No Easy Answers (21 page)

My aunt, an attorney in Michigan, was the first person to advise me of this. Friends weighed in on the subject as well. Their consensus, based on what had happened so far, was that the police couldn't be trusted.

Nonetheless, I wanted to clear my name, and by not taking a lie detector test, I looked like I had something to hide. So my family came up with a compromise. We paid to have an independent third party conduct the test.

Alverson & Associates, a polygraph company based in Denver, agreed to our request. On May 11, administrator David Henigsman hooked me up to the sensors and began asking questions. He started with simple things, like “Is your name Brooks Brown?” and “Are you a student at Columbine High School?” Then he began asking me about the attack.

He asked if I had ever seen Eric and Dylan's pipe bombs, or if I had ever helped to make one. He asked if I had any prior knowledge of what was going to happen. He asked whether I had any reason to lie.

I passed.

We gave the police the results, including a signed statement from Alverson that I had been truthful. The police weren't satisfied. They wanted the video of the test, the complete transcript, and all computer data. We refused. My dad told them, “Look, Alverson is a trusted name that has been used all over the country. If this isn't going to convince you, then nothing will. We don't owe you anything else at this point.”

Even though Stone had named me as a possible suspect, my room was never searched. Neither was my car. My computer wasn't seized. These steps were taken with other acquaintances of Eric and Dylan, even though their names were never given to the press as possible suspects. They weren't with me.

Around the middle of May, my parents got a phone call from the producers of
The Oprah Winfrey Show.
Oprah had already done one show about Columbine, where she had spoken with parents of the victims. Now she wanted to hear from me about what had happened with Eric's Web pages.

My mom turned down the invitation at first; she didn't want people to think we were using the tragedy to meet Oprah Winfrey or to get famous.

The problem was, several media outlets had stopped listening to us about Eric's Web pages. Since the police were denying that we had talked with them, and Stone was suggesting that I'd been in on the attack, they weren't believing my family anymore. We realized that this show was a chance to get our story out there. So, after further consideration, we agreed.

We didn't care about being on TV. We just wanted to get the truth out. We wanted people to know that if something like this could happen at Columbine, it could happen anywhere. All around, we were hearing that music had caused Columbine, or video games had caused Columbine. We had to counter that.

People needed to know that bullying and injustice had caused this. Parents and administrators not being attentive to the needs of their kids had caused this. We didn't want anyone else to go through what our community had suffered. We wanted to help stop Columbine from happening again.

I also had the opportunity to speak up in my defense, to answer the accusations before a national audience.

We appeared on the show May 21. Oprah's producers provided the tickets to Chicago, where the show is taped. I was actually nervous about getting on a plane; I've always hated flying. Nonetheless, after the events of the past month, leaving Littleton behind for a little while was a relief.

It was hard to make it through the taping. Only a few days before, I had finally come to grips with the idea that Eric and Dylan really were dead, that I would never be able to confront them with what they had done, would never have that outlet for my pain and confusion. It had only been a month since the shootings; my emotions were still raw.

I thought I was prepared to talk, but then the taping began. Immediately the producers played a “montage” tape that showed our community in mourning, video footage of Dylan, and a general review of
the events of April 20. At the end, Oprah projected the drawing I'd made when Dylan and I were in grade school. It showed two friends holding hands, with a caption underneath that said, “What scares me most is if Dylan does boast that he isn't my friend.”

Seeing it all projected up there, I felt all the pain coming back. It was all I could do not to start crying all over again. And it was right at that moment that the video ended and the lights came up on me.

“Brooks still cannot believe his boyhood friend has done this,” Oprah said, turning to me.

I nodded, and took a breath.

“And I know that the Klebolds, if they had known about Eric's Web page, if they had known anything about any of this—they would have been all over it,” I said.

My mom went on to explain how we had turned over the Web pages, and the police hadn't followed up on them. My dad told Oprah about the different options the police could have pursued. I talked about my last conversation with Eric, the atmosphere of the school, and how I was still trying to understand what had happened.

We were joined during the show by Gavin DeBecker, an expert on predicting violence and author of the book
Protecting the Gift: Keeping Children and Teenagers Safe.
DeBecker was quick to criticize Sheriff Stone for his comments.

“I think what the sheriff's comments about Brooks seemed to indicate, when he said he may be a suspect, is that typical example of institutional BS that says ‘those people know something about our department, and I want to now reduce their credibility,’” DeBecker said.

Instead of finding the easiest ways to point fingers and avoid blame, DeBecker said, people need to look deeper for the answers. He suggested that kids in my generation had “grown up with death in a way that you and I never did.”

“This is their world,” he said. “These boys give us all the opportunity to look at ourselves.... The shooting gives us the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, what's this about?’ Something's clearly different here when boys are going into high schools and doing this. We have an opportunity now.”

Oprah encouraged people to learn from what had happened at Columbine.

“I'm thinking if we don't learn from this, we'll see it again,” she said.

Those words echoed my own feelings. Since we had been denied the chance to ask Eric and Dylan why they had done what they'd done, we would have to learn on our own.

My family's appearance on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
helped get the word out. Other shows invited us to appear as well. However, one particular appearance wound up falling through.

I had been invited to participate in a group talk with President Bill Clinton in early June. The discussion, called “Kids and Guns,” would have Clinton presiding over a panel of teens from around the country. It would be televised on ABC's
Good Morning America
.

The night before I was going to get on a plane for Washington, D.C., the network called to rescind my invitation. I had been removed because as “a witness in an active investigation,” I would not be allowed to enter the White House. A different student from Columbine wound up attending in my place.

When they told me that, I just laughed. That was all I could do.

The day after our appearance on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
aired, graduation ceremonies were held for the Class of 1999. We tried to make it seem as normal as possible. My family posed for photos with me in my robe before we left for the ceremony. My parents told me how proud they were.

Still, there was no getting past the shadow that hung over that day. The ceremony was being televised nationally. Everyone was watching us.

Principal DeAngelis gave a speech to the 437 kids that were graduating that day.

“Two of the graduating seniors of the Class of 1999 and one of the faculty members are no longer with us,” he said. “Their lives were cut down too short. Their lives were full of courage and hope and enthusiasm. We will never forget that they loved us as much as we loved them. Each of us will carry the spirit of Isaiah Shoels, Lauren Townsend, and Dave Sanders into the future.”

Valeen Schnurr, Jeanna Park, and Lisa Kreutz, all of whom had been wounded at Columbine, were there to receive their diplomas. Lauren Townsend's family walked across the stage to accept her diploma.

I felt drained afterwards. My parents gave me a hug, and then I stepped away for a moment, to be alone with my thoughts. When I did so, I became aware of someone standing behind me. It was Principal DeAngelis.

I hadn't spoken to him since the shootings.

“How are you, Brooks?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I'm doing.” Seeing as how the administration had asked me not to return to school, I really didn't feel like talking to him.

“What did you think of my speech?” he asked.

I paused and looked at him.

“I thought it was bad,” I said after a moment.

DeAngelis looked taken aback. “What?”

“Look, fifteen people died that day,” I said. “Not just the kids that you named up there. We lost people that day that you didn't even count. That your school cost the lives of. Avoiding the truth doesn't change it.”

“I just thought it would make it nicer for these kids,” DeAngelis said. “Easier to deal with.”

“You're wrong,” I said. I turned and walked away.

DeAngelis followed me. He'd been reading the papers; he knew my family had been speaking out against the atmosphere at Columbine. “What did I do?” he asked me. “Why are you and your parents so upset with me?”

I could have told him. For four years, the administration had turned a blind eye to the torment the unpopular kids suffered every day. They had allowed that atmosphere of hate and cruelty to exist. And now—even as DeAngelis gave speech after speech about Columbine being “full of love”—the school had asked me and the rest of Eric and Dylan's friends to just “go away” after the shootings. The words he had said to the cameras did not reflect reality.

I didn't feel like fighting with him about it, though. Graduation was over. I was done with that school now.

I walked away from DeAngelis and rejoined my family.

At the same time students were graduating from Columbine, Sheriff Stone told the
Denver Post
he was “bowing out of the media maelstrom.”

Stone's accusation against Brooks wasn't the only thing he'd done that was attracting criticism. From the beginning, Stone made blunders and comments to the media that were either uninformed or flat-out incorrect.

On the day of the shooting, Stone said there were “up to twenty-five dead,” even though parents were still at Leawood Elementary waiting for word on their children. Stone claimed that Eric and Dylan tried three times to escape the school and were turned back by gunfire each time. The official report from the sheriff's office later indicated that no such thing had happened.

Early in the investigation, Stone spoke about how he believed the parents of Eric and Dylan should be held accountable. Those words might have scared off the Harrises from cooperating with investigators; they demanded immunity from prosecution before they would consent to police interviews, and when that immunity was denied, they refused to talk.

He also implied that three students who were detained outside of the school on the day of the shooting might be involved. The three students identified themselves as the “Splatter Punks.” They said they were only there because they had heard about the shootings on the radio and come to the school out of curiosity.

Stone told authorities he suspected them “because the shootings were not on the radio at that time.” Yet his department's own official spokesman pointed out that the students had already been cleared. Stone wound up holding a midnight press conference to tell reporters that what he'd said earlier that day was wrong.

In a May 7, 1999 article, “Colorado Sheriff to Stop Talking to Reporters,”
Washington Post
writer Tom Kenworthy shared concerns from local authorities about Sheriff Stone.

“To some senior law enforcement officials here, none of whom will comment publicly, Stone is violating a cardinal rule of criminal investigations: Don't say anything that might tip off possible subjects or potentially jeopardize future prosecutions,” Kenworthy wrote. “Stone's sometimes ill-considered public statements, they suggest, reflect his lack of senior lawenforcementexperience and training, and underscore howfar removed he is now from his days as a policeman in suburban Lakewood.”

By the time I graduated, the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department had already conducted three interviews with me. So it wasn't a surprise to my mom when they called again in July for another conversation.

The police said they had my backpack. When we got back to my house on April 20 and I saw my brother run out of the house, I jumped out of the car and ran to hug him; I left my backpack behind. It had never occurred to me to go back for it, so it had remained in Ryan Schwayder's backseat.

On May 18, Detective Jon Watson interviewed Ryan about what had happened. Watson asked at length about my actions that day; Ryan explained that he and Deanna had picked me up, and I had told them there was a shooting. According to Watson's report, Ryan's mom commented that my bag was still in the Jeep. Watson chose to take it.

Over those next two months, the police went through the contents of my backpack, looking for something that would connect me to Columbine. Now they were calling my parents for a fourth interview—and they had a “revelation” in store.

When she answered the phone, Judy Brown said, the officer on the other end was very polite and friendly. He said the police had Brooks's backpack, and that they were going to bring it over to the house.

“You don't have to do that,” she said. “We'll come down and get it.”

“No, no,” the officer replied. “I want to do this for you, because I'm sure you and Mr. Brown have questions for me, and we want to answer every question you have.”

“Okay, then,” Judy said. “Just drop on by.”

“No, I want to make an appointment,” the officer said. “Andyou're sure Mr. Brown will be there, too?”