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April 21, 2025 - Dr. Oz Podcast
42:02
Columbine Shooter's Mother Sue Klebold Breaks Silence | Dr. Oz | S7 | Ep 121 | Full Episode
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The Columbine shooter's mother.
Many say you're the mother of a killer.
Is that fair?
Sue Klebold.
Were you ever scared of Dylan?
Her biggest regret.
Do you think you're a good mother to Dylan?
Could she have prevented the Columbine tragedy?
Something went wrong in his thinking.
Sue Klebold.
What you haven't heard.
If Dylan was sitting in my seat, what would you want him to hear?
Coming up next.
Today, a special edition of our show, Columbine, a word that is synonymous with a tragic wave of school shootings that continue to plague our nation.
Columbine may still be the most notorious of them all, thanks to the meticulous and cold-blooded planning by Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris.
Imagine being the parent of one of those shooters.
It's been 17 years since that infamous day in April, and for the first time, Dylan Klebold's mother, Sue, This is a photograph of Dylan Klebold.
At the time, he was 17 years old.
And this photo, from the same year, Dylan on his way to the prom.
Can you see any signs that just three days later, he would participate in one of the worst school shootings in American history?
On April 20th, 1999...
Dylan and his friend, Eric Harris, entered Columbine High School with explosives and automatic weapons.
By the time it was over, 14 students and one teacher were dead.
24 more were wounded.
Dylan and Eric took their own lives.
Dylan and Eric's murder-suicide left their families, their community, and the world with profound questions we still struggle to answer.
How could this happen?
What was going on in the minds of these young men who killed?
Could anything have been done to stop it?
Dylan's mother, Sue Klebold, has been on a 17-year journey in search of answers.
A long, painful quest leading to the publication of her book, A Mother's Reckoning.
Today, what Sue Klebold learned as she struggled to come to terms with the actions of her son.
You've been quiet for 17 years.
Why did you decide to go public now?
Well, the tragedy was so horrendous.
So many lives were lost.
So many people were hurt.
And from the very beginning, I didn't understand really what had happened, what my son's role in it was.
It took a very long time to even understand his role in the tragedy.
It took additional time for me to process that, to get through it, to do a lot of personal work around the loss.
And then I started doing a lot of research to try to understand how he had died and what state of mind he might have been in to harm so many people so viciously.
So I guess the one word answer to that is readiness.
I just wasn't ready until now.
So, it's a sensitive topic, obviously.
You've lived it for all these years.
This is a book where it's remarkably gripping.
I stayed up literally most of the evening trying to absorb the information that was so important in it.
And I don't think I'll ever forget some of the lessons you shared, many of which we'll cover.
But you're not making money from the book.
You're donating all the proceeds.
To mental health, work.
All my share.
All your share.
Of the profits.
So let's start on April 20, 1999.
The day of the Columbine shootings.
How did you find out that there was a problem?
That day began very early in the morning for me.
I was getting ready to go to work.
And it was dark because I used to go downtown.
I had to get up very early.
It was not time for me to give Dylan his wake-up call yet.
His bedroom was upstairs and mine was down.
And while I was getting dressed for work, I heard him thundering down the stairs with heavy footsteps.
He ran right past my bedroom door.
I was very surprised that he was up early.
I leaned out my bedroom door and all I could see was darkness.
I couldn't see him.
And I said, Dil?
And then...
I heard his voice in the darkness by the front door and he said"bye" and he slammed the front door and left.
So the last word he said to you was"bye"?
Yes. How did you find out that he was one of the shooters?
That process sort of evolved a little bit slowly.
The first inkling I had of the tragedy was when I was at work.
I was getting ready to go to an afternoon meeting.
I had stepped away from my desk and the red message light was flashing on my phone.
When I came back to answer and listen to the message, it was my husband's voice.
And it sounded ragged and breathless in a way that I had never heard him speak before.
And he said, this is an emergency.
Call me back immediately.
From the tone in his voice, I knew something had happened to one of my children.
I just knew it.
I called him back and he was in a state of great agitation and he said listen to the television and he put the phone down in front of the television and I couldn't hear what was happening but I thought if something is on television that's huge.
This is not just simply there's been an automobile accident and I yelled what's happening?
What's happening?
And my husband got back on the phone and just started blurting out.
You know, there's been a shooting at the school.
People in trench coats are hurting people.
Dylan's friends don't know where he is.
He wasn't in his first class this morning.
And it was sort of a cascade of terror and trying to put these pieces together.
It took me the full day to learn that my son had died.
And toward the end of the day, I was able to listen to the news reports and hear how some of the other victims and their conditions if they were in hospitals and their estimates of how many were wounded.
And from that point until six months later, I believed that my son was there, perhaps not under his own volition, maybe accidentally, maybe he'd been tricked or coerced.
I had a very strong amount of denial about his role in this.
And it wasn't until we got the police report six months later that I really had to acknowledge what he had done.
What goes through your mind when you realize your son killed 12 students, a teacher, wounded 24 more?
I don't think there's any way to describe the agony that I feel.
The humiliation, the sorrow.
It's incomprehensible to even try to explain it to someone.
And here's a very small analogy, and it's probably ineffective, but imagine that you're taking a beloved dog for a walk and you're holding the leash.
And while you're holding that leash, that dog attacks and kills others.
And you're holding the leash.
And that's very much the way it felt.
Like, how could this have happened?
He was my son.
I was caring for him.
I was loving him.
Just bewilderment, pain, so many horrible feelings.
The days leading up to the shooting, did you notice anything that was changing in him?
Any acute issue that might have set him off?
No, not at all.
Three days before the shootings, he went to a prom with his friends and 12 kids rented a limo together and went out for dinner and he came back early the next morning and we talked in the hallway and he told me he'd had the best time he'd ever had in his life and thanked me for sending him.
He talked with his friends about his future and which one would come back with a muscle car that he or she wanted and there was no indication that I could see.
That he was deeply troubled or dangerous.
What did you feel, what was going on when you first learned your son had died?
That he was actually gone?
The day of the shootings, the police, the sheriff's department, and actually it was different sheriff's departments, had come to our house and they had sent a SWAT team and we were asked to leave our house.
We were all asked to remain outside, and I was sitting on the ground for most of the day, sitting outside on our front walk.
And all day long, I kept asking, is Dylan alive?
Can you tell me what's happening with my son?
I didn't know what was happening in the school.
I heard through an open window a fragment of a news report where they said 25 people are believed to be dead.
I just kept trying to find out what had happened to my son.
Toward the end of the day, in the late afternoon, I think one of the officers took pity on me and said, I asked, is my son dead?
And he said, yes, he is.
And I said, how did he die?
And he said, I don't know.
Was part of the recovery learning to grieve for your son?
Or was that difficult, knowing that he'd killed all those other kids?
When a murder-suicide occurs, where you love someone and they harm other people and then take their own lives, it's a very complicated grief process.
First, there is the horrible sorrow of knowing that he hurt so many people that their lives were devastated.
And I had that burden of feeling somehow, I didn't know how, but feeling somehow responsible because he was my child.
The probing eye of the media, the accusations, and that develops fear and paranoia.
You become afraid.
I was certainly fearful.
I feared for our safety.
I know that when I went back to work, my supervisor was showing me the back staircase so that if someone invaded my personal space, if the media showed up unexpectedly, I could have a way to get out.
And on top of all that is grief.
For your own lost loved one.
And we were being sued.
So I had those kinds of issues where I was worried about the lawsuits and what would happen and if I would lose our home and if we would be bankrupt.
And it was through therapy.
I had a wonderful therapist who was a grief specialist.
And she helped me get through this by emphasizing the importance of focusing on grief.
She said there's nothing you can do about all these other things, that the real thing I needed to work on personally was to feel the grief of my own loss and that these other things would come in time and I would be able to find answers.
So I think early on I was sort of pushing myself into allowing myself to grieve.
Were you able to grieve for the victims, the kids who had died that day?
I have grieved for them in so many ways over the years.
To this day, when I hear anything about one of the victims, or I see children in a grocery store with one of their parents, and I think, look, the kids, this child is just like, you know, this beautiful relationship between a parent and a child.
And Dylan took that away from them.
I will still cry when I hear things about that.
I will never stop really grieving for all these losses, I don't think.
There was a stockpiling of guns, including semi-automatic weapons and shotguns.
Multiple rounds of ammunition, homemade bombs.
Yes. I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask this, but how is it possible that all this could take place without your knowing about it?
Coming up next.
Shan is back.
Now, he gets real about his dad's health scare that was a wake-up call for him.
I look back now and it actually changed my life.
Plus, Shannon Doherty's cancer crisis.
How she's fighting back.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Every piece of evidence from the Columbine High School shooting is in this building.
Music
Let's talk about the evidence.
About six months after the shooting, you were able to see what the police had gathered, information about what was happening with your son and with Eric Harris.
What did you and your husband learn?
We had been believing that Dylan, as I said, was somehow not quite responsible for this, that he had been there, but he couldn't have done the things that they said he was doing.
When we went to the police...
That he was sadistic and hateful and cruel.
And for me, that introduced a new...
A new situation to grieve for.
And I think that particular phase of this, it started the grief process entirely all over because I had to reframe who Dylan was to me.
It's so hard to acknowledge that.
Let me go through some of the evidence that was revealed.
There was a stockpiling of guns, including semi-automatic weapons and shotguns.
Multiple rounds of ammunition.
Homemade bombs.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to ask this, but how is it possible that all this could take place without your knowing about it?
I wish I knew.
I was in and out of Dylan's room.
I think the answer to that is I believed in the goodness and wellness of my son.
And I was parenting a child that I believed to be healthy and not at risk.
If I had believed he was at risk...
I would have been searching more for things that were a threat.
And certainly I was the kind of mother who did search.
He and his friend Eric had gotten arrested for theft 14 months before they died.
And I searched his room regularly.
But at the time of Dylan's death, he was a graduating senior.
He was a few weeks away from ending his senior year.
He'd been accepted at four colleges.
He had demonstrated to us that he was doing everything that was expected of him and that he was looking forward to his future.
He'd been accepted at four colleges.
He was going to a prom.
I didn't see any indications that anything was wrong.
And whatever he was doing was very well hidden.
I did not think to look for it.
I did not know it existed.
We had always been an anti-gun family.
We didn't own any.
We never thought that someone in our family could own a gun.
The idea that a 17-year-old boy could have purchased a gun without our knowledge was appalling to us.
We didn't even know such a thing was possible.
Let's pursue that because there are these so-called basement tapes, videos that you learned about six months after.
The Columbine shooting.
What did you feel when you saw your son on those videotapes with guns?
I felt ill.
I remember standing up right after or during the presentation because I thought I was going to be sick and I almost left the room.
It was a terrible, terrible shock to see that and to learn that he not only was capable of doing what he did, But they had the wherewithal and the means and were able to obtain all these materials.
It was astounding and baffling and horrifying.
Did you recognize your son in those videos?
Was that your boy?
It certainly didn't appear to be to me.
This was not the child that I recognized.
I think in some of those tapes it appeared to me...
That he was posturing.
He was doing theater.
He was trying to be dramatic and tough and kind of performing, perhaps on Eric's behalf and on behalf of anybody who would look at those tapes.
But it was not the child I recognized at all.
As you processed all this evidence against your son, did it change how you felt about him?
For a brief time, it did.
And there was even a moment when I felt that I hated him.
I think I began to feel over time that Dylan was a victim of his own thinking and his own malfunctioning mind.
In thinking that and believing that, it was not possible to maintain any level of anger.
Were you ever scared of Dylan?
And I remember...
Pushing him against the refrigerator.
You know, shape up.
Stop thinking of yourself.
Think of other people in your family.
And he took a deep breath and he said, Mom, please stop pushing me.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to control my anger.
Coming up next.
Michael Strahan is back.
Now, he gets real about his dad's health scare.
That was a wake-up call for him.
I look back now, it actually changed my life.
Plus, Shannon Doherty's cancer crisis.
How she's fighting back.
All new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Journal entry, April 1999.
Dylan, wherever you are, I love and miss you.
I'm struggling in the chaos you left behind.
If there is any way to absolve you...
Of these actions, please point the way.
Help us find answers that will give us peace and help us live with this life we have been thrust into.
Help us.
Were you ever scared of Dylan?
You know, I was never afraid of Dylan.
There was one moment, though, Where we were having a confrontation, and it was the only time that I ever remember the two of us having a confrontation.
It was a time when he had forgotten to get me a Mother's Day gift, and everything seemed to be falling apart in my personal life.
My husband was ill, and our other son was struggling to stand on his own two feet.
And Dylan forgot to get me a Mother's Day gift, and he had forgotten to do some things that were his responsibility.
Pushing him against the refrigerator and really giving him a mom lecture.
I mean, I was just like, you know, shape up.
Stop thinking of yourself.
Think of other people in your family.
And Dylan was quite a bit taller than me.
And he stood up and he took a deep breath and he said, Mom, please stop pushing me.
I don't know if I'm going to be able to control my anger.
And that did startle me.
I mean, it really took me aback for a moment.
But the fact that he had said that and said it gently and said it quietly dispelled any fear reaction.
I was a little bit, for a moment, frightened slightly, but I felt that my pushing him and yelling at him was really my error, that I wasn't parenting properly, that I was saying to myself,
"What are you doing here?
You're not handling this very well." So we immediately separated.
I apologized to him.
He apologized to me.
Later that day, he went out and got me a gift.
And it was a day where I thought we had sort of resolved things.
In the book, you blame Eric Harris for at least getting your son involved in a way that allowed Columbine to happen.
I don't like the word blame, and I don't believe that is what I feel.
I believe that Eric was blatantly homicidal.
What they did was so terrible and so evil.
I know it's out of the bounds of somebody who is troubled, and I know that, and that's why I worked so hard to try to understand it.
But I think that for whatever they were experiencing, there was a kind of almost a magnetic attraction that they fulfilled each in the other.
Something that the other needed to do whatever it was they felt they were going to do.
You forgive Dylan for the shooting.
...
It is a very difficult question to answer because I understand the sensitivity of that answer.
By loving and forgiving my son, I know that that aligns me with someone who was a killer.
In my mind, Dylan, something went wrong in his thinking.
We could see a full two years before this happened that he was having suicidal thoughts and feelings.
They were not treated.
They got worse and worse.
And I feel that Dylan was a victim of his own disorder, of what was going on in his mind.
So forgiveness isn't even really a piece of this.
Do you still love Dylan?
Absolutely. Every minute, every day.
He's with me every minute.
You wanted to reach out to families that had lost loved ones at Columbine.
I know the mother that I met first, the first thing she asked me was,"Who was Dylan?" And I thought that was the most beautiful gift anybody could give me to ask that question.
*music*
Tom's words sound like a jackhammer to me, even those uttered most quietly.
His thoughts are never aligned with mine.
They always come from far away, and they're totally foreign to my thinking.
There was so much anger and hostility directed towards you after the Columbine shooting.
What was it like to go to Littleton, Colorado, to home, and live there?
What were the sentiments to your family after the massacre?
I thought a lot about that.
I gave it serious consideration.
But what I ultimately decided was that I needed to be near my support system.
I couldn't imagine that anything could happen in my life that would instantly overnight make me hate it.
And it was very difficult and very traumatic.
I would go into a doctor's office and just pray that they didn't call my name out loud because I didn't want anyone to know who I was.
Why did you stay?
Why not leave?
Change your name?
Change your country?
I thought a lot about that.
And then I also realized that if I left, I would still be the mother of a killer.
I wouldn't change anything.
I can't hide from this.
And so I tried to embrace it and learn from it and accept it and see where this journey took me.
Coping with Columbine put tremendous stress on all your relationships, but perhaps most importantly on your marriage.
I'd love to understand how you and your husband coped or didn't.
We each coped in our own way.
We grieve differently.
My tendency is to be more extroverted, to seek out other fellow survivors of loss.
To sort of get shoulder to shoulder with people who want to do something and make a difference.
My husband is much more introverted.
And I think my activity level, my reaching out, was difficult for him.
And I think his withdrawal and his tendency to want a quiet and peaceful life, not dealing with this constantly, was difficult for me.
And the way I sort of summarized this, it was sort of...
He's perceiving me to be grieving incorrectly because I'm wallowing in it, and I sort of viewed that what he was doing was incorrect because he was in denial.
And that wasn't really true for either of us, but that's the way I think it sort of felt for both of us.
You described yourselves as being on roller coasters.
It was a roller coaster.
But different ones.
Yes, we were on two different rides, yes.
And we were never...
In the same place at the same time.
And that was one of the difficult things.
When you're having a down day and you feel sad, you want someone to appreciate that sadness, give you the space for that sadness and feel it with you.
Or, you know, it always seemed that one of us would be sad, the other would be angry or vice versa.
And it was stressful to always try to find a balance in this relationship when we were just wildly fluctuating through all kinds of emotions.
So the marriage did not survive.
That is correct.
What does Tom think about what you're doing now, writing this book?
I don't want to say what Tom is thinking, because I don't know what Tom is thinking.
I can only say that my writing the book was difficult for him.
Early on, you and your husband differed on how you wanted to address the families that had lost loved ones at Columbine.
You wanted to reach out and write to them.
He felt the opposite.
How did you reconcile that?
What did you want to say to them that was so important?
I wanted to acknowledge that to whatever degree it was possible for me that I recognized their agony and their sorrow and to let them know that I cared about that and to let them know that I am not my son and to think of us both.
As two beings with the same frame of mind, the same personality, the same perceptions, was incorrect.
I wanted to do whatever I could to connect with them.
I thought perhaps it might help, certainly, you know, when we look at victims and victims' advocacy, sometimes it is helpful for people to come face to face with perpetrators or their families, and I thought it might be helpful for them.
What kind of responses did you get?
I got a very small response.
Over time, I was able to meet two of the parents who did reach out to me and wanted to meet.
And I don't think I have ever felt gratitude that deeply as I did to those individuals who were brave enough and kind enough to meet with me.
Quite a few years later, many years later, I also did meet another one of the fathers.
But the meeting early on with the two individuals who reached out to me, it was a very tearful meeting.
And I know the mother that I met first, the first thing she asked me was,"Who was Dylan?" And I thought that was the most beautiful gift anybody could give me.
To ask that question.
To not make the assumption that he was just some evil killer, but that he was a boy and that he was loved and that there was someone to know there.
And I will always be grateful to her for doing that.
Did you grieve for her child and the others?
Of course.
Of course I did.
I didn't know them.
But I think of them always.
I still think of them.
They are always in my mind.
And to me, you know, the strongest love that I can identify is the love between a parent and a child.
And the thought that my son took that away from them.
I felt so terrible.
And I continue to feel terrible, no matter what I do, no matter how much I learn.
That is something that is very difficult to live with.
Thank you.
Many say that you're the mother of a killer.
Yes. Is that fair?
It is true.
I don't know if it's fair or not, but it's true.
It's something I've had to come to grips with.
He was a killer.
Were you right not to have been involved in his diary, not to have violated his confidence?
Because the answers were all there, right in front of you.
I know.
If you have to do it again, would you have read what Dylan was writing in secret?
Coming up next.
Michael Strahan gets real about his dad's health scare that was a wake-up call for him.
It actually changed my life.
Plus, Shannon Daugherty's cancer crisis.
How she's fighting back all new Oz.
That's coming up tomorrow.
Let's talk about Dylan's state of mind.
You make a note in the book that you never wanted to read Dylan's writings, his diary.
You didn't feel it was appropriate, and you've seen it written that we're not supposed to do that.
Right. Were you right not to have been involved in his diary, not to have violated his confidence?
Because the answers were all there, right in front of you.
I know.
If you could have just seen what he was really thinking.
Before this happened to me, I would have said, no, that would be unethical to read a child's diary.
I would say to a parent now, you search for anything you can, but know the risks of doing that and be prepared to discuss those risks and discuss your concerns.
Because the message we're sending is, I care about you, I'm worried about you, and I would do anything I had to do to try to keep you safe.
If you have to do it again, would you have read?
What Dylan was writing in secret?
I certainly would have, but we have to remember this was not a book.
This were pages stuck in school books or in the back of a calendar.
So it wasn't just the simple fact of finding a book somewhere and opening it.
So you write about your belief that a brain illness is not a hall pass.
Yes. What do you mean by that?
I don't want anyone to think that I'm excusing what Dylan did, like, oh, he couldn't help it, he was sick.
It's not quite, you know, I understand that that's kind of a ridiculous statement.
That's what I meant by that, that certainly whatever was in Dylan that caused him to be violent, I'm sure there were medical factors, but I'm sure there were others as well.
And as a mother, a very important insight you offer is that love is not enough.
That is one of the most important things I believe that I learned from this entire experience.
That if someone does have a brain illness, if someone is not well, you can love them, you can tell them you love them, you can believe that your love is protective, but you can't love away illness if someone is truly ill.
They need help.
They need professional help.
And I believed that my love was protective, and I think certainly when it comes to...
Mental illnesses especially, we tend to believe that our loving them alone will fix things and will make things right.
And it doesn't, necessarily.
It never occurred to me to have any conversations about what's going on in your head.
I never had a conversation like that with Dylan.
I so deeply regret that I did not.
So if Dylan was sitting in my seat right now, What would you want him to hear?
Coming up next.
next.
Can we talk about the legacy of Columbine?
As you struggle to make sense of this, do you feel any responsibility for these copycat school shootings?
As a survivor of a child who died by suicide, I feel responsible in many ways for not saving his life.
But I don't feel...
I'm responsible for intensifying the level of violence.
And that's a difficult thing, again, for some people to hear.
But, you know, I did not raise my son to be a violent person.
I did everything I knew how to do to keep him safe and happy and make him a good citizen.
And I certainly have not Tried to make the Columbine incident something that would be copied.
You write in the book about Tom forcing the kids to get dressed for church, making sure that he kept his room clean or, you know, he was a good boy.
And yet you argue, you point out that you never monitored his brain health, which you say is the single biggest regret of your life.
Absolutely. And again, 17 years ago, this had not happened, and I don't think anything about depression was widely known, and teen depression.
If you had monitored his brain health, could you have prevented the Columbine shooting?
I believe that yes, I could have.
If I had had the knowledge and the information and the ability to see, to somehow capture the level of Dylan's despair.
I don't know if I could have prevented a shooting in which Eric was involved, but I certainly believe that Dylan would not have been there that day to take part in it.
So if Dylan was sitting in my seat right now, what would you want him to hear?
I think I'd want him to hear how I've used these last 17 years.
To say, I'm sorry, I didn't know.
And to try to find whatever answers I can and to share them.
And to encourage people to realize that what goes on behind the face is very different from what you think you're seeing.
It can be very different.
And to be very mindful of that.
We teach our children, and I certainly did, every way to keep themselves safe.
I mean, what do we teach them?
How to cross the street.
You know, don't drink and drive.
Use condoms.
I mean, just all these things.
And it never occurred to me to have any conversations about what's going on in your head.
How do you perceive life?
Do you feel sometimes that you'd rather not be here?
I never had a conversation like that with Dylan.
And I so deeply regret that I did not.
Do you think Dylan had any idea how much he would hurt you?
I think he had no idea whatsoever.
Dylan had no idea what this would do to so many of us.
I don't think he did.
*Music*
Charlie is back.
There are some reports that you sent angry.
Tex made some comments that were a little alarming for me to hear.
Is he ready to face his truth?
According to Denise, you said, I'm going to kill you, and I'm going to kill your mom.
I'm concerned as a father and a husband.
All new Oz.
That's coming up next week.
Sue has compiled a list of resources about teen suicide prevention, bullying, and many other topics.
They're all in her book, A Mother's Reckoning.
You can also find them on Dr. Oz.
So if you decide to never speak about this tragedy ever again, what would you want everyone in America to know to take away from this conversation?
Thank you.
I think I'd want people to understand the importance of not always trusting what you see and the need to...
Always look behind the surface, to make the assumption that there is a need to look behind the surface, even when there isn't.
The chance that one's child or family member would become a mass shooter is very, very small.
It's probably one in millions.
But the chances that someone you love might be struggling with thoughts of suicide and might be planning their own death, there's a much, much higher danger of that.
And I think I want to raise awareness about that for people to know.
That suicide is the second leading cause of death for youth.
And we have to open our eyes and do something about this.
Do you think you're a good mother to Dylan?
I'm sure it sounds ridiculous for me to say yes, but I did believe I was a good mother.
And I believe where I failed him was in all the ways that we've discussed today.
Of not knowing how to communicate in a way that would draw him out.
Of trusting in his goodness and his healthiness.
But I believed I was the best mother I knew how to be.
And I believe, for the most part, I was a good mom.
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