GUNMAN'S DIARY TELLS CHILLING TALE.

Byline: Richard Jones Knight Ridder Newspapers

A detailed diary kept by one of the two gunmen who went on a shooting and bombing spree at Columbine High School shows they planned the attack for more than a year and timed it for a busy lunch hour to ensure ``a big kill,'' police disclosed Saturday.

The handwritten diary shed light on both the motivation of the teen-agers and the execution of the deadly school attack.

In entry after chilling entry, police said, the diary shows Dylan Klebold, 17, and Eric Harris, 18, spent months preparing for Tuesday's massacre at the school - building bombs, stockpiling weapons, studying school maps - where police say they killed 12 students and one teacher before turning their guns on themselves.

``They were going for a big kill,'' said Jefferson County Sheriff John Stone, who discussed some of the diary's contents with reporters Saturday.

``I can just tell you the bottom line of this thing: They wanted to do as much damage as they could possibly do and destroy the school and destroy as many children as they could and go out in flames,'' he said.

News of the diary's existence broke at virtually the same hour that this close-knit community began burying its dead. While most of the nation was watching the funeral of Rachel Scott, 17, on live television, Stone was holding a news conference describing the diary to reporters.

Stone declined to say which of the teens kept the diary or exactly where it was found. He did confirm, however, that it was collected last week during searches of the boys' homes.

He placed some blame on parents, saying that along with the diary, investigators found a shotgun barrel on a dresser and bomb-making materials in the bedroom of one of the youths.

``A lot of this stuff was clearly visible and the parents should have known,'' Stone said. ``I think parents should be accountable for their kid's actions.''

The parents have not commented beyond separate written statements released by their attorneys. The statements expressed sorrow and sympathy for the victims' families.

The sheriff described the diary as ``a time line of the planning of this thing.''

``They had been building bombs for this particular thing for a considerable period of time,'' he said. ``They had been acquiring weapons for a considerable period of time.''

It also seemed to answer the question posed by nearly everyone since the shootings occurred: Why?

Stone said that Harris and Klebold were isolated young men with neo-Nazi tendencies who were determined to strike back at those who they felt ridiculed and derided them.

``We want to be different, we want to be strange,'' Stone said, paraphrasing a passage from the diary. ``We don't want jocks or other people putting us down.

``The whole thing,'' he continued, ``has this German Nazi theme to it. . . . We're going to punish you.''

Stone said that the students had paid attention to every grisly detail as they planned the attack.

``They had it mapped for quite a period of time and had made notations on the map like `These lights are bad over here, a good place to hide here. Numbers of students in the cafeteria' . . . that 11 o'clock had the highest amount'' of students, he said.

``It was basically a time line, Day One we do this, Day Two we do this, Day Three we do this,'' Stone said, noting that the pair had even planned activities down to the minute. ``At 11:15, 11:20 or whatever we will do this and then we'll go in and it's rock-and-roll time. . . .''

Stone said the diary showed that the gunmen were specifically targeting athletes and minorities.

``They were targeting those people because they felt that they were different and because they weren't respected because they were made fun of,'' Stone said.

Throughout, Stone said, the diary maintains a militaristic tone, which is apparent right up to the very last entry on April 20 - the day of the shootings and the birthday of Adolf Hitler.

``It basically said, `It's time for the operation.'''