Lakewood, Colo. — Authorities had at least 15 contacts with the Columbine High School killers dating back two years before their murderous attack, the state attorney general said Thursday, angering families of the victims.
Attorney-General Ken Salazar did not, however, blame the Jefferson County sheriff's office for missing warning signs about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Instead, he summarized how investigators reacted to 1997 complaints about Mr. Harris, from a thrown snowball that cracked a car window to a prank telephone call.
There were more ominous signs, too: Authorities have said an anonymous tip that year led a deputy to a website run by Mr. Harris that said the two teens had built pipe bombs and concluded: “Now our only problem is to find the place that will be ‘ground zero.'”
Mr. Harris, 18, and Mr. Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives at the school near Littleton on April 20, 1999. It remains the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.
“In the end, none of the many efforts to open up the Columbine records, including today's activity, will mean much beyond passing curiosity if we cannot learn from this tragedy,” Mr. Salazar said at a news conference.
The announcement came as authorities publicly unveiled a chilling display of evidence from the attack: the murder weapons, bullet fragments and the chairs and tables where 13 people were gunned down by the suicidal gunmen. There was a message board that was put up in a school window the day of the attack that still says in blue Magic Marker: “1 bleeding to death.”
Much of the material is headed for the state archives. Relatives of the dead and survivors of the horrific attack saw much of it for the first time in a private viewing Wednesday.
“When you read about the number of bullets that were shot and you read about the number of guns, it's one thing,” Darrell Scott, whose daughter Rachel was killed, said on NBC's Today. “But when you walk into a room and see the overwhelming numbers of spent shells and bullets and pipe bombs and knives, it was just an overwhelming sight.”
He said it was “the first time my wife and I had seen the gun that actually killed Rachel.”
