In October, six months after Columbine, the sheriff’s department agreed to share the evidence they’d collected. They invited Tom and me to come in for a presentation of the material. We were told that the sheriff’s department would be presenting video evidence as part of their report, and wanted to warn us that seeing it might well be “more painful than April 20th”. We assumed they were referring to surveillance tape. Tom said he’d refuse to watch footage of the massacre. I couldn’t believe we were even discussing such a thing. If I had to see Dylan killing people, I’d go mad.
Before the meeting, Tom and I were still convinced that Dylan had either been a reluctant participant or accidentally become entangled in something bigger than he understood at the time. We’d heard a rumour that military training materials on brainwashing techniques had been found in Eric Harris’s home, which had refuelled our belief that Dylan had been another victim of the tragedy. It was plausible; Eric’s father did have a military background. I entertained fantasies that we’d be able to hold a public memorial service. But that was only a moment. I was coming to understand how fragile a construct we had created. Denial had been a necessary – indeed, perhaps, a lifesaving – defence mechanism for me. As time went on, though, it was becoming more difficult to sustain.
We sat down with the lead investigators. It was the first time Tom and I learned from an official source what had happened that day, and in the days leading up to it. They explained exactly what Dylan and Eric had done, who shot whom, which weapons had been used, and where at the school each individual had been injured.
I went completely numb as detailed information about the massacre rained down on us. It was like a documentary so violent and depraved that I would never, ever, under ordinary circ*mstances, have watched it.
A single fact had emerged, without any ambiguity at all: Dylan had done this thing. Dylan had deliberately killed and injured people. He had derided them as they begged for their lives. He had used racist, hateful language. He had not shown mercy, regret or conscience. He had shot a teacher. He had killed children in cold blood.
Gathering himself, Tom pressed for more information. What was Dylan’s state of mind? Why was he there? What thoughts and feelings would cause him to take part in this atrocity? It was obvious that Dylan had fully participated in the massacre, but had he done so willingly? Was it not possible he might have been brainwashed, drugged or otherwise coerced? Kate, the co-investigator, shook her head and told us the police were sure Dylan had participated willingly. When we asked how she could be sure, she told us the boys had left behind a videotape.
Although the boys had taken video production classes together, it had never occurred to me that Dylan and Eric might have created a videotape of their own. The news that they had done so sent a jolt of terror and dread through my gut. The Basem*nt Tapes were videos of Dylan and Eric talking to camera in various places and times in the weeks before the shootings. Many of them were shot in Eric’s basem*nt bedroom, which explains the name they were given by the media. As soon as the tape started to play, I realised I was going to have to let go of every one of my assumptions about my son’s life, and about the actions leading up to his death and the atrocities he committed.
My heart nearly broke when I first saw Dylan and heard his voice. He looked and sounded just as I remembered him, the boy I had been missing so much. Within seconds, however, the words he was saying came into focus, and my brain reeled. I stood up from my chair, wondering if I’d have time to get to the restroom before being sick. He and Eric were preposterous, posturing, giving a performance for each other and their invisible audience. I had never seen that expression of sneering superiority on Dylan’s face. Adrenaline coursed through me, making it hard to concentrate, though the information on the tapes felt so important, I didn’t want even to blink.
Viewing the tapes finally forced me to see my son the way the rest of the world saw him. No wonder they thought he was a monster.
Like Dorian Gray’s portrait, the picture I had of Dylan in my mind grew uglier every time I looked at it. The buffer I’d clung to all those months –believing he’d been an unwitting or coerced participant, or acting in a moment of madness –was gone. The evil face I’d seen on the tapes was a side of him I did not recognise, a side I’d never seen during his life. With my therapist’s help, I would eventually find there was no lasting comfort in casting Dylan as a monster. Deep down, I couldn’t reconcile that characterisation with the Dylan I had known. The rest of the world could explain away what he had done: either he was born evil – a bad seed – or he’d been raised without moral guidance. I knew it wasn’t nearly so simple.
After we saw the tapes, I opened a small box in my desk drawer where I keep treasured keepsakes. Among them is a tiny origami horse. I checked and rechecked the box for the little horse, periodically taking it out to examine it, as if its folds held the answer to the questions I was asking.
When Dylan was about nine, I contracted a nasty eye infection that persisted despite several trips to the doctor. Dylan had been concerned, checking my eyes often to see if they had improved. He was always a physically affectionate child, and I can still summon the memory of his hand on my shoulder as he peered anxiously into my eyes. While I was still healing, I discovered a tiny winged horse made of folded paper carefully placed on my desk, along with a note in his childish handwriting. The note said, “I hope my get well Pegasus makes you well. I made him espessially for you. Love, Dylan.”
How could I reconcile the cherub with the halo of golden hair who used to giggle while smashing kisses into my face, and the man – that killer – on screen?
A time would come when my heart would fully open once again to my son – when I could weep not only for his victims, but also for him. I would learn of the deep suffering Dylan experienced, perhaps for years, of which I had been totally unaware. The anxiety disorder and PTSD I would experience myself after Columbine would provide me with firsthand experience in the ways that a crisis in brain health can distort a person’s reasoning. None of this would excuse or lessen what Dylan did, yet my greater understanding of the brain illness I now believe gripped him enabled me to grieve for him again.
That process would take years. Seeing the tapes was the first step. As terrible as the experience was, I had to accept that Dylan had been an active and willing participant in the massacre. I would need to piece together the contradictory fragments I had collected in order to understand how he could have hidden a side of himself so entirely from Tom and me, as well as from his teachers, his closest friends and their parents. And I was determined to do so, not simply so I could have a context for my own grief and horror, but to understand what I could have done differently.
Seventeen years later, I think every day about the people Dylan and Eric killed. I think about the last moments of their lives – about their terror, their pain. I think about the people who loved them: the parents of all the children, of course, but also teacher Dave Sanders’ wife, children and grandchildren. I think of those who were injured, many left with permanent disabilities. I think about all the people whose lives touched those of the Columbine victims, for whom the world became a more frightening and incomprehensible place because of what Dylan did. The loss of the people Dylan killed, ultimately, is unquantifiable. I think about the families they would have had, the Little League teams they would have coached, the music they would have made.
I wish I had known what Dylan was planning. I wish that I had stopped him. I wish I’d had the opportunity to trade my own life for those that were lost. But a thousand passionate wishes aside, I know I can’t go back. I do try to conduct my life so it will honour those whose lives were shattered or taken by my son. The work I do is in their memory. I work, too, to hold on to the love I still have for Dylan, who will always remain my child, despite the horrors he perpetrated.
I think often of watching Dylan do origami. Whereas most paper folders are meticulous about lining up the edges, fourth-grade Dylan tended to be more slapdash, and his figures were sometimes sloppy. But he’d only have to see a complicated pattern once to be able to duplicate it.
I loved to make a cup of tea and sit quietly beside him, watching his hands move as quickly as hummingbirds, delighted to see Dylan turn a square of paper into a frog or a bear or a lobster. I’d always marvel at how something as straightforward as a piece of paper can be completely transformed with only a few creases, to become suddenly replete with new significance. Then I’d marvel at the finished form, the complex folds hidden and unknowable to me.
- This is an edited extract from A Mother’s Reckoning: Living In The Aftermath Of The Columbine Tragedy, by Sue Klebold, published on 15 February by WH Allen at £16.99. Order a copy for £12.99 from the Guardian Bookshop. All author profits from the book will be donated to research and to charitable foundations focusing on mental health issues.
