Sunday, December 29, 2013

He "bumped his head"

Police in Newtown Connecticut have finished their investigation and released more information about Adam Lanza. The New York Post quotes a teacher who said,

“In all my years of experience, I have known (redacted) grade boys to talk about things like this, but Adam’s level of violence was disturbing,” the teacher said. “Adam’s creative writing was so graphic that it could not be shared.”
Did that teacher bring his violent writings to anyone's attention? Yes, apparently to her principal. What did the principal do about it? That is not revealed in the 7000 documents made public yesterday.

We don't know, because the investigation is now closed, and the police have eight more pages of information they do not plan to share.

Jason Howerton writes in The Blaze that

In the documents, a friend told police that Nancy Lanza reported that her son had hit his head several days before the shootings. And an ex-boyfriend told police that she canceled a trip to London on the week of the shooting because of “a couple last-minute problems on the home front.”

Lanza “was undoubtedly afflicted with mental health problems; yet despite a fascination with mass shootings and firearms, he displayed no aggressive or threatening tendencies,” it said.

Mary O'Leary writes in the New Haven Register that

Nobody was allowed into his room, he wouldn’t touch doorknobs, his windows were covered with black plastic bags, his food had to be arranged on the plate in a certain way and he changed clothes often during the day, according to the report.

Nobody was allowed in his room? What, was he the owner of the house? My point is that such entitlement is absurd.

Allan G. Breed and Michael Biesecker write for the Associated Press that
Lanza's real problems appear to have begun after his parents' separation in 2001, when he was 9 years old.

In fifth grade Lanza and at least one other student produced a book entitled "The Big Book of Granny." It is about a granny and her son who

Granny and her son, "Bobolicious," terrorize a group of children. In one episode, Bobolicious tells the children they're going to play a game of "Hide and go die."

Breed and Biesecker write,
Granny uses her "rifle cane" to kill people at a bank, hockey game and Marine boot camp. She also goes back in time and murders the four Beatles, according to a police synopsis.

The book also contains several chapters with the adventures of "Dora the Beserker" and her monkey, "Shoes" — a clear knockoff of the popular children's show "Dora the Explorer."

When Granny asks Dora to assassinate a soldier, she replies: "I like hurting people ... Especially children." In the same episode, Dora sends "Swiper the Raccoon" into a day care center to distract the children, then enters and says, "Let's hurt children."

In the real kids' show, Dora has a backpack that contains a talking map. In Lanza's perversion, the group carries a bag stuffed with an AK-47, an M-16, a shotgun, a musket and a rocket launcher.

The boy who drew the cover illustration — showing Granny firing her cane gun — thought the book was turned in, but that remains unclear.

He told investigators that Lanza was "weird" and "would sit by himself on the other side of the room and would not talk or associate with anybody else." Lanza also came to school with a briefcase, he recalled.

Breed and Biesecker write,

Back at Newtown High, Adam was a member of the Tech Club — although he did not engage much with the others. Instead of participating in gym class, he was allowed to keep a journal.
How does keeping a journal equate to taking a gym class?

Was their sexual abuse, with Lanza being either the perpetrator or the victim? Breed and Biesecker write,

Among the documents investigators found on Lanza's computer was one titled "pbear" that investigators described as "advocating pedophiles' rights and the liberation of children." Another, called "Lovebound," was a screenplay describing a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man.

Two weeks before the shootings, the documents say, Nancy Lanza told a lifelong friend that Adam was growing "increasingly despondent" and had refused to leave his room for three months. Despite sleeping on the same floor, they communicated only via email; one document in the police inventory is a "list of problems and requests from the shooter to Nancy."

The mother tolerated that?

On Dec. 10, 2012, she decided to try a little "experiment." She was going to make a short trip to New Hampshire to see how Adam fared alone for a few days.

Shortly before noon, she texted a friend that "she had gotten off to a rough start." Adam had "bumped his head" early that morning, and they were "dealing with blood," according to the police files.

Nancy Lanza returned home late in the evening of Dec. 13.

Within 12 hours, she, her son and 26 others were dead.

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