The Columbine Killers' 3 Unreleased "Basement Tapes" (Recorded in 1999)

More or less everyone is familiar with the tragic events that took place on April 20, 1999 at Columbine High School, in Columbine, Colorado. Dubbed “the Columbine High School massacre”, the school shooting perpetrated by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold left 14 students and 1 teacher dead, and many others injured (with themselves being 2 of the students killed, after committing suicide).

In December of the same year, Time Magazine reporter Tim Roche was given access to five video tapes that investigators had discovered, recorded by the murderers, outlining their motives and reciting a “kill-list” of sorts, amongst other things. Roche published an article for Times on the tapes on December 20, soon after viewing them, dubbing them the “Basement Tapes”. Not long after the article’s publication, furious family members of the deceased threatened to sue Jefferson County, considering the fact that not even they had been given access to the recordings. They came to an agreement, with Jefferson County quickly screening the tapes for them, and then vaulting them away “indefinitely”.

In 2003 a 15 minute segment of the killers shooting at the Rampart Range was released, and in 2004, so too was a short film the two had created for school titled ‘’Hitmen for Hire’’, both of which many people suspected to have been 2 of the 5 Basement Tapes. In 2006, Jefferson Country Sherriff Ted Mink was told by the courts that he was now allowed to release the remaining footage should he want to, although ultimately he declined to do so, fearing that some troubled youths may be inspired by the recordings. Instead, he released 949 pages of previously unreleased documents on the case, including full transcripts for all of the Basement Tapes, confirming that the 2 previously released videos were indeed 2 of the 5 Basement Tapes. Several sources who have seen the tapes (including various family members of the deceased) claim the total runtime to be roughly 3 to 4 hours. Since the last screening with various family members in 1999, the unreleased tapes have never been seen by anyone else.