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When a Mother's Child Becomes a Killer
A Mother's Reckoning is perhaps the most devastating memoir you'll ever read. While countless books examine the Columbine tragedy from the outside, only Sue Klebold can tell us what it means to discover your child has committed unthinkable violence. The book has been hailed as "soul-piercingly honest" by The Times of London and "required reading for all parents" by Parents.com. When it was published in 2016, seventeen years after the massacre, it quickly became a New York Times bestseller, with all author proceeds donated to mental health organizations. What makes this book so powerful is not just its unflinching examination of tragedy, but how it transforms our understanding of warning signs, brain health, and the complex relationship between suicide and violence. Through Klebold's journey from denial to understanding, we witness a mother's impossible task: to mourn her son while acknowledging the devastation he caused.
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The Day That Shattered Everything
On April 20, 1999, Sue Klebold's life as she knew it ended with a phone call from her husband Tom: "There's been a shooting at Columbine High School." As she drove the agonizing 26 miles home, her mind raced through scenarios-Dylan injured, Dylan trapped, Dylan in danger. The morning's odd goodbye haunted her; Dylan had left early for bowling class with an unfamiliar edge in his voice.
Upon arriving home, Sue learned Dylan hadn't attended bowling class despite leaving early. When their lawyer called confirming the district attorney suspected Dylan was one of the gunmen, the unimaginable reality began to take shape. Tom's determination to go to the school-even at risk to his life-crystallized their desperation. As police arrived with guns drawn, searching their home for explosives, Sue stood in her driveway thinking: "We are the last people on earth anyone would expect to be in this situation."
For hours, Sue and Tom paced their driveway like "frightened animals," begging for information while police refused to engage. The surreal scene included helicopters circling overhead, armed officers escorting them to the bathroom, and the unexpected arrival of Judy Brown, mother of Dylan's childhood friend. During a separate interview with a detective, Sue desperately tried to explain why Dylan couldn't possibly be involved, mentioning his interest in fireworks but insistence that they never owned guns, despite Dylan once asking for one.
As reality slowly crystallized, Sue's prayers shifted from hoping for Dylan's safety to praying for his death if he was truly harming others. By nightfall, a SWAT team member confirmed what she already sensed: Dylan was dead. In that moment, Sue Klebold joined the ranks of parents who had lost children that day-but with an unbearable difference. Her son was not just a victim but one of the perpetrators.
3장
Living with the Unthinkable
The transition from having no information to suddenly being exposed to nonstop television coverage was devastating. The horrifying images of triage centers hastily assembled on suburban lawns, ambulances racing through familiar streets, and traumatized survivors stumbling out of the school made the tragedy suffocatingly close-"the difference between seeing a fire at a distance and standing knee-deep in live coals." Every news update brought fresh waves of horror, each helicopter shot of the school another blow to their already fragile psyche.
That first sleepless night, Sue and Tom lay in bed touching hands and shoulders for comfort, their bedroom a sanctuary that felt both safe and surreal. They were confronting the unbearable reality that Dylan was dead while still not knowing exactly how he died or what he had done. Sue's mind, refusing to accept the unthinkable, desperately conjured alternative explanations-perhaps Dylan had been duped or forced to participate, maybe he was an unwitting accomplice, perhaps he hadn't actually shot anyone. She couldn't fathom how he could have obtained a gun or why he would want one. The questions multiplied endlessly, each leading to darker possibilities. The physical pain of grief was overwhelming; "heartbroken" was no longer metaphorical but a literal description of her shattered chest, accompanied by waves of nausea and a crushing weight that made breathing difficult.
Just a month earlier, Sue had told a friend over dinner at their favorite restaurant that her life had never been more satisfying-a loving 28-year marriage that had weathered life's normal storms, a self-sufficient older son thriving in his own apartment, and Dylan successfully back on track after some junior year troubles, with college acceptance letters arriving and a bright future ahead. Within 24 hours, she had become "the mother of a hate-crazed gunman responsible for the worst school shooting in history." The whiplash between these two realities was impossible to reconcile.
Media reports painted wildly contradictory portraits of Dylan that Sue didn't recognize: a black-clad goth, a core member of the mysterious "Trench Coat Mafia," a calculating bully, a victimized outcast, secretly gay, spoiled rich kid, and more. Each shifting theory felt like looking through a kaleidoscope, fragments of truth mixed with speculation and sensationalism, taking her further from the son she knew - the boy who helped younger students with math problems and wrote sensitive poetry. Local news vans camped outside their home, while national outlets dug through their garbage and interviewed distant acquaintances for any scrap of information. In the media, the gentlest portrayal painted the Klebolds as checked-out, oblivious parents who missed obvious warning signs; the harshest depicted them as knowingly shielding a hateful racist assembling an arsenal in their basement. Sue understood why people blamed them-she admitted she would have blamed the parents too-but knew neither caricature was true, which made the reality even more disturbing and complex.
4장
The Sunshine Boy
Who was Dylan Klebold before Columbine? Sue describes him as "The Sunshine Boy"-a sensitive child who excelled academically and seemed to navigate life with relative ease. He maintained close friendships throughout childhood and adolescence, particularly with Nate, Zack, and later Eric Harris. Dylan was valued by peers as an excellent listener and participated in normal teenage activities-working at Blackjack Pizza, bowling, and handling sound engineering for school theater productions.
Baseball had been central to Dylan's childhood, connecting him to family traditions across generations. When painful elbow inflammation prevented him from making the Columbine High School baseball team, it represented a greater loss than his parents realized, shifting his focus toward computers and technology.
Dylan's acute sensitivity to embarrassment intensified as he grew older. By junior high, he became increasingly self-conscious about standing out, telling his mother "it wasn't cool to be smart." Despite this concern, he continued to excel academically, even being recommended for high school algebra while still in eighth grade.
While Dylan maintained his responsible nature, his older brother Byron was experiencing typical teenage challenges. When Byron's grades declined and marijuana was discovered in his room, Sue and Tom intensified their supervision of him. This focus on Byron may have meant they overlooked Dylan's emerging needs, as Dylan continued his pattern of self-reliance and doing what was expected.
Sue and Tom maintained involvement in Dylan's life, meeting his friends' parents and providing transportation until the boys could drive. When Dylan and his friends began working at Blackjack Pizza together, Sue helped Dylan manage his finances. Though his academic performance varied based on his interest in subjects, Sue wasn't overly concerned, believing he would eventually find his areas of excellence.
What haunts Sue most is the ordinariness of their lives before Columbine. Dylan wasn't a troubled child they worried over-they called him "The Sunshine Boy" because everything seemed to come easily to him. Sue wishes she had known it was possible for everything to seem fine when it wasn't.
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The Hidden Depths of Despair
After the tragedy, Sue received copies of Dylan's journals from the sheriff's department. Reading them broke her heart. He had expressed depression, isolation, and suicidal thoughts beginning two years before Columbine. Despite having friends, he felt he didn't belong.
Dylan's journals showed increasingly disturbing signs beyond depression. Dr. Peter Langman, an expert on school shooters, believes Dylan may have progressed from avoidant personality disorder to schizotypal personality disorder as adolescent stressors became unmanageable for him. Schizotypals often seem "odd," are sensitive to slights, use strange syntax and unusual words, and experience a blurred boundary between reality and fantasy. In Dylan's journals, his fantasy of being godlike increasingly dominated as he felt profoundly inferior in reality.
Another independent analysis found "persistent themes of depression, suicidality, and alienation" with possible "major depression with transient psychotic episodes and/or borderline personality disorder." Regardless of the exact diagnosis, Dylan was clearly not "in his right mind"-nine out of ten school shooters Dr. Langman profiles suffered from depression and suicidal thoughts.
After reading a journal article about youth suicide prevention that mentioned Columbine, Sue had a revelation-Dylan had gone to the school to die. Though she knew he died by his own hand, she hadn't fully processed that his suicide was central to understanding his actions. When she finally began reading about suicide, she discovered how little she knew. Someone in America dies by suicide every thirteen minutes-40,000 people yearly. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among people 10-14 and second among those 15-34.
Suicide is preventable with proper treatment, but Dylan struggled alone with his illness. Though he showed outward signals of depression, Sue and Tom observed but couldn't decode them. If they had understood what those signs meant, Sue believes they could have prevented Columbine.
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The Fateful Dynamic with Eric Harris
Dylan's journals revealed the deadly interdependence between him and Eric. When Dylan's friends Zack and Nate began dating girls in summer 1997, Dylan felt betrayed and began spending more time with Eric. Though Dylan had written about suicide for nearly two years, homicidal comments only appeared that fall. Even after planning with Eric, Dylan's private writings show he believed he would die by his own hand before carrying out their plan.
By January 1999, Dylan was dismayed to find himself still alive, writing "I hate this non-thinking stasis. I'm stuck in humanity. Maybe going 'NBK' (gawd) with Eric is the way to break free." His journals grew darker and more scattered as he came to see Eric's plan as his only escape, though his ambivalence remained until the end.
Once, Dylan told Sue, "Eric's crazy," and she simply responded that he'd meet difficult people throughout life and trusted his judgment. She had no conception of the true danger. Eric's journals were filled with sadistic images, fantasies of rape and destruction-markedly different from Dylan's focus on loneliness, depression, and longing for love. Many experts believe Eric displayed traits of psychopathy-diminished empathy, manipulative behavior, and lack of conscience.
A 2001 study of adolescent school shooters found 25% participated in pairs, typically with one psychopath and one suggestible, dependent, depressed partner. Dylan made efforts to distance himself from Eric, even asking for Sue's help to decline Eric's invitations. She never questioned why he couldn't simply say no to Eric when he could to other friends. Dr. Frank Ochberg noted, "Dylan did not have the profile of a killer, but he had vulnerability to become enmeshed with one." When Eric tried to interest other boys in his destructive plans, they didn't bite-but Dylan did.
Criminal justice specialist Dr. Adam Lankford's research shows rampage shooters share three characteristics: mental health issues producing a desire to die, a deep sense of victimization, and desire for fame through killing. Nearly half of rampage shooters die by suicide during their attacks, with almost no chance of escape-showing what Lankford calls "life indifference." Mass shooters follow a discernible path that often begins with suicidal thoughts. Dr. Thomas Joiner notes that "suicide prevention is also murder-suicide prevention."
For Dylan, Sue believes this was true. He took comfort in the idea of death but lacked the capability for suicide alone. As Dr. Joiner explains, people must become desensitized to pain and violence to harm themselves-Dylan couldn't do this alone. Planning the rampage with Eric may have been how Dylan rehearsed his own death, desensitizing himself to the violence required.
7장
The Path to Violence: Warning Signs Missed
People want insight into Dylan's final days, so Sue has opened both her journals and Dylan's to create a parallel timeline. Threat assessment professionals describe a "pathway to violence" that often begins with personal loss or humiliation, followed by research and planning, preparation (accumulating weapons and selecting targets), and finally implementation.
As Dylan's senior year progressed, the Klebolds' lives seemed to be improving. His Diversion counselor called with terrific news-early termination from the program, an honor given to only 5% of participants. The counselor was convinced both Dylan and Eric were on solid ground, just ten weeks before the massacre.
College acceptance letters started arriving in February. Dylan had options in Colorado and Arizona, and seemed to be planning his future. When Sue asked if he wanted to stay closer to home for college, he firmly said, "I definitely want to go away." Looking back, she believes he was talking about his own death.
At parent-teacher conferences, they learned Dylan's grades had dropped in calculus and English. His English teacher praised Dylan's writing abilities but mentioned he'd written a disturbing paper with "dark themes." She'd asked him to rewrite it and planned to show it to his counselor. Sue asked Dylan to show her the paper, but by nighttime, both she and Tom had forgotten about it. She finally saw the paper a year after his death-it described a man dressed in black killing popular kids at a school. She wonders if she would have recognized it as a warning sign, or simply seen it as artistic expression.
That spring, Sue noticed Dylan looking pensive and distracted whenever he wasn't busy. A month before the shootings, she found him staring blankly into space. When she asked if he was okay, he claimed he was just tired and had homework to do. She's relived that interaction countless times since, wishing she'd recognized his "thousand-yard stare" as a warning sign for imminent suicide.
In the last two weeks of Dylan's life, Sue spontaneously hugged him in the hallway, telling him how much she loved him and how proud she and Tom were. He barely touched her in return. She took his face in her hands and repeated her words, insisting she wasn't kidding. He looked down, embarrassed, and whispered thanks. That memory is one of her most painful-she has no idea what Dylan could possibly have been thinking.
Four days before the tragedy, Tom and Dylan studied a map of the University of Arizona to find the best dorm. The day before the massacre, Dylan went to a steakhouse with Eric, telling Sue they had coupons. When he returned home around 8:30, he said he had a lot of work to do and would be in his room all evening. The next morning, she heard him rushing out. "Dyl?" she called into the darkness. "Bye," was all he said.
8장
Finding Purpose Through Devastating Loss
On Valentine's Day 2001, almost two years after Dylan's participation in the Columbine massacre, Sue was diagnosed with breast cancer. It felt like a virtual bomb had been set off in her heart-the place where you hold and nurture a child. Her son was dead, and fourteen others because of him. It made sense there would be collateral damage.
Recovery from cancer made Sue realize she'd been wrong in thinking she wanted to die. Though Tom often said he wished Dylan had killed them too, and Sue had fantasized about trading her life for those who died at the school, surviving breast cancer helped her see that her life was a gift. Her work going forward would be finding a way to honor that gift.
In the second year after Dylan's death, Sue finally found community through the Suicide Prevention Coalition of Colorado. Walking into the first meeting, she was terrified of judgment. Ten minutes later, she was sitting with five other mothers who had lost children to suicide, tying raffia bows onto flowerpots. There was nothing but love and compassion. The opportunity to grieve for Dylan as her son, regardless of his final actions, was invaluable.
At a coalition luncheon, Sue found herself in a room of people who understood all her feelings-the humiliation of being duped, the shame of failing her child when he needed her most. These weren't deficient people; they were teachers, social workers, truck drivers, dentists-normal people who had deeply loved someone they lost. Many had misread warning signs just as she had.
After that watershed day identifying herself as a suicide loss survivor, Sue became seriously involved in initiatives to prevent suicide and violence. For the first time in years, she felt she had a contribution to make. This wasn't purely altruistic-working shoulder to shoulder with others toward a common goal was healing. This work became her calling, a path out of darkness.
9장
Changing the Questions We Ask
Grief has a life cycle. Many people told Sue they started emerging from the fog after about seven years, and that was true for her too. By 2006, she wasn't missing Dylan any less or thinking less about his victims, but she wasn't crying every day or moving through the world like a zombie. With legal restrictions lifted, she wondered if she could help promote better understanding of suicide by speaking out.
When tragedies like Columbine happen, everyone asks "Why?" But perhaps this is the wrong question. Sue believes the better question is "How?" Asking why leads to simple answers without actionable solutions. Only someone in distress with vulnerability to suicide sees death as logical. It's dangerous to view suicide as a natural response to disappointment when it's really the result of illness.
Dylan was vulnerable-emotionally immature, depressed, possibly suffering from mood or personality disorders. Sue and Tom failed to recognize these conditions and curtail influences that exacerbated them. Asking "how" allows us to frame self-destructive behavior as a process. How does someone progress toward hurting themselves or others? How does the brain lose access to self-governance and conscience? How can distorted thinking be identified earlier?
It's very hard to know who will commit violence. Profiling doesn't work. But violence can be prevented. Threat assessment professionals have a saying: Prevention does not require prediction. Dr. Reid Meloy uses an analogy: A cardiologist may not know which patients will have heart attacks, but treating risk factors in all patients reduces cardiac events overall.
A similar tiered system works in some schools. At tier one, everyone should have access to brain health screenings, conflict resolution programs, and suicide prevention education. Tier two focuses on kids going through hard times or in high-risk populations. The third level activates when a child emerges as a particular concern-perhaps they've talked about suicide or turned in disturbing material, as Dylan did.
If we're serious about preventing violence, we must recognize the danger of having highly lethal firearms readily available when someone is vulnerable. Dylan didn't do what he did because he could purchase guns, but the risks are demonstrated and must be part of making communities safer.
Brain health is health. Every one of us has the capacity to suffer, and most will at some point. We teach our children dental care, nutrition, and financial responsibility-how many teach them to monitor their own brain health? Sue did not know how, and her greatest regret is that she did not teach Dylan.
10장
A Mother's Unending Reckoning
A day does not pass that Sue doesn't feel overwhelming guilt-both for how she failed Dylan and for the destruction he left behind. Sixteen years later, she thinks daily about the people Dylan and Eric killed, about their terror and pain in their final moments. She thinks about everyone who loved them: parents, Dave Sanders's wife, children, and grandchildren, siblings, cousins, classmates. She thinks about the injured, many with permanent disabilities, and everyone whose life touched those of Columbine victims.
The loss of those Dylan killed is unquantifiable-the families they would have had, the Little League teams they would have coached, the music they would have made. Sue wishes she had known what Dylan was planning. She wishes she had stopped him. She wishes she could trade her life for those lost. But she knows she can't go back. She tries to conduct her life to honor those whose lives were shattered or taken by her son. Her work is in their memory. She works, too, to hold onto the love she still has for Dylan, who will always remain her child despite the horrors he perpetrated.
Sue often thinks of watching fourth-grade Dylan doing origami. Unlike most paper folders, he was somewhat slapdash, but could duplicate complicated patterns after seeing them just once. She loved sitting beside him, watching his hands moving like hummingbirds, marveling at how a simple piece of paper could be transformed with a few creases. This mirrors her experience after Columbine-turning what she thought she knew about herself, her son, and her family inside out, watching as a boy became a monster, and then a boy again.
Origami isn't magic; even complex patterns are knowable and can be mapped and understood. So it is with brain illness and violence. Depression and brain disorders don't strip someone's moral compass, yet these potentially life-threatening diseases can impair judgment and distort reality. We must research and raise awareness about these diseases and dispel myths that prevent us from helping those who need it most.
One thing is certain: when we do a better job helping people before their lives reach crisis, the world will become safer for all of us.
