Columbine

by Jeff Kass

  The Klebolds also called Dylan’s friend, Devon Adams, the day after the shootings to invite her to Dylan’s funeral. “I wasn’t there to talk to them, but they called us and I had told my parents if they called to tell them that I was there for them if they needed me,” Devon says. She ended up attending the funeral for slain student Rachel Scott instead, which was the same day. “Possibly my biggest regret of my life is attending Rachel’s funeral and not Dylan’s,” Devon now says.

  ∞

  The day of Columbine Rev. Don Marxhausen was thinking to himself, “Who the hell are the dumb parents?” Then a parishioner and neighbor of the Klebolds came up to Marxhausen while he was handing out the Eucharist.

  “It’s the Klebolds,” the man said.

  “What?” Marxhausen said.

  “Police cars are all over the Klebold property,” he replied. “It’s the Klebold family. It’s their son.”

  “Oh, really,” Marxhausen said to the neighbor.

  “Body of Christ,” Marxhausen said to parishioners, continuing to hand out bread wafers.

  “Keep it going,” Marxhausen said to himself, trying to maintain appearances.

  Then he took action. “So I said through the grapevine, let them [the Klebolds] know if they need me, I’ll be available. Well, it turns out the grapevine never got to them, Tom just called me on his own. ‘Would you help?’ Of course. A Christian needs to go where it’s the darkest. And that might be Jewish as well. Not for voyeurism, but because if you have some candle, you got to light that darkness. So I didn’t have to think about this. Of course I’ll be there.”

  Marxhausen is a burly, bearded, liberal man with a sharp wit. He loves to laugh but is no stranger to difficult situations, having been a social worker for six years in inner-city Chicago. Dylan’s funeral was held on Saturday, April 24 at a local funeral home, and about fifteen people attended, including a Klebold aunt and uncle; Randy and Judy Brown; and Nate Dykeman’s mother and stepfather. Dykeman himself did not attend, he contends, because he was not told.

  Gary Lozow did not attend. Another attorney from his office did, but not for legal reasons. “This was a very sort of intense relationship, and I think that the people that were there for them, we were among those people, I hope,” says attorney Kornfeld, although he did not attend the funeral either. “This relationship, especially at the beginning, was an unusual kind of attorney-client relationship. We were there to help, and we weren’t there to judge them. I think that’s what a lawyer should do anyway. Certainly in this case, that’s what we tried to do, and, we didn’t think they did anything wrong.”

  Marxhausen’s wife was also there, for a reality check, along with another Lutheran pastor and a police officer. Robyn Anderson recalls being invited through another friend of Dylan’s, but says she didn’t get the message until after the fact. Tom Klebold wore a charcoal suit; Susan had on a dress. Before the service got underway, Marxhausen picked up on the tension among the small group and came up with an idea. “I said we just needed to talk first. We talked about forty-five minutes and out came all this love [for Dylan].”

  There was a sort of funerary loophole Marxhausen was on the lookout for. “I’ve heard people, they don’t speak ill of the dead, then nothing got said,” he says. But people did talk, and it wasn’t about Dylan the mass murderer. It was about Dylan the Boy Scout, Little Leaguer, and ten-year-old who enjoyed grossing out his mother with a handful of leeches from a creek. He wasn’t a bloody mess, but the same old Dylan in an open casket.

  The positivity left Marxhausen confused. “People told how much they loved Dylan, how really they thought he was a good guy, and I had several families there and afterwards come and tell me that the Klebolds did a marvelous job in raising him,” he says. “So, if you were at the funeral . . . you’d have a difficult time figuring out what was reality.”

  Marxhausen asked the attorney whether he should “shut up or talk to the press.”

  “Why don’t you tell people what you saw here today?’” he replied.

  Tom Klebold knew that Marxhausen had put himself on the line by performing the service. “You made yourself vulnerable,” he said.

  The Klebolds released a statement after the funeral: “Today we had a private service for our son, Dylan Klebold, whom we loved as much as we knew how to love a child. Our sadness and grief over his death and this tragedy are indescribable. We again apologize to all those who have also suffered a loss of their loved one and we continue to pray for the recovery of those who are injured. We would also like to extend our gratitude to those who have offered their support and sympathy during this grieving period.”

  On Friday April 30, ten days after Columbine, the Klebolds had their sit-down with Jefferson County sheriff officials: Lead Columbine investigator Kate Battan, Sgt. Randy West, and Investigator Cheryl Zimmerman. Also present was Jefferson County Deputy District Attorney Charles Tingle.

  The Klebolds were represented by Lozow and Stephanie O’Malley. Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas can’t recall why he didn’t sit in on the interview with the Klebolds. But Thomas says the meeting lasted from 4:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. He told the Rocky Mountain News that the Klebolds were “very cooperative” and “they were obviously concerned about everything that’s transpired.” The Klebolds also asked for any writings, diaries, and information on Dylan’s computer that could help them understand April 20th.

  Kornfeld did not attend the meeting but said, “I don’t think the Klebolds refused to answer anything. I don’t think the Klebolds walked out the door.”

  The Klebolds told police they thought Dylan was gentle. There was nothing unusual about his room, although Tom didn’t go in there often and had not been in there for about two weeks before the shooting. But near the end of his life, “Dylan seemed to like the way he looked and seemed comfortable in talking to anyone,” according to the police report of the Klebold interview. Tom thought Dylan managed himself and his life well. Tom was “very upset” with how the media portrayed Dylan after Columbine.

  ∞

  Kornfeld said he worked on the Klebold case about a year, but his hours significantly dropped off after the summer of 1999, once it became clear the District Attorney would not pursue a criminal case against them. Kornfeld acknowledges that the Klebolds “clearly” missed something, but not in a criminal manner.

  Edgar Berg, Tom’s former colleague, spoke with the Klebolds in the days after Columbine. Like Devon, the only way Berg could figure Columbine was to point to a secret life Dylan led. “Tom acknowledged that’s what his son did,” Berg says. “Tom says that he just spent endless, sleepless hours thinking, ‘What did I miss?’ Dylan was his best friend.”

  The Klebolds were prepped for a television appearance that never occurred. They went silent until June of 1999, when families of those who were killed and injured started receiving letters of apology that were mostly boilerplate, but slightly personalized to each victim. “Our hearts are breaking for you over the loss you’ve experienced,” the Klebolds wrote to Brian Rohrbough, whose son Dan was killed. “Dan was so young, yet so full of selfless courage. He’ll never have the chance to do any of the things he wanted to do because he was taken from you in a moment of madness. We’ll never understand why this tragedy happened, or what we might have done to prevent it. We apologize for the role our son had in your son’s death. We did not see anger or hatred in Dylan until the last moments of his life when we watched in helpless horror with the rest of the world.”

  “A moment of madness,” however, may not have fully captured Dylan’s situation: His writings, his arrest, his school suspension, his buying of guns and making of bombs, and Susan’s own words—that Dylan had “always been fascinated by explosives and guns”—all pointed to a pattern. Lawsuits against the Klebolds would say as much.

  If Dylan was able to keep his plans for Columbine secret before the shooting, many did not
want Tom and Susan Klebold to keep their family life secret after the shooting. If Dylan led a secret life, that did not mean much of the public felt Tom and Susan Klebold should be secret. How could they not catch one iota of planning for the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history while one of the plotters lived under their roof? How could they miss the depression that Dylan dragged with him?

  ∞

  After the shootings, Robyn Anderson and her mom sent a sympathy card to the Klebolds. They then called and set a date to visit the Klebolds at their home.

  That story comes from Anderson’s deposition after victims’ families filed lawsuits against her. The scene itself at that deposition is notable: Nine attorneys representing eight slain students and six injured students (some attorneys represented more than one client) were present. Anderson was accompanied by her own attorney, Denver-based Richard Everstine.

  The parents of five slain students—Kelly Fleming, Matt Kechter, Dan Rohrbough, Lauren Townsend, and Kyle Velasquez—were also there to face down Anderson. They were all represented by attorney James P. Rouse, and he reminded Anderson who they were. “Next to me is Brian Rohrbough. His son Daniel was killed there. Next to him is Dawn Anna. Her daughter Lauren Townsend was killed there.”

  Among the most intriguing scenarios in the deposition is what Anderson describes as a one-hour visit with the Klebolds after Columbine. But the deposition provides little insight. “We just talked about everything that had happened,” Anderson said, “and how we were all in shock about Dylan and Eric.”

  “What exactly was said, to the best of your recollection?” she is asked.

  “Basically, just how they [the Klebolds] tried to think about everything they could possibly think about as far as signs that something was wrong, that something was going to happen, as did I,” Anderson says.

  Did the Klebolds flag any warning signs?

  “Nothing really conclusive,” Anderson says, except for Dylan’s odd, maybe bothered tone of voice when he said “bye” to his parents the morning before he left to kill twelve classmates and a teacher. Anderson “briefly” discussed with the Klebolds her buying the guns. “Just that we had gone several months before, and that I had shown my ID to help them get the guns.” Did Anderson tell the Klebolds she regretted the gun purchases? Were the Klebolds remorseful for Dylan’s actions? How did the rest of the conversation go? Anderson cannot remember, but she adds that the Klebolds were hospitable.

  Anderson is about equally blank when it comes to any warning signs she herself picked up on, except recalling that Dylan seemed a little odd when confronted with the exact date of the prom.

  ∞

  Nearly six months after Columbine, Devon Adams called the Klebolds on what would have been Dylan’s 18th birthday, September 11, 1999. They still had the same phone number, and she left a message. She called to “let them know I was thinking of them. I was keeping them in my thoughts. Let them know I hadn’t forgotten about them. I hadn’t forgotten about Dylan, and I was still around.”

  Devon also had a gift for the Klebolds and went to their house, where she spent a couple hours talking “about memories and stuff.” She recounted how he helped her after her car accident.

  “I think they thought it was pretty cool,” she said of the car story. “We were T-boned while crossing an intersection, and Dylan stopped his car and ran up to my window and was just like, ‘Are you OK? Are you OK?’ and he was freaking out, and I just told him to go get my parents and tell them to come up here and get me.”

  Then Devon and the Klebolds got to what had brought them together—the killings, and why Dylan did it. The Klebolds were still considering, as Devon puts it, “The multiple personality possibility” but adds, “Just, I mean, any theory you’ve heard of . . . literally. I mean, we’ve talked about all of them.”

  The Klebolds cried at some points while Devon was there. “But it was probably because I was crying first; because I cried a lot,” she says.

  When Devon talked with the Klebolds a year later on September 11, 2000, Sue gave her an open invitation to hang out with her and Tom to watch a movie or use their pool or tennis court, but Devon was too busy to take them up on the offer. The Klebolds also said they were putting together a photo scrapbook of Dylan.

  People sometimes have a hard time describing how the Klebolds look. Devon remembers Susan wearing Dylan’s jeans after his death, which is tough because Susan is not especially tall, while Dylan was around 6-feet 4-inches. But it’s also tough recalling much more. Devon believes it may be Susan’s sadness and her eyes that always seem to be filled with tears. “It’s sort of the thing where you don’t want to remember; you don’t want to remember pain, and Susan really embodies pain and she’s pretty much been through the worst that you can go through and so you don’t really; you try to block that out,” Devon says. “It’s obvious in everything she says; in her voice, yeah. In her eyes, and just her mannerisms.”

  ∞

  October 1999 marked 180 days since the shootings, and the deadline for those who might sue government agencies connected to Columbine to file “intent to sue” notices. Such papers do not ensure anyone will actually sue, but are a placeholder to reserve that right should they decide to do so later. At one point nineteen victim families filed intent to sue notices against the sheriff’s department and/or school district. But the name that stuck out was Klebold. Tom and Susan argued in their filing that the sheriff’s department was “reckless, willful and wanton,” in how it handled the Browns’ 1998 report, just as Eric and Dylan entered diversion. It was maybe the one thing the Klebolds and the victim families could agree on.

  While the Browns’ report mentioned Eric and Dylan, the Klebolds heaped blame on Eric. If the sheriff had followed up on the report and informed the Klebolds, Tom and Sue said, they probably would have demanded that Dylan stop hanging out with Eric. The Klebolds never did file suit. But in February 2000, then Sheriff John Stone appeared before the Colorado state legislature to support a pair of gun control bills when State Sen. John Evans, a Republican from the Denver suburb of Parker, asked Stone questions that remained on a lot of minds: How were the Klebolds and Harrises unaware of what their children were up to, and why hadn’t charges been filed against them? One set of parents may have known about an explosive, but it couldn’t be corroborated, Stone said. “There was deception in the way they stored the firearms and bombs in the house,” he added.

  On Columbine’s one-year anniversary, the Klebolds were still sad, and still sad for those whose lives their son had ruined, they said in a public statement. But part of the statement now emphasized they were ready for answers:

  There are no words to convey how sorry we are for the pain that has been brought upon the community as a result of our son’s actions. The pain of others compounds our own as we struggle to live a life without the son we cherished. In the reality of the Columbine tragedy and its aftermath, we look with the rest of the world to understand how such a thing could happen.

  We are convinced that the only way to truly honor all of the victims of this and other related tragedies is to move clearly and methodically toward an understanding of why they occur, so that we may try to prevent this kind of madness from ever happening again. It is our intention to work for this end, believing that answers are probably within reach, but that they will not be simple. We envision a time when circumstances will allow us to join with those who share our desire to understand. In the meantime, we again express our profound condolences to those whose lives have been so tragically altered. We look forward to a day when all of our pain is replaced by peace and acceptance.”

  Marxhausen says that over a year after Columbine, the Klebolds themselves still had no answer. It wouldn’t do any good to talk to them, even if they would talk to a reporter. “It’s too soon,” he says. “I think that they’re just starting to process and come up with some ideas. Then if you were to talk to them rig
ht now, it would not be the same thing were you to talk to them six months from now. ‘Cause there’s a whole piece of shock that was part of it; it’s part of grief too.” He later adds: “They’re going to have to own up to, in the end, not only did they love their son, and a hell of a lot of people did, or a lot of people did, their son did a very, very, very, very bad thing. Now the mother was already there. He [Tom] doesn’t want to say that yet. But in the end, they’re both going to have to balance each other out. We had this kid that we loved, who was going to be our star, because the older one Byron is not an academic.”

  At one point, the Klebolds wouldn’t even talk to their friends. Paranoia that they would talk to the media, or break confidences, became too great, Marxhausen says. A set of neighbors who had shepherded the Klebolds through the crisis, making sure they kept eating and taking walks, were among those shut out. But the neighbors then told the Klebolds one week later, “You can’t throw us out.” The Klebolds relented.

  In the first year and a half after the shootings, Marxhausen visited with the Klebolds every other month. “Probably sixty percent friend and forty percent minister,” is how he terms their relationship. Although Marxhausen will also say: “I’m not their pastor really. She’s Jewish. He’s still struggling with issues of faith. But I can be the God person and the Christian by simply being there.”

  When visiting the Klebolds at their home, Marxhausen sometimes brought flowers. He can’t remember the type; his wife picked them out. Once he brought a small Christmas tree. The Klebolds might serve coffee and cookies. Sometimes they have dinner, but Marxhausen usually visits in the daytime—it’s easier to see people at the locked gate at the bottom of the driveway where visitors call up to be let in.