believed what the sheriff was telling them off the record . . . Clearly, the easiest way to shut up somebody is to go after their kid. And that's what the police were doing.”
The Rohrboughs and the Petrones were the first parents that I had the chance to talk extensively with. Later, I received a call from Darrell Scott, Rachel Scott's father.
Mr. Scott had already co-authored a book about his daughter, entitled
Rachel's Tears.
Now he was putting together a tribute video, made up of comments from people who had known her. He had a photo of me studying with Rachel before a debate competition, and he knew that she and I had been friends. So he asked me to participate.
I agreed. I wanted to do it for Rachel.
Mr. Scott and I went to Clement Park, and when he turned on the camera I just started talking. I said that if Eric and Dylan had thought they were getting back at all the people who had made fun of them, they had made a horrible mistake by killing Rachel. If there was one person who would have accepted them, it was her. I talked about our first discussion on faith. I wanted to make it clear that Rachel had never judged people by their beliefs, despite what Bruce Porter had said at her funeral.
Rachel Scott was one of the most beautiful people I've ever known, and being able to speak in her memory gave me one small piece of closure. I thank her family for giving me that chance.
To this day, it's still awkward when I'm around the families of the people Eric and Dylan wounded or killed. No matter how nice they are to
me, I know that somewhere deep down, they're looking at me and thinking, “I lost my child to those two sick bastards, and this guy was their friend.” It's hard to approach them. It's hard to talk to them.
Still, once I get to talking with them, they understand that I really didn't have any clue about what was going to happen. They realize that I lost people that day, too. I'm not a conspirator. I'm just another person, and the friends I thought I knew betrayed me.