Exorcising the Pain
Littleton buries its dead and tries to understand
Only a handful of people came to say goodbye to Dylan Klebold. His long, skinny body fit awkwardly into the cardboard casket where it would lie until cremation. His hands were folded on his chest, and stuffed animals surrounded him. His family and few friends shared memories, the happy ones about Dylan the Boy Scout, Dylan the Little Leaguer, Dylan the wrestler. There was his mother Susan's favorite story: One afternoon, Dylan, age 10, came running back from the creek with a pile of leeches. Normally unflappable, Klebold's mother was disgusted by her son's blood-sucking treasures; Dylan loved it, the fun of grossing out Mom. For those who attended the service, it was as if Dylan's life had ended at age 12, not five years later in a murderous rampage that left 12 students, a teacher, and the two killers dead, and a nation grieving and groping for answers. That wasn't the young man Susan Klebold raised. "This monster," she told her hairdresser, Dee Grant, tears coming down her cheeks, "was not the son I knew."
In the perverse pattern that has come to characterize national tragedies like that at Columbine High, Week 2 brought not just funerals but a struggle to comprehend. Colorado buried its dead children and a beloved teacher in a parade of cathartic services that were as much tribute to the slain as an exorcism of inexplicable evil and a collective commitment to carry on. But still, there were questions. Privately, residents wondered why so many warnings had been missed. By the police, by school officials. And, most of all, by parents. Was everyone blind?
Some comprehension came as a more detailed picture of Eric Harris--if not Dylan Klebold--began to emerge. The image of Harris is at once disturbing and disturbingly reassuring. Just 18, Harris was not a racist or a goth or a fascist, although he dabbled in all those obsessions. In fact, it appears, Harris was a psychopath, who advertised his dark side nearly everywhere he went. For all his advertising it, though, Harris somehow attracted little attention until he had transformed himself into a hideous killer. The signs were hard to miss. Harris was taking Luvox, an antidepressant similar to Prozac that's often prescribed for depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Based on what's known about him--in particular the writings on his Internet Web page--some psychologists believe Harris may have suffered from a particular type of antisocial disorder known as "malignant narcissism." The traits are frightening: Self-absorption and an inability to empathize with others' pain. Messianic self-perception. A quest for revenge. A need for enemies as justification for extreme aggression. Aubrey Immelman, a psychology professor at St. John's University in Minnesota, says narcissistic leaders often surround themselves with uncritical admirers "willing to do their bidding at almost any expense." Perhaps that's where Dylan Klebold came in.
Klebold is every parent's worst nightmare, not only for what he did but for how well he hid even the slightest indication that he worshiped death and violence. Klebold's father thought he had a great relationship with his son. "Dylan was his best friend," says Edgar Berg, a former colleague of the father's who spoke to him after the shooting. "Tom says that he just spent endless, sleepless hours thinking, 'What did I miss?'"
In the case of his own son, maybe nothing. In the case of his son's best friend--a lot. It is unsettling that Harris and Klebold were known as good kids in their younger years, kids who turned vicious only more recently. But psychologists say this is often the case with adolescent violence caused by some form of antisocial personality disorder. Such disorders are believed to affect some 7 million Americans. On one end of the spectrum, they are barely noticeable. A child may shoplift or an adult may be verbally abusive. At the other end, there's violence of the kind that convulsed Littleton. In Harris's Internet writings, University of Iowa psychiatrist Donald Black finds signs typical of the dark end of the spectrum. Among them: a sense of superiority, a lack of remorse, no conscience, disregard for others, and the need for revenge. "It's a myth that behind any horrific act like this there must be some kind of longtime trauma or abuse," says Black, the author of Bad Boys, Bad Men. "Most antisocial children I treat have pretty normal parents and pretty ordinary home lives."
"Wonderful family." Indeed, the lives of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold did seem pretty ordinary. Harris was an Air Force brat, whose father, Wayne, was a decorated major and pilot who moved the family to Kansas, Ohio, Michigan, and upstate New York. "They were a wonderful family, very friendly, outgoing, and caring," says the Rev. Bill Stone, a neighbor from Oscoda, Mich. Back then, Kathy was a stay-at-home mom, and Wayne was a director of the neighborhood association, a scout leader, and a youth coach. He shot hoops with his sons in the driveway. In Plattsburgh, N.Y., Chris Otten and Harris were best friends who often played basketball or goofed around by the marina. As a youngster, Harris didn't get into big trouble. There was the time he and Otten stole lighters to set off firecrackers. The store called their parents, and both boys were grounded. "Eric did have pressure from his dad, nothing he would express verbally, but it was something I could tell," Otten said. "His dad was fairly strict and wanted him to do good and not mess up." Terry Condo, Harris's Little League coach, remembered the quiet boy as someone "new and trying to fit in, a little unsure of himself, but nice." Harris's parents seemed supportive. "They were ideal Little League parents," Condo said. "They didn't yell or carry on. They were dignified and friendly and involved." Chris Otten stayed in touch with Harris after the family moved to Littleton in 1996. He sensed an unhappiness: "I think what happened is a lot of people didn't accept him, and he found his one friend who did."
"I will kill." That one friend was Dylan Klebold, a bright kid who grew up in Colorado and whose parents--like the Harrises--were said to be quiet, nice, involved. What's clear is that Dylan Klebold was the follower, Eric Harris, the leader. And that whatever went sour had been building for more than a year. The biggest alarm bell was Harris's chilling Internet Web site. Among the many things he claimed to hate: liars, R-rated cable movies, country music, weather forecasters, commercials, racism. His postings were full of rantings about killing people: "You all better . . . hide in your houses because I'm coming for EVERYONE soon, and I WILL be armed to the . . . teeth, and I WILL shoot to kill and I WILL . . . KILL EVERYTHING!" Said psychiatrist Black, who daily works with people diagnosed with antisocial disorders: "I haven't seen anything this extreme, this filled with senseless hate, in 15 years."
What's perhaps most disturbing about Harris's Internet ravings is that people knew about them, yet nothing was done. Randall Brown, whose son's life was threatened by Harris, took the screeds to the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department once--and again after the cops lost them. Brown says the police took no action, even though they were aware the boys had been arrested for breaking into a car. The sheriff's department said Friday that its deputy assigned to the school had been given the writings last March and was watching Harris, but saw no evidence of a crime. No one talked to his parents. No one told the court officer monitoring the boys' probation program about the threats. Nor did anyone tell the judge who handled their cases. Magistrate John DeVita told NBC: "I probably would have looked at it a little closer, I think, if that information may have been available."
There's also a question of whether America Online, which hosted the Web site, had some responsibility. Internet service providers are not liable for clients' postings, nor are they required to monitor them. At least not legally. But what about ethically? AOL bars threatening statements. "Our policy is to encourage members to notify AOL's call center if a threat rises to the level of suicide or violent threat, and then we'll contact the authorities," says spokesperson Kim McCreery.
Randy Brown did not show the vile missives to Harris's parents. In an interview with U.S. News, Brown nearly broke down when asked if he shared them with the Klebolds. Brown's wife, Judy, and Susan Klebold are close friends. The Browns did express concern to the Harrises several times--besides threatening Brooks Brown's life, Harris had cracked his windshield and urinated on the Browns' bushes. Both Harrises were "very concerned." Says Randy Brown: "His mother started to cry when I told her about the windshield. She said she'd take care of it." Wayne Harris gave his son a talking-to, but "Eric fooled them all. He fooled everyone," says Brown. "He convinced his father that there really wasn't anything serious about his behavior, and his father believed him." Indeed, that's the other side of Eric Harris--a smooth, well-mannered charmer. "That boy was very skilled at deception," says the mother of a Columbine freshman whom Harris repeatedly asked out in the weeks before the shooting.
Copycat crimes. And in that, too, Harris was like a lot of teenage boys. In fact, whatever was going on in the brains of Harris and Klebold is, on some levels, not unique. Far more than past school shootings, the Littleton massacre continued to spawn troubling copycat crimes in schools across North America last week.
The most serious came when a 14-year-old Canadian boy was charged with murder after he pulled a 22-caliber rifle from his long dark coat and opened fire on pupils at a high school in rural Alberta, killing an 11th grader and seriously injuring another student. But throughout the United States, hundreds of schools were on a heightened state of alert following threats of gun and bomb violence. Most proved unfounded, but there were more than a few signs of serious intent. In Brooklyn, N.Y., police arrested five 13-year-olds after they were overheard allegedly plotting to bomb the school at its June graduation ceremony. In Oklahoma, authorities evacuated 500 students at Enid High School after a school employee found a homemade pipe bomb in a bathroom. In California, several teenage boys were arrested after they threatened to blow up the school. At one boy's home, investigators found a school map marked with bomb targets and a copy of The Anarchist Cookbook--an explosives manual. For all their isolation, Harris and Klebold were not alone.
With Joannie M. Schrof, Jeff Kass, Ben Wildavsky and Susan Gregory Thomas
This story appears in the May 10, 1999 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.