A new book about Adam Lanza and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting describes how Lanza's mother, Nancy, grew increasingly concerned about her son in the years leading up to the shooting.
Several disturbing details were released in an excerpt of the upcoming book Newtown: An American Tragedy, which is due out Dec. 10. The excerpt, published in the New York Daily News, reveals that Adam became increasingly obsessed with the military and had an obvious fascination with death and an aversion to human touch.
We've pulled out some of the new details below:
- Adam had an online gaming persona that significantly differed from his real personality. Under the username "Kaynbred," he was "able to show a bravado and confidence that was unfamiliar to classmates and family who only knew him as an awkward and meek teenager." He fit in well with other players in the online gaming universe.
- In the game Combat Arms, Adam created a military character who used weapons similar to those he used in the Sandy Hook massacre.
- Nancy was concerned about Adam early on in his life. About 10 years ago, she emailed a friend about Adam saying that "parental bonds are formed so early in life ... they are either there or they aren't." She seemed optimistic about being able to shape Adam's future.
- By 2012, she began to frequently leave Adam alone and confided in a friend that she thought it might be "too late" to help him. She went to see family in northern New England for Thanksgiving that year, leaving Adam behind because he didn't want to go.
- Nancy also noted in the weeks before her death that Adam "physically recoiled" when she reached for him.
- Days before the shooting, Nancy told a friend that Adam had become obsessed with joining the Marines. She told him he wasn't cut out for it.
- Adam often dressed in military garb and created an indoor shooting range that he used for target practice with his pellet gun.
- As Nancy grew increasingly worried about Adam, she decided to search his room. Under his bed, she found sketches that showed "gruesome depictions of death" and "images of mutilated corpses." One even showed "a large rolling grassy field lined with the corpses of young children" with faces that were "severely mutilated and couldn’t be recognized."
Adam shot Nancy dead at the home they shared before driving to Sandy Hook to kill 20 students and six adults last year on Dec. 14.
You can read the full excerpt here.
