Authors: Brooks Brown Rob Merritt
“Hey, look—media guy,” my friend joked. “How many points do I get if I aim for him?”
I shook my head. “I have no problem with the media,” I said. “Where would Martin Luther King have been if there weren't any cameras?”
I know it's popular in many circles to bash the media; people in Littleton do it all the time. I won't join them. I've met a countless number of reporters in the three years since Columbine; not only did most of
them prove to be great people, but we would never have uncovered the information we did without them.
It was the media that showed us what Eric and Dylan said on their basement videotapes. It was the media that kept constant pressure on the police to release more information. And when the media reported Sheriff Stone's comments about my “involvement” in the murders early on, they also gave my family plenty of chances to respond on the same day. They treated us with fairness.
In fact, I owe a debt of gratitude to the producers of CBS's
60 Minutes II.
Thanks to their work, it was finally proved—after two years of doubt—that my family had been telling the truth from the beginning.
Producers from
60 Minutes II
arrived in Littleton sometime between January and February of 2001. They were aware of the many new developments in the Columbine case, and wanted to dedicate a full hour to reporting on it—an unusual move, since they usually have three or four different stories per show.
Much of their report was dedicated to the police response to Columbine, and whether more could have been done. In interviews with Ed Bradley, I recounted the story of Eric's Web pages yet again.
While
60 Minutes II
was in town, my parents received a letter from Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas. We had asked for an internal investigation of Columbine back in October, and he was writing to tell us that the investigation would not happen; one reason he listed was that he had seen an affidavit for a search warrant of the Harris home in 1998, and it was not enough reason for a new investigation.
We were taken aback. No search warrant had been released among the 11,000 pages of police reports. If one existed, it would prove that everything my parents had been saying for the past two years was true. The police had insisted that there had been no follow-up investigation, that the Web site couldn't be accessed, and that my parents had never
met with Detective Hicks or with the bomb squad. If a search warrant was out there, it was imperative that we get hold of it to prove them wrong.
My parents faxed a copy of the letter to
60 Minutes II.
From there, CBS took the ball and ran with it. The show's attorney went to Jeffco with the letter in hand and demanded that the search warrant be released. With their help, we uncovered the truth.
The release of the search warrant was major news in Denver. For the Browns, it marked vindication after two years of being told they were lying.
The affidavit was prepared by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in March of 1998. According to the affidavit, a pipe bomb that had been found in a field one month before matched Eric Harris's description of his homemade bombs on his Web site.
Bomb squad member Mike Guerra wrote in the affidavit that “the size (of the bombs) is consistent with the devices labeled by Harris as ‘Atlanta’ and ‘Phobus.’” Yet the proposed search warrant had never been presented to a judge.
“I'm happy to learn more of the truth,” Brian Rohrbough told CNN on April 10. “They had denied this application existed. Columbine should never have happened. It begs the question, ‘Why did you deceive everyone?’”
A month later, Sheriff Stone would claim that “there was no attempt to hide documents” showing that investigators wanted to search Eric Harris's home in 1998. “I thought it was fairly well known,” he said in a television interview. “We weren't trying to hide anything. . . . Nobody asked for it.”
Stone's assertion was false. Judge Brooke Jackson had ordered the sheriff's department to release all of its Columbine files, except for those
the judge specifically wanted withheld. By not releasing the affidavit, police had directly disobeyed the judge's order.
“People criticize the media for being negative,” Randy Brown says today. “I'll tell you, the Sheriff's Department was lying to us for two years, and none of this would have gotten out if it weren't for the media. Without them, we would be nowhere.”
It meant everything to my family to finally have proof that we'd been telling the truth. But at the same time, it was hard to be happy when we saw that search warrant. Had the warrant been approved by a judge, I believe everything would have been different. The police would have found the pipe bombs. They would have found Eric's journals, and the violent writings on his computer. He would have been stopped.
Instead, that chance slipped through the cracks.
OVER A YEAR AFTER JUDGE BROOKE JACKSON ORDERED THE RELEASE of all Columbine material, the new revelations kept coming.
In March of 2002, crime-scene photos from the Columbine murders were leaked to the media. The
Rocky Mountain News
published a detailed account of the photos, but spared the public from the sight of them; however, the paper also cautioned that the photos were circulating throughout Denver. The
Denver Post
warned that it was only a matter of time before the photos were picked up by a tabloid or posted on the Internet.
Randy Brown condemned Stone for the mistake, saying that if his office couldn't even keep crime scene photos under wraps, he should resign. Parents of the victims were horrified; Tom Mauser told the
Rocky Mountain News,
“If it was their child that was murdered, would they want that picture shown to other people? It's beyond me.”
It wasn't the first such leak. In November 2001, the journals of Eric Harris were also leaked to the media. Those journals contained detailed plans by Harris to attack Columbine High School, as well as an entry that described in detail what Harris wanted to do to Brooks. Harris had been plotting to break into the Brown home on the morning of the attack, kill Brooks and his family, and burn down their house before moving on to Columbine and continuing the slaughter there
.
Had the search warrant drafted by the police been served, these writings probably would have been found as well.
In late 2001, a witness came forward to say that a member of the SWAT team at Columbine feared he had “accidentally shot a student” during the attack. According to Brian Rohrbough, that student was his son Daniel. Bullet shells from police were found all around Daniel's body, and investigators recovered only one of the three bullets that killed him. Furthermore, police officer Jim Taylor told Brian Rohrbough that he had seen Daniel killed while running from Eric and Dylan—which didn't explain how Daniel was shot from the front, at the angle of someone below him.
Daniel's parents tape-recorded this conversation. When the police issued a statement from Taylor saying he had never told Brian he'd seen Daniel shot, Brian produced the tape. Taylor was placed on leave the next day.
Despite these new revelations, in November 2001 U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock threw out all of the Columbine families' lawsuits except that of Angela Sanders. The judge described the slow police response to dying teacher Dave Sanders as “shocking to the conscience of this federal court.”
However, he wrote in response to the other suits that “holding police officers liable in hindsightforeveryinjurious consequence of their actions would paralyze the functions of law enforcement.”
Under pressure, Sheriff Stone asked investigators from the nearby El Paso CountySheriff's Office to conduct theirown investigation of Rohrbough's death. However, the investigation would be conducted behind closed doors, with no involvement from the families—and no promise of new information.
With the support of Colorado Governor Bill Owens, the victims' families requested that a grand jury be convened to investigate Columbine.
That request was denied. The families were told by U.S. Attorney John Suthers that even if there was evidence linking a police officer with Daniel Rohrbough's death, Suthers still wouldn't see reason to call for such an investigation.
The families had one option left. They pressed for a legislative investigation of the Columbine massacre at the state level. They received backing from State Representative Don Lee, who proposed a bill creating a committee that would have full subpoena powers.
This would be the first-ever investigation to have that ability; the Columbine Review Commission had been unable to force Sheriff Stone or other responding officers to testify. The committee would also be able to subpoena records that were not available to the general public.
On March 8, 2002, survivors and their families went to the state capital for a hearing to determine whether such a panel would be created. The House Civil Justice and Judiciary Committee conducted the hearing.
The lawsuits had been thrown out. Open-records requests had failed. This was the families' last chance to learn the truth about what had happened at Columbine.
Brooks and his parents made plans to speak before the committee that day. It was the first time Brooks would appear in public alongside the parents of the kids he had been accused of plotting against.
I arrived at the hearing a few minutes late. I'd given Richard Castaldo a ride there, and we'd been held up by the downtown Denver traffic. By the time we arrived and got Richard's wheelchair unloaded and assembled, Representative Lee had already given his opening statement.
However, I was there in time to see the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office put on a show as it defended its actions.
Investigator Kate Battan and Jeffco's attorney, Bill Tuthill, sat before the committee as their assistants wheeled boxes of evidence files into the room. I heard one of the victims' parents compare it to the scene in
Miracle on 34th Street
where all of the letters get brought into the courtroom and dumped on the judge's desk, overflowing onto the floor.
Tuthill described how open his department had been with the public. “The Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, over the course of the last few years, has produced a phenomenal, unheralded amount of material in unprecedented volumes during this particular investigation,” he said. “They are available not only to the news media, but to the families of the victims and to the public at large.
“The truth is, contrary to what you may read in the papers or hear from some constituents, a wealth of information concerning what happened at Columbine High School has already been produced,” Tuthill continued. “There is no need to go through this legislative inquiry in order to obtain additional information.”
The floor was opened to comments from the public. The first to speak were those opposed; one of them, Rachel Erbert, was a former classmate of mine.
“I think the answers that many people are looking for, to give closure, are not going to be found out in this lifetime,” she said. “For me personally, I can't get closure with this in the newspaper every single day. And I think it's going to increase the hurt.”
Another local resident went on to criticize my father and Brian Rohrbough at length, referring to their efforts as “bulldog persistence.” The speaker, who claimed that his wife, a reporter, had been “traumatized” by a story she did on Columbine, said there would be no purpose served by any further investigation.
“Every time this comes up on the front page . . . it's re-traumatizing people who were involved,” he said. “Some of these people are family
members, some of them are students who were in the school, some of them are people in the sheriff's department. . . Is it worth going through this process again for what little we're going to learn? I don't think it is.”
I looked over at Richard, watching the proceedings intently from his wheelchair. We spoke briefly, and with only a few minutes to spare, I began penciling in some changes to the speech I was about to give. Then they called my name.
I came forward and sat down before the nine-member committee. Behind me were the Rohrboughs and the Petrones, the Velasquezes and the Kechters, the Flemings, Lauren Townsend's mother, my parents, my friends . . . and on the other side, there was Kate Battan, and the representatives of the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.
I cleared my throat and began.
I'm Brooks Brown, and I'm here representing myself. I would like to apologize, because Richard Castaldo won't be testifying. He really didn't have too much to say. He's been rather sad lately. But he and I talk a lot about Columbine. He and I have kind of grown into a friendship.
I've seen Richie change. I saw him before Columbine; he was a real outgoing kid. He's changed a lot since it happened. Yet I sat back there and I asked him, after I heard all those people testify, whether he feels “traumatized.”
You see, Richie's paralyzed. You can't miss him; he's back there in the wheelchair, because he got shot in the spine. But he hears about Columbine, and it doesn't re-traumatize him.
In my case, my friends did this. And I was called “murderer” for months afterward. John Stone maligned my name many times. So did other people, saying I was a possible suspect. And
my parents, as you saw up here—Randy and Judy Brown—they are maligned all the time.
It doesn't re-traumatize them. It doesn't re-traumatize me. It makes me sad, but it doesn't re-traumatize me.
There are a lot of kids who remember what that school was, and they remember what Eric and Dylan and people like me went through—the outcasts. They look at it in a different way than most of the other people do. They won't be here testifying today, because they're scared that what happened to me may happen to them.
They say we've learned lessons from Columbine; I would like to state that while we may have—and while we may have become more strict about certain things—there were still things before Columbine that were illegal, and Eric and Dylan got away with them.