Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters who committed the Columbine High School massacre, murdering 12 students and a teacher. "use strict";(function(){var insertion=document.getElementById("citation-access-date");var date=new Date().toLocaleDateString(undefined,{month:"long",day:"numeric",year:"numeric"});insertion.parentElement.replaceChild(document.createTextNode(date),insertion)})(); Subscribe to the Biography newsletter to receive stories about the people who shaped our world and the stories that shaped their lives. And it was all thanks to two troubled teens: Columbine shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. On April 20, 1999, Adolf Hitler’s birthday, Klebold and Harris began their attack. They were released a month early from the program in February 1999. Andrew Solomon's excellent, Far From The Tree. But he didn't feel like he fit in at Columbine High School in Colorado. But the propane bombs didn’t explode so the two entered the school after 11 a.m., shooting at anyone they encountered. Update Feb 2017: Sue Klebold posted a brave and insightful TED Talk: Eric and Dylan's parents provoke the most debate at my events, yet unfortunately, this will be the shortest section on the site. With Harris, he worked at a local pizza place for a time. As the terrified parents of Columbine High School prayed for the lives of their children, Sue Klebold asked only for the death of her boy. They then intended to trigger more explosives – such as those attached to Klebold’s BMW – after ambulances and other help arrived. © 2020 Biography and the Biography logo are registered trademarks of A&E Television Networks, LLC. The rampage ended after 12 p.m. with Klebold and Harris committing suicide in the school’s library. Bullying was fairly common at Columbine High School and teachers reportedly did little to stop it. Tom and Sue Klebold also agreed through their attorney to fact-check a list of information I compiled prior to publication of the book. what happened to the columbine shooters parents: columbine shooters parents today: columbine shooters parents eric harris: columbine shooters parents photos: 12 3 4 5. Susan Klebold's 2009 essay for O, The Oprah Magazine, I Will Never Know Why. We can wish she and Tom had some magic insights, but the reality is that the vast majority of teen suicides take their parents by surprise—whether or not they kill other people on the way out. There was controversy over whether Harris and Klebold should be memorialized. The column format limited it to about 800 words, but Brooks chose them wisely. Albert DeSalvo is best known for confessing to be the "Boston Strangler," who killed 13 women in Boston in the early 1960s. The fourth weapon came from a co-worker at the pizza place. Sue Klebold's son was one of the shooters in a mass killing at Columbine High School 19 years ago. Like many teenagers, he liked violent video games. Originally, bombs planted in the school’s cafeteria were supposed to go off first, sending students and teachers into the parking lot where the two planned to shoot as many people as possible. Long after I created the first draft of this page (2004), Sue Klebold published her wonderful memoir, A Mother's Reckoning. The shootings sent shockwaves through the community and the world at large. https://www.biography.com/crime-figure/dylan-klebold. Here are photos of ⦠Long after I created the first draft of this page (2004), Sue Klebold published her wonderful memoir, So this page is somewhat moot: you should just go read Sue's excellent book, and/or google the many interviews she did when it came out. Dylan Klebold, along with Eric Harris, shot and killed 13 people and injured 20 at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. "Like Capote's In Cold Blood, this tour de force gets below the who and what of a horrifying incident to lay bare the devastating why. Columbine killer Eric Harris came from a middle class family. That's because Wayne & Kathy Harris, and Tom & Sue Klebold were vilified after the attack, and responded rationally: with brief written statements and then silence. Anna's daughter, Lauren Townsend, was killed in the April 20, 1999, attack. Linda and her husband Tom met with the Harrises and Tom also met with the Klebolds. Dylan Klebold, along with Eric Harris, shot and killed 13 people and injured 20 at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. Although he was bright, Klebold didn’t apply himself in school and earned mediocre grades. They even discussed which director should handle the film version of their attack. The lines of influence illustrate links between those who were influenced by Columbine and later perpetrators whom they influenced in turn. The parents of Brooks Brown, a student at Columbine, filed a report with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Office in March 1998 saying that Eric Harris had threatened to kill their son. Anderson "Devil Anse" Hatfield led his family in their notorious and bloody feud with the McCoys during the late 1800s along the Kentucky-West Virginia border. Mickey Cohen became the West Coast racket boss in 1947, after his mentor and predecessor, Bugsy Siegel, was assassinated. I find Sue credible and sincere. She's spent years excavating every detail of her family life, trying to understand what she could have done to prevent her son's violence. On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School and opened fire on their classmates, teachers and staff. My 2010 Daily Beast essay, The Last Columbine Mystery. David Brooks Op-Ed column notes that after his recent column about 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, he got e-mail from Tom Klebold, father of Dylan Klebold, one of shooters⦠They were both charged with theft, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing. Another ominous sign of things to come, Klebold and Harris made a video of them acting as vigilantes shooting “jocks” in the school hallways for a school project. It's a reported piece, based on my interviews with Bob Curnow and Linda Mauser. Klebold and Harris became interested in all things German, wore swastikas and even gave the “Heil, Hitler” salute while bowling or playing card games. There was an extensive investigation into the shooting and the authorities’ response to the siege. I find that absurd. The parents of Columbine High School shooters Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, along with the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department, are fighting ⦠Linda and her husband Tom met with the Harrises and Tom also met with the Klebolds. The perpetrators, twelfth grade students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, murdered 12 students and one teacher.Ten students were killed in the school library, where the pair subsequently commited suicide. Since it was their first offense, they were enrolled in a diversion program, which consisted of community service and counseling. I found all sorts of other bits of information about the parents, particularly the Klebolds. The following contains the complete story and facts about the events that occurred before, during, and after the Columbine High School Shooting: Quick Facts About The Columbine High School Shooting. The initial shock of the massacre quickly turned to total confusion: Parents, teachers, police officers, and journalists were all mystified as to how two teenagers could so easily and seemingly joyfully murder a dozen classmates and a teacher. But brace yourself: it's heartbreaking. Dawn Anna speaks about the anniversary of the mass shooting at Columbine High School in suburban Denver on March 23, 2019. References to Columbine were found in materials owned by Seung-Hui Cho, the 2007 Virginia Tech shooter, and Adam Lanza, the perpetrator ⦠Itâs been nearly 11 years since the Columbine tragedy rocked the nation, and the largest remaining questions center on the killersâ parents: Did they see it coming? His parents eventually started their own real estate management company and provided an upper-middle-class life for their family. It was based on a long conversation Brooks had with Tom and Sue Klebold. (Here's, Update Feb 2017: Sue Klebold posted a brave and insightful, this tour de force gets below the who and what of a horrifying incident to lay bare the devastating why. None of the prominent psychologists I worked with on the case expected the Harris or Klebold parents to hold great surprises. His father was a geophysicist and a mother worked with the disabled. In that process, they also added a few details here and there, through their attorney. A school shooting and attempted bombing occurred on April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, Colorado, United States. The bottom line is a dearth of information, in comparison to the rest of the case. He was described as a shy child who loved baseball, especially the Boston Red Sox. (A few days after the Virginia Tech tragedy, I published a New York Times op-ed suggesting a different approach with the parents there, hoping for a different outcome.). It's required reading for anyone interested in the case. So the secondary weaponry of the guns became the main event. There have been only three significant articles: David Brooks' 2004 New York Times column, Parents of a Killer. Sources included: the questionnaires they filled out for the Diversion program, Wayne's journal on Eric released by Jeffco, the police file on the single interview between the Klebolds and investigators, my interviews with Lead Investigator Kate Battan about that meeting, and interviews with people close to the families—some conducted by me, others in published accounts by journalists I trust. The New York Times described an earlier version of this document: âLangman has created a mass-shooter diagram tracking the influence Columbine has had on more than 30 other rampage attacks at schools and elsewhere, from California to Germany. Eric Harris, along with Dylan Klebold, shot and killed 13 people and injured 20 at Columbine High School on April 20, 1999. So this page is somewhat moot: you should just go read Sue's excellent book, and/or google the many interviews she did when it came out. However, that leaves three other parents, so I'm keeping this page, to help readers with them. The commission looked for ways to improve the handling of such crisis situations as did many other schools and states across the country. Her perspective of a mom who sees the severity of her son's depression only in retrospect is invaluable. His father Wayne was an Air force pilot, his mother Kathy was a homemaker and his brother Kevin earned a ⦠Bob met with both the Harris and Klebold parents. I reported on all four meetings in the Afterword to the paperback edition of the book, and focused on the Harrises in this article I adapted for the Daily Beast. ". Both received glowing reports at the end of the program with Klebold being called “a bright young man who has a great deal of potential,” according to an article in The Christian Science Monitor. (Here's my Vanity Fair piece on Sue's first interview, with Diane Sawyer.) They acquired guns and made pipe bombs. âColumbineâ now is a brand, a marker, a symbol, an event, a verb, a metaphor, a label. It had two primary topics, which just happen to be the two I get asked about the parents most:1) What did she and Tom see in Dylan before the murders, and 2) What has their life been like for the next ten years? It will be outlined here. Dylan Klebold was a child of upper-middle-class parents, considered gifted in grammar school. On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold walked into Columbine High School and opened fire on their classmates Intelligent, Klebold was in a program for gifted students at his elementary school. By ninth grade, he was friends with Harris and Brooks Brown. By the 1960s, gangster and drug kingpin Frank Lucas had constructed an international drug ring that spanned from New York to South East Asia. ", Explore a Decade of Dave Cullen's Research. He developed a hatred of school – a sentiment shared by Harris. The day of the Columbine High School Massacre was on Tuesday, April 20, 1999. Klebold was born on September 11, 1981, in Lakewood, Colorado. September 21, 2007 - The Columbine Memorial, adjacent to Columbine High School, is dedicated and opened to the public. Read it. Meet Wayne & Kathy Harris. Columbine became the archetypal school shooting for a number of reasons â most obviously because there were many more casualties: 13 dead (15, if you included the shooters themselves), 21 injured. Atop a hill near Columbine High School, crosses were erected for Harris and Klebold along with those for the people they killed, but the father of victim Daniel Rohrbough cut them down, saying that murderers should not be memorialized in the same place as victims. They roamed the school for less than an hour, killing 12 students and a teacher and wounding more than 20 others. They considered that possible, but not probable. Top Searches Holiday Gifts. A female friend of Klebold’s reportedly helped them get three of the weapons – the same young woman he took to the prom shortly before the killings. Bob Dylan is one of the most influential singer-songwriters of the 20th century, known for songs that chronicle social and political issues. Student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 32 people on Virginia Tech's campus in 2007. These are the only known meetings between the parents of the killers and victims. Trending. It's a reported piece, based on my interviews with Bob Curnow and Linda Mauser. As a quiet teen interested in technology, Klebold didn’t fit in with the dominant jock culture of Columbine High School. Klebold also enjoyed bowling and worked behind the scenes for school productions as a sound man. Harris even posted some of their bomb-making expertise and exploits on his website under his nickname “Reb” and using Klebold’s nickname “Vodka.”. It is an incisive, empathetic column, not to be missed. You won't get closer to the source than this. Their teenage son, along with his classmate Dylan Klebold, killed 12 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, on April 20, 1999. Columbine was intended primarily as a bombing, but the main bombs all failed. A very few critics complained that the piece was not revealing enough. February 12, 2016 - In ⦠In this difficult, jarring talk, Klebold explores the intersection between mental health and ⦠In 1998, during their junior year, the two were arrested after they broke into a van and stole some things out of the vehicle. Some were opposed, saying that it glorified murderers, while others argued that Harris and Klebold were also victims. Unfortunately, other young shooters would follow in their footsteps, and some of them, including Seung-Hui Cho, would mention Harris and Klebold as part of their deadly inspiration. What a Columbine Shooter's Mom ... it didn't matter that he was spending a night at the prom or putting a deposit down on a dorm room right before Columbineâsigns that led his parents to ⦠She did a masterful job at both. As the mother of Columbine High School shooter Dylan Klebold prepares to speak out in her first interview since the gruesome 1999 shooting massacre, a ⦠For Halloween 1996, one routinely bullied junior named Eric Dutro had his parents buy him a black duster jacket for a Dracula costume. Littleton residents gather at the Clemment Park memorial on Apr. These are the only known meetings between the parents of the killers and victims. Now, she spends her time advocating for suicide prevention and mental health services. The costume fell through, but he decided that he liked the trench coat and the attention it got him. Deeply disturbed by the attack, the governor of Colorado appointed a special commission to study the events of that tragic day. There was also a lot of rage simmering under the surface as well, which appeared in the violent essays he wrote for English class and the stories and poems he wrote for his creative writing class – all of which often featured blood, death and war. An investigator looked into the case and found that Harris had made the threats on his website and that he had also written about how he would like to kill people. The parents of Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold have often been portrayed as disengaged from the lives of their sons and unaware of the dark paths lying ahead. The two adopted the style of the school’s outcast clique, the Trench Coat Mafia, wearing long coats, dark clothing and looking unkempt, and reportedly hung around the group’s periphery. 24, 1999 to pays respects to 12 students and one teacher who died at Columbine High School following a shooting ⦠The mass murder ended when he turned the gun and shot himself in the head. The shootersâ names were Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. I would earnestly love to learn more from them but I understand their position. The parents of the suspected Dayton shooter have not yet issued any public ... whose son Dylan and another teenager killed a dozen classmates and a teacher 20 years ago at Columbine ⦠The student survivors of the Columbine shooting are now in their mid- to late-30s, and many now have families. Eric Harris and Dylan each carried two big guns: a semi-automatic rifle, and a sawed-off shotgun. Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the two shooters who committed the Columbine High School massacre, murdering 12 students and a teacher. In one of the videotapes made by the pair, Klebold said “I hope we kill 250 of you,” and Harris compared the killings to one of their favorite video games, Doom, as reported in Time magazine. Klebold, in personal writings found after the attack, expressed suicidal thoughts and was deeply saddened by his lack of a romantic relationship. Wayne & Kathy Harris are the parents of infamous Columbine HS shooter, Eric Harris. My 2010 Daily Beast essay, The Last Columbine Mystery. They believed that their actions would bring them fame as well as vengeance. We strive for accuracy and fairness. They also liked to play violent first-person shooter video games and listening to such German bands such as KMFDM and Rammstein. Dylan's mom wrote a candid, articulate, 5,000-word essay. Twenty years after teenage gunmen attacked Columbine High School, Ruegsegger Johnson and other alumni of the Littleton, Colorado, school have become parents. However, if you dig a bit—and I certainly have—some really useful information has come to light about them. Jesse James was a bank and train robber in the American Old West, best known as the leading member of the James-Younger gang of outlaws. Parents of Columbine Shooter Dylan Klebold Struggled With Guilt After Attack. He and his friend Eric Harris developed a hatred of school, and on April 20, 1999, they brought guns and pipe bombs to murder as many students as they could. Next 55 results. Beginning some time in 1998, Klebold and Harris began to plan their attack on Columbine High School. They killed 13 people and injured 20 before committing suicide. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us! Bob met with both the Harris and Klebold parents. Certainly it was the event that changed everything and set in motion a discussion of protocol for school shootings â what Dylanâs mother speaks of as âthreat assessmentâ guidelines. Dylan Thomas is a writer who is best known for the poem 'Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night' and the play 'Under Milk Wood.'. Reading for anyone interested in the case were opposed, saying that it glorified murderers, while others argued Harris. 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