New Yorker. Peter Lanza, father of Adam Lanza, has broken his silence more than one year after his son took the lives of 26 innocent people at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut, in December His new comments come in a New Yorker article that will be published this week. During the interview, Lanza insisted that, if given the chance, his son would have killed him. According to Peter Lanza:. A lot. The reason he shot Nancy four times was one for each of us: one for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan; one for me.
It was previously reported that Lanza was a vice president for financial services contractor to GE. The Lanza brothers saw their father on weekends during the separation, when among other things, they enjoyed hiking together. Peter went to pick him up for a weekend visit, and Adam refused to go. I have been trying to reason with him to no avail. He did introduce her to Ryan, who had moved to New Jersey after graduating college. He was still doing so a month before the shootings.
I wondered how Peter had felt through this period. I never expected that I would never talk to him again. I thought it was a matter of when. Nancy tended to, as did I. According to Peter, Ryan reached out several times, but Adam never responded. Peter and Shelley now suspect that Adam deliberately shut them out to hide his psychological decay. He is starting to talk about going back to school which would be nice.
In early , Nancy said that Adam had agreed to see Peter in the spring, but nothing came of it. Nine months later, Peter protested that Adam never even acknowledged his e-mails. He has had a bad summer and actually stopped going out.
Yet similar choices have worked well for others: some people with autism respond best to a mixture of laissez-faire and active indulgence. Peter wanted to give it to Adam personally.
I just feel sad for her. She slept with her bedroom door unlocked, and she kept guns in the house, which she would not have done if she were frightened.
Peter does not think that Adam had any affection for him, either, by that point. The reason he shot Nancy four times was one for each of us: one for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan; one for me. On the morning of December 14, , Peter went to get lunch at work and found colleagues clustered around a television.
Then news reports mentioned that a twenty- and a twenty-four-year-old were involved the ages of his two sons and that the shooter had attended the school. Unable to get any work done, he drove home to watch the coverage.
A reporter was waiting in his driveway, and told him that somebody at his house was involved in the shootings. But he knew better, and called Shelley at work. As soon as she got home, they called Ryan and began the two-hour drive to his place, in Hoboken.
Ryan had also left his office early; by the time he got home, the police had taped off his apartment building. They were questioned for a couple of hours and were made to wait for two more before they were allowed to see Ryan. I asked what they had done about a funeral for Adam. Two of these acts are explicable; the third, incomprehensible.
There are many crimes from which most people desist because we know right from wrong and are careful of the law. Most people would like to have things that belong to others; many people have felt murderous rage. Since , according to a USA Today study, there have been two hundred and thirty-two mass killings—meaning, more than four deaths apiece, not including the killer—in the United States.
But fewer than fifteen per cent involved random, unknown victims. The problem with generalities about mass murderers is that the sample size is tiny, and most die before they can be examined.
Almost half of all mass murderers commit suicide in the act, and many others are killed by police. But, for Adam, killing others and suicide were both crucial. The link seems clear: the more Adam hated himself, the more he hated everyone else. And yet, if someone has committed heinous crimes and is then found to have bad genes or a neurological abnormality, should we presume that biology compelled him? Will such knowledge also bring deeper understanding? Legal definitions of insanity still focus on psychosis, the delusions of which are held to diminish responsibility.
Medical conceptions include many additional bizarre behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. Peter has searched the psychiatric literature on mass killers, trying to understand what happened to his son.
He wrote that we insist that mass killers are insane only to reassure ourselves that normal people are incapable of such evil. So Sandy Hook was a culmination—neither sudden nor entirely calculated, at least until the very end. Peter wanted the writers to know how much their words helped him.
Saying how sorry she is. There was a woman whose husband stabbed and killed a child. People having Masses said for Adam. Other letters were peculiar: one suggested that Adam had been drugged by the C. He did tell his friend that mental health issues were not a reflection of the character of a person, but were symptoms of something else going on inside a person," the report said.
But in June , Lanza "and his primary acquaintance had a falling out and stopped spending time together," the report said, "after a dispute over a movie.
Early in the fourth grade, Lanza left the special education program because he had "met all speech goals," the report states. During Lanza's early elementary school years, his parents still lived together in the family home in Sandy Hook, but they separated in when Lanza was in the fifth grade.
AL began perseverative hand washing, avoiding contact with other people, and becoming increasingly fearful. By fifth grade, AL had written and submitted 'The Big Book of Granny' — a significant and violent text — and following that school year, his struggles began to escalate. Access to assault weapons with high capacity magazines did play a major role in this and other mass shootings in recent history. The report states, "[Lanza] and his parents did not appear to seek or participate in any mental health treatment after On Oct.
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