Chris Morris

     
     
     

 

 

 

 
 
 
Cops put killers' pal to work on case

Morris agrees to call Duran as investigators listen to conversation

By Carla Crowder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer


 

Former Columbine student Chris Morris was repeatedly interrogated, his home and clothes searched, by investigators seeking a possible third gunman.

Morris' alibi checked out, so the cops put him to work.

The beret-wearing Morris, described in pages of police interviews with associates as an angry outcast, agreed to telephone Philip Duran from an FBI office as investigators listened in and recorded the conversation.

Duran was later implicated as the middleman who helped the killers buy a semiautomatic TEC-DC9 pistol used in the killing. He's serving a 41/2-year prison sentence after pleading guilty to providing a handgun to a minor and possession of an illegal sawed off shotgun.

Stuttering and shellshocked four days after the April 20 killings, the men discuss how they had no idea their friends planned to pull off a mass murder.

"I'm still trying to figure out why they did it. You have any idea?" Morris asks.

Duran responds: "I have no clue, dude."

Morris says he "never noticed anything."

Duran says he never saw it coming.

Morris adds, "You know it just pisses me off that they go and do something like this."

Morris is a persistent interviewer, three times maneuvering the conversation back to how Harris and Klebold got their guns.

"Did they get those like when Eric turned 18 — did they go out and buy those, the shotguns?" he asks.

Duran responds: "I have no clue, dude."

Morris: "Did they steal 'em, ah man. Because they keep askin' me all this, and I'm like, I have no idea, you know. Tryin' to find these things out."

Duran: "I have no clue, dude."

Morris insists he knows that Harris and Klebold had tried to buy a gun from Duran and one of his friends.

 

Duran again denies involvement. Both express relief that they weren't involved.

"Didn't do nothin' man. I don't know," Duran says.

He turned himself in to authorities nearly two months later.

Described by numerous students as a close friend of both killers, Morris was known as a leading member of the Trench Coat Mafia, a loose-knit clique of outcast students at Columbine High, according to police reports.

Morris and Duran worked with Harris and Klebold at Blackjack Pizza.

Interviews with more than a dozen associates of Harris and Klebold paint conflicting pictures of the Trench Coat Mafia.

Some students say the group banded together over a shared interest in music and video games, and a need to stand up to the bullying "jocks."

But sometimes they were the bullies.

Student Alexandria Marsh, who told police she was a past member, said people in the group used drugs and had short tempers that led them to get into fights. They also talked frequently about blowing up the school.

Kristen Long, also a student, described the group as "staring you down if they passed you in the hall if you weren't their friend."

Nate Dykeman, another friend of both killers, failed a polygraph test. The polygraph examiner told investigators Dykeman was "deceptive" in answering questions about his involvement with the attack.

Dykeman admitted withholding information. He said he was afraid he'd be arrested for not coming forward earlier. He then provided information about the guns and bombs, but was never implicated in the April 20 shootings.

Interviews with Robyn Anderson, who purchased the other three guns, were also released. Anderson was never charged with a crime.

After she handed them the guns, Anderson wanted to make sure "that they weren't going to shoot someone or something with them."

The killers replied that they were not that stupid.

Contact Carla Crowder at (303) 892-2742 or crowderc@RockyMountainNews.com.


28 ) Ashley Egelund(22671)
"Ashley was in north corridor when she observed (Redacted) and Eric Harris coming around the corner from the library.... She said Chris Morris was armed with a handgun while Harris was armed with a shotgun.(5248 ) ....both started shooting at Ashley.... Ashley did not know (Redacted) at first but she saw his picture in the yearbook and is positive it was (Redacted).

52) Chris Wisher(9832)
"....he recognized one of the shooters--the other shooter was the kid wearing black that was arrested and placed in cuffs and put inside a black police car. He said that he is 100% positive that he was the male that shot at him."

(EP6-265)
"Thought he recognized Chris Morris as being one of the shooters.... ...on the west side of the cafeteria."

Dustin Gorton(10743)
"He named 2 other individuals he believed to be involved as Nathan Dykeman, Chris Morris." (2+2=4)

(8894)
"Daphne Baca had listed 4 names of possible suspects. Those names included Eric Harris, Dylan Klebold, Chris Morris, and Robert Perry."

 

For some time police suspected that Chris Morris, a member of the "Trench Coat Mafia" and an employee of a pizza restaurant where Harris and Klebold also worked, may have acted as a middle-man in the sale of the gun to the gunmen.

In addition, a sheriff's spokesman said Columbine student Chris Morris, 18, who was handcuffed and taken away during the deadly siege,

 is not a suspect. Morris, a friend of the gunmen, was released that day.

One student that matched some of the descriptions of the eyewitnesses was arrested on April 20; this was Chris Morris. A coworker and friend of both Klebold and Harris, Morris was a member of the now familiar Trench Coat Mafia, and was video taped later in the day on the 20th exiting a white van at the Harris home, in the company of Eric's fath

- Chris Morris, 17, a friend and co-worker of Harris and Klebold at Blackjack Pizza, is represented by John Richilano of Richilano and Ridley in Lower Downtown. Richilano said his client is not a suspect, is cooperating with authorities and is expected to be cleared of any wrongdoing.

Chris Morris, a friend of the killers' who was considered a suspect at one time, agreed to help investigators gather evidence that led them to a man who supplied Harris and Klebold with one of their guns.

Another teenager, who fled before the shooting began, is suspected of helping Harris and Klebold to carry duffel bags filled with bombs into the school.

 

Cameras caught the image of another young man being led to a police car in handcuffs. The report does not provide a name, but that person was Chris Morris, a Trench Coat Mafia member and friend of Klebold and Harris.

In the report, investigators for the first time publicly reveal that Morris contacted them after he learned from newscasts that his friends were named as the gunmen.

"A detailed timeline was compiled providing his whereabouts on April 20, and he successfully passed a polygraph," the report said.

"His computer also was searched, and no evidence implicating him of having knowledge or participation in the shootings was found."

Sherry Markham, whose daughter Nichole dates Morris, said she hopes the public finally realizes that he, too, was a victim.

Nicole Markham

 
MARKHAM 
Algernon Augustus   Pg: 77 (ALL)

MARKHAM 

Gervase William   Pg: 77 (ALL)
 
MARKHAM 
Katherine Mary   Pg: 77 (ALL)

MARKHAM 

Anne Winifred   Pg: 77 (ALL)
 
MARKHAM 
Winifred Edith Barne   Pg: 77 (ALL)

MARKHAM 

Constance Margaret   Pg: 77 (ALL)
 
MARKHAM 
Hope Seymour Dorothy   Pg: 77 (ALL)  
 

 

From Little League to madness: Portraits of the Littleton shooters

April 30, 1999
Web posted at: 10:31 a.m. EDT (1431 GMT)

From Newsstand Correspondent Art Harris

LITTLETON, Colorado (CNN) -- When she heard police sirens on the morning of April 20, Sherry Higgins raced to Columbine High School, where her children attend classes.

Arriving even before paramedics as police officers carried out the first wounded students, Higgins stripped off her blouse to use as a tourniquet, working in her halter top, trying to help as police brought carload after carload of wounded students.

"I was one of those people up there saying, 'Blow those shooters away, please. Why haven't you cops got in there and blown those guys away?'" she says. "I don't care who they are. Blow them away. They're killing our children."

But then, from the wounded students, Higgins learned the identities of the killers -- Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. They were friends of her daughter, fringe members of an outcast group nicknamed the Trenchcoat Mafia who often met at her house.

"They hung out here quite a bit. They're all good kids," Higgins says. "Eric had been over here. He seemed very sweet. Played Nintendo, laughed, had a good time. Joked, drank soda pop, had hot dogs. All-around good kid."

Higgins' daughter, one of the Trenchcoat Mafia, was in the cafeteria line at Columbine when the attack began. Her son, Chris Markham, was also in the line of fire.

"My friend Sean, I saw him get shot. He went down to the ground," Markham says. "I saw my friend Lance get shot. He went down to the ground. I saw my friend Dan get shot."

Only after Higgins found her children safe at home did she tell them who the gunmen were.

"They didn't seem like the killer type," Markham says. "When I heard it was them, I was kind of shocked because they had been in my house."

"These kids hid it from everybody," Higgins says. "They hid it well

 

 

 

 

"Those boys destroyed his life, and he's so angry at them," she said. "Even though it destroyed him, it made him take a reality check. He's doing well. He's going to college."

In some cases, investigators said, eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen a third shooter recanted once they were shown footage of Harris and Klebold in the cafeteria. They realized they had mistaken Klebold for someone else.

In addition, others realized they were wrong when they discovered that Harris almost immediately discarded his black trench coat, revealing a white T-shirt. Those witnesses had reported seeing two shooters in black trench coats and another in a white T-shirt.

Student overcame suspicion, aided probe

By Kevin Simpson
Denver Post Staff Writer

Nov. 26, 2000 - He'd walked the school halls in a trench coat and had worked at a pizza parlor alongside Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Like a handful of other students, 17-year-old Chris Morris felt the glare of suspicion - and unwelcome notoriety - in the hours after the Columbine massacre.

Documents unsealed earlier last week show how Morris, at one point led away for questioning in handcuffs, was pressed to account for his every step on the day of the shooting, hid out from the media and ultimately assisted the investigation.

"This whole thing sucks," Morris said in a phone conversation with a friend recorded four days after the attack.

Already, television footage had shown him in police custody outside the school. Authorities asked to search his room, examine his computer, even analyze the clothes he wore the day of the shootings.

Some other kids, asked to speculate on who else might have been involved in the shooting, mentioned him. Some noted that he'd disappeared with Harris and Klebold at the school's after-prom party the previous weekend, and that he'd left school less than an hour before the shooting started. Others alluded to a penchant for violence.

And in a chilling videotape before the suicidal rampage, Harris "willed" everything in his bedroom to Morris and another friend.

Although authorities ultimately would dismiss the idea of other accomplices, suspicion by association hung over Morris and several others in the immediate aftermath of the April 20, 1999, tragedy.

But interviews indicate that Morris, once he learned of the massacre while skipping class to play video games at a friend's house, realized who the shooters might be and contacted police. The information is part of 11,000 pages of Columbine materials released Tuesday by the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office.

Morris told investigators that he dialed 911 in an attempt to reach a detective but got disconnected. Then, answering a page from his mother, who works for the Cherry Hills Police Department, he talked to a detective there.

Afterward, Morris said, he finally reached the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office. An investigator confirmed Morris' story.

He then went to Clement Park, where authorities cuffed him and led him away for questioning. Morris gave a detailed account of his movements that day, starting about 5:50 a.m., when the friend who was supposed to pick him up and drive him to an early bowling class never showed.

The ride: Eric Harris.

"Morris said during class he never saw Harris or Klebold and assumed they weren't coming to school," the investigator wrote.

Morris, driving his 1985 red Dodge Lancer that was prone to overheat, left the bowling alley and stopped at McDonald's, then headed toward school. He attended his second-period science class and then a government/economics class.

But around 10:15 a.m., when he should have been heading to Acting, Morris decided to skip because he "had not attended for several days/weeks, as he knew he was going to fail the class anyway." He stopped at a nearby Cub Foods, bought a Mountain Dew and headed to friend Cory Friesen's house, where the two boys were playing computer games when Cory's mom called to tell them about the Columbine rampage.

"As the facts of the shooting began coming over the television, Morris began to suspect that Harris, Klebold and possible others were involved," said an FBI report.

Morris claimed to be a founding member of a coalition of undersized kids who got picked on at school, and the first Columbine student to start wearing a black trench coat that would come to define the group.

But he said he quit wearing the coat as the fashion trend caught on with others "because it was no longer a statement of his individuality." The moniker "Trench Coat Mafia" wasn't coined until after he'd quit wearing his coat, he added.

Morris literally outgrew the group as a growth spurt - and his admitted bad temper - made him a less inviting target for abuse.

But Harris, he told investigators, grew "depressed about his size and getting picked on." And Morris, who worked at Blackjack pizza with both Harris and Klebold, said Harris seemed to become more aggressive in the weeks prior to the rampage.

"This made Morris very angry because it appeared to Morris that Harris kept expecting Morris to bail him out of these fights," said one report.

Around Christmas 1998, Morris said, Harris seemed to become even more depressed. About two months before the shooting, he "drifted away" from Harris - largely because Morris now had a girlfriend.

He also described the escalation in the violent interests of both Harris and Klebold. They brought homemade explosives to work at Blackjack, and Harris even suggested using a CO2 "trip bomb" to foil people who continually broke through a fence behind the restaurant.

Morris said he found that "a little extreme for people crawling through the fence." And then there was the talk of guns.

Morris told authorities that he recalled another Blackjack employee, Phil Duran, had taken Harris and Klebold shooting and believed they'd gone to gun shows together. Later, Morris heard that the two had purchased a gun - an AK-47 or a "Tech" - from either Duran or a friend of his.

"Morris stated at the time he did not know what a Tech was, and in fact at first thought they were talking about a computer," according to a report.

Morris stressed that he was not involved in the massacre - and, as proof, offered that he would never have let his girlfriend, her little brother and his best friend's dad, a Columbine science teacher, remain at school if he'd known what was about to happen.

He told authorities he was "more than willing" to help the investigation.

They took him up on the offer.

Four days after the massacre, Morris phoned Duran - from the Denver office of the FBI, with tape rolling.

In a 14-minute conversation, he pumped Duran for information about how Harris and Klebold got the guns, and about a videotape Duran had helped make during a target shooting trip.

On the tape, Morris talked about how "it's real psycho right now. . . . I've been hidin' out at different people's houses and things." He complained about the media frenzy and told Duran he was just trying to figure out how Harris and Klebold got their guns.

"I have no clue, dude," Duran replied repeatedly.

Duran said he turned down Harris and Klebold's request to buy guns for them.

"All I can say is I'm glad I didn't, dude," Duran told Morris. Later in the conversation, Duran noted that his girlfriend hates guns and, "Now I'm kinda startin' to hate guns, too."

 

Eventually, though, Duran would plead guilty to weapons charges and be sentenced to 4 years in prison for his role in introducing the shooters to middleman Mark Manes.

When Duran asked Morris if he planned to attend a memorial service the next day, Morris again expressed reluctance to insert himself in the media maelstrom around him.

"I may try," Morris said. "It's just, you know, my face is kinda famous."

Copyright 2000 The Denver Post. All rights reserved.
This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.




 


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Chris Morris claims that he went to clement park. His car overheated etc.
Robyn said that Chris does not even have a car and had to rely on Eric and Dylan to pick him
up for bowling class.


My theory is this. And I apologize to anyone who might have stated this a thousand times in
this forum. But I believe that Morris was the one that placed the bomb in Clement Park.
There was someone else that came along to detonate it. Nate helped Eric and Dylan bring in
bombs not only that day, but during the after party for the prom.

I believe that he helped them
build them too. I believe that Nate is mentioned in the basement tapes and that is part of why
we will never see them, unedited. I am not saying that Robyn knew everything. But I think she
knew they were up to no good when they wanted to buy the guns.

Why would she refuse to
put her name on anything? I wouldn't mind at all if I knew it was for a sound minded friend.
But all in all, Nate Dykeman is the biggest liar I have ever met. Does anyone wonder why he
has such a HUGE drinking problem now? I will bet that it is the guilt that is eating him alive.
But I have a feeling, that with Chris... he was used. I dont think he was told the whole story. I
think he was used as the diversionary tactic.

Maybe he was told that they were going to pull
some sort of funky prank that wouldn't involve anyone getting hurt. but then again you never
know.


Just a thought.
I think chris just wore that outfit so he wouldnt look suspicious. If he knew something was
going to go down, hed want to look not like eric and dylan (all black) he wasnt stupid.

rebdominedotcom
Registered User
Posts: 1
 

Eric wasn't the one wearing his duster, Chris was. And Chris was wearing the
mask and the gloves that were found right by it.
Chris was the one who began trouble outside,
in the white Tshirt. Throwing bombs onto the roof... I think he had one of the four guns, and
ran into the school with Eric and Dylan (or after or before them, whatever doesn't matter) and
gave the gun back to them and escaped as a fleeing student, ran the hell back home (or
whatever)

Steve Trujillo(4649)
Says Chris Morris told him he did know how to use medieval weapons.

John Skeels(5404)
Says Morris talked about medieval torture often in history class.

 

 

Morris is Jewish

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Crime Library

For some time police suspected that Chris Morris, a member of the "Trench Coat Mafia" and an employee of a pizza restaurant where Harris and Klebold also worked, may have acted as a middle-man in the sale of the gun to the gunmen. Their suspicions were allayed when a person, who has not yet been identified by police, came forward to tell police that he had sold the gun to Harris. Two men have since been charged with supplying the guns to Harris.

 

Morris was also questioned extensively by police regarding the possibility that Harris and Klebold may have had one or more accomplices prior to the shooting. Early in the investigation there were as many as 10 people who police considered as possible suspects. Three teenagers, wearing black boots and trench coats, were detained during the confusion after the shooting but were later cleared of any involvement. Another teenager, who fled before the shooting began, is suspected of helping Harris and Klebold to carry duffel bags filled with bombs into the school. A teenager, wearing a white tee shirt was also seen with Harris and Klebold in the parking lot just before the gunmen entered the school, and Klebold's black BMW was seen 40 minutes before the shooting began, driving near the school with four teenagers inside. Police believe that, while there may have been others with prior knowledge of the shooting, Harris and Klebold were the only shooters.