media.www.collegian.com/media/storage/pap...r-2887975.shtmlEx-CSU employee threatened Columbine father. Twisted plot sparks FBI investigation, ends in heartbreak.
J. David McSwane
Issue date: 4/30/07 Section: News
Darren Morrison
More than a month after he pleaded not guilty, a former CSU janitor confessed to the Collegian that he recently sent a threatening e-mail to the father of a student killed in the 1999 Columbine High School Massacre.
"I just want to go in and say I'm guilty," Darren Morrison, who is set to appear in court Tuesday, told the Collegian last week. "Whatever the judge says, I deserve it, and I'll just take it… I can be a real jerk when I get on the Internet."
Morrison is charged with harassment, a class three misdemeanor, and is set to appear in Jefferson County Court Tuesday. If convicted, Morrison, 45, could spend up to six months in jail and pay a fine of up to $750.
Morrison sent the e-mail in December to Tom Mauser, a gun control activist who lost his son, Daniel, in the shootings at Columbine High School, where gunmen Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before taking their own lives.
In a videotaped interview with Collegian reporters last week, Morrison confessed to sending the e-mail that spoke of violence with a .50-caliber handgun - a gun powerful enough to shoot an airplane from the sky.
Mauser, who was featured in Michael Moore's Oscar-winning documentary about gun control, "Bowling for Columbine," has seen his fair share of death threats.
But Mauser says the e-mail sent by Morrison - who posed as a well-known guns rights activist - was especially frightening.
"It was very upsetting," Mauser said. "You never know when one of these folks might go off with a gun."
In the e-mail, Morrison posed as Duncan Philp, 50, a CSU alum and prominent gun rights advocate who has a turbulent history with the Mauser family.
With guns drawn, FBI agents and police approached Philp on December 15 in a parking lot.
"These guys are pointing guns at me, and I didn't do anything wrong," Philp told the Collegian earlier this month. "When people point guns at me and you post this kind of crap on the Internet, that's b.s… he screwed up."
After being cleared of any wrongdoing, Philp pointed investigators to Morrison, who had worked as a custodian in Parmelee Hall for the better part of a decade.
"I just didn't think things through," the Fort Collins resident said. "I hit the send button, and it was too late… it's the worst thing I've ever done."
Morrison admits to sending the threatening e-mail, but says there's more to the story.
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