Draft:Adam Lanza

Adam Peter Lanza (April 22, 1992 – December 14, 2012) was an American mass murderer responsible for the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting that killed 20 first graders, 6 staff members and injured 2 more staff members (all eight staff were female). Prior to the shooting, Lanza killed his mother at their home in Newtown, Connecticut. Lanza died from a self inflicted gunshot wound at the school.

The shooting is the deadliest elementary school shooting and the second deadliest school shooting in the United States after the Virginia Tech shooting. The shooting resulted in gun control debates and conspiracy theorists, most notably Alex Jones, claiming the massacre was a false flag.

Shortly after the shooting, police sources reported that Lanza's brother Ryan Lanza, then aged 24, was the perpetrator. Ryan told The Jersey Journal that it was likely due to the fact that Adam was carrying Ryan's identification card. Police said he was not considered a suspect, and he was not taken into custody. Ryan said he had not been in touch with Adam since 2010; when asked why, Ryan said his brother was "sick", "[doesn't] talk to anyone", and that Ryan "didn't know him anymore".

Early life
Adam Peter Lanza was born to Nancy Jean (née Champion) Lanza and Peter John Lanza, who married in June 1981. He was partially raised in Kingston, New Hampshire with his parents and brother, Ryan Lanza. in 2009, Nancy and Peter Lanza divorced after 28 years of marriage. Court records show their divorce was due to their relationship being "broken down irretrievably". The Lanzas consented to sharing joint custody of Adam, with his main residence located at the Newtown residence with Nancy. Nancy Lanza, in Newtown prior to the shooting. Nancy's house sat 5 miles (8 km) away from Sandy Hook elementary school.

Education
Lanza spent four and a half years at Sandy Hook Elementary School, starting Newtown Middle School in 2004. However, his mother reported that he experienced intense anxiety during this period.. She told friends that her son started getting upset in middle school because of frequent classroom changes during the day. The movement and noise were too stimulating and made him anxious. At one point his anxiety was so intense that she took him to the emergency room at Danbury Hospital. Because of the smaller class sizes, his mother moved him to a parochial school, St. Rose of Lima. According to a classmate at St. Rose of Lima, he entered "late in the school year", and he left in June 2005.

During Lanza's time in fifth grade, he made a book titled the 'Big Book of Granny' in which the main character is an elderly woman with a gun hidden in her cane and shoots people. The book was made in collaboration with one of his peers for a school project but was reportedly never turned in.

At age 14, he went to Newtown High School, where he was named to the honor roll in 2007. Students and teachers who knew him in high school described Lanza as "intelligent but nervous and fidgety". He avoided attracting attention and was uncomfortable socializing. He is not known to have had any close friends in school. Schoolwork often triggered his underlying sense of hopelessness and by 2008, when he turned 16, he was only going to school occasionally. The intense anxiety Lanza experienced at the time suggests his autism might have been exacerbated by the hormonal shifts of adolescence. He was taken out of high school and home-schooled by his mother and father. He earned a GED. In 2008 and 2009, he also attended some classes at Western Connecticut State University.

Video games
In early 2016, officials confirmed that a 25-second video of a man playing Dance Dance Revolution was Adam Lanza. In Connecticut’s final report on Lanza, it was stated that he was obsessed with the game and would play at Connecticut theater for up to 10 hours a day every weekend.

The report resulted in a debate about violent video games and their effects on young people. Wayne LaPierre, the CEO of the National Rifle Association publicly claimed that video games were the cause of the shooting.

Final months
In November 2014, a report from the Office of the Child Advocate in Connecticut suggested that Lanza could have been dealing with anorexia nervosa. The authors stated that "Anorexia may lead to cognitive impairment, and the combination of anorexia with an autism spectrum disorder and OCD likely heightened Lanza's risk of suicide.". They also noted that at the time of his death, Lanza "was anorexic (he was six feet tall (183 cm) and weighed 112 pounds (51 kg)), to the point of malnutrition and resultant brain damage."

He lived in near-complete isolation within his room, dedicating the majority of his time to playing World of Warcraft and other video games on the internet. The report stated that he "descended" into a world where his only communication with the outside world was with members of a cyber-community, "a small community of individuals that shared his dark and obsessive interest in mass murder".

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, Lanza's mother was contemplating moving him to a different town. She planned to purchase a recreational vehicle for him to stay in so that potential purchasers could see the house without disturbing him. The Report of the Child Advocate stated that:

"In the wake of Mrs Lanza's stated plan to move out of Newtown in 2012, and perhaps stimulated by fears of leaving the 'comfort zone' of his home, Adam planned and executed the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012. His severe and deteriorating internalized mental health problems were combined with an atypical preoccupation with violence. Combined with access to deadly weapons, this proved a recipe for mass murder'."

James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at SUNY Upstate Medical University, was consulted about what motivated Lanza to kill. Knoll states that Lanza's final act conveyed a distinct message: "I carry profound hurt—I'll go ballistic and transfer it onto you."

Relationship with his mother
Nancy Lanza became a stay-at-home mother shortly after Adam was born. He had access to the guns used in the shooting through his mother, who was described as a "gun enthusiast who owned at least a dozen firearms". She often took her two sons, Adam and Ryan, to a local shooting range, where they learned to shoot. Lanza's father has said that he does not believe Nancy feared Lanza. She did not confide any fear of Lanza to her sister or to her best friend, slept with her bedroom door unlocked, and kept guns in the house.

Adam struggled with showing basic emotions and would be coached by his mother when he was young. Adam was involved in a school play during his childhood, his mother had wrote to a friend "Adam has taken it very seriously, even practicing facial expressions in the mirror!" The state's attorny report on the shooting states that when Nancy asked Adam whether he would feel sad if anything happened to her, he replied "No."

Shooting
On December 13, 2012, Lanza's GPS showed that he droved past Sandy Hook Elementary school in an uninterrupted loop that began and ended at his home. The whole trip took him 23 minutes.

On the morning of December 14, 2012, Lanza shot and shot his mother four times in the head at their home in Newtown, Connecticut. He then drove to Sandy Hook elementary school in his mothers car. Lanza arrived at the school and opened fire on the students and staff at the school, resulting in the deaths of 20 students and 6 staff members.

Newtown police heard the final shot at 9:40:03 a.m., likely Lanza's suicide. Autopsy reports show he shot himself at the lower rear portion of his head with a Glock 20SF in classroom 10. The Glock was used solely for the Lanza's suicide.

Family reactions
Shortly after the shooting, news stations received false reports that Ryan Lanza, the brother of Adam Lanza, was the perpetrator. Ryan found out about this while sitting at his desk at work. It was reported that his office in Times Square, New York was raided by police shortly after he found out about the false accusations. Ryan's facebook was flooded with messages and comments shortly after news networks posted pictures of him. He made two posts on his facebook account criticizing the media and harassers within three minutes of each other, likely before police raided his office.

The day following the shooting, Peter Lanza, the father of Adam, released a statement:

"Our hearts go out to the families and friends who lost loved ones and to all those who were injured. Our family is grieving along with all those who have been affected by this enormous tragedy. No words can truly express how heartbroken we are. We are in a state of disbelief and trying to find whatever answers we can. We too are asking why. We have cooperated fully with law enforcement and will continue to do so. Like so many of you, we are saddened, but struggling to make sense of what has transpired."

Motive
Less than a year after the shootings, a report of the massacre was released to the public that showed investigators were unable to establish a clear motive for Lanzas actions.

Mental health problems
While living in New Hampshire at the time, Lanza exhibited developmental challenges before the age of three. These included communication and sensory difficulties, socialization delays, and repetitive behaviors. He was seen by the New Hampshire Birth to Three intervention program and referred to special education preschool services. Once at elementary school, he was diagnosed with a sensory-integration disorder. The sensory-processing disorder does not have official status by the medical community as a formal diagnosis but is a common characteristic of autism. His anxiety affected his ability to attend school and in 8th grade he was placed on "homebound" status, which is reserved for children who are too disabled, even with supports and accommodations, to attend school.

When he was 13, Lanza was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome by a psychiatrist, Paul Fox. When he was 14, his parents took him to Yale University's Child Study Center, where he was also diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), depression and anxiety. He frequently washed his hands and changed his socks 20 times a day, to the point where his mother did three loads of laundry a day. He also sometimes went through a box of tissues in a day because he could not touch a doorknob with his bare hand.

Lanza received treatment from Robert King, who advised implementing comprehensive support, and Kathleen Koenig, a colleague at the Yale Child Study Center, prescribed the antidepressant Celexa. Lanza took the medication for three days. His mother Nancy reported: "On the third morning he complained of dizziness. By that afternoon he was disoriented, his speech was disjointed, he couldn't even figure out how to open his cereal box. He was sweating profusely ... it was actually dripping off his hands. He said he couldn't think ... He was practically vegetative." He never took the medication again. A report from the Office of the Child Advocate found that "Yale's recommendations for extensive special education supports, ongoing expert consultation, and rigorous therapeutic supports embedded into (Lanza's) daily life went largely unheeded."

During a 2013 interview, Peter Lanza expressed his suspicion that his son might have had undiagnosed schizophrenia alongside his other conditions. Lanza noted that family members may have overlooked signs of the onset of schizophrenia and psychotic behavior in his son's adolescence, mistakenly attributing his peculiar behavior and growing isolation to Asperger syndrome. Because of concerns that published accounts of Lanza's autism could result in a backlash against others with the condition, autism advocates campaigned to clarify that autism is a brain-related developmental disorder rather than a mental illness. The aggression displayed by Lanza in the shooting is typically not observed in the autistic population and none of the psychiatrists he consulted identified concerning indications of violence in his demeanor.

Lanza appears to have had no contact with mental health providers after 2006. The report from the Office of the Child Advocate stated: "In the course of Lanza's entire life, minimal mental health evaluation and treatment (in relation to his apparent need) was obtained. Of the couple of providers that saw him, only one—the Yale Child Study Center—seemed to appreciate the gravity of (his) presentation, his need for extensive mental health and special education supports, and the critical need for medication to ease his obsessive-compulsive symptoms."

Computer
On the morning of the shooting, Lanza removed the hard drive from his computer and intentionally destroyed it with a hammer or screwdriver, making it difficult for investigators to recover its data.

Lanza never permitted others to access his bedroom, including his mother. Lanza had also taped black plastic garbage bags over the windows in his bedroom to block out sunlight. He had cut off contact with both his father and brother in the two years before the shooting and at one point communicated with his mother, who lived in the same house, only by email. A document titled "Selfish", describing Lanza's belief in the inherent selfishness of women, was found on his computer after his death.

Obsession with mass murders
Adam Lanza made a spreadsheet with detailed information on mass shooters and mass shooting incidents, along with making Tumblr accounts named after school shooters.

Investigation findings revealed Lanza had a keen interest in mass shootings, such as the Columbine High School massacre. In his room, investigators uncovered clippings, including a story from The New York Times detailing an incident in 1891 where a man shot at schoolchildren. His computer contained two videos of gunshot suicides, movies that showed school shootings, and two pictures of Lanza pointing guns at his own head.

Lanza had an account on a forum titled “Super Columbine Massacre RPG”, which discusses the video game of the same name and other mass shootings. Lanza used the username "Smiggles". Lanza's posts on Tumblr and the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! forum is seen as a clear indicator by investigators about Lanza's fascination with Columbine and other mass shooting incidents. In one post on the forum, Lanza describes having a dream about Columbine while he was asleep.

Lanza had posted writings related to the 2011 Norway attacks perpetrated by Anders Behring Breivik, citing his mass murder as "impressive", and writing that he "finally outdid Woo Bum-kon", referring to how South Korean policeman Woo's spree killing had been the deadliest rampage to date when Breivik's attacks occurred. He also contrasted Breivik to American-Israeli mass murderer Baruch Goldstein.

Reported 2011 phone call
In January 2014, the New York Daily News reported that Lanza had made a phone call to AnarchyRadio, a college radio station in Oregon in December 2011, in which he used the name "Greg" and compared a teenage mall shooter to Travis the chimpanzee. An audio recording of the call obtained by the newspaper was said to contain Lanza's voice by two of his former high school classmates. Lanza is also said to have discussed the possibility of going on to the radio show in an instant messaging conversation, in which he had the username "Smiggles". Danbury State Attorney Stephen Sedensky said "Adam Lanza may have called a radio station, but I do not specifically know whether or not that is Adam Lanza on the audiotape".

Legacy
Since the massacre, Lanza has become subject to discussions by true crime fans and has opened a disturbing subculture of Adam Lanza "fans". Online platforms such as TikTok, Twitter and Tumblr are utilized by his fans to post fan art, edits and fan fiction of Lanza.

Other mass shooters have been inspired by Lanza:


 * Jesse Osborne, the Townville Elementary School shooter had planned to "outdo" Adam Lanza.
 * Jonathan Sapirman, the Greenwood Park Mall shooter made online posts about Adam Lanza and posted photos of himself pointing a gun to his own head, similar to the photos found on Lanza's computer.
 * William Atchison, the perpetrator of the 2017 Aztec High School shooting, had used "Adam Lanza" as an online username.