Detectives investigating the massacre “had three possible crimes to uncover: participation in the attack, participation in the planning, or guilty knowledge” (203). Friends of Eric and Dylan are questioned and released. Sheriff Stone continues to talk of a conspiracy, while Agent Fusilier, by the end of the second week after the shooting, believes the legitimacy of such a theory to be “remote.”

Cullen writes, “Rumors of a third shooter have continued right up to present day,” and again brings up the fact that both Eric and Dylan removed their jackets at various points during their attack led witnesses to believe that there were four shooters, not two (204). Memory, Cullen notes, “is notoriously unreliable” (205), and this is illustrated here by Principal DeAngelis having two utterly different versions of the moments and actions leading up to him encountering Dylan holding a shotgun.

The FBI interviews Kristi Epling, a friend of both Dylan and Eric, and someone who was especially close to Eric. Epling and Eric wrote notes to one another in German class and Epling, after the shooting, mailed these notes to a friend, whom she imagined would effectively hide them. The friend went to the police. Epling says another friend, Nate Dykeman, is in Florida, to avoid media attention.