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Before Columbine

Aired October 22, 2003 - 11:41   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in Colorado are selling a video that not everyone will be clamoring to buy. They have released a tape made by the teenagers who went on a shooting rampage in Columbine High School, and this tape was made six weeks before that massacre, which ultimately killed 14, including the two shooters, who committed suicide.
Joining us now to discuss what's on the tape, give us the basics on it, is CNN's Brian Cabell.

Brian, watching this, as we saw it being fed in, there's something that is deeply tragic about it, seeing them kind of make light of all this, isn't it?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly is. The tape never seen until today, not in public. The Jefferson County Sheriff Department's been holding on to it. But the Columbine Open Record Task Force want it released, so that's exactly what happened.

Let's take a look at it right now. We're going to show you four people on this. This is Eric Harris. He is one of the four shooters. Again, as you said, Miles, this was shot some six weeks before the Columbine massacre, shot March 6. Columbine was actually on April 20th, 1999. That is Klebold right there with the longer hair.

The location, Rampart Range Road, a forested area, outside of Columbine, Colorado. You can see here, they were shooting bowling pins, and as you, making light of it.

Actually, five people on the tape -- we're showing four of them -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two others as well who were actually supplying them with the guns. The girlfriend of Klebold was on this tape. We are not showing that to you.

Again, that is Harris right there. That is one of the gentleman, Mark Maens (ph), who was suspected of supplying the guns to the two young men. They take turns shooting the video. They take turns shooting the video as well, and they laugh frequently throughout.

Again, six weeks after this target practice -- that is another one of the men accused of supplying the guns and convicted -- they walked into the columbine high school, some six weeks after this was shot, they walked in with two shotguns, a rifle, handgun, and 30-plus explosive devices. The attack lasted for about one hour. They killed 12 students. They killed one teacher. They killed themselves and several others were wounded. The motive in this never of course precisely clear. We know they were outcasts, they weren't happy, they were filled with hate, but precisely why they did all this, we don't know. We do not from this that they were planning this well ahead of time.

O'BRIEN: And perhaps the most tragic thing, all those things you said, they were outcasts, they were depressed, they were filled with hate, they were trying out weapons, all of that was known to a fairly large group of people in advance.

CABELL: And yet we're told that -- you can hear this at any number of high schools. There are outcasts anywhere, they are people making threats anywhere, there are people with guns unfortunately anywhere, but these two took it out actually some six week after this was shot.

O'BRIEN: Let's hope people take that kind of talk seriously now.

CNN's Brian Cabell, thank you very much. Very traumatic tape.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the weaponry involved. CNN's Mike Brooks, law enforcement expert, joining us now to talk a little bit about it.

A fair amount of -- well, it's pretty high-powered stuff, isn't it?

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERT: Very much so.

O'BRIEN: Why don't we go through -- and maybe we can roll the tape once again. We can go through the type of weaponry that was involved here. Some of them, the kick was so tremendous it almost bowled them over.

Let's start with this one here.

BROOKS: This one here looks like some kind of high-powered, semiautomatic folding stock rifle with an extended magazine with a scope on it, and you see a number of different ones. You see one with the scope, and one without. This looks like a 12 gauge pump sawed-off shotgun, with a sawed-off stock and a sawed-off barrel, which in and of itself to possess is illegal unless you have ATF (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Now this looks like a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun, Miles. In the video, they refer to the Eagle. Or they refer to "the Desert," which would lead me to believe that would be a .45 Desert Eagle, which is a very expensive handgun. They show the bowling pin and the damage it does. They also were showing a tree, comparing a .9 millimeter round with a slug.

Now this is a suppressed looks like a Tech-9 to me, Miles. This is some kind of suppressor, whether commercially made or homemade that they have, on that particular weapon. Now we're back to...

O'BRIEN: And a suppressor would be like a silencer, or a little different? BROOKS: It's the proper name for a silencer, yes.

O'BRIEN: OK, got you. Go ahead.

BROOKS: And then you see another of the folding stock, high- powered, possibly .30 caliber semiautomatic rifle without a scope. Now I don't know if they took the scope off or put the scope back on, or they had two separate. Now, this is, again, the .45 handgun right there that they refer to as a "Desert."

O'BRIEN: Now it's interesting, they were practicing with the scope there. Clearly everything that happened in that massacre was at close range. And in a sense, the scope is just kind of a diversion as to what happened, in fact.

But the amount of weaponry here, I mean, really, what you're look at here I guess the term would be overkill. This is a tremendous amount of weaponry they had, hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.

BROOKS: And lots of ammunition. And it shows them with the -- I saw one picture -- it shows them loading a double-barrel shotgun. They took the shotgun around, puts it to his stomach to adjust it for some reason. Just not very safe, doesn't look like they had a lot of experience using it.

O'BRIEN: I don't think you have to be around guns very much to know that's a dumb thing to do.

BROOKS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: I guess the question that a lot of people would have in their minds -- and when we look at that high-powered rifle, we should be very clear, we don't know that that's an assault weapon or not, that high-powered weapons. We know it's a high-caliber rifle for sure. Folding stock on it; it's got a scope. That's a very menacing weapon. Is that an easy thing to come by in this country?

BROOKS: You can. You can get those. That probably did not have that folding stock initially. It was probably modified. You can go to gun shows and legally own weapons like that.

Now, the sawed off shotgun, which you see here, you see law enforcement use those for close-quarter combat. You don't normally see normal people -- there's no reason to have one sawed off like that unless you want to take it, conceal it underneath of a coat. When I was a police officer in Washington, we'd see people holding up banks with those kind of things. They'd tie tape or some kind of sling, put it underneath the coat, go in, and hold up a bank. That was a weapon of choice back in the '70s and early '80s.

O'BRIEN: And just by lopping off that barrel, by virtue of that fact, you've done something illegal.

BROOKS: It's a violation of the National Firearms Act, absolutely. O'BRIEN: And just overall, your impressions looking at this, just their general demeanor, attitude here, it's hard to stomach, isn't it?

BROOKS: To me, it looks like they're out there having fun. You know, they're looking at this as fun, shooting bowling pin, not very proficient. But as you said, with weapons like this, you don't have to be very -- you can be very, very close and not be very proficient in the use of firearms.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Mike Brooks, thanks for your expert analysis of that. I appreciate it.

BROOKS: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com






Aired October 22, 2003 - 11:41   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Authorities in Colorado are selling a video that not everyone will be clamoring to buy. They have released a tape made by the teenagers who went on a shooting rampage in Columbine High School, and this tape was made six weeks before that massacre, which ultimately killed 14, including the two shooters, who committed suicide.
Joining us now to discuss what's on the tape, give us the basics on it, is CNN's Brian Cabell.

Brian, watching this, as we saw it being fed in, there's something that is deeply tragic about it, seeing them kind of make light of all this, isn't it?

BRIAN CABELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Certainly is. The tape never seen until today, not in public. The Jefferson County Sheriff Department's been holding on to it. But the Columbine Open Record Task Force want it released, so that's exactly what happened.

Let's take a look at it right now. We're going to show you four people on this. This is Eric Harris. He is one of the four shooters. Again, as you said, Miles, this was shot some six weeks before the Columbine massacre, shot March 6. Columbine was actually on April 20th, 1999. That is Klebold right there with the longer hair.

The location, Rampart Range Road, a forested area, outside of Columbine, Colorado. You can see here, they were shooting bowling pins, and as you, making light of it.

Actually, five people on the tape -- we're showing four of them -- Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, two others as well who were actually supplying them with the guns. The girlfriend of Klebold was on this tape. We are not showing that to you.

Again, that is Harris right there. That is one of the gentleman, Mark Maens (ph), who was suspected of supplying the guns to the two young men. They take turns shooting the video. They take turns shooting the video as well, and they laugh frequently throughout.

Again, six weeks after this target practice -- that is another one of the men accused of supplying the guns and convicted -- they walked into the columbine high school, some six weeks after this was shot, they walked in with two shotguns, a rifle, handgun, and 30-plus explosive devices. The attack lasted for about one hour. They killed 12 students. They killed one teacher. They killed themselves and several others were wounded. The motive in this never of course precisely clear. We know they were outcasts, they weren't happy, they were filled with hate, but precisely why they did all this, we don't know. We do not from this that they were planning this well ahead of time.

O'BRIEN: And perhaps the most tragic thing, all those things you said, they were outcasts, they were depressed, they were filled with hate, they were trying out weapons, all of that was known to a fairly large group of people in advance.

CABELL: And yet we're told that -- you can hear this at any number of high schools. There are outcasts anywhere, they are people making threats anywhere, there are people with guns unfortunately anywhere, but these two took it out actually some six week after this was shot.

O'BRIEN: Let's hope people take that kind of talk seriously now.

CNN's Brian Cabell, thank you very much. Very traumatic tape.

Let's talk a little bit about some of the weaponry involved. CNN's Mike Brooks, law enforcement expert, joining us now to talk a little bit about it.

A fair amount of -- well, it's pretty high-powered stuff, isn't it?

MIKE BROOKS, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT EXPERT: Very much so.

O'BRIEN: Why don't we go through -- and maybe we can roll the tape once again. We can go through the type of weaponry that was involved here. Some of them, the kick was so tremendous it almost bowled them over.

Let's start with this one here.

BROOKS: This one here looks like some kind of high-powered, semiautomatic folding stock rifle with an extended magazine with a scope on it, and you see a number of different ones. You see one with the scope, and one without. This looks like a 12 gauge pump sawed-off shotgun, with a sawed-off stock and a sawed-off barrel, which in and of itself to possess is illegal unless you have ATF (UNINTELLIGIBLE).

Now this looks like a .45 caliber semiautomatic handgun, Miles. In the video, they refer to the Eagle. Or they refer to "the Desert," which would lead me to believe that would be a .45 Desert Eagle, which is a very expensive handgun. They show the bowling pin and the damage it does. They also were showing a tree, comparing a .9 millimeter round with a slug.

Now this is a suppressed looks like a Tech-9 to me, Miles. This is some kind of suppressor, whether commercially made or homemade that they have, on that particular weapon. Now we're back to...

O'BRIEN: And a suppressor would be like a silencer, or a little different? BROOKS: It's the proper name for a silencer, yes.

O'BRIEN: OK, got you. Go ahead.

BROOKS: And then you see another of the folding stock, high- powered, possibly .30 caliber semiautomatic rifle without a scope. Now I don't know if they took the scope off or put the scope back on, or they had two separate. Now, this is, again, the .45 handgun right there that they refer to as a "Desert."

O'BRIEN: Now it's interesting, they were practicing with the scope there. Clearly everything that happened in that massacre was at close range. And in a sense, the scope is just kind of a diversion as to what happened, in fact.

But the amount of weaponry here, I mean, really, what you're look at here I guess the term would be overkill. This is a tremendous amount of weaponry they had, hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of stuff.

BROOKS: And lots of ammunition. And it shows them with the -- I saw one picture -- it shows them loading a double-barrel shotgun. They took the shotgun around, puts it to his stomach to adjust it for some reason. Just not very safe, doesn't look like they had a lot of experience using it.

O'BRIEN: I don't think you have to be around guns very much to know that's a dumb thing to do.

BROOKS: Absolutely. Absolutely.

O'BRIEN: I guess the question that a lot of people would have in their minds -- and when we look at that high-powered rifle, we should be very clear, we don't know that that's an assault weapon or not, that high-powered weapons. We know it's a high-caliber rifle for sure. Folding stock on it; it's got a scope. That's a very menacing weapon. Is that an easy thing to come by in this country?

BROOKS: You can. You can get those. That probably did not have that folding stock initially. It was probably modified. You can go to gun shows and legally own weapons like that.

Now, the sawed off shotgun, which you see here, you see law enforcement use those for close-quarter combat. You don't normally see normal people -- there's no reason to have one sawed off like that unless you want to take it, conceal it underneath of a coat. When I was a police officer in Washington, we'd see people holding up banks with those kind of things. They'd tie tape or some kind of sling, put it underneath the coat, go in, and hold up a bank. That was a weapon of choice back in the '70s and early '80s.

O'BRIEN: And just by lopping off that barrel, by virtue of that fact, you've done something illegal.

BROOKS: It's a violation of the National Firearms Act, absolutely. O'BRIEN: And just overall, your impressions looking at this, just their general demeanor, attitude here, it's hard to stomach, isn't it?

BROOKS: To me, it looks like they're out there having fun. You know, they're looking at this as fun, shooting bowling pin, not very proficient. But as you said, with weapons like this, you don't have to be very -- you can be very, very close and not be very proficient in the use of firearms.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Mike Brooks, thanks for your expert analysis of that. I appreciate it.

BROOKS: Thanks.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com