Brief review of the evidence against “Smiggles”

It’s been over a year since the story broke (here) of the online account “Smiggles” that was used by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter from 2010 to 2012. At that time, the available evidence supporting the case (that Smiggles = the shooter) was presented, generally consisting of similarities between the writer of the “Smiggles” posts found on the Shocked Beyond Belief Columbine forum and what was then known about Adam Lanza.

Since then, multiple relevant details have been revealed about both the profile and about the shooter, all of which fully support the conclusion that they are the same person, but Sandy Hook Lighthouse has never collected all of this evidence pertaining to the “Smiggles” profile in one place. That will be the goal of this article.

For those who closely follow the case, there will probably not be much new information here. However, that will change tomorrow when Sandy Hook Lighthouse will publish some previously-unseen writings associated with this account. In the meantime:

How We Know “Smiggles” was Adam Lanza:

1. Items that Smiggles claimed to have owned or demonstrated knowledge of were found when Lanza’s home was raided. Here are three examples.

In the “The Halloween thread” on 28 Oct 2010, a conversation in which users were exchanging lists of their favorite horror movies, Smiggles posted a link to a youtube clip. The link is now dead, but the web archive shows that it was in fact a clip from Killer Klowns from Outer Space.

The following photo is from the Connecticut State Police’s supplementary files to the Yogananda St. investigation, in the gallery “Sec_4_Primary_Scene” and is  of the computer room adjacent to the shooter’s bedroom. Note the bright blue VHS box on the floor:

It’s a copy of Killer Klowns from Outer Space:

A year later, Smiggles listed again listed Killer Klowns among his favorites of all time, in the thread “Favorite films”:

Note that another entry on this list is the 1972 film Crawlspace. 

This is a photo of the closet in Adam Lanza’s bedroom:

To the left of the PC tower, above the green book and beneath the blue one, is the 1971 book Crawlspace, upon which the film from Lanza’s favorite 25 list is based. It is difficult to make out, but that’s undeniably what it is:

rotated:

the book’s cover art, for comparison:

On  11 Dec 2011 in the thread “What are you reading?” Smiggles claims that he is reading  In the Shadow of Man, a book by renowned chimpanzee expert Jane Goodall:

In the same cluttered photo of Lanza’s bedroom closet where Crawlspace was visible:

It’s this:

2. The fact that Adam Lanza is confirmed by law enforcement to have frequented and posted to an unspecified “Columbine blog”:

3. The fact that “Smiggles” was found to be a username from a chat log on Adam Lanza’s USB drive, and that this username is declared to be “presumably the shooter” by the Connecticut State Police who have reviewed these logs:

4. Smiggles posted  to the “Super Columbine Massacre RPG! Discussion” forum a “Spreadsheet of Mass Murderers,” consistent with the notorious spreadsheet of the same data that was found on Adam Lanza’s USB drive.

Lanza’s spreadsheet has never been released to the public, but is described in police reports:

On the USB drive found in Adam Lanza’s closet, he had titled this file “colgam01” – short for Columbine Game. This strongly indicates just which “Columbine blog” Lanza was posting to: the Columbine Massacre Role Playing Game discussion forum.

5. On 15 Oct 2009, a player named “Smiggles” participated in several online PC shooter game matches. The servers hosting these matches logged these games on their website, and recorded each username and corresponding IP address that connected (intended to be  used by players to track their stats):

This user’s IP address traces to Sandy Hook, Connecticut:

…and returns the following Charter Cable of Newtown connection information:

…which is consistent with the connection info logged by the website GunBroker when Nancy Lanza ordered firearms online:

It is possible that another player used this name; it’s even possible that another user in the same vicinity as Adam Lanza played with this username (as unlikely as that may be.) However, the same player (verified by IP address) also played under another username that appear on Adam Lanza’s USB drive,  that being “pedobear”:

Lanza also used an abbreviation of this “pedobear” name as the filename for his essay on pedophilia:

6. “Smiggles” had a very pronounced interest in chimp society and the discussion of the subject, to the point where he called a radio show to discuss chimpanzees in comparison to school shooters.

This same peculiar interest was noted by a personal friend of Adam Lanza’s, and was observed on his hard drive:

note that the “view of humans as glorified animals” is entirely consistent with the viewpoint expressed by “Greg” on the Anarchy Radio call

7. The voice of Smiggles (who claimed his name was “Greg”) was confirmed by the New York Daily News to have been that of Adam Lanza by a former Newtown High School classmate, Kyle Kromberg:

21-year-old Kyle Kromberg, who attended Latin class with Lanza from freshman to junior year at Newtown High School, recognized his voice instantly.

“It’s him,” said Kromberg. “I talked to him every day for about an hour each day from freshman to junior year, so I know his voice. He’s a very soft-spoken kid, but very articulate.”

Kromberg said he and another classmate often made a point of talking to the extremely introverted Lanza, who he recalled would dart out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang.

“As soon as he opened his mouth (in the audio clip), I knew it was him,” said Kromberg. “There’s no voice distinction.”

8. As previously noted, “Smiggles” provided a list of his “top 25” favorite films of all time, in the thread “Favorite films.” All of the films on this list are very obscure – particularly for Adam Lanza’s age group – and all but one is a horror film (the lone exception being Stalking Laura, a “Lifetime” thriller about workplace shooter Richard Farley.) Adam Lanza discussed this same specific taste in films with a personal friend in early 2012, who told police about it after the shooting (but long before the “Smiggles” profile and its list of 25 films were made public):

9. When police raided the Lanza home, they discovered that all of the windows in Adam Lanza’s bedroom were taped shut with garbage bags. “Smiggles” notes a particular dislike of exposure to sunlight.

10. “Smiggles” claimed that he had a BMI (Body Mass Index) of just 14, in the thread “Are you a virgin?” on Sep 6, 2011. The message was in reply to another user, who was claiming that they were asexual:

A BMI of 14 is considered dangerously underweight, and suggestive of anorexia.

The following is a quote from the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate report on the Sandy Hook shooter:

Anorexia
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner found that at death, AL was anorexic (six feet tall and 112 pounds), to the point of malnutrition and resultant brain damage. This finding raises questions regarding how he, living at home and spending the majority of his time on his own, physically presented to his mother. Authors cannot determine what, if any, concerns were raised by his family regarding his eating ability or habits, or his continued emaciation during this time. AL’s mother had consulted with his pediatrician years earlier about his weight, and by 2008, he was prescribed Miralax for ongoing constipation issues.

At 6’0 feet tall and 112 pounds, Adam Lanza had a BMI of 15.2 at his time of his death. This is considered dangerously underweight and suggestive of anorexia.

11. Topics covered by Smiggles correspond with wikipedia articles edited by Kaynbred, as does the information written by each user about these subjects:

Richard Farley:

The link labeled “ESL’s 11k” leads to the official report for the Richard Farley shooting (note: “11k” is Columbine slang for, roughly, “complete police investigation” files, after the Columbine shooting’s supposedly 11,000+ page official report.) The “ESL 11k” contains the following information:

…which Kaynbred had previously curated:

“Kaynbred” is known to have been another username belonging to Adam Lanza. Sandy Hook Lighthouse will review the evidence establishing that identity in a separate post soon.