Living with a son’s terrible legacy: Susan Klebold
On April 20, 1999, Susan Klebold's 17-year-old son, Dylan, and his friend Eric Harris gleefully shot 13 people to death at Colorado’s Columbine High School before killing themselves.
Susan Klebold raised a mass murderer. On April 20, 1999, her 17
-year-old son, Dylan, and his friend Eric Harris gleefully shot 13 people to death at Colorado’s Columbine High School before killing themselves. She’d seen no sign of Dylan’s despair and rage, she
tells O magazine, and facing what he’d done left her “nearly insane with sorrow. I often wished that I would die. I got lost while driving. I’d sit through meetings without the slightest idea of what was being said.” For many in her community, she was a pariah. “I was widely viewed as a perpetrator, or at least an accomplice since I was the person who had raised a ‘monster.’ Our elected officials stated publicly that bad parenting was the cause of the massacre.” Klebold wondered obsessively that if she had somehow raised Dylan differently, disaster could have been averted. “Had I been too strict? Not strict enough? Had I pushed too hard, or not hard enough?” It’s now 10 years after Columbine, and Klebold has no answers; she knows only that her son was angry, depressed, and suicidal, and too proud to seek help. “For the rest of my life, I will be haunted by the horror and anguish Dylan caused.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
5 weather-beaten cartoons about the Texas floods
Cartoons Artists take on funding cuts, politicizing tragedy, and more
-
What has the Dalai Lama achieved?
The Explainer Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader has just turned 90, and he has been clarifying his reincarnation plans
-
Europe's heatwave: the new front line of climate change
In the Spotlight How will the continent adapt to 'bearing the brunt of climate change'?