Posted on 10/10/2009 4:18:47 PM PDT by real saxophonist
Dylan Klebold's mom speaks in "O" magazine
"No inkling" of plans for Columbine massacre
By The Denver Post
Posted: 10/10/2009
Susan Klebold wrote an essay in the November issue of O magazine. (Denver Post file photo )An essay by the mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold says she had "no inkling" of her son's inner turmoil, and her examination of his journals has prompted her to learn about suicide in an effort to understand the school shooting.
The essay by Susan Klebold, which appears in the November issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, explores her son's role in the 1999 massacre where he and co-conspirator Eric Harris killed 12 students and a teacher and left two dozen wounded before killing themselves.
Neither family has spoken at length in the aftermath of what at the time marked the most deadly school shooting in U.S. history. Pending litigation contributed to the silence for several years, but even with the lawsuits resolved, repeated requests for interviews have been turned down.
In a news release, Oprah Winfrey also noted that Susan Klebold had declined interview requests but then, several months ago, agreed to write about her personal experience. The magazine released a few advance excerpts.
"From the writings Dylan left behind, criminal psychologists have concluded that he was depressed and suicidal," Susan Klebold wrote in one passage. "When I first saw copied pages of these writings, they broke my heart. I'd had no inkling of the battle Dylan was waging in his mind."
She added: "Dylan's participation in the massacre was impossible for me to accept until I began to connect it to his own death. Once I saw his journals, it was clear to me that Dylan entered the school with the intention of dying there. And so in order to understand what he might have been thinking, I started to learn all I could about suicide."
Susan Klebold received no payment for the essay, said a magazine spokesperson, but hoped to "raise suicide awareness and to generate support for organizations such as The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and the American Association of Suicidology."
A spokesperson for the Klebolds' attorney, Gary Lozow, would not field questions and said that the Klebold family would have no further comment.
The magazine hits newsstands on Tuesday.
In another passage, Susan Klebold recounted the early morning before the violence began:
"Early on April 20, I was getting dressed for work when I heard Dylan bound down the stairs and open the front door. Wondering why he was in such a hurry when he could have slept another 20 minutes, I poked my head out of the bedroom. 'Dyl?' All he said was 'Bye.' The front door slammed, and his car sped down the driveway. His voice had sounded sharp. I figured he was mad because he'd had to get up early to give someone a lift to class. I had no idea that I had just heard his voice for the last time."
Another excerpt describes her struggle to come to grips with the tragedy.
"For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused," she wrote. "I cannot look at a child in a grocery store or on the street without thinking about how my son's schoolmates spent the last moments of their lives. Dylan changed everything I believed about myself, about God, about family, and about love."
Working moms.
Susan lebold had her HAIR DONE the DAY AFTER!! I will NEVER forget that!! What a SHALLOW....EMPTY person.
You have got to be kidding me
Awwwwww, it must have been some exclusive beauty shop and she’d been on their waiting list for months. They bumped her up on the list out of sympathy. Or sumfin.
There is some weird justification and denial going on in her mind to this day obviously. This wasn’t about ‘suicide’. If he had just offed himself, the world would have been better off. No, this is about mass murder.
It’s like if Ted Bundy’s parents were going on about how he had low self esteem or something. It’s retarded. She’s basically still thinking that in some way, he was a victim.
What a pickle of a nickname... “Dyl”. (dill)
I guess he was expecting the school to get promptly stormed and that was when he was planning to shoot himself after his and his friend’s raid of mysterious vengeance. But the fuzz cowered outside for hours.
No, Dylan entered the school with the intention of making other people die there!
What happened to Dylan is directly related to the lack of communication he had with his parents, IMO.
What happened to the old fashion idea that parents get up and make breakfast for their kids....
..go over homework, tests....check on after school activities.
That's what I did...
...This woman lost touch with her child a long time ago.
Bookmarked
Maybe she could have caught this when his school essays began to get bizarre. Seems she was viewing him as a low maintenance pet, like a cat.
I think he WAS a victim. ...Of demonic possession.
I’m not that familiar with the Columbine thing but isn’t this the kid who had a bunch of assault rifles in his room, was on the internet with a bunch of other bum kids and they all wore black trenchcoats?
According to michael moore, it had something to do with his dad working at a missile facility. Even though it was a commercial rocket one.
With one 'trophy' child - if Dylan had shared a bedroom with a brother, the brother would have talked to Mom n Dad. Or possibly, Dylan wouldn't have been so messed up in the first place.
I read the issue of SWAT magazine that immediately followed the massacre and it is a HILARIOUSLY EXTREME example of rationalization —SWAT couldn’t enter the structure and do ANNNNYTHING because of the alarms and spraying water from the sprinkler system....blah, blah, blah....
Basically these guys just lived to walk around acting tough but when there was the TINIEST chance they could get injured or killed, well, that was a TOTALLY different story.
They just cowered outside patiently —for hours— while kids were getting killed, and then for very well afterwards. They were unwilling to face any danger AT ALL.
Have you ever had a friend you knew very well suddenly start taking PROZAC? It is JEKYL AND AND HYDE scary, and every member of that family was saturated WITH IT EVERY DAY. Those were PROZAC murderers to whom every idea was fine as they felt no remorse for ANYTHING!!!
Changed what you believed in what direction???
Learning should be redemptive and growthful!
Cops have no duty to protect any adult or child. That’s just how it is. Everyone is on their own, but many have this illusion that a 911 can save you.
Demonic possession is unlikely (but not impossible) to happen to somebody unless he has in turn delved into the occult in some way. There normally would be other signs of this kind of infatuation. Wonder what this pickle kid’s room looked like.
...sounds like her son had everything....money, hi-tech toys, nice neighborhood, upscale house, etc....
....but no parental influence....no moral clarity...no sound structure.
And his mom still doesn't get it.
This is BS - they had a huge amount of bomb making materials in the two homes and why werent these people investigated and put in jail?
Anti depressants are dangerous because of that, they dull pain. That’s their job. The also can increase energy. They don’t immediately change your perceptions however. At the very beginning it’s very dangerous, usually for suicides. You still are miserable but suddenly it’s duller and you have more energy. The suicidal/homicidal thinking is still there, but suddenly the guilt and lack of energy is gone.
I know this stuff saves many lives, including my own. But of course it can do the opposite sometimes as well.
If I had ever tried anything like "Trench Coat Mafia" or anything weird at all I would have been smacked down and tied up in the closet until I came to my senses. I can't believe what I've seen kids doing for decades now and getting away with it. WTF is wrong with their parents? Or are their parents just as bad in their own way?
Well put it this way, there have been no more chicken-SWAT debacles like this at similar school incidents. Columbine shamed them good.
Unfair.
The SWAT guys followed doctrine, which assumed a standoff, negotiations, etc. Perfectly reasonable doctrine appropriate for what happened in the past.
New situation means the old doctrine was inadequate.
Just as on 9/11 the doctrine was that in a hijacking you did as you were told, flew around for a few hours or days in discomfort, then sold your story for a bunch of money.
SWAT and airline passengers now have different doctrines.
From my understanding they weren’t really in any trench coat mafia, and weren’t really even that unpopular. A lot of that was fabricated early on. Apparently they were just psychotic killers, and that’s about all there is to it.
If local police are going to try to support a quasi-military arm without looking like keystone kops, they should be at least as savvy on war scenarios as our actual military is. You want to “negotiate” with a guy who has been shooting innocents down in cold blood for no reason? Mais non.
Oprah NEEDS money as evidenced by revisiting this tragedy...
I am SO not kidding....I remember it VERY well....she got her HAIR DONE the day after!!! OMG!!
Terrible tragedy.
The hero cops sat hiding, cowering actually, behind squad cars, lightposts and trees while people bled to death. Two high school kids, without military training, kept a thousand cops at bay.
Call 911 and die.
Arm yourself. Learn how to protect your family.
(No disrespect to Texas Rangers, Wyatt Earp, Sheriffs and cops who protected civilians.)
PLUS they had BOMB MAKING STUFF in the GARAGE!! What a bunch of HORRIBLE PARENTS!
Prior to Columbine the doctrine made sense, just as the non-resistance to hijackers did before 9/11.
It isn’t fair to blame people for not anticipating a change in tactics by the enemy. Especially not the on-the-ground cops. If blame needs to be assigned, it should go to those who ordered the SWAT guys to follow what was rapidly becoming outdated doctrine.
I didn;t read the article....who was taking that EVIL PROZAC??
“O” magazine....The validity of the story stopped on the front cover.
Well good for her! I mean that too. Just damn...she was going to have TV cameras from all over the world shoved in her face, and people like you judging her for what her son did. She may as well look good for the camera so people did not judge her. If you look back Patricia Ramsey always looked her best for the camera....now we know for a fact she was innocent! No matter what the case, it is always best to put your best face forward.
Was this woman clueless? I can't say. How many of you would know that your son or daughter is suicidal? I knew kids in high school who did it!!! Some died, some were hurt badly trying. How many of their parents knew? The other kids knew...but we never told their parents (that is cause back then ‘parents’ were the enemies) One day I was at high school when a girl tried to kill herself by jumping off the roof of the building! She did not die, but she was paralyzed for life. I am stating this because some parents...a lot of parents...may truly never know.... Now another reason Mrs. Klebold had her hair done the next day......did it ever occur to you that in a few days she would be going to a funeral?????/
I guess i’m not going to judge her.
All I can think is “how would i feel if it were my son?”
Of course i don’t think my son would ever do anything like that but if he had I would feel despair over what he had done but I would also despair over the loss of my son. killer or not.
You must be sick. I will pray for you.
I think I would despair over being such an awful parent and role model......bet they NEVER went to CHURCH.
IIRC,This is the one who supposedly had the stock or barrel of a gun sticking out of a duffel bag in his room and his mom,upon seeing it one day,asked him about it and he simply said, it’s nothing,and she never pressed the issue.I don’t know how true that is,but it wouldn’t be hard to believe.Also,weren’t they building bombs out in their garage?
Seems I read that someplace not long after the massacre occurred.
Really? Absentee parents or empty house, I could agree with you, but working moms, really? My four kids who are never- ever in a lonely house, and never without a parent or grandparent would probably not agree with that.
I think you are right. Also, do other FReepers out there think that teenagers should be kept on a short leash? From what I have gathered, Harris and Klebold did as they pleased. It’s like the Charlie Brown cartoons where the adults are a strange voice in the background. I don’t know the Klebold mother, but if I had to guess she paid her son very little attention and really did know nothing about what he was up to because she chose not to know.
Here’s an article about Klebold and Harris that another FReeper had posted a year or two back that was interesting:
The Depressive and the Psychopath
http://www.slate.com/id/2099203/
“Cops have no duty to protect any adult or child. “
If that’s the case, these people shouldn’t be cops. I can give a hundred examples of cops, sheriffs, deputies and peace officers protecting adults and children. If some cop can’t live up to that standard, he should’nt be a cop or sheriff.
Only a simpering cop would whimper that he has no duty to protect adults and children.
She’s basically still thinking that in some way, he was a victim.
A LIBERAL PROGRESSIVE MINDSET AND A WASHING OF A GOOD BRAIN WITH PROPAGANDA. “killers are victims too”
My hair and how I looked for the world would be the last thing I would be thinking about.
I don’t think growthful is a word.
A few weeks ago I was just about to fall asleep when I heard a “gun shot”...one shot. ...then quiet. I live in a nice area, in a small condo building with a few other buildings...a VERY quiet neighborhood.
I called my neighbor and said, “did you hear that?” She said, yes ..also thought it was a gunshot. It was dark, I saw nothing so I got on the phone and called 911. The police were there in minutes and I went downstairs when the dispatcher said they were just talking to someone and it was NOT a gunshot.
I was pretty shook up as I thought at first, it was a suicide. The police were talking to the teenage boy that lives in another building...there are very few kids here.
It turns out he had tried an “experiment “ he saw on TV You tube and the bottle blew up and popped.
The point of this story is...here comes his mom.She tells the police that “He saw something on Youtube and wanted to try it.He didn’t mean to wake anyone up”..then to the kid, “ Now say you’re sorry.” Kid mumbled “sorry”. ..
I said looking straight at the kid, “Are you sure you don’t have a gun?” ....and then off they trotted.
I tell this story cause if that had been me as a teenager:
1. I would not be wandering around at 11pm on a school night “experimenting”
2. My parents would have been furious and ashamed. ..no doubt my dad would have grabbed me and yanked me around and yelled at me.
The times have changed....”Now, say you are sorry...and tell them you didn’t mean anything.”
My parents were very strict and to this day I am grateful for their love.
. I wanted and enjoyed my two...
.. and their daily existence and emotional well being were important to my husband and I.
We were 24/7 with them....
...and God was central to our child rearing....social activities....etc.
Now they are grown.... and we continue to maintain good contact with them, love and respect.
There is no legal obligation to be every single individual's personal bodyguard. If you don't think your life is worth protecting then why should government mercenaries care about it.
My parents were strict but loud noises around the house were just asking for an ass beating. As far as todays measure goes you would hardly believe it’s crossbow season! :^)
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