DENVER - THE mother of Columbine killer Dylan Klebold says she has been studying suicide in the decade since the high school massacre but had no idea her son was suicidal until she read his journals after his death.
HAUNTED BY HORROR FOR LIFE
SUSAN Klebold said her son left early for school on the day of the shootings.
'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.'
Susan Klebold's essay in next month's issue of O, The Oprah Magazine, is the most detailed response yet from any of the parents of Columbine killers Dylan Klebold or Eric Harris. The teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher in the 1999 shooting rampage at Columbine High School in suburban Denver. Twenty-one people were injured before Klebold and Harris killed themselves.
The parents have repeatedly declined to talk about the massacre. They gave depositions in a lawsuit filed by families of the victims, but a judge in 2007 sealed them for 20 years after the lawsuit was settled out of court.
In her essay, Susan Klebold wrote that she didn't know her son was so disturbed. 'Dylan's participation in the massacre was impossible for me to accept until I began to connect it to his own death,' she wrote in excerpts released by the magazine ahead of Tuesday's publication.
'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.'
In a statement with the essay, Oprah Winfrey wrote that Susan Klebold has turned down repeated interview requests but finally agreed to write an essay for O. A spokesman for the magazine said there were no plans for Susan Klebold to appear on Winfrey's television talk show, and a spokesman for the Klebold family said there would be no further statements. -- AP
