He and Eric were preposterous, posturing, giving a performance for each other and their invisible audience. I had never seen that expression of sneering superiority on Dylan’s face. My mouth gaped open when I heard the language they were using—abominable, hate-filled, racist, derogatory words, words never spoken or heard in our home.
The dynamic between the boys was laid bare, and it was a revelation. Adrenaline coursed through me, making it hard to concentrate, though the information on the tapes felt so important I didn’t even want to blink.
On the first recording, we saw Eric act as emcee, introducing topics he wants memorialized on the tape, while Dylan adds contemptuous support. At first glance, Eric seems like the calm, sane one, while Dylan rages in the background. It is obvious that Dylan’s rage is a crucial component in the dynamic. Over and over, Eric urges him to “feel the rage,” and Dylan obliges by pulling out anything he can to lock himself into a state of anger and hold himself there. The lengths he goes to are ridiculous, as when he recalls slights from his preschool days.
The psychologists who reviewed the tapes would come to a similar conclusion: that Eric relied on Dylan’s slow-burning, depressive anger to fuel and feed his sadism, while Dylan used Eric’s destructive impulses to jolt him out of his passivity. It would take years for me to filter what I heard on the tape and to understand the role of anger in Dylan’s self-destruction.
Through the appalling bravado, and the shocking, hateful words spilling out of his mouth, I could see Dylan’s familiar adolescent self-consciousness, the same awkward embarrassment he displayed whenever Tom brought out the video camera to make a home movie. I wanted to both leap through the screen and beat him with my fists while screaming at him—and, in the same moment, to reach back in time, to hold him and tell him that he was deeply loved, and not alone.
I no longer remember the order in which the segments played. In one, the two boys sit in two chairs facing the camera, eating and drinking alcohol from a bottle. They list the people they want to hurt, and describe what they would like to do to them. (As Kate pointed out, none of the people mentioned on the tapes were injured in the attack.) In another segment, Dylan holds the camera while Eric plays dress-up and shows off weapons. They talk about keeping the plan a secret. Eric shows how carefully he hid the weapons so his parents would not find them.
Kate inserted a side comment here for our benefit. This portion of the video was a real eye-opener, she said, even for those who worked in law enforcement. Investigators had failed to discover one of Eric’s hiding places in their initial search of the Harrises’ home; they’d had to go back after seeing the tape. She added that people on the team went home and searched their own children’s rooms as they had never searched before.
Dylan talks about sneaking his newly purchased shotgun into our house. He had sawed off the end, making it smaller and easier to conceal—not to mention illegal to own. He describes his tension as he held the gun inside his coat and slipped up to his room without being suspected. We’ve never learned whether the gun was stored inside our home or elsewhere. It might have been kept inside his box-shaped headboard; the inside could not be accessed unless the bed was taken apart. Watching, I felt hopeless. Even if we had continued to search his room, as we did regularly for six months after his arrest in junior year, we probably would not have looked there.
At one point on the tape, Dylan makes a derogatory comment about my extended family, and another about his older brother, Byron. We had been grieving for six full months, and nobody had borne the brunt of the world’s venom more bravely than Byron had. Our older son had stepped up and shouldered the terrible responsibilities that had landed on him with astonishing grace and courage. It was ironic. Dylan had so little to complain or be angry about that he was reduced to grasping at straws like his relationship with his brother or rarely seen relatives in order to stoke the rage Eric needed him to sustain.
In another snippet of tape, Dylan complains to Eric that I am making him participate in a Passover seder. On the weekend they made the video, I had decided to make a traditional Passover dinner and invite a neighbor to join us, and I asked both of my sons for their work schedules so I could plan accordingly. Dylan responded in a way I found immature and self-centered. He didn’t want to participate. The youngest person at the table has to read part of the service, and he found it embarrassing.
I asked him to reconsider. “I know this holiday means nothing to you, but it means something to me. We’ll have a good dinner. Do it for me?” When he said he would, I thanked him and told him I appreciated it. Then there he was on the video, complaining to Eric about his obligation to attend.
Eric, who is playing with a gun while Dylan talks, becomes very still and silent when he hears the word “Passover.” He hadn’t known my family was Jewish. When Dylan realizes what he has let slip, he starts backpedaling. He seems afraid of Eric’s reaction, and tells him I’m not really Jewish—just a quarter, or an eighth. I couldn’t tell if he was worried about being judged, or being shot.
Eric finally breaks the tension by offering a word of consolation to Dylan. Watching it, I thought, You stupid idiots! All this talk about hating everyone and everything, and you don’t even know what you’re talking about. It’s all something you’ve invented in your minds to sustain your anger. The heartbreaking thing was that, for a moment there, it seemed like Dylan had almost realized it.
At one point on the tapes, Eric suggests they each say something about their parents. At that, Dylan looks down at his fingernails and says, almost inaudibly, “My parents have been good to me. I don’t want to browse there.” Neither one of them acknowledges a connection between the actions they are planning and the pain they will cause the people who love them. In another recording, they go so far as to announce that their parents and friends hold no responsibility for what is about to happen, as if tidying this minor detail will make everything fine for their families when it’s all over.
The last segment was the shortest one. It was also the most difficult for me. In it, the boys pause to say a few words of farewell before going over to the school to carry out their plan. Supplies are piled around them, as if they are heading out on an expedition. Eric tells his family how they should distribute his possessions.
Dylan does not utter an angry word or speak of hatred or vengeance. He makes no mention of the death and destruction to come. There is none of the braggadocio of the previous tapes. He does not cry, either; his affect is flat, resigned. Whatever else he intends to do, he is going to the school to end his own life. He looks away from the camera, as if speaking only to himself. Then he says softly, “Just know I’m going to a better place. I didn’t like life too much….”
Watching this, I had to bite my lip to stop myself from screaming, Stop! Stop! Don’t go. Don’t leave me! Don’t do this. Don’t hurt those people. Give me a chance to help you! Come back. But wherever he was, Dylan couldn’t hear me anymore.
? ? ?
Tufekci: “I can see no benefit whatsoever to releasing those tapes, only the possibility for great harm.”
—Notes from a conversation with sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, February 2015
Years later, Tom and I would fight to make sure the so-called Basement Tapes were not released to the public.