Law officers were warned 15 times about dangerous teens

Families of victims claim officers, parents missed signs of murder

LAKEWOOD, Colo. -- Law officers were warned about the Columbine High killers at least 15 times in the two years before their murderous rampage in 1999, the state attorney general said Thursday in a report that outraged the families of the victims.

Attorney General Ken Salazar said he was still digging for details about whether authorities may have missed possible warning signs about the killers. Asked whether he thought there was a cover-up, Salazar said: ''I do not know today.''

Salazar's report angered families of the 13 victims because it did not blame the Jefferson County sheriff's office for missing warning signs about Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold.

Some wept as Salazar concluded he had found no sign of negligence, and families said his narrowly tailored report did nothing to ease their anguish.

''It's done. You know it. They're not going to do any more,'' Randy Brown said as he hugged his sobbing wife. The Browns told the sheriff's office that Harris was making death threats against their son in August 1997.

While Salazar detailed his report, some 900 people lined up to view a vast and chilling display of evidence collected in the case. Authorities also released a 90-minute compilation of videos made by Harris and Klebold.

Wearing trenchcoats and sunglasses, the two are seen stalking through the hallways of Columbine just five months before the attack, portraying hitmen offering their services to students victimized by bullies. At one point, the two roar obscenities into the lens and promise a brutal death for their targets.

Harris, 18, and Klebold, 17, killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves at the school near Littleton on April 20, 1999. Family members have long said the sheriff's office, the gunmen's parents and others missed signs that the teens were capable of murder.

Speaking in a room with somber families staring at him from the back wall, Salazar said his investigation is not complete.

He said his staff interviewed two former sheriff's officials just this week and that authorities are still trying to find a file detailing a search warrant affidavit for Harris' home after a pipe bomb was found along a bike path in 1998. The search never took place.

Salazar said his investigators looked at how sheriff's officials reacted to 1997 complaints about Harris, ranging from petty vandalism to a Web site run by Harris that said he and Klebold had built pipe bombs and concluded: ''Now our only problem is to find the place that will be 'ground zero.'''

In all, Salazar said, the sheriff's office had at least 15 contacts with the two teens -- from dispatch reports to official investigative reports -- stemming from six separate incidents. But it made no conclusions about what investigators could have done differently.

The collection of evidence unveiled Thursday included 10,418 separate items -- from the murder weapons and the black trenchcoats worn by the killers to bullet fragments and the chairs and tables where people died. A message board put up in a school window the day of the attack still says, in blue Magic Marker: ''1 bleeding to death.'' There were 13 body bags.

Authorities released two videos, one of the anxious scene in a park near the school the day of the shooting, the other the Harris and Klebold video.

''I don't care what you say; if you ever touch him again, I will fricking kill you,'' a wild-eyed Harris screams on the tape.

Some relatives say such videos were seen by school officials and that nothing was done.

''This raises more questions than it answers,'' said Dawn Anna, whose daughter, Lauren Townsend, died at Columbine. ''I would disagree that there was no negligence.''

Brooks Brown said he wanted to know what sheriff's officials did with multiple warnings from his parents about Harris. He was stunned by the failure to execute the search warrant at the Harris home a year before the slayings.

''That's basically telling me my friends died because of a clerical error,'' he said.

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Associated Press Writers Catherine Tsai and Jon Sarche contributed to this report.


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