On the short drive from the school to the firehouse, she turned on the radio and the news that came through the speakers was unthinkable. There were twenty dead children. Her fears were amplified when, before entering the firehouse, a state trooper told her that the parents of students in her son’s class should wait in a special room in the rear of the building. The trooper had her sign a sheet of paper. She counted the signatures. There were twenty.
Outside the school, Scarlett Lewis was looking for her son Jesse. She kept witnessing emotional reunions between parents and children as she waited amid the chaos for her own child. Still, there was no sign of him.
“They took him to the Children’s Adventure Center,” a parent told her. She ran to the center, near the school, but Jesse wasn’t there.
“Oh, I think they took Jesse to the house next door with six other kids,” another concerned parent advised.
A couple of hours after the last child had left his house, a knock came on Gene Rosen’s door. It was Scarlett. She explained that she was looking for her little boy Jesse.
“I heard there were six children here.” The pretty woman’s face looked frozen in terror, almost distorted, as she spoke. “Is Jesse Lewis here?”
Rosen looked at the pained woman, knowing he could provide no words of comfort. “No he’s not, but let’s go to the firehouse,” he told her, knowing that she had already been there. Rosen accompanied her on the short walk back to where the grieving families continued to frantically pace.
By 1 P.M. nearly four hours had passed since Adam Lanza had set foot inside Sandy Hook Elementary School. The mood in the firehouse had changed. Gone were the joyous parent-child reunions. The room was filled with only twenty-eight families waiting to hear news of their missing loved ones.
Krista Halstead was convinced that her school secretary mother, Barbara, was dead.
“There is nobody left alive inside,” an officer told Krista. “We have checked every nook and cranny.”
But unbeknownst to the family or law enforcement, Barbara and school nurse Sally Cox were still hiding in the first-aid closet. Shortly after 11:15 A.M., almost two hours after the shooting, they decided to open the door a crack. From the slit in their office window they could see several men in the courtyard wearing fatigues and toting weapons, but not knowing whether they were SWAT team members or the attackers they decided to remain hidden. Meanwhile, only feet away in the Principal’s office, law enforcement officials had set up their command center.
Neither had cell phones with them but they could hear helicopters overhead and people on the roof of the school shouting and yelling. At one point, someone jiggled the office door, but did not call out.
Finally, at 1:15 P.M., the two women summoned the courage to open the office door. They saw the police, who acted surprised before immediately taking them to safety.
“Close your eyes,” the police said as they escorted Barbara and Sally outside.
They reunited with their families. It would be the last moment of joy that day.
In the back room of the old brick firehouse, twenty-six families were asked to sit down. Connecticut governor Dan Malloy walked into the room, standing at his side were local politicians and community leaders, including Newtown First Selectman Patricia Llodra and St. Rose of Lima pastor Robert Weiss. There was no protocol for a situation like this. The traditional routine of having relatives identify a body before confirming death would leave the families waiting for several more hours. The governor made the decision that they had already waited long enough.
He whispered to one of his staffers, “I am not going to take any questions from families of the dead kids.” Then he began to address the room of anxious parents in a monotone voice: “Two children were brought to Danbury Hospital and expired.”
Most in the room had feared the worst but hearing the news sent many into hysterics. Many fell off their chairs and onto the floor. Several parents screamed out in agony. One man yelled out: “Well, where did the other people go? We want to be with our kids.”
The governor took a deep breath. “Nobody else was taken to a hospital,” he responded.
“So, what are you telling us, they’re all dead?” another parent screamed.
“Yes.”
The room was in shock. The wails of pain pushed through the walls and out into the parking lot where those within earshot stopped what they were doing and lowered their heads.
Newtown First Selectman Pat Llodra ordered that each family be assigned a police escort as a shield against the media and to work as a liaison to help convey information and answer any questions or concerns.
Some of the parents remained at the firehouse. A few huddled around a television at 3:15 P.M. to watch as President Barack Obama teared up while delivering his statement expressing his shock, grief, and prayers to the victims.
We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years. Each time I learn the news I react not as a president but as anybody else would as a parent.
That was especially true today.
I know there’s not a parent in America that doesn’t feel the same overwhelming grief that I do.
The majority of those who died today were children, beautiful little kids between the ages of five and ten years old. They had their entire lives ahead of them, birthdays, graduations, weddings, kids of their own.
Among the fallen were also teachers—men and women who devoted their lives to helping our children fulfill their dreams. Our hearts are broken today for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these children and the families of the adults we lost.
Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain.
As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago—these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children. And we’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.
This evening Michelle and I will do what every parent in America will do—hug our children a little tighter and tell them that we love them. There are families in Connecticut that cannot do that tonight and they need all of us tonight.
May God bless the memory of the victims and in the words of Scripture heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds.
Governor Dan Malloy left the firehouse to address the media gathered nearby at Treadwell Memorial Park: “Evil visited this community today. And it’s too early to speak of recovery, but each parent, each sibling, each member of the family has to understand that Connecticut—we’re all in this together. We’ll do whatever we can to overcome this event. We will get through it.”
Inside the firehouse, Jenny Hubbard had been sitting with Pastor Robert Weiss for several hours waiting for news about her six-year-old daughter, Catherine. Her child was “unaccounted for,” she was told. As she waited, she walked around the room trying to comfort the other mothers who were experiencing similar agony.
When the news came that her daughter was gone, her thoughts turned to Catherine’s older brother, Freddy. He was only eight. Freddy and Catherine were so close. She turned to her pastor and said, “Father, come with me, and let’s tell Freddy.”
Together, they gently told the eight-year-old boy of the death of his sister.
The little boy looked back at them and asked, “Who am I going to play with now? I have nobody to play with now.”
Barbara Sibley wasn’t going to get her car out of the parking lot anytime soon. She and her son Daniel hitched a ride back home with her friend Sandra instead. She draped her suit jacket over her son, whose coat and backpack were still inside the classroom. As she got out of th
e car she saw her father-in-law, Robert Sibley Sr., waiting in the driveway.
“You’ve had quite a morning,” he said.
Barbara, who had been okay until that moment, collapsed on the driveway, and began crying hysterically. She was having trouble breathing. All she kept repeating was: “I was so afraid.”
Her father-in-law helped her into the house where she regained her composure before checking on her twin boys, both of whom were supposed to be going to Sandy Hook Elementary School later that day for afternoon kindergarten.
“We have no school today!” the kids shouted with excitement, before one of them took on a sadder tone when he remembered a sugary treat he would be missing. “Does this mean I can’t get my chocolate milk?” he innocently asked.
Daniel walked up the stairs to his room, closed the door behind him, pulled the covers up over his head, and slept the rest of the day.
CHAPTER 13
HOUSE OF HORRORS
When the tactical team from the Connecticut State Police arrived at 36 Yogananda Street, the address attached to the black Honda Civic, which had been registered to Nancy Lanza, Adam Lanza’s body had yet to be positively identified and they were on full alert for an armed conflict. The officers sped up the long driveway and quickly took positions around the exterior. There were no signs of activity inside the home. A large wreath with a red bow hung on the front door and a fresh garland twisted up the columns in front of the entranceway. The driveway was empty, and in the attached garage sat a BMW, idle.
Down the block seventeen more law enforcement vehicles had gathered, blocking off the street. Officers in full riot gear quickly swarmed through the quiet residential upper-middle-class neighborhood, some going from door to door and asking residents to leave their homes. Within seconds of arriving several officers stormed through the front door of the Lanza home, moving quietly from room to room, rifles drawn. The first thing they noticed was that the house was in immaculate order. In the spacious living room, the television was turned off and the remotes were neatly stacked on an end table. In the kitchen, recently watered green plants rested on a sill. There were no dirty dishes in the sink. The team of officers began fanning out in different directions, searching throughout the house.
As they entered the basement, they saw military posters lining the walls and video games stacked neatly in rows not far from a large television screen. The windows had been darkened with shades to prevent sunlight from coming through.
They entered the two upstairs bedrooms belonging to Adam. In the room where his bed was located, they found journals and drawings. They found the covers on his bed neatly laid out and five matching tan colored shirts along with five pairs of khaki pants in his closet. In his other room, which he shared with his mother, investigators found his computers. The hard drives had been destroyed and the internal discs that stored the data scratched. An empty cereal bowl rested nearby. Again, room darkeners covered the windows. Adam had duct-taped black garbage bags over the windows to prevent any light from getting through.
In the upstairs master bedroom they found the remains of a woman. She was in her pajamas, lying on her back. The shades were still drawn. The four gunshot wounds to her head had nearly decapitated her. The wounds suggested the weapon had been pressed directly against her head when fired. At the foot of the bed lay a Savage Mark .22-caliber rifle with three live rounds inside and one spent cartridge.
As investigators began to sort through the home for clues, it soon became clear that the massacre wasn’t a spontaneous act of violence or a momentary break from reality but the result of a tremendous amount of planning and preparation. It had been years in the making.
Most disturbingly, they found a gruesome list of the top five hundred mass murderers in world history. The massive spreadsheet, seven feet long and four feet wide, had ranked the killers in order from most kills to least, along with the precise make and model of the weapons used, all typed out in a tiny nine-point font. The carefully researched document appeared to have taken years to create.
Along with the spreadsheet, investigators discovered newspaper clippings and printed-out articles showing that the killer had created a virtual who’s who of mass-murder infamy. Several killers Adam gave particular interest to according to investigators included:
• James Holmes, who killed twelve and wounded fifty-eight moviegoers in an Aurora, Colorado, movie theater in June of 2012.
Holmes parked his car near the exit door of the theater, changed into black clothing, and suited up in military gear preparing for a bloodbath. He put on a gas mask, a load-bearing vest, a ballistic helmet, bullet-resistant leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector, and tactical gloves, and carried a 12-gauge Remington 870 Express Tactical shotgun, and a Smith & Wesson M&P semiautomatic rifle with a hundred-pound drum magazine before walking inside the theater and unloading on the audience.
Holmes fired off seventy rounds, many of which hit multiple people, and was only prevented from shooting more because his rifle jammed. He was apprehended by police outside the theater.
• Charles Carl Roberts IV, who murdered five Amish girls and injured five others inside a one-room Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 2006.
Roberts was armed with a handgun, shotgun, rifle, stun gun, two knives, and six hundred rounds of ammunition when he barricaded himself in the schoolhouse along with twenty-eight other people. The deranged gunman ordered the hostages, most of them children, to line up against the chalkboard and then released all but ten female students.
Roberts fired at least thirteen rounds from his 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistol, shooting five girls, between the ages of six and thirteen, in the head execution style, before killing himself.
• Steven P. Kazmierczak, who shot twenty-one people, killing five, at Northern Illinois University on February 14, 2008.
Kazmierczak walked into Cole Hall wearing dark brown boots, jeans, and a black T-shirt reading TERRORIST, imposed over an image of a rifle. His arsenal included three handguns, a 9-millimeter Glock 19, a 9-millimeter Kurz Sig Sauer P232, and a .380 Hi-Point CF380; a 12-gauge Remington Sportsman 48 shotgun concealed in a guitar case; eight loaded magazines; and a knife.
He walked up and down the aisle, firing fifty-four shots into the lecture hall as students scrambled for the exits. Kazmierczak turned the gun on himself before police were able to arrive.
• Jared Loughner, who shot eighteen people, killing twelve, and severely injuring Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a constituents’ meeting in a grocery store parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, on January 8, 2011.
Loughner walked into the “Congress at Your Corner” event sponsored by the congresswoman armed with a 9-millimeter Glock 19 pistol with a 33-round magazine before he opened fire on Giffords from close range, as well as numerous bystanders, including a nine-year-old girl.
Loughner was tackled by bystanders as he tried to flee the scene.
• John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo, who killed ten people and wounded three others in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia during their October 2002 terror spree.
Over the course of twenty-three days, ten people were randomly gunned down by a Bushmaster .223-caliber rifle while doing random everyday tasks such as reading a book, mowing the lawn, shopping, or pumping gas.
After an exhaustive manhunt, both were later apprehended by law enforcement.
Still, of all the mass killers Adam studied, investigators believed it was the name on the top of his list of killers, the Norwegian gunman Anders Behring Breivik, who proved the most influential. Over the course of his research on mass killers, it was believed that Adam had become obsessed with Breivik’s killing spree in July 2011.
“We believe Adam studied him closely and may have tried to imitate some of his techniques,” said one official familiar with the investigation. “They both used the same video games to train and prepare and they were both obsessed with other mass killers.”
After s
etting off a series of bombs in downtown Oslo that killed eight people, Breivik made his way to Utøya Island where, dressed as a police officer and carrying an arsenal of weapons, he systematically hunted down and shot dead sixty-nine others, most of them young people attending a summer camp. When an armed police SWAT unit from Oslo arrived on the island and confronted him, he surrendered without resistance.
Breivik left behind a fifteen-hundred page manifesto, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence.” In the pages, Adam found detailed instructions on how to prepare for the solitary journey and eventual gratification that encompassed one’s preparations for a mass killing. Investigators believed Adam may have been able to relate to Breivik, who thought of himself as a loner on a one-man crusade to educate the world through his destructive means.
Breivik wrote: “You are normally required to plan absolutely everything alone; fight alone to see your mission through and you are likely to die alone with half of your city’s system protectors hunting you. However, I have never in my life felt that I have done anything more meaningful than what I am doing now regardless of the lack of moral support from my founding brothers or other armed resistance fighters. Support from our extremely distributed and anonymous ‘non-hierarchy’ out there would be nice but I have managed to cope through mental discipline to become what I am today; a self-driven and highly effective manifestation of an independent resistance cell. I have managed to stay focused and highly motivated for a duration of more than 9 years now. I feel really happy about my current course.”
Investigators also turned up evidence that led them to believe that Adam, like Breivik, used his violent video games to prepare for his killing spree. In the video game Call of Duty, Modern Warfare 2, Breivik believed he had found the perfect tool to hone his killing skills.
“I just bought Modern Warfare 2, the game. It is probably the best military simulator out there and it’s one of the hottest games this year,” wrote Breivik. “I see MW2 more as a part of my training-simulation than anything else. I’ve still learned to love it though and especially the multiplayer part is amazing. You can more or less completely simulate actual operations.”
Newtown: An American Tragedy Page 14