by Jeff Kass
This reporter, I, however, got a rare glimpse of the house. When it was up for sale, a brass plaque engraved with three ducks on the front door of the Harris home read Welcome. Above the door was a more militaristic, black metal eagle. (Eric’s favorite animals were dogs and bald eagles.) Inside the home, ready for prospective buyers, it was immaculate. There was nothing to be gleaned about the previous residents. Apart from the disclosure notice, whoever lived here before was a ghost.
Stepping through the front door, visitors enter a small living room with pinkish carpet, which leads to a modest generic kitchen. To the right is a dining room where light streams in. Adjacent to the dining room is another living room space and a fireplace. The dining room also leads to an outside deck and a standard backyard with storage shed. Above the shed door is another black metal eagle.
Up the carpeted stairway are three bedrooms. The master is not large and includes a bathroom with a Jacuzzi bath and a small, walk-in closet. It seems a home for modest people. The other two upstairs bedrooms are tiny. Also upstairs is an open loft space which, one police officer who searched the house the day of Columbine noted without elaboration, “appeared to be used mostly by Eric Harris’ mother.”
The basement, Eric’s domain, is awesomely large and potentially quite private for a teenager. There is a living room and bathroom. The bedroom is larger than the upstairs bedrooms. Two below-ground windows cupped by metal half pipes funnel light in, and the window wells, filled with rocks, may have hidden homemade bombs.
Eric’s basement is also where the two filmed some of their “basement tapes,” or video diaries. The first loop rolls on Monday, March 15, 1999 around 1 a.m. Dylan sits in a tan La-Z-Boy with a toothpick in his mouth. Eric adjusts the camera from a few feet away, then sits in his own recliner. He takes a small swig of Jack Daniel’s from a quart bottle and winces.
“I’m going to kill you all,” Dylan says to the camera, but then tells Eric, “Shhh. Your mom can hear a bat breathing.”
“She hears nothing,” Eric answers, then adds, “Let me take you on a tour of my room.”
First are plastic gloves taken from a doctor’s office—good for building pipe bombs. A pile of magazines on the floor covers a white plastic box containing pipe bombs, shotgun shells, and two boxes of 9mm cartridges.
“Beautiful,” says Dylan. “Oh my God.”
Eric opens a desk drawer and removes a black, two-bell alarm clock—for a time bomb. A black plastic box holds CO2 cartridges. Eric and Dylan will turn the cartridges, about three inches long, into popcorn for anarchists. They fill them with gunpowder, attach a fuse, and tape matches around the fuse. They swipe the matches on match strikers taped to their forearms. One striker still carries the warning: “Keep away from children.” For more deadly effect, they wrap nails and lead shot with duct tape around the cartridges so the fragments burrow into the hearts and brains of victims upon explosion.
A box for a BB gun contains a sawed-off shotgun, and another desk drawer contains a chunk of a shotgun handle. Eric displays a black-handled combat knife in a sheath with a swastika scratched on the surface.
“What you will find on my body in April,” Eric says of the arsenal.
Eric and Dylan mention a coffee can full of gunpowder and a fifty-foot coil of green fuse hangs on the wall, along with a poster of a blond pin-up girl. A receipt for thirteen ten-round rifle clips from Green Mountain Guns is in a CD box as if it is a treasured document.
Behind a CD case on a bookshelf are several large pipe bombs: metal pipes about six inches long and stuffed with gunpowder. Eric and Dylan will wrap some of these with lead shot too. A tackle box has more bomb-making equipment. Eric and Dylan talk about the time Eric’s parents found the box, but only took the pipe bombs out.
“You guys will all die, and it will be fucking soon,” Eric says to the viewers. “I hope you get an idea of what we’re implying here. You all need to die. We need to die, too. We need to fucking kick-start a revolution here.”
Family
Philanthropist, Athlete Leo Yassenoff, 77, Dies, read the 1971 front page headline in the Columbus Dispatch.
Within thirty years, front page headlines blared after Yassenoff’s great grandson, Dylan Klebold, helped kill thirteen people.
Yassenoff donated almost all of his $13 million-plus fortune to charity and strove to promote all races, creeds, and colors.
Klebold and fellow gunman Eric Harris hated all.
Yassenoff strove to promote Jewish causes.
Harris adored the Nazis.
The Jewish Community Center in Ohio’s sleepy capital was named for Yassenoff after his death, a crowning achievement that was also a refrain in Klebold’s obituary, making Columbine a story of a boy from a prominent Jewish family gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The family line ran from Leo to son Milton to granddaughter Susan to great grandson Dylan. But Dylan was not born until ten years after his great grandfather Leo’s death and was not even related to Leo by blood. A little-known fact is that Leo’s son—and Dylan’s grandfather—Milton Rice Yassenoff had been taken in from the Jewish Infants Home in Columbus.
Born October 15, 1893 in Dayton, Ohio, discrimination taught Leo tolerance. He attended Ohio State University, beginning a close, lifelong bond with the school. A 1916 photo shows a lean and serious-looking Leo with neatly combed hair in an old-fashioned football uniform. Once he was a successful businessman, Leo continued to travel with the Ohio State football team, throwing them picnics and giving players jobs, according to an unpublished family history by Solly Yassenoff, a cousin to the Klebolds. Leo lived at 2456 Fair Avenue in Bexley—the wealthy city of approximately thirteen thousand, characterized by handsome brick homes and appendaged to Columbus with its own, semi-smug identity.
But the bloodline, in a literal sense, stopped with Leo. In 1923, he married Betty Lupton, director of the Columbus Jewish Infants Home. (Despite her work, a family friend says she was not Jewish.) At the Infants Home, Betty and Leo “fell in love” with Milton Rice. Born of Russian descent in Toledo, Ohio in 1919, Milton’s biological mother had been unable to provide for him. His death certificate lists his mother and father’s names as “unknown.”
“At the same Infants Home, Leo and Betty also discovered a very bright child named Abner, whom they took in and possibly adopted,” according to Solly’s history. Solly does not indicate why Leo and Betty adopted rather than have their own children.
Leo’s noble efforts to uplift society did not always apply to family members. Retired businessman Bernie Mentser, who knew the family, said Leo “could be sentimental one time and be hard as a brick another time.”
Abner appeared to be an accomplished youth and was involved in everything from football to the National Honor Society in high school. Solly thinks Abner graduated from Ohio State before taking an advertising job. Tragedy and maybe a little mystery struck the family when Abner committed suicide while visiting in Michigan in the early 1940s, Solly writes. Family friends say it occurred in Columbus. A death certificate for him cannot be located.
A 1936 photo reproduction of Milton shows a calm and earnest seventeen-year-old in a suit and tie with neatly combed hair. one who could be an All-American boy as much as the descendant of Jewish immigrants. He looks unafraid, and straight into the camera.
Almost smiling, Milton seems to have the same prominent nose as his grandson, Dylan Klebold. But Milton looks like a young businessman. His grandson, at seventeen, was a school shooter.
Milton served in the army in World War II. Solly says he was stationed in Bora Bora in the South Pacific “and loved it there.” Upon returning, he met and married Charlotte Haugh, who grew up in small-town Ohio, recalls Charles Huelsman III, who later became her stepson. Huelsman described her as “soft,” “diplomatic,” and a “terribly nice person. Social, charitable, loving, concerned, empathic, real giving person, really tried to
raise her kids well.”
She also converted to Judaism, Huelsman says. She and Milton had three children: Diane Elizabeth, Susan Frances, and Philip Leo, in that order. Their address was 74 S. Roosevelt Avenue in Bexley. Today, the house’s thick, beige stone foundation gives way to smooth stucco as the walls reach the roof. The building materials, and the home’s tidy and sturdy character, mirror the rest of the neighborhood. Residences here are nice and slightly stately, but not ostentatious. Like other homes on the block, the lawn at 74 S. Roosevelt leads up to the door. Reporters from across the country have knocked on it since Columbine.
When the Yassenoffs lived there, the living room contained a painting of Milton and Charlotte with the children, Huelsman recalls. “It’s not a picture that has any strain in it. It’s a pretty standard family portrait.” He also remembers a piano in the living room, but only his father and kids playing it. “When I asked them [the Yassenoffs] ‘Hey, you’re so tall, why didn’t you go out for basketball?’” Huelsman adds, “They described themselves as klutzes when it came to sports, even though they had impressive height.”
The family belonged to the reform Temple Israel, but rarely attended, said family friend Albert Glick, who lived two doors down. The marriage between Milton and Charlotte, while good, made for some odd symmetry. Charlotte was a teetotaler. Milton liked to gamble at poker and have “maybe two” drinks at the end of the day after dealing with Leo, Glick said.
Milton worked in Leo’s business, mostly managing the cinemas. The occupation on his death certificate read, “former executive, Academy Theatre.” The father-son relationship, however, remained bare. “At the end, or close to the end, he [Leo] and his son weren’t even speaking to each other,” said Mentser.
Milton went along to get along. His grandson would do the same. And just as Dylan Klebold’s parents buried their son, Milton’s parents would do the same.
Milton died an early death. At forty-seven he succumbed to uremia, when a toxic amount of waste hits the bloodstream—typically related to kidney failure. His assets were pegged at $792,265. In his will he took care to note, “I believe minor children need the presence of a woman.” His one-paragraph, 1967 obituary was tucked deep into the Columbus Dispatch on page 54-A. His daughter Susan was eighteen.
The obituary was a stark contrast with Leo’s front-page billing, which would come four years later. In pictures of him wearing a suit and tie, Leo has a small chin and taut upper lip that make his mouth look like a bird’s beak. He is portly, bald, and wears round glasses. After Leo died on August 30, 1971 of renal failure, his Ohio estate tax return listed his “principal occupation” as builder and real estate developer. His probate file stretches 590 pages. One document values his estate at $14.8 million.
Leo left all of his estate for “charitable purposes with the exception of a few personal bequests.” He said disbursements to the family would provide “generous economic returns which, if properly preserved, should last for generations to come.” He also noted the importance of giving to Jewish causes “as a member of a minority group, as a matter of fact, the least populous of the minority groups.” He added: “I should like if possible for a nominal subvention to be apportioned to each and every Jewish Temple or Jewish Synagogue in the City of Columbus.” Leo listed almost fifty religious and secular organizations as candidates for charitable giving. Virtually every one was in Ohio, although two were in Denver: National Jewish Hospital and The American Medical Center—formerly The Jewish Consumptive Relief Society of Denver. The will does not specify why Leo chose those out of state charities where his granddaughter Sue Klebold would eventually settle.
But after death, Leo still fought with family. His estate agreed to pay $300,000 “to certain of said claimants,” that included Dylan’s mother and Leo’s other grandchildren.
∞
Susan’s mother, Charlotte, died of cardiac arrest in 1987 at age sixty-five. She was still living in Columbus. Her occupation was listed as bookkeeper, her estate at over $1 million. Her children were spread across the country. Diane Rafferty was in Palo Alto, California, Susan in Littleton, and Philip in Columbus.
After Columbine, Solly, the unofficial family historian, would not talk about the family, declining written and other requests. “There’s not much to say about it, and I really don’t have the time to do it,” he said in one phone conversation. His extensive family history does not mention Columbine.
∞
In 1964 the Beatles were a hot new band. Democrat Lyndon Johnson won the presidential election. It was the ’60s, but not yet the ’60’s revolution. One foot was still in the 1950s. It was the era when the parents of both Columbine killers became teenagers.
Dylan Klebold’s mother was born on March 25, 1949 and attended the private Columbus School for Girls from first through twelfth grade. As a sophomore, Susan was assistant art editor of the school paper, Silhouette, and art editor the next year. As a junior, she was also art editor of TOPKNOT, the yearbook. She was involved in Scroll, the literary magazine that included art, stories, and poetry. She was in the art club, I’Pittori, along with the Latin club. In her senior year, she took photos for the school newspaper.
Her short brown hair set off her boyish looks. Her smile appeared to come easily. With a pointy chin and high cheeks, she was a female version of Dylan.
Girls routinely wore blazers with a coat of arms on the left breast in the formal class photos of that time. They have white socks and saddle shoes, knee-high skirts and white blouses. Susan was no different. “I don’t remember them personally, but I was at school at the same time,” one woman says of Susan and her sister, Diane. “They were quiet girls. They didn’t make waves.”
Columbus School for Girls touts its academic standards. Unless, of course, the pursuit of knowledge involves one of its own alumni caught in the uncomfortable position of being the mother of a school shooter. Then the learning is shut out.
“We align ourselves with the families that sent their kids here,” says Carolyn Thomas Christy, director of development at Columbus School for Girls, when asked for information on Susan.
“This family has been very good to this school,” Christy says.
“She [Susan] is a very private person,” she adds. “We know that Susan is.”
∞
Susan was in the Columbus School for Girls class of 1967, graduating the same year her father died. She then enrolled in Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois. The private liberal arts college touts its long-standing support of diversity, where the fifth Lincoln-Douglas debate took place in 1858. In her freshman photo, Susan looks over her right shoulder and into the camera, the light forming a sort of halo around her head. Her lips are sealed, but there is a tiny smile. As in high school, Susan’s short hair and demure expression continue.
Susan left Knox in 1969. Her stepbrother, Charles Huelsman III, is not sure why. Maybe more opportunity at her hometown university, Ohio State. Maybe she wanted to be with her mother, whom she lived with upon returning to Columbus. But Huelsman is sure Susan sought counseling given her father’s early death, and landed in a book by Ohio State University professor Hugh Missildine.
Missildine’s books seem to veer towards pop psychology. As he recounts patient histories, he traces every problem, no matter how convoluted, to someone’s childhood. But he is considered a major figure in Ohio medicine, starting the Columbus Children’s Psychiatric Hospital and Residential Treatment Center.
Missildine’s most famous book is probably Your Inner Child of the Past, published in 1963. Maybe his most famous patient, the then Susan Yassenoff, shows up in his 1974 book co-authored with Lawrence Galton, Your Inner Conflicts—How to Solve Them. Susan apparently appears under the pseudonym “Sandra,” with some details of her bio altered to obscure her identity. “My father and she talked about it in front of me,” Huelsman recalls of her case study. “I think Susan was rather proud to be par
t of a book at that young age.”
And proud, possibly, because she successfully solved the problem that had taken her to Missildine. Although Susan does not seem to have felt proud—or at least open to talking about it publicly—post-Columbine. In a quick phone conversation, her only one with me, I told her, “I came across your profile in the Hugh Missildine book.”
“What?” she said.
“Yeah,” I reply, “in the, it was a few, quite a few years ago, the profile you had as Sandra.”
“I think you are way out of base here, I’m going to hang up now,” Susan says.
She does just that.
Her lawyer, criminal defense attorney Gary Lozow, quickly called an intermediary. Lozow called it a matter that occurred when Susan Klebold was nineteen. But no further communication on the issue came my way.
This is the profile, narrated by Missildine:
Sandra is a twenty-year-old woman who came to see me because of a phobia. “I have a death phobia,” she told me. “It underlines everything I do. I think about death all the time.”
She is a music student, about to graduate from college, has been living for the past year with her fiancé and is very much in love with him, as he is with her. He too is in music.
When I asked her to talk about herself, she told me: “I’m afraid of failure. I won’t even attempt something unless I’m assured of success. I think too much. I don’t have a temper.
“War things and medical programs bother me. I was terrified of bugs as a child. Airplanes used to bother me, too, and storms. My mother used to cuddle me and comfort me when I was fearful. When I was afraid, my sister would call me stupid. I scold myself for being afraid. I often feel that I’m a burden to people. I sometimes get depressed.
“I think the fear of death will always be there. I wish I could turn off this part of my mind. I wish there were traumas to explain all this, but I’ve never had any traumas. When I get a headache, I’m always sure it is fatal. Then I worry that I will die, which makes the headache worse. Everything makes me think of death. I have to divert myself in the evening constantly—by eating, watching television, practicing my music or masturbating. I feel constantly that I’m coming a minute closer to death. What a waste of time to think of that all the time. But thinking this is a way of life with me.”