Back on the Columbine Massacre which shocked america our world. I started screaming and crying and telling him not to shoot me, and so he shot the girl. He shot her in the head in front of me. Screaming. The suspects were not only on a shooting rampage, but they were going to destroy the school, they were going to burn the school. The Columbine High School massacre had a seismic impact on america. 13 people died and 2a others were injured before the two killers turned their guns on themselves. I have to take this moment once again to hammer home to all the children of america that violence is wrong. The actions of teenagers Eric Harrison and Dylan Klebold made Columbine A Byword for the phenomenon of School Shootings. That terrible day often cited as an inspiration for other attacks. In the aftermath of the tragedy the parents of the two killers came in forfierce criticism. People asked how could they not have known . How could they have missed the signs . Now, after 17 years, the mother of one of the two killers has broken her silence. The guilt i feel at even loving dylan, or feeling that way about him, knowing what he did and how he hurt other people. For 17 years, Dylan Klebolds mother, sue, has been trying to understand what drove her son to kill. I felt that by sharing this story it might help somebody, it might give them an opportunity to view their own families, their own children, differently, and see things in a way that i wasnt able to see. What kind of child was he . He was a cherub, he was precocious, extremely bright, playful and loving, thick blond hair like a mane, andjusta happy engaged, engaging child. In the book, you say that when dylan was born you had a premonition that something awful was going to happen. That was the strangest thing, and i have never in my life had anything happen like that. When dylan was an infant, newborn, and i was in the hospital and i was holding him in my arms, and i had a sudden feeling it was all i can think of it was like a bird of prey had passed over us and ifelt like a shadow had brushed across my face. And in this feeling i got was that this child will bring you sorrow, that something is wrong, and it was so bizarre because he was a healthy, perfectly healthy child, but i do remember having that feeling, and i never thought about it again until the day after columbine i woke up and i remembered that. Dylan klebold lived in this house in the Sandstone Foothills of Jefferson County for almost a decade. Dylan, his older brother byron, his mother sue, his father tom, were a typically suburban family. Sue worked looking after disabled students in the Community College. Tom was a geophysicist. They both looked for good behaviour in their boys. Dylan and eric met at Middle School and entered Columbine High in 1995, aged 1a and 15 respectively. Over time they became increasingly close. Dylan nicknamed himself vodka. Eric was reb, short for rebel. Eric had spent a bit of time at your house but he was a friend of dylans for a while, and once you even gave him a job reference. Idid. What were your impressions of him . My impressions of eric, for the most part, was that he was a perfectly normal, likeable kid. The only time i ever saw eric act in a way that i thought was inappropriate was at a soccer game, when they were both at a soccer game on a soccer team and their team lost. I thought, well heres a moody kid whos just lost his cool and, you know, it wasnt anything that struck me as being dangerous. But what was dylans relationship with him like, do you think . I felt that up until the time that they got in trouble together. Which was 1997. Yes, it was 1a months before they died, they both were involved in a theft. They stole something out of a parked van. They both got arrested and they got into something called a diversion programme. When that incident occurred i determined their influence on each other was not a good thing. We my husband and i made an effort to try to keep them apart more and to very closely monitor this relationship, and it seemed to us that dylan had pulled back from that relationship a lot on his own. The boys escaped a criminal record by enrolling in a Rehabilitation Programme known as diversion, but dylans behaviour towards his parents was becoming increasingly erratic. Dylan became more withdrawn, more hostile, but he still took part in family events. He held down a part timejob. He went to the school prom three days before the massacre. But what his parents didnt know was that Dylan Klebold had been suicidalfor two years. He poured all his rage and upset into diaries and journals that were only handed to the klebolds by the Police Almost two years after the killing. In the diversion paperwork, you wrote, dylan is introverted and has grown up isolated from those who are different in age, culture, other factors, hes often angry, sullen, behaviours seem disrespectful to others. He seems intolerant of those in authority and intolerant of others. These were some of the core issues affecting him, werent they . Right, and what i wanted to do when they went to the diversion, i was so worried about him that i wanted to put everything into the Diversion Report that could show any kind of concerns that i had, so i tried to be extremely open, to say yes, he gets irritable, and yes, he does spend time in his room, because i wanted them to be able to help him and help us deal with this. Those were, that was as bad as it got with dylan. I tried to say, what could i say that would put it all out there so they could help . You talked about having concerns over his behaviour. So did you check on his room . Oh yes. In the times that i was in and out of his room, it was because i was checking to see how clean it was. I mean, it was like, we need to change your bed, you know, lets get this picked up. I wasnt looking for anything wrong because i didnt see it. After he was arrested, yes, i searched his room. We tore his room apart because it was like, what are we missing . Im a parent who believes in searching kids rooms for their own protection. But over time, as i said, the arrest was 1a months before he died, he was a graduating senior going off to college. It seemed that at some point it was no longer appropriate to search his room, because he was going to be moving out and living on his own. Dylan was just weeks away from graduation when the massacre took place. Columbine high school lies 15 miles south of denver in the shadow of the rocky mountains. 0n the 20th of april 1999, its name became infamous around the world. Dylan klebold and eric harris calmly drove their cars packed with explosives, guns and grenades into the schools parking lot and set about destroying the school. This wasnt a moment of madness. It was a cold blooded massacre, months and months in the planning. Newsreader the suburban high school turned into a killing field. Newsreader one by one, they extracted the dead and injured from the school. This teenager was rescued from an upstairs classroom. Ive been a swat officer since 1980 and this was clearly the most devastating and traumatic scene that ive ever seen. I hope never to see it again. Sirens. Tell me how that day began. It was still dark, the house was black, and i heard Dylan Thundering down the stairs in his boots, because his bedroom was upstairs and ours was down. And i was startled, because it was too early for him to be up, and i opened my bedroom door and i yelled, dyl . He had run past my room, down the stairs, and he was at the front door, and i couldnt see him but all i heard him say was, bye. And then he slammed the door and left. I was very concerned. I woke my husband immediately and said, something is bothering him, would you be home today . Will you talk with him . My husband worked out of our home and he said, yes, ill be home, ill be home all day, ill talk to him when he gets home. And then what happened . About noon, i was getting ready to go to a meeting. I worked for the Community College system. I had left my desk and came back and the message light was flashing on my telephone. And i thought, id better listen to this. I picked up the phone and listened. It was my husbands voice, and he sounded horribly upset. His voice was cracking. He could hardly breathe. And he said, listen to the television, something horrible is happening at school. It was such a day of confusion, we had police come to our home, we were asked to leave our home. We had to sit outside. We sat on the ground all day. At that stage though you must have thought that it was more likely that your son was involved in the shooting, as opposed to being shot . We could hear through the window the television that had been left on and at one point we heard 25 people are dead. And i remember at that point thinking, if dylan is really doing this he must stop, and that moment was when i really, i prayed for him to die. I mean, i thought something has got to stop this, whatever it is thats going on. It took me a very long time to believe months to believe that my son was actually responsible for killing and hurting people. Up until that time i believe i was living in really an extreme state of denial he was there but he didnt really kill anybody, or he wasnt what they are saying. It was eric . Yes, it had to be eric. What his parents were unaware of was that dylan had hidden a Sawn Off Shot Gun and ammunition in his bedroom. Police later said that klebold and harris had prepared 99 home made explosive devices for use in the attack. It must have been a kind of very strange thing to compute, to know that between them Dylan Klebold and eric harris were going to blow up the whole school. That was one of the most difficult moments of this entire process. Because i had to go through so many, so many phases of accepting this and accepting, 0k, they were there, and 0k, they hurt people and it was purposeful and yes, it was planned, it wasnt impulsiveness, and then at the Police Report to finally learn their plan had been to kill everyone in the school, but the plan failed. And when i thought of that and thought of the magnitude, i was. I really didnt think i was going to live through it. And you in the book describe him sometimes as withdrawn, sometimes monosyllabic. And that he took failure hard. I wonder, do you feel there were certain signs there that you missed . I think there were. In particular the fact that in hisjunior year several things happened to him. We had all those issues in a row he got arrested, he got in trouble at school. He had scratched a locker at school. I did not recognise that this, those things meant that there was a potential life and death situation. I did not recognise that these were possible signs of a mental condition. According to fbi records, there have been 50 mass murders or attempted mass murders at schools in america since columbine. Sue klebold made one stipulation before our interview that we would not show the Cctv Pictures Of Dylan and eric in the school during the massacre for fear of copycat attacks. You were asked to go to the Sheriffs Office six months after the massacre to be shown videos. Tell me about that. It was a collection of the two of them talking about what they were going to do, and being horribly violent, hateful, and i remember when i saw that i actually stood up, i thought i was going to be ill, it was such a shock because the person i was seeing on that film was not anybody i could recognise, it was not dylan. But at that point did you have to face up to the fact that he was equally responsible for columbine . That was the moment, that was the day, which i learned that he was not an innocent bystander who happened to get involved. This was not an impulsive act. He prepared for this for a long period of time. And that he was equally involved in killing people, and in saying horrible things to people before they died. In the aftermath of the massacre you had support from friends, you had support from co workers. But you also had a substantial firestorm coming at you. What sort of things happened . I remember being in a Grocery Store and paying with a cheque and the checker recognise my name and asked me if i knew him. And i said, yes, he was my son, and then she started, you know, in a very loud voice saying this was the work of satan and just like shouting at me, and im trying to bag my groceries and get out. I would turn on the radio and hear myself being discussed and called disgusting, and so these were just things that happened and it created a feeling always of being watched, being judged. This instant decision about what had happened by people that didnt know. People want to believe that its something as simple as this was bad parenting. Because thats a comforting thought. Because none of us want to believe that Something Like this could happen to us. And i think it made people feel safer to believe that we were all the things they wished we were, or perceived us to be, or imprinted on us, because then they would feel, well, this couldnt happen to me because im not like that. You also wrote to the victims families. I did do that, yes. 0ne father did write back to us about a year later, which i was extremely grateful for, and wanted to meet us. It was profoundly comforting to me, and meant so much to me. I received a letter from the sister of one of the girls who had been shot, and then one of the mothers of one of the girls who had been killed also reached out and wanted to meet with me. And that, those things meant so much to me. I couldnt even begin to explain how it felt so wonderful to have them be gracious enough and brave enough to do that. Sue klebold now believes that dylans suicidal years were a significant factor in the Columbine Massacre. Since 1999, she has become increasingly involved in the issue of suicide prevention. She has written a book about the columbine tragedy, a mothers reckoning, donating her profits to Mental Health charities. You say in the book, i should have listened more and lectured less. In all the years since i lost dylan i wish i had just said, you feel that way, tell me about that some more, tell me about how you feel. I think i had a tendency more to sort of lecture, tell him what to do, or to do what parents do, and ijust wished that i had talked much less. You wrote in the book that it would have been betterfor the world had dylan not been born, but it would not have been better for you. The guilt i feel at even loving dylan or feeling that way about him, knowing what he did and how he hurt people, but dylan was my son and knowing him did enrich my life and i loved him and he broughtjoy to me when he was alive, and since his death i have found meaning in life by trying to find answers, to understand why this happened and how this terrible thing came about. What do you wish that you had said to dylan that morning when he ran out of the house . I think i wish i had just tackled him. And just said, sit down, youre not going anywhere, were going to talk. I read somewhere that you had actually worn a piece of his clothing, you held onto things. Yes, i did wear his clothes for a long time. My husband and i both did. Its just a feeling ofjust wanting him a little bit closer. In the aftermath of all this, your very strong and long marriage didnt survive. And i wonder why you decided to go your separate ways . You said, for the sake of ourfriendship. Right. When this tragedy happened it was like a Lightning Bolt hitting a tree. It just sort of split whatever the marriage was. We responded to the tragedy differently and what we felt our life calling was in relation to this. It was like being on an Ice Floe Thatjust got smaller and smaller and there was no common ground. The tragedy, which was at the time the worst School Shooting in american history, cast a long shadow. Families were shattered. Sons and daughters dead. 0ne teacher murdered as he tried to protect students. And those who were shot that day and survived, some of them living with the most horrific wounds. Have you been to the memorial . I have. What happened when you went there . I have gone quite a few times. And what i do is i sit there and in my head i talk to the kids, and to the teacher whos there, without the rest of the world, without parents, lawyers, community. I just want them to know that im thinking of them. And i will always think of them. Do you want to take a moment . Im 0k. 0k. You talk a lot in the book about faith. Do you still believe in god . Not in the same way that i did before. But i wonder if you had religion before in a different way, or whether you believe there is an afterlife . I dont know. I go back and forth on that. And whether if there is you will see dylan again . That is the one thing i have hoped foragain and again, is that at some moment either in this present life, or in the transition or in the afterlife, that i must see him again. Im hoping that i will see him again. Though if you believe in good and evil or good and ill, you might be in a different place . I know, i know. I know. A lot of people are going to read this book and theyre going to read it a lot of them in different ways because its going to mean at lot to different groups, so its going to mean a lot to the victims families, to the survivors, some of whom are in wheelchairs. What would you say to them . What do you say to them now . I have this feeling of wanting to say over and over again, im sorry, im sorry, im sorry, and i know that such a thing is so completely inadequate. But i dont know what else to say besides, im sorry. Im just so sorry for what dylan did and i wouldnt even know what else to say. Hello there. Fog has been quite a hazard in recent days, and i suspect it will be as we head on into the first part of new years eve. The worst of the fog will be across east anglia and the south east of england. Itll be quite dense in places it could be quite tricky on some of the faster routes. So do take care on the roads. And there will be further delays at the airports. If youre on the move, your Bbc Local Radio should keep you updated with things. T