Columbine shooter's mom still cringes
DENVER — Sue Klebold doesn’t break down in tears anymore when she learns about another mass shooting. The attacks have become too common in the 17 years since her own son killed 12 of his classmates and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado.
Now, she is analytical, wondering if the gunman hid weapons at home the way her son Dylan did. Whether there were warning signs like the ones she missed with him.
Most painfully, Klebold wonders if the shooter used images of her son and details of his crime, still widely available online, as a model to gain fame through the slaughter of innocent people.
“Every time I see a photograph of Dylan on the (Columbine) surveillance tapes, I cringe,” Klebold said. “Because every time that occurs somewhere there is a disenfranchised individual that is using that as a blueprint.”
Klebold spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday, a week after the release of her memoir, “A Mother’s Reckoning: Living in the Aftermath of Tragedy,” exploring the causes of her son’s violence and ways to prevent future attacks through mental health awareness.
Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris opened fire at the suburban Denver school on April 20, 1999, killing 13 people before taking their own lives. Another 24 people were injured in the attack.
Sue Klebold knew her son had some problems but wrote in her book that she dismissed them as teenage angst while he quietly plotted the killings and detailed the depths of his pain in journals she only discovered after his death.
“I wish I had learned how to communicate differently with him and how to listen better,” Klebold said. “I wish I had realized that things can seem perfectly fine when they are not, and the other lesson I wish I had learned is to shut up and listen.”
With the book, Klebold said she tried to commemorate his life without glamorizing his troubled final years in a way that would inspire copy cats.
In the years after the Columbine attack, she and her ex-husband Tom Klebold vigorously fought the release of videos that her son and Harris filmed in her basement that offered glimpses of their methods and motives. The parents worried that the details would offer a roadmap for future violence.
Other mass killers have been obsessed with the Columbine attack, drawing on a wealth of information in books and movies, fan websites dedicated the shooters, and even a Broadway show. Klebold said she still receives mail from young women across the country professing their love for her son.
She is donating any profits from the book to mental health charities and research.
