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Klebold and Dykeman |
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Nate Dykeman, an acquaintance of the two killers, told the program that Harris once showed him one of the pipe bombs. Dykeman said he was surprised.
"I was kind of taken aback. Things were starting to get out of hand," Dykeman said. "Making little fireworks is one thing but when you make things that can blow half your body apart ... "
Dykeman also said Harris kept a hit list.
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Dykeman left Colorado for Florida shortly after Columbine -- but not before taking a polygraph test as investigators looked for accomplices.
The examiner found that Dykeman was "deceptive" in his answers about whether he'd been involved in the attack, but he was never implicated.
Dykeman still lives in Florida, where he has attended school, and did not respond to a request for an interview. "Just three days before the attack,
Nate Dykeman, a friend of Eric Harris, said on ABC's Good Morning America that Wayne Harris found a pipe bomb in Eric's room a year before the shootings.
Dykeman said Wayne Harris disposed of it without telling authorities, because his son already was in a juvenile diversion program for another incident.
"Stone has no business being sheriff," says Victor Good, chairman of the Colorado Reform Party, which has voted to back the recall. "We thought he'd learned his lesson. But instead of having a legitimate press conference when the facts are known, he chooses to play favorites and pander to Time. That's just unacceptable."
Like Brown, Good is hardly a disinterested party; his stepson, Nate Dykeman, was also a friend of Klebold's and Harris's who was caught in the maw of the media frenzy. But anger over the release of the tapes has also forged unlikely alliances between the Browns and victims' families that had previously shunned them because of the cloud of suspicion cast on Brooks.
"Randy and Judy Brown are wonderful people, and every point they have is absolutely valid," declares Angela Sanders, daughter of slain teacher Dave Sanders. "I've had very little contact with the sheriff's office, but I do believe that Sheriff Stone needs to be gone. He hasn't done a very good job of protecting the families."
"When they had assemblies, that was an opportunity to hero-worship the jocks," says Victor Good, whose stepson, Nathan Dykeman, was a friend of Klebold and Harris. "The kids were not permitted to leave. And the assemblies were always for athletes, never for academics. What the hell is school spirit? Worshiping these other kids?"
He may not have been the only member of the Harris household fighting a losing battle with reality. According to Nathan Dykeman, who sold his story to the National Enquirer and then claimed that the tabloid distorted many details, Wayne Harris found a pipe bomb in Eric's room last year, possibly as a result of his conversation with Brooks Brown. Whatever punishment Harris may have meted out to his son--who was already on probation, taking anti-depressants and seeing a psychiatrist--it didn't include calling the police.
Dykeman's stepfather takes five day trip with Klebold
"Victor Good, whose
son, Nathan Dykeman, was
friends with both
of the killers, seniors at
Columbine, said . . . 'The most horrifying thing
of this, that people should be horrified and scared to death of, is that
these kids did not show any signs of this. It's terrifying. We knew
a
different Dylan.'"
"'This was no broken
family, this was no abusive family, no anything.
These people spent time with their kids.' Thomas Klebold considered his
two
sons his best friends,
Mr. Good said, and earlier this month spent five days
with Dylan touring the University of Arizona,
where Dylan was accepted to
start in the fall."
"Just three days before
the attack, Nathan
Dykeman
attended the
prom with Dylan Klebold in a group of four couples who shared a limousine,
and saw Mr. Harris at the post-prom party. 'They all had a great time,'
Mr. Good said."
Jefferson County resident Victor Good agrees.
He knows both the Harrises and Klebolds. He took Eric and Dylan to baseball games with Nate Dykeman, his stepson, and regarded them as intelligent, polite teenagers.
Six months after the tragedy at Columbine, Victor Good has decided he will never understand why Eric and Dylan did what they did. But if there was a failure to foresee the massacre, Victor Good would lay blame at the doors of a school system that revered athletes and tolerated the violent themes Eric and Dylan embraced in their classwork, not at the homes of their parents.
"Here's the real tragedy,'' he said. Eric and Dylan "were raised in loving families that built their lives around their kids, and it happened to them. Think of the horror of that.''
Drudge 5/30/99 "...Bill Carter of the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to unleash a new media scandal, according to publishing sources. Carter is set to accuse the ABC-TV Network of checkbook journalism in the Columbine High School Massacre! Carter will charge: "ABC News paid a friend of one of the teen-age gunmen in the Columbine High School shootings $16,000 for the exclusive broadcast rights to home videos and other materials containing details about the killers. Then last Monday, the network presented what it called an exclusive interview with the 18-year-old, Nathan Dykeman, on GOOD MORNING AMERICA." "It is gross on some level to profit off this tragedy,'' Jeff Zucker, the executive producer of NBC's TODAY show, tells Carter. "It's a clear example of buying a story and it's an unseemly thing for ABC to do.'' ..."
-- the killers' friend
Dykeman left Colorado for Florida shortly after Columbine -- but not before taking a polygraph test as investigators looked for accomplices.
The examiner found that Dykeman was "deceptive" in his answers about whether he'd been involved in the attack, but he was never implicated.
Dykeman still lives in Florida, where he has attended school, and did not respond to a request for an interview.
Steve Davis -- the sheriff's spokesman
Nathan Dykeman, a close friend of Dylan's, told police that he'd seen Dylan making a purchase behind Blackjack Pizza, paying something like $200-$300 dollars to Philip Duran (another worker at the pizza place). Nate thought Dylan was buying drugs and being staunchly anti-drug, gave him a hard time about it. Dylan told him then that he'd been buying a gun. With the weapons purchased Eric and Dylan made a video at a campground where they were practicing shooting the sawed off shotgun. The videotape of the target practice was made by Harris and Klebold in March, and was shown Nate two weeks before the Columbine shootings. Dykeman told cops about the videotape three days after the killings.
Columbine claims another 'victim'
Friend of Harris, Klebold fled family in days after shootings
By Dan Luzadder
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
JEFFERSON COUNTY -- Victor Good's house seems uncommonly quiet as he sits at his
desk near a window that overlooks Columbine High School.
Gone are the sounds he describes as those of "normal, awkward teen-agers,"
which, until recently, included his stepson, Nathan Dykeman, 18; Nathan's best
friend, Dylan Klebold; and his friend, Eric Harris.
From a balcony in the tidy, upper-middle-class home, Good and his stepson
watched through binoculars two months ago as SWAT teams surrounded Columbine.
They saw, at that distance, wounded student Patrick Ireland's desperate plunge
out of the library window.
It is where Good first heard Nathan's chilling prediction: that Dylan Klebold
and Eric Harris were the boys with the guns who killed 12 students, a teacher
and themselves, and wounded about two dozen others.
Now it is where Good and his wife, Julie, Nathan's mother, mourn a different
kind of loss: They have not seen Nathan since three days after the shooting.
They haven't spoken with him since he
packed his bags and left home with his biological father, Matt
Dykeman,
to move to Florida, Good said.
Nathan walked out on his graduation, on the funeral of his friend, and on the
only family he has known for six years.
The images left to the Goods were from Nathan's national television appearance
on ABC's Good Morning America, where he talked about his two friends. And from
the story that appeared about him in the Florida-based supermarket weekly
National Enquirer.
Both media organizations, Good said,
paid Nathan thousands of dollars for his appearance -- something Good and
his wife warned Nathan not to take, something Good says, bitterly, has helped
disrupt their family.
"His 'Disney dad' is responsible for that," Good said.
Good said Nathan was paid $16,000 by ABC
for an innocuous videotape he and
Klebold
had made.
He also said an ABC producer called their home and offered them money for an
appearance, and suggested they might
make "$2 or $3 million" from a book deal later on.
Good said they were not interested.
He said the media's luck changed after Nathan left his Colorado home.
Reached at his father's home in Florida, Nathan tells a different story.
"I was broke. I had to leave my truck in Oklahoma where it broke down," he said.
"Now my college tuition is paid for. I've been criticized enough for this. What
was it I did wrong? I know at least a dozen people who were offered money from
the media."
Nathan says he wasn't paid for an interview but for the
videotape that he and Klebold
made of a trip to school.
He did enter into an agreement with the National Enquirer, which he now says
distorted, mischaracterized -- and misquoted -- what he said.
The Goods' trauma may seem less dramatic than the devastation that descended
upon the families whose children died or were wounded by the two high school
killers.
But Good said it seems as though they have lost a child.
"April 20 was the longest day of our lives," Good said. "It's like it took a
month or more to turn the page on the calendar, to try to get on with living."
"I suspect there will be a lot of families who will face something like this,"
said John Kiekbush, chief of investigations for the Jefferson County Sheriff's
Department, and lead investigator in the case.
"This is the kind of thing that can happen to people who go though these kinds
of traumatic experiences," he said.
"It's very hard to understand," said Good, his voice cracking. "Nathan was so
close to his mother; he was kind of a mama's boy. His mother sat by the phone
all day on Mother's Day. The phone never rang."
Nathan said the fallout came over the reaction of his stepfather and mother when
they learned that his friends Klebold and Harris were the killers.
He said it was as if they ceased to trust him, to believe him.
They were terrified, he said, that he
was somehow involved.
"They tore apart my room," he
said. "They threw away my heavy metal CDs, anything that had a skull on it or
something like that. I couldn't believe the way they treated me."
He said he believes his stepfather
feared the police would come with a warrant to search his room and find
something incriminating.
Immediately after the shootings, Good admits, he was "very direct" with Nathan.
He warned him that because of his close relationship with Klebold and his
longtime association with Harris -- they had known each other since eighth grade
-- Nathan would get caught up in the investigation.
"I told him, if there was anything,
anything at all, that we should know, to tell us now," Good said. "We had
already watched on television as police led Chris Morris away in handcuffs."
Morris, a close friend of Harris, Klebold and Nathan, was released after being
questioned by police. They all worked at a Blackjack Pizza parlor, as did Philip
Duran.
Duran has been charged with helping Klebold and Harris acquire a semiautomatic
pistol used in the killings and with possession of one of the illegal sawed-off
shotguns used in the attack.
Shortly after the shooting, Nathan was
identified publicly as a member of the "Trench Coat Mafia," a Columbine
clique alternately described as outcasts and computer geeks. Good said linking
his son to the group is one of a long list of things the media got wrong.
And it was implied in some news reports
that Nathan could be a suspect.
Good took Nathan the day after the shootings to the FBI, where he was
interviewed at length and given a lie-detector test. He did not take an
attorney.
Good and his stepson have declined to say what Nathan told investigators.
But court documents show the information Dykeman gave authorities helped lead to
Duran's arrest.
Dykeman
spent more than 12 hours talking to the FBI and was interviewed later by
agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
"I was never treated as a suspect by the FBI," Nathan said. "They were just
after, you know, information about Eric and Dylan."
Dykeman had a falling out with Harris over a girl Nathan was dating in January.
But they still shared four classes -- including a bowling class -- at Columbine.
Good said his stepson "was kind of afraid of Eric" toward the end.
Nathan said he wasn't so much afraid of Eric as he was concerned about him. "He
was more and more depressed ... (last summer)," he said. "He had a lot of things
he was trying to figure out. He was seeing a psychiatrist. I was concerned about
that."
Nathan maintained his close friendship with Klebold, but saw less of him in the
last few months because Nathan became "more interested in dating," Good said.
Good said that as Nathan pulled away from the two, Harris and Klebold grew
closer.
Because of his son's close relationship with Klebold, the Goods and the
Klebold's parents became friends. Good said he has talked with Tom Klebold
almost every day since the shootings. They have had lunch.
The Goods also attended the funeral service for Dylan Klebold and spent three
hours with the family at the funeral home that evening.
That also is a sore point with Nathan. He said he talked to the Klebolds before
he left town but was not told about the funeral service until it was too late.
"They just told me I missed it," he said. "I would have wanted to go."
Good says his son's friends -- whom the
world now knows as cold-blooded, brutal and compassionless killers -- were
guests in his home "thousands of times."
But Good said he never saw any indication that Klebold or Harris were capable of
what he calls a "monstrous" crime.
Neither, he said, did the Klebolds.
"There were no warning signs about these kids," Good said. "There was nothing
that you could point to that would say they were ever capable of such a
monstrous act.
"All this stuff that people said about them that day, about them being Goths,
the Marilyn Manson music ... using black makeup, their obsession with Hitler and
the Nazis, being part of a national hate group ... that was all ridiculous. It
was all wrong."
Nathan said reports that Harris and Klebold were in bowling class the morning of
the shootings were also wrong -- just as were reports that they frequently
shouted "Heil, Hitler" during bowling classes and wore Nazi insignia to school.
"People were saying their parents had to know what they were doing, that they
should have seen this coming. That's wrong, too," Good said. "They didn't know,
because no one knew. No one but Dylan and Eric."
"Everyone in America wants to believe that there were warning signs, so they can
believe it would never happen to them, to their children."
Nathan said he too remains confused by the events that occurred.
"I last talked to Dylan at the bowling class on Monday, and I didn't talk to him
after that. Something happened in that last 24 hours. And I wish I knew what it
was."
June 28, 1999
23) Nathan Dykeman, senior (trenchcoat mafia associate) "...anyway yes there were 2 more people in the school with handguns but they decided to bail.... eric and dylan went threw with it and the other 2 did not...
10. Officially: Battan said that all suspects had passed lie detector tests.
Families' contention: Columbine student Nathan Dykeman failed his test and refused to take another. Student Zachary Heckler's test was inconclusive.
News' findings: Battan did say all suspects passed polygraphs; documents showed that one was "inconclusive" and another was "deceptive" on key questions.
Battan told the Rohrboughs, according to their audiotape: "Some of these people have been interviewed six or seven times. Many of these people, and closer friends, have taken polygraphs. Everybody has passed the polygraphs, which I don't believe polygraphs 100 percent ever."
FBI agent Mark Holstlaw told the News in a Dec. 14, 1999, story, that everyone who had taken lie detector tests had passed, and other methods were used to clear those who had refused.
<http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/columbine/article/0,1299,DRMN_106_929608,00.html>
"Bomb Count Grows in Colorado, And a Woman Is Linked to Guns"
(New York Times A1 4/28/99 by Jodi Wilgoren and Eric Schmitt) also reveals
that "the two young men" "plotted the killings for at least a year."
"Victor
Good, whose son,
Nathan Dykeman, was friends with
both
of the killers, seniors at Columbine, said . . . 'The most horrifying thing
of this, that people should be horrified and scared to death of, is that
these kids did not show any signs of this. It's terrifying. We knew
a
different Dylan.'"
"'This was no broken
family, this was no abusive family, no anything.
These people spent time with their kids.' Thomas Klebold considered his
two
sons his best friends, Mr. Good said,
and earlier this month spent five days
with Dylan touring the University of Arizona, where Dylan was accepted to
start in the fall."
"Just three days before the
attack, Nathan
Dykeman attended the
prom with Dylan Klebold
in a group of four couples who shared a limousine,
and saw Mr. Harris at the post-prom party. 'They all had a great time,'
Mr. Good said."
He points to a note written by Nathan Dykeman, who was one of Harris and Klebold's best friends.
It says, "High school has been the best of times and the worst of times, but through it all, two guys have been with me. Thanks for the memories and everlasting friendship, Dylan and Eric." He turns to the pages with Eric and Dylan's class photographs and shakes his head.
What happened on prom night?
By Patricia Callahan
Denver Post Staff Writer
May 1 - A friend who went to an after-prom party with Columbine High School
shooter Dylan Klebold told ABC News that Klebold, fellow gunmen Eric Harris and
another teenager disappeared from the party sometime after midnight.
Authorities are investigating whether
Klebold
and Harris planted bombs at the school during that party, which ran from
midnight to 5 a.m. April 18. That's two days before the worst school
shooting in U.S. history.
Nathan
Dykeman,
who shared a limousine with
Klebold at the prom, told ABC he
noticed Klebold,
Harris and their friend, Chris Morris, 17, disappeared from the party between 2
and 2:30 a.m.
"I never got to say good night,'' Dykeman said. "I figured they were somewhere
else ... having fun.''
Authorities said they have talked to Morris. And attorney John Richilano said
his client has "cooperated extensively and completely'' with investigators and
is not a suspect.
As Dykeman was leaving to go home for lunch April 20, he saw Harris walking into
the school from a lot where he normally didn't park. Dykeman said he thought it
was odd. He knew that Harris and Klebold hadn't been at school that day.
"The fact that both are absent on the
same day - usually if Dylan's absent or going to be absent and knows it, he'll
tell me where he's going,''
Dykeman said. "I hadn't heard
anything from him.''
When he drove back to school after lunch, Dykeman found out about the shooting.
He called his friends to see if they were OK. He saved Klebold for last.
Klebold's father, Tom, answered.
"I called them with the hope that he was there and would be OK and everything,''
Dykeman said. "And it basically eased up to me telling them that I think that he
was involved in it, and I think he could possibly be in the school.''
Tom Klebold was in shock. He was speechless, Dykeman said.
"I honestly thought he was going to like drop the phone,'' he said. "He just
could not believe that this could possibly be happening and that his son was
involved in this, and he said, "Please keep me informed on whatever you hear.'-
''
Then Klebold called authorities to see if he could help. Authorities told him it
was too late.
Dykeman said Klebold never dropped any hints about the shooting. Authorities
found a journal in Harris' bedroom plotting the shootings and ways to blow up
the school.
"I go over it countless times every day, just wondering what I possibly could
have missed - if there were signs, if I should have seen something or should
have done something differently,'' Dykeman said. "Every time I come up empty.''
