What happened to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold’s bodies?
Harris and Klebold's bodies were sent to the Jefferson County's Coroner Office on the evening of April 21 for further examination. Autopsies were conducted the next day.
On April 24, Klebold was cremated following a short funeral service for family members and friends. Sue Klebold speaks about the funeral in a interview from 2021:
“It’s hard to talk about the funeral. We had just a very few people there, I think in the room there was 12 people or so. I wanted to have the body cremated before i left the premises, because i was so afraid someone would hurt him or take him. I remember looking up at windows cause i was afraid of the media, and I was constantly watching to make sure someone wasn’t on some ladder somewhere, trying to look in, capturing pictures of Dylan and his casket, or snapping pictures of us. He was just, there, in a cardboard box and they allowed each of us to have a couple minutes with him, so my husband and my son and I each had time with him, alone, to say goodbye.”
Later in the interview she mentioned something she had said out loud, to Dylan’s body:
“Darling, help me understand what happened.”
These parts of the interview can be found here.
Although there isn’t that much information about what happened to Eric, we do have documentation showing that Eric’s body was released to Aspen Funeral Home, with no services held, per power of attorney:
“Eric Harris Body Released to Aspen Funeral Home 1350 Simms (303) 232- 0985, No services for Harris per Power of Atty to Private Investigator. Bill Black works at Aspen (303) 232- 0985.”
On April 27, master carpenter Greg Zanis erected fifteen large wooden crosses atop a hill near Columbine High School to commemorate those who had died, including the shooters. Over 125,000 people visited this memorial over the next following days.
April 30, the father of victim Daniel Rohrbough cut down the crosses bearing the perpetrators' names in the presence of media, stating that they should not be memorialized in the same place as the victims.
Dylan’s ashes were handed to his family, meanwhile all we know for sure is that Eric’s ashes were handed to the Harris’ lawyer.
In Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism released in 2023, it is stated that Eric’s ashes were kept on the same shelf as Timothy McVeigh’s until McVeigh’s remains were scattered in the mountains around 2001.
According to that claim, Eric’s ashes were stored in an investigative locker under Ellis Armistead’s control until Nigh retrieved McVeigh’s.
