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LAKEWOOD, Colo. (Feb. 26) -- Authorities had at least 15 contacts
with the Columbine High School killers dating back two years
before their murderous attack, the state attorney general said
Thursday in a report that angered families of the victims. But the attorney general said his investigation is not complete and has grown since he was asked to look into contacts between the killers and investigators beginning in 1997, two years before the attack. Salazar said his staff interviewed two former sheriff's officials just this week. He also said 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 - a search that never took place. ''We are still looking for that file,'' Salazar said. Asked if he thought there was a cover-up, he said: ''I do
not know today.'' Speaking in a room with somber families of
the dead staring at him from the back wall, Salazar promised
to issue a supplemental report. ''In the end, none of the many efforts to open up the Columbine records, including today's activity, will mean much beyond passing curiosity if we cannot learn from this tragedy,'' Salazar said at a news conference. Salazar said his investigators looked at how sheriff's officials reacted to 1997 complaints about Harris, from a thrown snowball that cracked a car window to a prank telephone call. There were more ominous signs, too: Authorities have said an anonymous tip that year led a deputy to a Web site run by Harris that said the two teens had built pipe bombs and concluded: ''Now our only problem is to find the place that will be 'ground zero.''' Family members said Salazar's report failed to give them the answers they crave. · Post Messages Nearby, more than 150 people lined up to view a vast and chilling display of evidence - the murder weapons, bullet fragments, the chairs and tables where the victims were gunned down. A message board put up in a school window that day still says in blue Magic Marker: ''1 bleeding to death.'' Authorities also released two videos, one of the anxious scene in a park across the street from the school that day, and another, 90-minute compilation of videos made by Harris and Klebold. Much of the material is headed for the state archives. Relatives of the dead and survivors of the horrific attack saw much of it for the first time in a private viewing Wednesday. ''When you read about the number of bullets that were shot and you read about the number of guns, it's one thing,'' Darrell Scott, whose daughter Rachel was killed, said on NBC's ''Today.'' ''But when you walk into a room and see the overwhelming numbers of spent shells and bullets and pipe bombs and knives, it was just an overwhelming sight.'' He said it was ''the first time my wife and I had seen the gun that actually killed Rachel.'' A key part of Salazar's investigation looked at work done by former sheriff's deputy John Hicks. Sheriff Ted Mink asked Salazar to investigate why a 1997 report by Hicks - found in a folder last October - was never reviewed as part of the probe into the shootings. Hicks also looked into a 1998 complaint that Harris posted a death threat against a fellow student on the Web site, along with descriptions of pipe bombs he and Klebold built. Randy and Judy Brown, whose son was named in the threat, reported the information to the sheriff's office. A warrant was drafted to search Harris' home, but it was never executed. Hicks left the department in 2000 and now lives in South Carolina. Tom Mauser, whose son, Daniel, was killed at the school, said he wanted more details about why the search never took place. ''If we're going to learn lessons, that's a key part of it,'' he said. ''Why did law enforcement stop where it did?'' |