Sue Klebold on the warning signs (there were few), building a life after the shooting, and why she still loves her son Dylan
Kate Fillion – February 14, 2016

[McCleans article
]

In 2001, investigators showed you Dylan’s journal, which they’d removed from his room within hours of the shootings. While Eric’s theme was hate, Dylan’s was love. How did it feel to discover that?

It broke my heart that not only did I not know his feelings of anger, I did not know his feelings of longing. I felt overwhelming sadness that I didn’t know he had someone he was passionately in love with though she did not know he existed—literally. It just makes the whole tragedy all the more baffling.

Have you ever spoken to her?

No. And she’s not aware [of how Dylan felt about her.]

😦

I’ll let Sue address this via excerpt quotes from her book “A Mother’s Reckoning”

“In early January of 1998, Dylan told Tom about his frustration with a couple of kids at school who were “really asking for it.” The kids were freshmen, and Tom resisted the temptation to laugh: Dylan was six feet four inches tall, and a junior. Dylan told us he wanted to get some guys together to confront the boys. Tom and I told him not to give them the satisfaction of a response. I was worried someone would be hurt, and Tom was worried Dylan would embarrass
himself by engaging with freshmen.

–

“Tom believes, as (Author Ralph) Larkin does, that the culture at Columbine was toxic, and a desire for revenge motivated the attack the boys launched on the school. Many  experts disagree: despite Larkin’s claim that the propane bombs Dylan and Eric placed in the cafeteria were put under
the tables where the jocks typically sat, they did not target popular kids or athletes during the attack, or anyone at all. (Of the forty-eight shooters profiled in Dr. Langman’s book School Shooters: Understanding High School, College, and Adult Perpetrators, only one of them specifically targeted a bully.) Furthermore, there is almost no mention of bullying in Dylan’s journal. If anything, he appears to have envied the jocks for their social comfort and ease with girls.

I personally fall somewhere in the middle. Bullying, however severe, is not an excuse for physical retaliation or violence, much less mass murder. But I do believe Dylan was bullied, and that along with many other factors, and perhaps in combination with them, bullying probably did play some role in what he did. Given Dylan’s temperament and core personality traits, it’s easy to understand why being bullied would have been especially hurtful to him. He hated to be wrong, and didn’t like to lose. He was extremely self-conscious and critical of
himself. (Relentless self-criticism is, incidentally, another sign of depression.) He liked to feel self-reliant, and wanted to be perceived as someone who was in control. This sense of himself would have been badly eroded with each incident. Apparently, they were common.

One day, Dylan came home, his shirt spotted with ketchup. He refused to tell me what had happened, only that he’d had “the worst day of his life.” I pressed, but Dylan downplayed it, and I let him. Kids have disagreements, I thought. Whatever it is, it’ll blow over—and if it doesn’t, I’ll know. There has been reporting that the incident was more serious than I could ever have
imagined: a circle of boys taunting Dylan and Eric, shoving them, spraying them with ketchup, and suggesting they were gay. That incident alone may not explain the deadly kinship forged between the boys, but it is the kind of shared humiliation in which a bond is formed.  Tom and I were aware of another incident.

Junior year, Dylan had a parking space in a remote lot next to the school grounds. A few weeks after he confronted the freshmen, he told his father his car wasn’t running well. Tom found the hood flattened as if someone had stood on it, leaving an indentation deep enough to damage the fuse box. Dylan said
he hadn’t noticed the dent. Tom asked him outright if the freshmen had intentionally damaged his car. Dylan said he didn’t know when or how it had happened, although he was certain it had happened in the school parking lot. The car was old, and we’d never expected it to survive high school without a
few dings. But our failure to find out what happened to it is one thing I regret.”

“Tom and I did not perceive Dylan as being unpopular; he simply had too many friends for us to see him that way. Unfortunately, we did not have the slightest idea what his daily life was really like at school….”

“It mirrors our own conversations, too. One of Dylan’s friends told me he’d never seen any examples of students mistreating other students—and then, in the very next breath, told me about kids hurling a soda can full of tobacco spit in his direction at a school sporting event. Another of Dylan’s friends (Brooks Brown as recounted in his book No Easy Answers) told us a car full of kids threw glass bottles and other trash at their group as they drove by. (Larkin reports that throwing trash from moving cars at lower-caste students was common.) A resigned Dylan tried to comfort a horrified newcomer to the group: “You get used to it. It happens all the time.

It hurts that it was so easy for Dylan to hide what his life was like at school. I still have dreams in which I discover his hidden pain. In one, I am undressing him, still a toddler, for a bath. I pull his shirt off and see a bloody network of concealed cuts across his torso. Even writing about it now makes me cry.

Dylan’s struggles may have been hidden from us, but they were not uncommon ones. A 2011 study by the Centers for Disease Control found that 20 percent of high school students nationwide reported they had been bullied on school property in the thirty days before the survey; an even higher percentage reported they’d been bullied on social media. Anti-bullying
advocates suggest the number may be closer to 30 percent.

A tremendous amount of research has been done on the effects of peer harassment, and there is unquestionably a correlation between bullying and brain health disorders that stretches all the way into adulthood. A Duke University study found that, compared with kids who weren’t
bullied, those who were had four times the prevalence of agoraphobia, generalized anxiety, and panic disorder as adults. The bullies themselves had four times the risk of developing antisocial personality disorder.

There is also a strong association between bullying and depression and suicide. Both being a victim and bullying others is related to high risks of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts. Researchers at Yale found that victims of bullying were two to nine times more likely to report suicidal thoughts than other children.

The connection between bullying and violence toward others is more complicated, although again there’s a correlation. Bullied kids often become bullies themselves, which appears to be what happened with Dylan and Eric. Larkin cites a student who claims they terrorized her brother, a student with special needs, so badly he was afraid to come to school. Researchers
call students who both bully and suffer bullying “bully-victims,” and find that these bully-victims are at the greatest psychological risk. “Their numbers, compared to those never involved in bullying, tell the story: 14 times the risk of panic disorder, 5 times the risk of depressive disorders, and 10 times the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior.”

The humiliation and degradation Dylan experienced at the hands of his schoolmates likely did contribute to his psychological state. At some point his anger, which had for years been directed toward himself, began to turn outward, and the idea of personal destruction he found so comforting began to include others. Repeated incidents of disrespect at school, an environment that should have been safe, may very well have constituted the pivot point.
Of course, even if Dylan did endure humiliation at the hands of his classmates, it cannot absolve him in any way of responsibility for what he did. At the same time, I have deep regrets I wasn’t more in tune with Dylan’s feelings about the place he spent his days. I wish I had spent much more time and energy on determining the climate and culture of the school (and how appropriate it was for Dylan) than on assessing it academically.

Once in a while, I allow myself to fantasize about the thousand ways the story could have ended differently, and all of those fantasies begin with a different school. My biggest regret, though, is that I did not do whatever it would have taken to know what Dylan’s internal life was really like.”

As oppose to yet another despised and forgotten mass shooter statistic? But yeah, I get what you’re saying. Thing is, the option he chose is sadder still because despite our having an awareness of his having existed it’s solely based on what he’d done and the harm he’s caused others and so we’re strongly discouraged from remembering the entirety of his existence at all.

Is this a multiple choice question? If so, that be a HATE on all of the above. 😉

I think you’re preaching to the choir on that point.  I agree that having a girlfriend and/or having sex with chicks or that girlfriend would not have been a quick fix for the mental issues they were struggling with nor a fast-track to salvation. It’s even possible that if the dating got super intimate and then suddenly the girl decided the relationship was over, it might’ve been a contributing factor to make the two even more unstable and reactionary than they already were. The two did need a genuine friend that cared about them and was attuned and close enough to see that something was off.  Someone that was ok with drawing them out and being a sounding board allowing them to blow off steam. This could’ve potentially had been a friend that might’ve ended up being a girlfriend but not necessarily. Bottom line though is that a girlfriend would not have single-handedly have been able to nurture them, console them with sex or save them from themselves.  A friend, however, that wanted to help them want to begin to save their own selves, to reinforce the idea that they mattered, would’ve been more along the lines of a positive influence that they needed and did not have the benefit of in their lives.  

I think it was a bit of both and that because he enjoyed beats and rhythms that he entertained the idea of being a drummer as a future career.  I think it wasn’t a serious consideration but something he probably told friends and family while he was mulling the idea over in his head as he messed around and practiced performing in Brooks’ band. I think he truly loved and connected in to music in his spirit and it was nourishment for Dylan. Snapping his fingers, whistling tunes, doing rhythmic percussion on his steering wheel while driving with the Chemical Brothers amped up on his sub woofers. He vibed it in the core of his being and so it was one of the few things he idly considered that he might possibly like to do if he actually stuck it out here on Planet Earth and made it to adulthood. All kids dream though and even though Devon said Dylan mentioned he wanted to become a drummer, it doesn’t mean that he was seriously motivated to do just that.

That’s one of those trick questions, right?  The sort that I’ll never be able to answer the right way to please everyone. 😉   I’m going to say that both were equally intelligent but in their own differing ways. And I’m not saying as such just to be on the fence about it. Dylan was highly intelligent which I’m sure includes a high IQ to boot and this was concretely verified and tested that he had gifted abilities which began to show up markedly while he was a child. His learning was accelerated. He grasped concepts and ideas quicker than average kids, assimilated something introduced to him effortlessly and was then ready to move on to more and more advanced stuff far earlier than peers of the same age.  Eric was smart in the average range of intelligence but he was clever and most importantly, he had a thirst for knowledge and learning.  I’m sure Dylan wasn’t at all bored in the least with the sort of intelligence and “awareness” that Eric had to offer in their friendship.  The two were too smart for their own good, They had too much time on their hands just for the simple fact that they were bored af following along with the the unimaginative, ‘in the box’ dull style of “education’ their school had to offer everyone equally which didn’t challenge or stimulate them enough nor satisfy their curiosities. They weren’t engaged enough to be excited about contributing and honing their intelligence towards a productive, connected future in this life. The two were sharp and restless boys that were a potent combination, a formula that ended up to no good. Idle hands make for the devil’s work, as they say. 

Probably that it’s strange and surreal. I think Sue grapples with the infamy her son has acquired by default for participating in such a horrendous atrocity. Don’t think she’d ever quite be able to wrap her head around the fact that young girls have pictures of her son on their phone for the simple fact that  he is known at all and recognized because he is synonymous with the Columbine tragedy. It’s probably perverse to her though a part of her tries to be understanding as to what Dylan must represent for them.  

Mm, I don’t know but I think the Doors suits Dyl perfectly.  I wouldn’t say he listened to the band as a ‘guilty pleasure’ either just that his family was pretty well rounded and his parents exposed him to classic movies and such so there’s a good chance Dylan knew a fair amount about all kinds of music including classic ‘60 and ‘70 rock and from his parents who would’ve been in their late teens in the groovy hippy era.  There is something perfectly natural about Dyl grooving to some classic Jim Morrison ala ‘Riders on the Storm’ while driving home on that long, winding, wilderness stretch of the canyon roads at sundown on his way home from work. “People are Strange” seems to fit Dyl’s general sentiment about his existence. But then again, I’ve always seen him as kind of a frustrated nineties hippy that never found that ‘love is all you need’. 😉

Robyn met Dylan in 1995 at the start of their Freshman year when she had moved to the area and at first he appeared to be a “rough guy” but had a warm heart.

Another boy who once was close to Klebold remembered him as “very, very intelligent” and unassuming. Chris Logan, 18, said he and Klebold were friends until somewhere within their sophomore year, when they enjoyed hanging out at the movies, bowling or playing video games at arcades.

Chris Logan, who was heavy into theater, ran around with Dylan. Their circle of girls and guys bowled together and went to movies. When Chris threw a Christmas party, Dylan was there. So was Chris’ girlfriend, Robyn Anderson. Already she and Dylan had developed a bond. 

Eric killed both Dans.

Dan Mauser:
After John Savage had been allowed to leave, Harris turned and fired his carbine at the table directly north of where they had been, grazing the ear of 15-year-old Daniel Mauser. When Mauser fought back, shoving a chair at Harris, Harris fired again and hit Mauser in the face at close range, killing him

Eric Killed Dan Rohrbough:
explain here

That haircut isn’t a neo nazi skinhead look, it’s a military style close crop buzzcut.

Mm, I’d say about equal though Devon went just a bit deeper with Dylan in conversations than Robyn could muster in her friendship with him. Devon had a maturity whereas Robyn and Dylan were sort of a pal around type thing and homework partners.