Just sharing a reminder from Sandy Hook parent Lenny Pozner, that this is indeed real life in 2015: finding yourself the victim of random violence will, in turn, make you the victim of targeted harassment from still another disturbing corner of humanity, courtesy of Florida Atlantic University Professor James Tracy.
If the reader disagrees that Tracy is out of line or thinks this is a free speech issue, just a word of advice: if someone you love is ever the victim of gun violence, keep your guard up. Professor Tracy may suddenly appear in the hours after your loss to call you a crisis actor and run you down on his radio show. And if that doesn’t bother you, you would fit right in at Florida Atlantic University.
(On a note for regular readers, things have been quiet around here partly because I have been writing. There will be some updates on that, and a blog post or two, in February. Have a happy and safe New Year.)
Sandy Hook Lighthouse has come into possession of two private messages (PMs) sent by the Sandy Hook shooter in 2010, under his “Smiggles” moniker (see this article for a review the evidence establishing that this profile was in fact Adam Lanza.)
Copies of these messages were obtained through a source with direct access to former members of the original Columbine RPG Discussion forum. The recipients of these messages have made it clear that they did not, at any time, have any awareness that “Smiggles” was planning a crime of any sort, nor did they know of the real identity of that user until it became public knowledge in 2014.
Both messages are lengthy, and grant insight into the shooter’s beliefs and mental state at the time they were written (October and November of 2010, just over two years before the Sandy Hook shooting.)
The first PM discusses horror films, aversion to sunlight, and the shooter’s description of episodes of paranoia and hallucinations. The shooter makes reference to a scene from a film “Terror House” as a visual analogue for what he “sees” in his visions, which he calls simply “the images.” For reference, this snippet of the film can be viewed below (while this is a from a horror film and may be jarring, the content is not particularly graphic or violent. The “faces” start about 1/3rd of the way in):
A screen shot of the first private message is below. For readability, a transcript of the message will be repeated immediately after:
From: Smiggles
Posted: Sun Oct 03, 2010 3:56am
I don’t have the persistent sense of fear that you described, but around once every couple months when I’ve gotten arbitrarily fatigued and it’s around 12:00-5:00 in the morning, I have images of distorted faces flashing through my mind. They’re sort of similar to the ones toward the end of the movie Terror House, at about 75:00. When I first saw the scene, I mentally flinched for a moment because of its similarity to what I have imagined in the past.
On a tangent, this is probably among my favorite movies (although its ending was disappointing). I searched for it after reading an IMDB review, and I eventually found this link. The review said that it was similar to Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Don’t Look In The Basement, both of which have aspects which I enjoyed. I first knew from about 5:00 to 5:30 that I was going to love the movie for its style of atmosphere. I wouldn’t expect most people to enjoy this movie nearly as much as I do, but I’m surprised that it has received so little attention. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which I haven’t seen; I’m not interested in that sort of movie) has a similar plot scenario, but this one preceded it by a few years.
About the images- they’re not exactly like the ones in that movie, but that’s the best I can do to display an example of them. It’s not the normal screamer type of pop-up for me; the faces are fairly mundane, and they sporadically rapidly appear without any context and then disappear.
When it happens and I get slightly paranoid over them , I usually go straight to my bedroom and try to sleep; I don’t even bother to brush my teeth first because the bathroom’s window only has partial drapes and I don’t like being around exposed windows during it. It sounds pathetic, but when I get into my bedroom after it happens, I search it to determine that there’s no one in there with me, and then feel better knowing that the only route someone could take is through the closed door. I’ve occasionally felt uncomfortable about looking at the gap between the windows and their synthetic drapes.
On another tangent, what do you think about sunlight? Those drapes haven’t been opened in the last five years, and the drapes in the room I’m in right now have actually been taped shut (to block the gaps from allowing sunlight through) for the same amount of time. I absolutely hate sunlight, along with any artificial light which resembles it.
The few times I see an extremely bleak, dark, and dreary day outside during the morning or afternoon with thick gray clouds covering the entire sky, I get into a good mood and think about how wonderfully beautiful it is outside. Bright, sunny, “cheerful” days are depressing. Nearly every afternoon is miserable for me. Beyond just the normal animosity I have for sunlight, I get exhausted between noon and and sunset when I’m in a room which allows the slightest amount of afternoon light in.
I hate having my skin exposed to sunlight, so I always wear a hooded sweatshirt and full-length pants, even in the hottest weather. The sunglasses I wear are gigantic and almost completely prevent me from seeing any direct sunlight when I’m looking in any direction. I would also wear a full balaclava if it wouldn’t get me profiled as a criminal. They need to make a fashion come-back…
I intend on eventually living in northwest Washington (probably Seattle.) It’s among the most consistently overcast regions in the mainland US ( http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/online/ccd/cldy.html ). I always get disappointed when I check the UV index for the day and see how low it is compared to my state’s level.
Getting back to the subject of paranoia- those images were the worst “hallucinations” I had experienced until a couple of weeks ago late one night when I was getting very tired. The incident was so surreal that I only a remember a small amount of the details. Basically, I began to “see” many different things. Although I knew that none of it was actually real, it came as close to being real as it could for me without it being physically tangible. I heard screaming around me, and I had an overwhelming sense that there was someone dead behind me. I kept seeing silhouettes of flickering people everywhere. I felt like I had to cry. The entire ordeal persisted for about fifteen minutes and sort of faded away. Prior to it happening, I had never had that sort of delusional hysteria before. It was possibly the strangest thing I’ve ever experienced.
(end quoted text)
Notes about this message
1. The first link, which is no longer active, at one time led to a full copy of the film Terror House. This can be verified by performing a web search of the URL.
2. “Terror House” was released under several different names, including “The Folks at Red Wolf Inn”, which is what Smiggles listed the movie as in his “top 25 list” on the same form the following year.
3. Smiggles notes that he sought out “Terror House” after reading an IMDB review that “said that it was similar to Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things and Don’t Look In The Basement.” Presumably, this is the review he is referring to, from 2005:
Three of the four other movies mentioned in this review (“Children Shouldn’t Play With Dead Things,” “Don’t Look in the Basement,” and “the Baby”) appear on Smiggles’s 25 favorite films list:
4. “Smiggles” describes the room in which he was writing the message at the time:
Those drapes haven’t been opened in the last five years, and the drapes in the room I’m in right now have actually been taped shut (to block the gaps from allowing sunlight through) for the same amount of time.
This is at least worth noting because of the two rooms in question (one with drapes, one with tape) the one that appeared to be the shooter’s “computer room” was in fact the one with drapes on the windows, not tape:
The bedroom, with taped windows.
However, this message was sent two years before the shooting, and at any rate, the police noted the abundance of computer equipment in the bedroom closet, so at that time there may well have been a computer in each room, or some other setup:
Same room, opposite wall. Note the two stacked PC towers, and the Dell monitor nearby.
5. The shooter describes the sunglasses he wears, emphasizing how they “are gigantic and almost completely prevent me from seeing any direct sunlight when I’m looking in any direction.”
A few witnesses at Sandy Hook Elementary School claim that the shooter was wearing sunglasses. However, more do not mention any sunglasses, and just as many witnesses falsely recall seeing the shooter wearing a mask as do recall sunglasses. The Medical Examiner’s description of the shooter’s body does not mention any sunglasses at all, and so the most likely conclusion is that he was in fact not wearing sunglasses during the shooting.
However, police did find a pair of sunglasses in the shooter’s car, parked out front:
“Cocoon” brand sunglasses are over-sized, with the intention that they are worn over a pair of normal prescription glasses. Wearing them by themselves would indeed make them “gigantic” sunglasses. The company’s marketing copy describes their design toward blocking out sunlight:
6. “Smiggles” describes the window in his bathroom as having “partial drapes” that do not sufficiently block out sunlight. This was the bathroom next to the Sandy Hook shooter’s bedroom, with drapes visible:
7. Lanza’s descriptions of “hallucinations” and “delusional hysteria” in this message are very significant, in that there has never been any record that he experienced any such hallucinations, despite wide speculation that he may have been schizophrenic or otherwise detached from reality. This private correspondence is, so far, the only known instance where he confirmed (or at least claimed) being delusional or seeing things that were not there.
Second message: the essay
The second private message sent by the Sandy Hook shooter is longer, and focuses entirely on the subject of pedophilia. At the conclusion of the message, the shooter states clearly “I’m pretty confused when it comes to my sexuality, but I’m certain that I’m not a pedophile.”
This message was sent on 12 November, 2010. The context, evident over the course of the message, is that Smiggles is referring to a post he had left almost two weeks earlier, in the thread “Do you vote?” where another user had mentioned Tyler Clementi. Clementi was a young man who had committed suicide after his roommate surreptitiously filmed him engaging in a sexual encounter with another man, and then posted the footage online. Smiggles’s comment at that time hinted at a larger post he had decided not to share:
I’ve been considering posting a topic sort of indirectly pertaining to the subject of gay bullying ever since Tyler Clementi killed himself, but I’ve been a bit hesitant because it will probably make me appear deranged.
Smiggles also makes reference to another topic on the forum (which he would later post a comment to,) that being from the thread “‘Pedophile’s Guide’ pulled from Amazon” which discussed this CNN news story about how an author’s controversial guide to luring children was pulled from the retailer amazon.com’s catalog. The story was posted on 12 Nov, 2010, the same day this message was sent.
The private message below, then, was intended as a forum post, and is thus clearly written for an audience, but was just never shared before (hence the writer’s references to fielding replies, and addressing a group.) It also appears that “Smiggles” is copying from, or perhaps paraphrasing, an essay that was found on the USB drive in Adam Lanza’s closet:
Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate, in their report on Sandy Hook last November, went into greater detail in describing this text:
Essay Regarding Pedophilia
At some point, AL crafted an undated and lengthy essay, which he identified as a college admission application text, outlining a position that pedophilia should not be considered abhorrent or illegal. His essay, academic in tone, references varying cultural norms across the span of time to support a premise that our modern day attitudes about pedophilia are arbitrarily constructed. Authors are careful to note that there are no other writings that speak to a preoccupation he may or may not have had with pedophilia. There are no records and there is no evidence that he had pedophiliac tendencies. Authors note that there is evidence that he was in possession of video pornography, but that the contents of the pornography was not pedophiliac in nature. It is possible that the essay he drafted constituted an academic exercise that was not submitted for review by any educational professional. As with the “Big Book of Granny”, it was obsessive in both length and tone, 34 pages long even though he stated that the “requirement” was 500 words.
-Report of the Office of the Child Advocate, pg 101
Given the difference in length, this piece of writing cannot possibly contain all of what was in that essay. However, the parallels in content and structure will be immediately obvious.
Sandy Hook Lighthouse is releasing this text unedited, not to grant a platform where the killer’s views can be spread, but with the same goal in mind that has been behind every article posted here: to provide the most detailed understanding of the killer’s psyche and the events leading up to the shooting, with the hope that similar events can be prevented someday. That the killer’s arguments will be heard is an unfortunate, but worthwhile consequence of working toward this goal, as this piece of writing is very revealing in regards to the shooter’s beliefs and mental development.
Once again, a full copy of the text will follow these saved images. The writing is not graphic, but simply given the subject matter and the writer, it may well be offensive or disturbing to some readers.
From: Smiggles
Fri Nov 12, 2010 8:25pm
Basically, I take the belief that everyone should have equal rights and apply it consistently. I’ve had these thoughts for years and haven’t spoken to anyone about them. I’d like to be able to discuss this in a topic, but it will probably be too offensive. I’m going to keep it to myself for now.
And now that I think about it, this might sound a bit satirical, but it’s not. Anyway, this is what I would have posted:
Ever since I was 14, the entire subject of gay rights which is so pervasive in this society has frustrated me. It’s not owing to any malice I have toward homosexuals, but instead is caused by the absurdity of the overwhelming fervor against the discrimination of homosexuals while there is another class of people who genuinely suffer from persecution for their lifestyle. While many people celebrate homosexual relationships, sexual relationships between adults and children are universally condemned and vilified. Every adult who is known to have been involved in one is automatically branded for life as a violent and dangerous rapist. Anyone who is unfortunate enough to be subjected to this societal corruption endures the effects of it for the rest of their lives: their personal information is widely divulged to their neighbors as if public castigation is encouraged; they are denied employment; their location must be reported to their oppressive government; whether or not an adult engages in a sexual relationship with a child, they must forever hide their mere sexuality or else be stigmatized infinitely beyond anything homosexuals endure. If any of this applied to homosexuals, the public would be appalled, yet no one cares when it applies to pedophiles.
It seemed as if the entire country was outraged when Tyler Clementi killed himself a couple months ago. From what I know, the catalyst for his suicide was the way that he had been mocked after being recorded by a hidden camera while he was engaging in sexual activity with another male. Yet To Catch A Predator, a television program which was based on the manipulation of hundreds of adults into being recorded by hidden cameras after desiring sexual activity with children, has never received anywhere near this level of outrage. The audience is supposed to find entertainment value in the humiliation of ephebophiles were afterward violently subdued by police and impounded, having the rest of their lives impacted significantly greater than anything Tyler Clementi had experienced. There was scarcely any criticism when one of the ephebophiles was forced into shooting himself in the head as police were surrounding him.
Watch this video objectively and imagine that they are speaking about homosexuals like Tyler Clementi:
There is an inordinate amount of innately fallacious arguments against pedophilia, most of which are also directed toward homosexuality. I’m not going to address any of them to begin with because I assume everyone here already understands that arguments such as “The DSM recognizes pedophilia as a mental illness” or “pedophilia is unnatural” are ludicrously invalid. For this first post, I’m only going to address arguments which are remotely coherent. If anyone invokes more ignorant ones, I will address them later in this topic. I’m not sure how well I’ll be able to do this preemptively, though, because I don’t entirely understand the mindset of people who disparage pedophilia as a sexuality. From my perspective, it’s like trying to argue against someone who believes that females are inferior to males. It’s a patently absurd notion, and I find it to be sort of comical that I even have to make this argument.
To begin with, you must understand that pedophiles are not the only victims of this virulent persecution. The children who choose to engage in sexual relationships with adults are invariably severed from their loving relationships and are indoctrinated into believing that they have been abused, being labeled as “victims” and being subjected to the genuinely abusive will of psychiatrists (the most immoral profession I can imagine) who “treat” (coerce) them into believing that they can overcome their “abuse”. I don’t understand how this can be perceived as being fundamentally any different from the nature of the mental abuse which is used to indoctrinate political dissidents.
Children would not be “scarred” by their voluntary sexual experiences any more than adults in typical sexual relationships would be “scarred” unless their society shamed them into believing that they should feel guilty. The reason why a child would be mentally damaged after having consented to sexual activity is because they are socially conditioned into believing that what they did is in some ill-defined way deleterious. This is no different than submitting to oppressive religious beliefs that premarital sexual activity should be viewed negatively, and that anyone who engages in it should feel shame and remorse for having committed their sins. I assume everyone here understands that there is nothing innately pernicious about the nature of sexual relationships between adults, and that there is nothing innately immoral about sexuality in general, yet somehow sexual activity inexplicably becomes a pestilence once children engage in it. This argument is the equivalent of saying that the sexual activity of unmarried couples is harmful, yet the sexual activity of married couples is neutral, or even virtuous. It’s completely nonsensical. The morality of the sexuality of children should not be evaluated any differently than the morality of the sexuality of adults.
The specious propaganda which is primarily disseminated against the legitimacy of sexual relationships between adults and children is that a child is incapable of consenting to sexual activity, so any occurrence of it is inherently rape. This is an arbitrary assumption which oppresses children and is an indication of the abusive mentality which is inflicted upon them daily in this society, dehumanizing them and relegating them to the status of slaves.
Why is sexual activity considered to be incomprehensible to a child? What is so fundamentally challenging about the concept that there is not a single child who could possibly fathom it?
It’s absurd for to claim that sexuality is something which requires significant mental capabilities and thus must be violently controlled by governments, because there is no restriction against imbeciles being sexual. Children are innately incapable of comprehending it, yet once someone attains a certain age (which varies extremely depending on the time period and location, thus demonstrating that it’s absolutely meaningless), everyone is suddenly capable of it? If the nature of sexuality is fundamentally a concept to understand for all children, then it is not reasonable to assume that even a small minority of people are capable of comprehending its perplexity at 18. If an adult may engage in sexual activity because they are demonstratively capable of employing prudent rationality, then why may a child not enjoy the same right? Professing that a child is incapable of understanding the concept of consent because of the belief that adults are universally “more rational” than they are, and thus children do not deserve to control their bodies, is equivalent to claiming that females do not deserve to control their bodies because males are “more judicious in personal affairs” in relation to them, or some other such inane fatuity. It’s a senseless and morally reproachful position to hold.
There is the argument that the “power disparity” in the relationship between an adult and a child renders any sexuality between them to be inherently abusive. This notion can be applied against females, arguing that they cannot be in a sexual relationship because many of them explicitly desire one with a male who is in a higher position of societal “power”, thus none of them are capable of giving consent. No none believes that a pretentious “power disparity” argument applies to the legitimacy of sexual relationships between adults, yet it arbitrarily applies to children? It is also outright fallacious because the child has all of the control over the relationship. The adult would have to be extremely careful around the child because virtually everyone would accuse the adult of raping the child without consideration as to whether or not s/he gave consent.
Some of you may say that children would never consent to sexual activity, and that if they engage in it, an adult must have forced them into it. Apply this argument to females once again and it immediately evinces why this is a meaningless assertion. It is equivalent to asserting that violent persecution is justified toward any female and her associate who engages in premarital sexual activity because no females would ever desire it owing to some arbitrary criterion. It’s a presumptuous way to justify discriminatory coercion and is not based on any logical argument. Personally, I don’t understand why children in general would want to be sexual, but I also don’t understand why adults in this society are so sexual. If I was ever going to engage in any sexual activity, I would be certain that it would be meaningful, but adults everywhere engage in it as if it doesn’t matter. Adults seem to invariably claim that it is “making love” or some other haphazard justification of their licentious behavior. In that case, how can you define what is and is not a legitimate expression of love? If you believe that adults “making love” can be described as positively as I constantly hear it is, then the sexual activity of children is equally positive.
Why is this society so adamantly opposed to pedophilia? Children deserve all of the rights and respects that an adult should receive, yet this is not the case to any extent. The inexorable battery of children (“spanking”) is fully legal in the United States. Children’s free will is suppressed and annihilated in every conceivable manner within families. Beyond having their associations, location, and every action subject to their parents’ wills, they are denied their own thoughts, opinions, values, and religion, and instead are coerced into adopting their parents’. Within the rest of society, children are denied property (their parents instantly legally siphon it from their children’s domain regardless of how the child obtained it), employment, and are denied the right to have even an token impact on the government which innately subjugates them through its very existence (although I’ll spare you from my anarchistic rhetoric in this post). Children are not even allowed to control their own bodies: if an adult wants to force any medical procedures or treatments onto a child, the child does not have any choice in the matter.
This is why children are forced into being ashamed of their sexuality and why adults are violently persecuted for loving children. If pedophilic relationships were condoned, then it would be a recognition that children have human rights, which this egregious society is not capable of accepting. Children deserve all of the rights and respects that adults should receive, yet they do not because this morally reprehensible society implicitly enjoys the abusive subjugation of them as sub-human property instead of as people who have their own legitimate thoughts and desires. If you support civil rights, such as through being a feminist or a LGBTQIA activist, you should oppose the violent persecution of pedophilic relationships and the subjugation of children. The right of children to have sexual relationships is a small step toward liberating them from the oppression of adults which they currently endure.
I wasn’t intending on posting anything about this topic because I don’t think that anyone would consider an alternative perspective (about which I still have very little faith), but the recent removal of that book from Amazon has irritated me. I’ve barely read any information about the book or its removal, so I don’t know anything about its contents, but it was probably completely benign. It doesn’t matter either way, though, because it would have been removed under any circumstance merely because of the nature of its subject.
While it seems like nearly everyone wants the and anything like it to not be available through Amazon’s website, the motive of the very few people who oppose its removal is nothing other harrowing. According to them, it’s inappropriate for Amazon to not support the free speech of authors. These people use the same mentality and reasoning for the justification of the availability of material pertaining to nuisances such as racial supremacy, as if pedophilia is something that is equivalently morally repugnant; as if the existence of information pertaining to it should merely be grudgingly tolerated rather than supported as something which can be positive. I don’t have an moral opposition to a book which directs adults on how they can safely have a relationship with children: I condone its availability. Information like that needs to be available because any beauty which could potentially be present in such relationships is currently violently suppressed. I support anyone, child or adult, who believe that their love is important enough to be in a relationship together and risk the current consequences, because I believe that nothing is more important than love. Those who seek the application of violence to suppress these relationships are the depraved profligates, not the individuals who seek to express their love regardless of age.
I know that I will be accused of desiring sexual contact with children, and there might possibly be accusations that I have already had it, but neither case is true. I also have not seen any degree of child pornography (nor intentionally seen any adult pornography). All of the sexuality which is rampant in this society in general is as disgusting to me as pedophilia is, but that isn’t sufficient reason for me to desire the violent persecution of anyone over it because of personal perspective. I’m pretty confused when it comes to my sexuality, but I’m certain that I’m not a pedophile.
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.
It’s been awhile since I’ve updated, and with good reason: when I started this blog, and as information about the case leaked, followed soon by official reports, I maintained a “to do” list of leads to cross off. That list grew several times with each new break in the case. However, the “Blarvink” wikipedia account (posted here last month) represented the very last investigative lead I had in my backlog.
In other words, until some new information becomes available, there’s not much left to say. On that note:
When New Information Will Become Available
First, the Sandy Hook Advisory Committee has today provided the latest projected release window for their oft-delayed report: February 2015. While I’d be inclined to take this prediction with a grain of salt given the past delays, at this point there’s not really much left that they could possibly cite as a reason for delay (the Child Advocate report was one they were waiting on for a long time, then they agreed to stop waiting, then it came out, so the delay there is understandable.) The Courant has more here: Link
The other obvious avenues for new information to come out would be either of the two lawsuits filed in the past month.
The first lawsuit (explained here) was filed by at least ten of the families of Sandy Hook victims, alleging wrongful death against the manufacturer and dealer of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting.
The second lawsuit (explained here) was filed by the families of two Sandy Hook victims, Noah Pozner and Jesse Lewis. The suit was filed against the town of Newtown and the Newtown School Board, alleging that the town was negligent in securing the entrance to the school, and failed to provide substitute teacher Lauren Rousseau with keys to lock her classroom door, or otherwise fulfill the obligations of the school’s lockdown procedure.
As either of these lawsuits progress, it’s likely that some previously-unreleased or redacted information will come to light (assuming that either case reaches that point.) When it does, I’ll be sure to cover it here.
Given my focus on just the facts of the case here, I don’t have any observations to share either way on the merits of either lawsuit.
Timeline Updates
I updated the Adam Lanza timeline to include information from the report of the Child Advocate’s office back in November. The timeline has also been updated to include information about the Blarvink wikipedia account.
(thanks to a reader of the blog, Jonas, for supplying a full accounting of the available posts for this profile; I’d been aware of it for a year but was not convinced it was the shooter until now.)
The first known online activity associated with the Sandy Hook shooter was his activities on wikipedia (and several firearms forums) under the moniker “Kaynbred” starting in June 2009 (I’ve covered that account’s wikipedia activities in depth here.) This first-known account also represented the earliest significant online activity in his timeline.
As it turns out, Kaynbred was not Adam Lanza’s first wikipedia account. The user account Blarvink was created by Adam Lanza on February 4th, 2007, when Adam Lanza was 14 years old.
This point in time also marks just 3 days before Adam Lanza’s final meeting with Yale nurse Kathleen Koenig (they had a total of 4 meetings from Oct 2006 to Feb 7, 2007.) It is thus well documented that he was experiencing emotional paralysis and extreme anxiety at this time, and it was during these meetings that Lanza asked Koenig questions about schizophrenia as well as psychotic depression.
Although the account was created on February 7th, the earliest available activity associated with the account is not until two months later, on April 11th (click here to see all of the account’s contributions.)
The edits on that day include one to the page for the television show Blues Clues, wherein he redacts some obvious vandalism. This perhaps seems like an insignificant point, but it is worth noting the correlation in subject matter seen from Lanza’s other account Smiggles, 4 years later:
Oh, dear God. The school shooter in the episode of Homicide: Life on the Streets was the host of the children’s show Blues Clues. I guess going away to school didn’t turn out too well for him.
[link to a scene from said television show]
This tragedy could have been prevented. Steve showed all of the warning signs.
A similar correlation can be seen in the subject matter of the other page that Lanza edits on that day, and his known fixations in real life. The edit shows that Lanza was active on the (now-erased) page for “Rant” – a page dedicated to defining and explaining the act of ranting.
Since the page itself was erased, we have no way of knowing what edits he made to it (only his edits to the page’s “talk” page survive.) However, being familiar with all of his other writings, I immediately suspected that this section came from the Sandy Hook shooter:
The scholarly foundation for a discussion of ranting begins with the observation that ranting is likely universal, probably evolutionarily conserved, and therefore putatively performs a vital function affecting reproductive success. It has been hypothesized that ranting is part of the behaviour pattern of male bonded, small group, coalitionary lethal violence directed against outsiders. If that hypothesis has merit then the ranting behaviour pattern may have biological roots extending to the epoch of the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees. It would also follow that ranting may have a powerful non verbal, probably emotional, component.
Compare this with the reports from his Yale examinations included in the Child Advocate report, dated one month after the archiving of the wikipedia page:
The Yale psychiatrist’s initial report observed that AL presented as a “pale, gaunt, and awkward young adolescent standing rigidly with downcast gaze and declining to shake hands.”
AL’s mother told the Yale psychiatrist that he used to look at people but did not anymore. AL then asked rhetorically, “Why should I have to.” When the doctor explained all of the information that a person could learn by looking at a facial expression, such as a smile, AL stated that people could interpret smiles differently: “Some primates smile when they are frightened.
However, since the archive in question is from January 2007, and the “Blarvink” account was not registered until one month later, it can’t have come from that user account. Two likely scenarios then:
That sentence is what led to Lanza’s attention to the article and subsequent edits, whatever they may have been.
That edit did come from Adam Lanza, but either under a different user account or anonymously.
Since the page in question is gone, there’s no way to prove or disprove either scenario without access to Wikipedia’s admin records, so it will probably be left at that.
The most significant contribution in terms of cementing the shooter’s timeline, though, is Lanza’s edit to the page for Newtown High School, on August 28th, 2007. In it, he simply changes the number listed for the amount of students attending the school; it his his edit note (explaining to other Wikipedia users why he made the change he did) that is most revealing:
According to what the surrogate vice principal stated in the auditorioum to the 9th and 10th grades on 8/28, there are 1,737 students in Newtown High School this year. I Updated the page accordingly.
This can be taken as confirmation that Adam Lanza attended the “New Students” assembly at Newtown High School, the same day that he made this edit.
Note how this event falls in between the other events on the timeline from this period (the edit is bolded:)
August 26, 2007: Just before the start of 10th grade, “a communication from a psychiatrist stated that the doctor had reviewed [Adam’s] history with [Nancy] and that he was confident that Adam was prepared and ready to attend Newtown High School as a full time student that fall.” Source: Report from the Office of the Child Advocate, pg 62
August 28, 2007: Adam Lanza, as Blarvink, makes an edit to the wikipedia page for Newtown High School, updating the number of attending students. His note for this edit includes confirmation that he attended an assembly at Newtown High School (likely the “New Student Orientation” always held in August) that same day:
According to what the surrogate vice principal stated in the auditorioum to the 9th and 10th grades on 8/28, there are 1,737 students in Newtown High School this year. I Updated the page accordingly.
Pre-Fall 2007: Nancy write to a staff member at Newtown High School, just before the start of the school year, affirming that [Adam] “insists on walking through that front door,” and that he was “prepared.”
It is worth noting that Adam had actually already attended 9th grade at Newtown High School and was thus not a “new student,” but the above context makes the purpose of his attendance at the assembly obvious.
Finally, the account’s later attention to the page for the book Into the Wild is certainly consistent with Lanza’s developing worldview at the time; the edit itself is not significant, beyond also being consistent with Lanza’s obsession with exact details — in this case changing the amount of a person’s life savings, in the previous edit changing the number of students at the school, and in many later edits specifying the weapons and ammunition used by specific mass killers.
For those interested, here I’ll also include some of Jonas’s observations about Blarvink’s wikipedia etiquette and what it suggests to him (without comment from me as this is beyond my familiarity with the site):
Jonas Rand says…
User:Kaynbred only had 12 edits.to Wikipedia. By contrast, User:Blarvink, by contrast, made at least 20 edits, one of which is no longer visible (due to the deletion of the article, “Rant”, by an administrator, after the time the edit was made). The Blarvink account was created on February 4, 2007, but his first edits on record are on April 11, approximately 2 months later, reflecting a similar pattern to the account “Kaynbred” (created almost 2 months before its first edit):
Blarvink made a few edits here and there almost every month from April to September 2007, at the end of which he stopped editing, only to login to the account over 5 months later to make his final edit under that name, to the talk page of Barack Obama, where he wrote a sarcastic response to another user’s comment about the article’s content. After this, he seems to have abandoned the account altogether.
Regarding the edits themselves, they show interests that had not been linked with Adam Lanza before, and also show more ideological viewpoints, such as an opposition to liberalism and Barack Obama. While it isn’t fair to infer that his opinions had not changed between this point and the time he committed his massacre, or that this even tells us what viewpoint he had at this point (he could have been anything from a conservative, to a libertarian, to a Maoist to be opposed to liberalism and Obama), it does help to piece together his internet activities during his high school years. Something that everyone may not be familiar with is the terms used in his edit summaries: he has a familiarity with at least some Wikipedia policies but this could have easily been attained by simply lurking and reading the rules, and looking at other people’s contributions (there is a “Recent Changes” page in most wikis, including Wikipedia). POV stands for “Point of View” and is used in Wikipedia to mean something that is biased, i.e., in contravention to its Neutral Point of View (NPOV) policy. In his last two edits before his long break from Wikipedia, on 10 September 2007, we see Blarvink changing content that he is deeming “POV”. While this is a common term, he uses it to describe the title “Her Majesty” and removes that title from the page about “New Zealand” where it was used to describe Queen Elizabeth II. He was informed on his talk page that this was, in fact, a proper usage of the term, though he never responded to this comment.
It is worth noting that almost every edit made under this account comes with an edit summary, which it is considered proper etiquette to do on Wikipedia for all edits that are not minor, though it is not always done. Only one of these summaries is automatic (the result of an “undo” action that automatically reverts the last edit to the version immediately preceding it). Of his 19 edits as “Blarvink”, only three have no edit summaries, including his last edit under that account. His first edit said that he removed vandalism from the ‘Origin’ section of the article “Blues Clues”, but he actually made the edit he described in this post a minute after he said he had done it.
Another interesting feature of these edits is that they show more of a variety of interests than Lanza’s later postings online, particularly his edits as “Kaynbred”, which largely only deal with the subjects of guns and mass shootings. Here, we have Lanza visiting pages as diverse as the book “Into the Wild”, New Zealand, Blues Clues and the Gas constant. However, we do see an interest in war, reflected in 1) the comments by Lanza’s 7th grade teacher about his essays on the subject of battles, war, and destruction; and 2) the books from Lanza’s book collection which are revealed in the latest report from the Office of the Child Advocate. Blarvink edited the articles on Alvin York (a US Army Sergeant and WWI veteran) and the Fall of Saigon.
Perhaps he even had an earlier account, but I doubt it due to the nature of his first edit, announcing that he had deleted vandalism when 1) this is usually not announced and 2) he had not even done it yet. This seems like a newbie mistake. He may have had a third Wikipedia account, however: not only was he inactive there after 2010, but the period between the last edit from Blarvink’s account and the first edit by Kaynbred is over 17 months long.
P.S. – The page “Rant” was deleted in 2013, so his edit to it was not preserved; however, the article’s talk page was never deleted, so his comment there, from 2007, stays to this day.
Regarding his first Wikipedia contributions, it is possible that he contributed something to this section of the article at a later date as “Kaynbred”, and indeed according to this tool (which is used to list the various accounts that a single user has synthesized across multiple wikis run on Wikimedia Foundation servers – such as Wikiquote, Wiktionary, and foreign language versions of these sites)…
…User:Blarvink had 21 contributions, which would account for the edit to the “Rant” article that he discussed on the talk page, and one additional edit. His account currently shows only 19 contributions, so it isn’t beyond the imagination that his first contribution could have been to add content to the “Rant” page and his second contribution being the one he explained on the talk page. However, it is impossible for the section quoted above from the archived page to have been added by the Blarvink account (though it may have been added by Lanza using an IP address, or a different alias, it could have been anyone), for the simple reason that Blarvink wasn’t registered until February 2007, and that archived version was from January.
I would just quickly note that the items burned were only the ones left in the home, i.e. not anything that was found to be of evidentiary value (or even potential value) and thus seized back on 12/14 and in the days after. All of that stuff will still be in the possession of the Connecticut State Police.
the hard drive from Adam Lanza’s PC, smashed with a dumbell and scratched (presumably with the nearby set of keys)
One of the most significant lingering questions about the Sandy Hook case is the killer’s hard drive: what was on it? Why did he obliterate it just hours before ending his own life, having committed one of the most heinous crimes in history in the intervening morning? What, if anything, was sufficiently shameful or incriminating that it had to be destroyed, in light of the extremely incriminating evidence found intact on the external USB drive he left intact in a nearby closet?
I don’t know. But I believe I’ve found a forum thread that at least explains why he erased his hard drive in this specific fashion.
As I recently established in the course of reporting a Columbine RPG Forum thread that likely explains Adam Lanza’s familiarity with Anarcho-primitivism, Adam Lanza was reading discussions on said forum long before he was actually participating in them. Thus, anything we find on the forum between 2007 and 2010 we can reasonably assume Adam Lanza read.
This particular post appears days after the Kaynbred account first appears, and about a month after the release of the english version of Bullet Time, an extremely obscure film written and produced by a member of the Columbine RPG forum, and a film which Adam would later demonstrate an intimate familiarity with. So, this discussion occurred during a window in which we know he was extremely active online, and paying particular attention to the Columbine RPG forum (recall that he was crafting his “mass murder spreadsheet” during this time, the filename of which he titled after the forum.)
“colgam01” = COLumbine GAMe
One of his first acts after joining the forum seven months later was to share this same spreadsheet with the forum.
no copy of the thread itself was archived, just the index page showing the title
Indeed, Lanza would have been reading the discussion I am about to reference with far more attention than anyone else; the recent report from the Office of the Child Advocate conclusively establishes that his focus on mass murders was unprecedented compared to anything the FBI had ever seen, and the lens through which he viewed this information was primarily and undeniably the Columbine Massacre RPG forum (referred to in the report as “a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder. (pg 100)”
Finally, it’s worth pointing out that the user “Sabratha” who was involved in the making of Bullet Time participated in this discussion. Adam Lanza definitely read Sabratha’s posts, and so this detail, almost by itself, establishes that Lanza would have read the following discussion.
How to erase a hard drive
The thread in question was initially posted on May 12, 2009, and the thread’s topic is The Eric and Dylan e-mails. The point of interest being discussed is a note from a news article, indicating that one of the Columbine shooters erased his hard drive in such a manner that investigators were never able to surface its contents:
They pored over e-mail among Harris and Klebold and friends. Most of the writings spoke only of teen-age concerns. Girls. Games. Television shows.
The investigators scrutinized Web postings and other writings — some from Harris’ computer — promising more death on April 26, a threat that never materialized.
Unlike Harris’ computer, Klebold’s offered no help.
Investigators concluded that Klebold had gutted the machine, erasing one of the two hard drives, leaving it blank.
“I can’t prove it,” Davis says. “But deep down in my heart, I think it was probably nuked either the day before, or that morning.”
What did Klebold have to hide?
“We’ll just never know,” Davis says.
While the intended topic of conversation in this thread was for everyone to speculate as to the contents of this hard drive that was owned by Dylan Klebold, the discussion starts to drift toward the how of the scenario more so than the what. Here are the relevant excerpts in light of the picture at the beginning of this post:
“Yeah Dylan made sure no one could read his HD, it’s a ticky proccess too. You have to clear it like 2 or 3 times just to make sure you can’t recover it. Whatever was on there he didn’t want anyone to see. I think it may have been to hide porn but that’s just my guess”
“But this takes a lot of time, I don’t know what for tools he had available, as OSX-User I am also able to erase my harddrive with some extra-features, and overwriting with these methods take multiple hours. He also ereased one of the two harddrives, the first one was maybe the OS only. If I would him I had destroyed; you just have to know what/where.“
“Couldn’t Dylan have just taken his computer stuff out to a field and smashed it up with a sledgehammer and dumped the remains? I’m not very tech-savy so that’s what I would have done in his position.”
“I know that Cho got rid of his harddrive in some unknown manner, I guess he wasn’t as tech-savy as Dylan so he had to physically get rid of it”
“Yeah, to destroy it or threw it away or burn it COMPLETELY would be the best thing”
“Firstly if you format a HD the data can be recovered. I know of a company in the United Kingdom, where I’m from that can restore data from a formatted HD. I expect they could recover something from one of Klebold’s two HD’s removed from his primary computer. And yes destroying the HD physically is the best way to go. The aforementioned technology is only what the Government is telling you about. “
While we of course cannot know with certainty exactly which of the Sandy Hook killer’s actions were inspired by these sorts of forum discussions, it is entirely reasonable to assume that he read this forum thread, and also that he lacked any sort of significant input beyond what he absorbed through his computer, given the information in this week’s report from the Office of the Child Advocate (also, recall that even when he was supposedly in college, his mother Nancy found him in the library rather than in class.)
In other words, it may seem presumptuous in a normal criminal case to assume that information found online was the exact information that a given criminal read and was inspired by, but this is not a normal case. Adam Lanza primarily existed, just seven months after this posting, as an online identity that read this exact forum, and was otherwise barricaded from the outside world in the sealed bedrooms on the second floor of his home. There can be no reasonable doubt that he read this thread, and his corresponding actions in 2012 leave no doubt that he took this information to heart, and subsequently took the contents of his hard drive the grave.
Note: Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate released their final report on Adam Lanza yesterday (you can get it here.) These are my reactions having reading through it once.
Overall, I thought it was a very well-constructed report, and was quite revealing. Several of the gaps in what we know about Adam Lanza have been filled in, particularly in his early childhood.
Given the aims of the report, much of it has to do with formulating recommendations for child care and mental health treatment. I’m going to leave all of that out, since my focus here is just on establishing the facts of the case.
So, here is just a list of the things I noticed in one read-through as they came up. Note that the official report refers to Adam Lanza as “AL” and I left that abbreviation unchanged in most of the excerpts below.
Eighteen take-aways from the report
1. Adam Lanza’s mental and emotional difficulties did not suddenly emerge in middle school, or even elementary school. He was first identified as having special needs at least as early as three years old, when the family still lived in New Hampshire and where Adam was in pre-school at the time. His difficulties were especially noted in the area of language, and he was even noted as having “made up his own language” at this age, which presented problems when communicating:
The developmental assessment completed by AL’s Birth to Three provider indicated that AL “fell well below expectations in social-personal development.” The evaluator was unable to understand any of AL’s language, needing his mother to serve as an interpreter throughout the testing. Evaluators concluded that AL presented with “significantly delayed development of articulation and expressive language skills.” The evaluation did note that AL had a good attention span, creative play skills, and that he could follow adult directions. The evaluation recommended speech and language services to support
communication development and regular pre-school attendance to “stimulate development in all domains.”
This seems extremely significant in light of Adam’s posts as Smiggles, wherein he longed for a “pre-language” existence, or stated “I hate every facet of language, along with the entire concept of aesthetics.” It also may have fueled his despair in trying, and failing, to learn a second (third?) language in German.
2. Nancy Lanza had noticeable emotional/psychological problems herself. In particular, the authors do not seem impressed with Nancy’s frequent claims that she was suffering from some vague terminal illness – they all but call her out as a liar. They also record Peter Lanza has having believed her claims when they first asked him about Nancy’s allegedly-poor health, but specifically note that he changed his mind when presented with medical records. It’s even hinted that Nancy’s neurosis may have encouraged the same in Adam. A significant excerpt:
[We] cannot conclude what may have been at the root of Mrs. Lanza’s real or imagined health conditions. But her email correspondences, combined with the lack of substantial findings in the medical records suggest a fixation with her health and mortality. How much of this was observable or felt by other members of the family is difficult to conclude and authors cannot speculate. A review of Mrs. Lanza’s correspondence however, frequently paints a picture of a woman who seemed preoccupied with anxieties, either about AL or herself. This is a dynamic that continues to be seen as AL moves through adolescence.
3. The authors are not at all impressed with Dr. Fox, who evaluated Adam in the seventh grade and supplied an “excuse note” at Nancy’s behest so that Adam could be taken out of school indefinitely. This was a very unconventional thing to do: withdrawing a student completely and indefinitely from school (which is not homeschooling) and refusing tutors or any interaction with the school system at all. Adam wasn’t homeschooled in 8th grade; he was just home. (I’ll just note here that my speculation about this time period when assembling Adam Lanza’s educational history turned out to be pretty accurate.)
I also detect an indirect implication that Dr. Fox and Nancy Lanza had a sexual relationship. Immediately after explaining that Dr. Fox closed his practice and moved overseas when he was exposed as having engaged in a “consensual sexual relationship with a female patient” (they link to this article from the Courant) they note that what Dr. Fox did for Nancy was unconventional and could not be explained. They didn’t say that she slept with Fox in order to get the note for Adam, but I can’t be alone in picking up on that subtext (note, though, that the confirmed “female patient” was definitely not Nancy.) I’m not saying it’s true either, but it is an interesting possibility (it’s also oddly reminiscent of a scene from Forrest Gump.)
4. Adam Lanza’s fixation on primates as setting examples for ideal human behavior goes back to at least 2006, when he was examined at Yale.
The Yale psychiatrist’s initial report observed that AL presented as a “pale, gaunt, and awkward young adolescent standing rigidly with downcast gaze and declining to shake hands.”
AL’s mother told the Yale psychiatrist that he used to look at people but did not anymore. AL then asked rhetorically, “Why should I have to.” When the doctor explained all of the information that a person could learn by looking at a facial expression, such as a smile, AL stated that people could interpret smiles differently: “Some primates smile when they are frightened.
This would have been right around the time when he started reading the Columbine RPG forum, though there’s not much at all surviving from that era of the forum to know what he would have been reading there.
5. The evaluators at Yale very accurately predicted the consequences of Nancy accommodating Adam’s desire to withdraw from society, to the extent that it is baffling and very frustrating to know that Nancy ignored their advice. Nancy was told this in 2006 (emphasis theirs):
Beyond the impact of OCD symptoms on himself and his mother, we are very concerned about AL’s increasingly constricted social and educational world. Much of emphasis has been on finding curricular level of instruction. Inability to tolerate even minimal interaction with even older more mature classmates will have grave consequences for his future education and social and occupational adaptation unless means of remediation are found. Inability to interact with classmates will prove increasingly deleterious to education. We believe it is very important to reframe the discussion with school from issues of curricular content to much more urgent issues of how to accommodate AL’s severe social disabilities in a way that would permit him to be around peers and to progress, rather than regress, socially, as well as academically.
[…]
However we believe that there is a significant risk to [Adam Lanza] in creating, even with the best of intentions, a prosthetic environment which spares him having to encounter other students or to work to overcome his social difficulties. Having the emphasis on adapting the world to AL, rather than helping him to adapt to the world, is a recipe for him to be a homebound recluse, unable to attend college or work productively into his twenties and thirties and beyond with mother becoming increasingly isolated and burdened.
Elsewhere, the report confirms that Nancy was preparing to leave Newtown with Adam, and speculates that the massacre may have happened (or at least happened when it did) as a result of Adam refusing to leave this “bubble.”
Perhaps by 2012 Nancy was thinking back to these prescient words from the doctors at Yale, and realizing she had done exactly what she was advised not to do. She tried to pull the plug on the killing machine that was assembling itself upstairs, but by then it was too late.
6. Adam’s hatred of therapists, and repeated references to them as “TheRapists” is almost certainly a lingering resentment over his experiences at Yale. This post from September 2011:
Therapists are secular priests who assert that they have some “truth”, and if your values deviate, then you are “wrong”. Hence, The Rapist. They impose their values onto you through their mindfucking.
…reads to me like Adam thinking back on the same experience (or rather, series of experiences) that a therapist reports to Peter Lanza in 2006 — they are two sides of the same story:
The process of asking [Adam] to talk with me directly about what is going on is critical. I appreciate that Adam’s view is that he wouldn’t say anything differently if [the father] were in the room, but I think he’s wrong. His judgment about how social/family dynamics work in a therapy situation is no more on target than his views regarding doorknobs and hand-washing . . . . He wants to control how the treatment goes because his anxiety is nearly unbearable if he can’t feel he knows what’s going to happen. I understand that. At the same time, he can’t control the treatment because his thinking is distorted and irrational. I can’t agree to follow his lead!
In fact, when I talk with him alone he has to respond, and last time I pushed him a bit. I am not surprised that he was angry, that’s OK . . . . I told Adam he has a biological disorder that can be helped with medication. I told him what the medicines are and why they can work. I told him he’s living in a box right now, and the box will only get smaller over time if doesn’t get some treatment.
I’m fine to see him this week at 11. I am OK to talk with him and you at the beginning, but the session to address his issues has to be just him and me. I’d do it differently if I thought it would help, but I’m convinced it won’t. Let me know your reactions.
Unfortunately, this perception of therapy as punishment seems to be another instance where Nancy encouraged Adam (or perhaps was persuaded by his arguments) rather than challenging him:
Mrs. Lanza had great difficulty seeing the value in pushing Adam out of this comfort zone. Her comment that she was “torturing” AL during his Yale evaluation echoes her earlier comment to a school administrator that she was “abusing” Adam by keeping him in the Danbury Emergency Department.
7. Adam Lanza was not a “genius” or at all exceptional in his cognitive abilities. He was an average teenager — although some of his “academic skills were in the very superior range,” this is distinct from having an innate gift. He was very good at things he could focus on and study and become good at.
There are multiple hints that his parents adopted the viewpoint of Adam as a Rain Man-like figure, as a sort of coping mechanism against the stigma of mental illness/disorder (i.e. “our son may be troubled, but in some ways he’s a genius”) and that in the long run this actually did serious harm: in the areas where he was not deficient (but was also not exceptional) he was placed in advanced classes (or college classes, etc.) which took away the few opportunities he had to function adequately and without contributing to his anxiety. This resulted in an environment where, in subjects where he was average, he was still not good enough.
A similar — and probably more damaging — mismatch arises in regards to Adam’s acknowledged disorders vs. accepted disorders as he re-enters the public school system in 2007; the authors of the report note that Nancy and the school staff prepared an education plan for a student with minor physical disabilities and “high functioning” Asperger’s Syndrome, rather than what the Yale doctors diagnosed him as having: profound and debilitating anxiety, with “special-education/therapeutic needs.”
I don’t mean to be crass, but I am consistently reminded of this humorous flyer for a found “cat” when I read about these repeated under-cooked evaluations of Adam’s abilities:
I think it’s an apt metaphor for how Nancy viewed her son, and how best to take care of him: you can make your house as “cat friendly” as you want, but that won’t turn a possum into a cat.
8. Adam was seen as a special case, even among school staff who dealt with special cases. This (undated) e-mail exchange, between a teacher and another staff member, is telling::
OH MY GOSH! AL is ready to join my class??? I HAD BETTER GET READY! I’m so nervous! Let’s talk . . . are they starting with a short visit or two or jumping right in and seeing how it goes with the potential to leave early as needed??? What about “prepping” my class before his arrival — today I have an appointment at 2:30 . . . but we can talk on the phone tonight . . .
The reply:
My guess is that he will start with an entire class. In my past experience, observing a class is more difficult than participating in a class. As for your other students—when in doubt – IGNORE AL. Any attention is tough. In terms of prepping them – just think about what you know about AL.
• No loud noises
• No strong smells
• No sudden movements
• No unpredictable actions, noises, smells, etc.
• Speak with a purpose or “Let me work.”
• AL may be uncomfortable around the boys, but I don’t know that for sure.
I am sure he will tell us whatever is a problem . . . . .
Have you talked to [STAFF MEMBER] about the math he needs for your class? Would you like me to do that? So many questions! At least our jobs are never dull.
Another staffer refers to Adam as “the most anxious youth I’ve ever seen,” so this is strong evidence that he was not lost in a multitude of similar cases. So, if he “slipped through the cracks” this is not because nobody noticed his level of impairment.
9. One of the most alarming records in the report, in my mind, is this email from Nancy to school administrators, in which she indirectly admits that she meticulously creates an illusive reality for Adam to convince him that he is a functioning and “normal” high school school student, while at the same time admitting this is far from the truth:
“He will not accept any preferential treatment at all. Since he obviously NEEDS preferential treatment, it leaves me scurrying around behind his back fixing things… i.e. The gym thing. I actually had to make up a story about liability, bureaucracy, and being out of school for over 12 months, etc. … then I have to go to [school staff] and get her to back that up … then I have to go to [another school staff], and get him to go along. Then his … teacher slips up and tells him that his IEP allows him to get out of study halls and I have to get her to recant and say it was a misunderstanding on her part. This is a high stress, 24/7 operation of misinformation. He does NOT have to go to lunch, but obviously I have to come up with a story that he will buy and then get everyone on the same page. Thanks for giving me the heads up… [about lunch]. I will get on it first thing in the morning. I will think of something. He wants to believe that he is an ordinary student, and I think it is important to let him believe for his self-esteem.”
If she’s willing to construct these false facades at such expense just to accommodate Adam, then convincing herself of convenient versions of reality was probably natural for her.
10. The report includes an exchange of some lengthy emails between Adam and Nancy from late 2008. I don’t even know where to begin about these, other than to point out that the emotional distance between the two participants in this conversation is so wide that I find hard to believe they were even on the same planet, much less in the same house:
August 2008 (AL is 16 years old, 11th grade): Email from AL to His mother, 11:25 p.m.
You do not seem to understand that I was attempting to comfort you with what I consider to be a maxim with which to live. You unfortunately probably still do not understand what I mean. As a disclaimer: I type nothing in this that is in a tone that is condescending, vindictive, malicious, snide, malignant, or any synonym that you can think of. I mean well.
If you believe that you wasted your life, as you seem to have insinuated, you will gain nothing from regretting it and will only depress yourself; you cannot change anything from the past. There is something that I can assure you of that will always be true: it does not matter if you live for the next one year, five years, ten years, fifteen years, twenty years, thirty years, fifty years or even 100 years; the day before you die you will regret ever worrying about your life instead of thinking of what you want to do.
Every new year that you do live, you will regret not having started anything that you wanted to do the year prior, only regretting the past more.
What I mean is that you should think of what you want to do today; not starting next year or next month, but today. Thinking that you are not going to be able to do anything in the future will only ensure that fate. Also thinking that you are too “old” is going to ensure the same fate.
It is not as though I do not mean that you are homeless and begging; I would spend my life savings to prevent that out of obligation for what you have done for me. My personality is merely inherently unmoving; I will not be upset over something that you cannot change. And you should not be upset either. What you should do is think about what you want to do.
I also want to mention that I purchased something two weeks ago on Newegg to double your computer’s memory without even saying anything until now. I do not try to avoid doing anything for you as you seem to think. I am glad that I was born, and I appreciate your having taken care of me. (It is not my fault if you have not detected as much of an increase in speed as I would have liked, however; I blame its outdated processor. I would change that if I could, but it’s not possible to do so for your model.) Please read the first paragraph again.
Email Response from Mrs. Lanza, 1:05 a.m.
I appreciate your effort to be a comfort to me. I apologize if I seemed angry or antagonistic. I was simply over emotional and as it is often the case worrying about the future. I admit that I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed by my circumstances lately, but in no way do I regret having raised two wonderful children. I have high hopes for you both and will consider my life a success if you and Ryan live happy and productive lives.
There are a few things that I do regret . . . one of the biggest is that I dropped out of college, believing it to be more important to help your father get through college. Financially, it was impossible for us to afford a college education for both of us, and it seemed more important that he receive a diploma. In some ways I regret leaving the workforce as it has severely limited my prospects for the future, but again, it was a decision that I made to take more responsibility for the house and the children, and to allow your father to concentrate on his career. I do feel that I was able to be a better mother and have been able to put great effort into raising you and your brother, so that regret is mitigated in that respect. On the occasion that Ryan or you show some appreciation for my efforts, I feel completely justified in that choice and dually rewarded.
I know that it is harder for you to show appreciation, and that it does not come as a natural response. I really do not want you to feel obligated in that way. I do not expect any help, financial or otherwise, from you or your brother, and would not accept it if it were offered. I am certain that I will not be homeless or begging on a street corner, as your father is obligated by law and morality to see that my 30 years of service and sacrifice are compensated for.
He has assured me that I will live a comfortable life and that my health expenses are covered. He is an honorable man. I am grateful that I was married to someone who honors his responsibilities. He has also taking [sic] responsibility to provide a college education for both you and your brother, so that neither of you will have to struggle and sacrifice as we did.
If you choose to, you will emerge from college with a master’s degree of your choice, debt free, to pursue any career in life that you wish. When I think of what I would like to do for the future,
I think I would like to get my college degree first. I just thought of that tonight, as a direct result of my conversation with you. I think it would be possible as I dropped out only a year shy of my degree, and it seems as I might be spending quite a bit of time on campus waiting for you to take classes, so why not take advantage of that?! I suppose I could take classes at the same time you are taking classes.
I agree with you when you say that I should try to think positively of the future and what I want to do today. There is nothing that I can do about my diagnosis, and I do try to be as healthy as I can, despite the prognosis. I am sure that you noticed that I exercise regularly and do my best to stay in good shape. It’s not like I have the attitude that since I will be crippled anyway I may as well give up and get fat and sedentary now. I am working hard to stay as healthy as I can, for as long as I can.
At some point, I might like to start a business. I sometimes toy with the idea of an internet business like my friend, [L], owns. (Did I punctuate that last sentence correctly?) Her website is [xxx]. You should have a look at it sometime and let me know what you think of it.
Anyway, I would like you to know that no matter what, I am very proud of the person you are. I have no preconceived notion of how you should react or respond. I know that you tend to be more reserved and less emotional and I do not perceive that as condescending malignant, or callous. You are pragmatic and stoical. These are fine attributes. I am glad to know that you are glad to be born and appreciate being taken care of. I love you very much and am more than happy to take care of you in any way I can. I suppose I have felt that you didn’t even notice how hard I try to make things as tolerable as possible for you and that has made me feel sad in a way. I am much happier now, knowing that you do not despise me for bringing you into this world. Above all, I want you to be happy, no matter what you choose to do.
You may not think I notice, but my computer is working faster and I have been able to download bank statements faster and search the websites quicker. I was able to get baseball scores for all the games in a split second, and watch a video clip that a friend sent without any freezing. I didn’t know that you had worked on it, so I thank you for your efforts. You should let me know when you do thoughtful things so that you can get credit! As an aside, I am having a problem that has been ongoing for months. The cursor abruptly moves to a different place in text now and again when I am in the middle of typing a sentence. It is very strange and annoying. Maybe you can have a look at it sometime? Thank you for taking the time to send me this e-mail. I now understand your motive and meaning, and I truly appreciate it!
11. There’s an indirect admission from the authors that they also concluded Nancy bought the guns for Adam. it’s here (page 78):
In later interviews with state police, Mr. Lanza indicated that he had never given or purchased a firearm for AL but that he assumed Mrs. Lanza had. Mr. Lanza indicated that he was unaware that Mrs. Lanza was buying AL his own guns, as opposed to simply doing shooting activities together. Mr. Lanza indicated he knew AL had access to guns when he took him to a shooting range and AL had two long guns that Mr. Lanza believed were purchased by Mrs. Lanza.
Since the authors of the report had access to un-redacted Connecticut State Police files, this is probably just a differently-worded summary of the same police interview with Peter Lanza from last year’s official report. However, last year’s police summary (the actual interview itself is not publicly available) phrases this part of the conversation as:
S/A [Special Agent] Shibley asked Peter if he was aware of Nancy Lanza purchasing and owning firearms to which he replied yes. S/A Shibley asked Peter if he was aware of Nancy Lanza purchasing firearms for Adam to which he replied no. Peter stated he assumed Adam had access to firearms purchased by Nancy because on one occasion he took Adam to Wooster Mountain Shooting Range and Adam possessed two long guns that he believed were purchased by Nancy.
It’s a key difference in wording; the police report gives the impression that the investigators weren’t sure if Nancy had purchased guns for Adam, and neither was Peter. The Child Advocate report implies that investigators knew Nancy did buy guns for Adam, and just that Peter didn’t know she was doing it until the police told him. I suppose it’s for debate which interpretation is accurate, but only one can be.
12. They believe Adam Lanza’s prolonged “Dance Dance Revolution” sessions were a means for him to deal with his anxiety by completely exhausting himself:
Reports were that AL would dance for hours at a time. Per description, he would whip himself into a frenzy, a behavior consistent, possibly, with a need to contain anxiety-producing impulses and thoughts. […] It is reasonable to speculate from this behavior that AL’s mental health was deteriorating and that he was living with very serious inner turmoil at this time. Dance Dance Revolution served as a complete distraction and perhaps a containing device, as he danced to a state of physical exhaustion, only to return home to his self-imposed isolation.
AL seemed to be dividing his life between various forms of escape in which he made minimal personal contact with other human beings, either dancing to the point of physical exhaustion while noticeably oblivious to other people in the theater, or physically shut off from the outer world in his room while immersed in a fantasy cyber-world.
13. They note that Adam increasingly started to engage with the world through his computer, descending by 2010 “into a world where he communicated most often, and at times perhaps singularly, with members of a cyber-community.” Included is an email from Adam’s e-mail to an unnamed “cyber aquaintance”:
It’s amazing how fast time passes. It’s hard to believe that it’s already been this long. I’m sorry about my mood over the summer. I was more depressed than I had ever been before. When I apologized for it, you said that I wasn’t behaving disrespectfully and that I never had been, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as kind toward you as you deserve. I don’t know how much it ever seemed like it, but I’ve always really appreciated your friendship. I’ve pretty much been a complete loner throughout my life but I’m sure that even if I had more friends, you’d still be my favorite person I’ve met. I’d like it if we could do something together again sometime. . . . Please email back and we could figure out something amazing.
I believe this is the only record of a heartfelt or empathic message ever written by the killer. (The content of the message doesn’t suggest to me a “cyber acquaintance” though; this sounds like an email to his DDR friend, especially the part about “doing something together again” which sounds like a real-life encounter. But that’s not how the report describes it.)
14. Adam continued to correspond with members of the Columbine RPG forum for months after leaving it in February 2012. The report never specifies what website these acquaintances were made at, but I think “a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder” makes it pretty clear.
July 23, 2012 (From AL to Cyber-Acquaintance): “My interest in mass murdered [sic] has been perfunctory for such a long time. The enthusiasm I had back when Virginia Tech happened feels like it’s been gone for a hundred billion years. I don’t care about anything. I’m just done with it all.”
The timing of this exchange is very telling; this was just days after the Aurora theater shooting, and Adam had been away from the forum for over four months. The tone of the email suggests to me that someone from the forum was missing his input on this latest massacre, and sent him an email with some kind of sensational details about James Holmes. Adam’s reply shows that by now (just five months before the Sandy Hook shooting) he was bored with the topic — or, at least, claims he was. This could be a sort of envious dismissal of a mass shooter that he would have seen as a competitor by this point.
I should also note that it doesn’t seem the authors took into account any of his forum posts. It appears they based their evaluations of his online activity through the un-redacted police reports, which examined his email activity, which showed interactions with the same people… but they were not the exact same interactions as seen on the Columbine forum.
This is probably because they were going off of the police reports, which likely didn’t have any forum posts in them either. The official report’s note that Adam Lanza “was a member of several columbine forums” was probably gleaned from the context of these email exchanges, where Adam and the other forum users probably mentioned the Super Columbine Massacre RPG forum in conversation. I don’t think they ever found the forum itself (in fact Shocked Beyond Belief may have been offline when they looked for it.)
15. The contents of his hard drive that referred to pedophilia were apparently research for some kind of college essay:
At some point, AL crafted an undated and lengthy essay, which he identified as a college admission application text, outlining a position that pedophilia should not be considered abhorrent or illegal. His essay, academic in tone, references varying cultural norms across the span of time to support a premise that our modern day attitudes about pedophilia are arbitrarily constructed. Authors are careful to note that there are no other writings that speak to a preoccupation he may or may not have had with pedophilia. There are no records and there is no evidence that he had pedophiliac tendencies. Authors note that there is evidence that he was in possession of video pornography, but that the contents of the pornography was not pedophiliac in nature. It is possible that the essay he drafted constituted an academic exercise that was not submitted for review by any educational professional. As with the “Big Book of Granny”, it was obsessive in both length and tone, 34 pages long even though he stated that the “requirement” was 500 words.
16. A previously-unreleased text from Nancy again describes the “bump on the head” that occurred on December 10th, just before she left for New Hampshire, and just four days before the Sandy Hook shooting.
AL sustained and injury to his head the night before Mrs. Lanza left for a trip to New Hampshire—2 or 3 days prior to the Sandy Hook shooting. Mrs. Lanza describes his injury in a text message reading “bloody, bloody, bloody.”
For comparison’s sake, the previously-released text:
“I was off to a rough start. Poor Adam bumped his head (really badly) and we were dealing with blood at 5:30 in the morning L He is ok.”
17. It hasn’t been released before, as far as I know, that Adam Lanza studied Sandy Hook’s security procedures (emphasis theirs):
The attack on Sandy Hook Elementary appears to have been a purposefully thought-out and planned attack—AL did not just “snap.” He visited the school’s website on numerous occasions. He had looked at the student handbook and viewed security procedures at the school.
18. This e-mail was sent by Adam just 3 days before Sandy Hook shooting. The “bump on the head” already happened, and Nancy was in New Hampshire.
From: (AL)
Date: 12/11/2012 9:56pm
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I didn’t really look at the emails you sent earlier, so I guess I ought to respond now. About the Chinese mass stabbers, they blend together in my mind too much for me to say much. Although I guess that should make it even easier to talk about them…I don’t know. Who am I to even say anything on the topic? The inexplicable mystery to me isn’t how there are massacres, but rather how there aren’t 100,000 of them every year. So when it comes to rates and such, causes and consequences, domestic or forging (sic), in whatever context, I’m just going to be completely making things up because I apparently don’t understand any of it.
I’m clueless about Olga Hepnarova. While granting that modus operandi really isn’t that important, I just can’t get into vehicular slaughterers. It seem too mediated, like using remote explosives (too hot). And knives stray too far from the whole “mass” aspect (too cold). The aesthetic of pistols tends to be just (sic) right.
A list of mass shooter suicide notes…I never thought to compile such a thing before. I can’t remember ever thinking, “Whoa, that guy had a suicide note and I’m just finding out about this?! If their existence is every (sic) divulged by the police, it tends to be pretty public knowledge; and if their contents are released, they’re even more prominent. So I’m probably not privy to any information that you aren’t’ already well-aware of. All I can offer is to say that you can probably rest easy knowing that you aren’t overlooking too many lurking Jiverlys.
As far as the Holmies go…well, the .gif of him dancing on a llama was cute. I guess that’s all I can say about the whole Holmie thing since I can’t really relate to it. I don’t understand why there weren’t the “he’s just a poor misunderstood puppy who needs help” type flocking around Jared Loughner since that spiel ostensibly applied to him more than James Holmes. And speaking more generally, I don’t really understand why Aurora shooting was considered such a big deal all-around, as if such a thing had never happened before. It’s not like its 1984.
The sum conclusion from the authors, in reaction to emails like these from the last days of Lanza’s life, is their belief that “his thinking, while highly idiosyncratic and verging on the bizarre with regard to mass murder, was not actively psychotic.”
This is something I’ve been sitting on for awhile. I just wasn’t sure it was worth posting about before, seeing it as more of an odd bit of trivia about the case than anything else, but today’s release of the official report from Connecticut’s Office of the Child Advocate has cast a new level of scrutiny on Adam Lanza’s childhood project “The Big Book of Granny” that he assembled with another, yet-unnamed boy while they were in 5th Grade. So, I’m going to share what they left out: Adam Lanza himself posted an illustration from the Big Book of Granny online.
This will take a bit of explaining.
The official report (both the one released today and Connecticut State Police report from one year ago) provide a description of the Big Book of Granny, but only one actual image from it has ever been released, that being the cover:
…note that while Adam Lanza’s name is unredacted, the “creator of the Granny Picture” is redacted. So, Adam apparently didn’t draw this picture. That will be relevant.
Personally, I’ve never really been interested in this home-made comic book as an investigative lead. Adam would have been in fifth grade at the time, and although the summary of the book provided by police includes a great deal of violence, that didn’t strike me as peculiar for boys in that age group.
The Child Advocate’s report, while it doesn’t include any actual quotes or photos of the book, basically destroys the validity of those kinds of dismissals (emphasis is in the original text):
“Here, “The Big Book of Granny” suggests that while in many ways [Adam Lanza] appeared to be positively developing, by the age of ten, on some level, he was deeply troubled by feelings of rage, hate, and (at least unconscious) murderous impulses. While many children, and especially boys, of this age contend with anger and violent impulses in their play and creative productions, “The Big Book of Granny” stands out, to mental health professionals, as a text marked by extreme thoughts of violence that should have signified a need for intervention and evaluation.”
So apparently, the Big Book of Granny was much, much more disturbing that whatever I was picturing.
Now, we need to jump around in time a bit.
Blarvink at 2draw
I first posted about this drawing back on November 26th, 2013 when the “blarvink” moniker first leaked. One of the pages I found online was of a drawing on the site 2draw, posted on June 8th 2005 and entitled Elder crying over Nuclear Weapon; I thought it was interesting that the user who posted it (as Blarvink, a name which Adam Lanza used in World of Warcraft) later tried (and failed) to delete it, given that Lanza had deleted so much of his online posts in other venues. This is that drawing:
I had posted that drawing before most of the major breaks in the case took place: just a day after the official report was ever released, before I found the “Smiggles” account, before the radio call was unearthed… basically when Adam Lanza was still a blank slate.
So, about two months later I had read all of the official report, and upon seeing the cover of the Big Book of Granny, noticed the similarity in art style. I updated the “2draw” post with this:
Edit 1/21/2014: a comparison between Adam Lanza’s illustration for the cover of the “Big Book of Granny” and the Blarvink’s 2draw contribution:
And that’s how it stood. Two drawings that look pretty similar, drawn about 3 years apart. Not a big deal really.
What the 2draw post really is
A few months ago I was browsing through the official report and skimmed the description of the Big Book of Granny (again, this is the only information that’s ever been released about it up until today; there’s no way to actually read the Big Book of Granny) and one description stood out:
The description of Granny “throwing a match and causing an explosion” is what is taking place here:
yes, it looks more like a cigarette than a match, and the smoke is coming out the wrong end, but we’re not talking about grading an art assignment here
There are a few issues with this assertion, but I think they actually make this posting more significant.
First, as I noted above, Adam Lanza didn’t actually draw the “Big Book of Granny” cover. The other boy (who the Child Advocate report notes is now living in mental health facility) drew it, and confirmed so in interviews with police. While this may not be the most reliable account (given the passage of time mostly, but also due to the co-author’s mental state) the cover of the book records the same, so it’s probably true.
If that’s the case, though, that means that Adam Lanza was sufficiently impressed (or obsessed, or interested, or whatever his emotions were) with the drawings that he wanted to duplicate them and pass them off as his own, at least in an online, anonymous situation, three years later.
Which brings us to the second point: the “Elder Crying Over a Nuclear Weapon” drawing is not literally a drawing from the Big Book of Granny. It’s a hand-drawn recreation, which actually shows a much more significant level of interest in the Big Book of Granny by its co-author, three years after it was originally drawn. 2draw (from what I can tell, not to mention the name of the site) is not a place where you can cut-and-paste art. You have to draw it in-browser (comparable to something like the app Draw Something.) The 2draw post itself notes that he took 44 minutes to put it together.
In other words, Adam was still obsessing over the violence in his (5th grade) book by the time he was almost an 8th grader. And I think that’s far more significant that quibbling over whether the original drawing was by someone else, or differed from the 2draw post. That he wanted to recreate it after so long, and put so much care into doing it, speaks to a deeper issue.
Anyway, I haven’t finished reading the report yet, but will have my overall response to it up tomorrow. In the meantime, here is the full description of The Big Book of Granny, from the official police report last year (my only changes are splitting paragraphs for readability):
On 08/16/13,1 was assigned to review documents returned from the FBI-Behavioral Analysis Unit. A review of box #3 of 5 boxes revealed a spiral bound booklet called “The Big Book of Granny”, which appeared to be created by the shooter. The book is bound in a black plastic spiral binding and covered on the front and back with a clear plastic sheeting. The book starts with a list of 85 Granny Jokes. All of the jokes are degrading statements beginning with “Granny!”
Following 3 pages of Granny Jokes, the book lists “Granny Products of the Future”, which includes advertisements for Granny Action Figure, Granny Action Figure 2, Granny Action Figure 3, Granny Action Figure 4, Granny Action Figure 5, Granny Action Figure Set (includes all 5 Granny Action Figures), Gran Spam, Granny Oats and Granny’s Granny. Each of the products is described in an advertisement format with monetary cost and
phone number to call to order.
The next section of the book is labeled as “Granny’s Clubhouse of Happy Children.” This section is a typed dialog from an imaginary TV show. The main characters feature Granny, her son “Bobolicious” and several children. In the show. Granny and Bobolicious are talking to the group of children as if in a group. In the first episode. Granny punches one boy in the face, throws a match and causes an explosion and threatens to shoot and kill the children.
The second episode, Granny’s Clubhouse of Happy Children 2, starts out with Bobolicious speaking to the children. Bobolicious said “Hi! I’m Bobolicious the Explorer….. Remember last time when everyone was slaughtered!? Well…You bread-brain leeches gave me 75 years of prison for that so called “Tragedy”! I was having fun!” The third and final episode. Granny’s Clubhouse of Happy Children 3, introduces two new characters, Dora the Beserker and her monkey, Shoes. Bobolicious says that they are going to play a game of “Hide and go Die.”
The next section of the book is labeled “Adventures of Granny.” There are eight chapters labeled “The Adventures of Granny” through “The Adventures of Granny 8.” All eight chapters are dialog between Granny and another character identified as Granny’s Son with various persons added in. In the first chapter, Granny and Granny’s Son rob a bank, Granny shoots people with her rifle cane, and then blows up the bank with dynamite. After the robbery. Granny’s Son shoots Granny in the head with a shotgun. In the second chapter. Granny and Granny’s Son go on a boat ride. Granny falls out of the boat and Granny’s Son throws her a cement floatation device which forces her to sink to the bottom of the ocean.
In the third chapter. Granny and Granny’s Son try to capture a boy and stuff him, to put on the mantle. Granny kicks the boy into the fireplace and he begins to burn. The boy jumps out of the fire and Granny punches him in the face. Then Granny shoots at him three times with her rifle cane and misses him. Granny then throws a Granny Action Figure to the boy. The boy gets distracted and the action figure comes alive and shoots the boy. Granny’s Son says “Yay! Now we can hang it!” In chapter four. Granny and Granny’s Son go to a hockey game. Granny goes onto the ice and punches one of the players and then shoots him with her rifle cane. After the hockey game, Granny and Granny’s Son go to Duchess restaurant to eat. In chapter five, Granny goes to Marine boot camp and meets up with Dora the Beserker and Swiper the Rackoon. Granny asks Dora if she would assassinate a soldier at midnight and Dora agrees to do it. Dora says ” I like hurting people…Especially children…” Granny then shoots multiple people with her rifle cane.
When Granny escapes boot camp and goes home to Granny’s Son, she tells him that she left boot camp because she killed the entire Marine legion. In chapter six, Granny and Granny’s Son are picked up from the side of the road by Dora the Beserker. Dora tells Granny that she can take her wherever she needs to go, after they go to the daycare center. When they arrive at the daycare center, Dora sends Swiper the Raccoon inside to distract the children. Then Dora enters and says “Let’s hurt children.”
In chapter seven. Granny and Granny’s Son go to visit Dora the Beserker. Dora takes them on an adventure to find Drunk. In the adventure, they encounter a rooster and have to call upon their bag to get a shotgun. In their bag is a handgun, AK-47, M-16, rifle, rocket launcher, musket and a shotgun. Dora uses the shotgun to shoot the rooster and Swiper the Raccoon. Later in the adventure, Dora accidentally shoots her monkey, named Shoes, Lenny the Cow and Tico the Chipmunk. Dora eventually gets arrested for possession of 6 guns and murdering 4 animals. In chapter 8, Granny and Granny’s Son use a time machine to go back in time. In their travels, they meet The Beatles. Granny kills all of The Beatles and says that she kills every bug she sees. Granny and Granny’s Son get arrested and sentenced to 75 years in jail for killing The Beatles. (See attached copy of the cover of The Big Book of Granny)
CASE STATUS:
This case remains ACTIVE pending further investigation.
Sandy Hook Lighthouse 
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