Dylan Klebold biography

Synopsis

Overview

Mass murderer Dylan Klebold was born on September 11, 1981, in Lakewood, Colorado. Dylan Klebold and his friend Eric Harris launched a deadly assault on their Colorado high school on April 20, 1999, during which they killed 13 people and injured more than 20. With a geophysicist for a father and a mother who worked with the disabled, he seemed an unlikely killer. He never wanted for anything. His family was upper middle class; his father had a successful mortgage business.

Intelligent, Klebold was in a program for gifted students at his elementary school. He was described as a shy child who loved baseball, especially the Boston Red Sox. By ninth grade, he was friends with Eric Harris and Brooks Brown. Like many teenagers, he liked violent video games. Klebold also enjoyed bowling and worked behind the scenes for school productions as a sound man. With Harris, he worked at a local pizza place for a time.

As a quiet teen interested in technology, Klebold didn’t fit in with the dominant jock culture of Columbine High School. He developed a hatred of school -- a sentiment shared by Harris. The two adopted the style of the school’s outcast clique, the Trench Coat Mafia, wearing long coats, dark clothing, and looking unkempt, and reportedly hung around the group’s periphery. Although he was bright, Klebold didn’t apply himself in school and earned mediocre grades.

Aggressive Behavior

Klebold and Harris became interested in all things German, wore swastikas and even gave the “Heil, Hitler” salute while bowling or playing card games. They also liked to play violent first-person shooter video games and listening to such German bands as KMFDM and Rammstein. In 1998, during their junior year, the two were arrested after they broke into a van and stole some things out of the vehicle. They were both charged with theft, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing.

Since it was their first offense, they were enrolled in a diversion program, which consisted of community service and counseling. They were released a month early from program in February 1999. Both received glowing reports at the end of the program with Klebold being called “a bright young man who has a great deal of potential,” according to an article in The Christian Science Monitor.

Klebold, in personal writings found after the attack, expressed suicidal thoughts and was deeply saddened by his lack of a romantic relationship. There was also a lot of rage simmering under the surface as well, which appeared in the violent essays he wrote for English class and the stories and poems he wrote for his creative writing class -- all of which often featured blood, death and war.