Salon.com > Nancy Lanza

Adam Lanza vs. the knockoff jihadis

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:45:00 +0000

Leave it to Joe Biden – or his speechwriters – to come up with the best description yet of Tamarlan and Dzohkhar Tsarnaev: “knockoff jihadis.” Knockoffs are, of course, cheap imitations, not the real thing, but the word also gets in a sly allusion to “whack-off” and “jerk-off,” or maybe that’s just me. It’s intentionally belittling. Biden thumbed his nose at those who would put the Tsarnaevs in a class with Mohammed Atta or Anwar al-Awlaki, let alone Osama bin Laden, and his words set up predictable braying on the right. (I learned about the controversy when I defended Biden’s comments on Joy Behar’s “Say Anything” while talking about my book, and inspired more invective on the right.)

Adam Lanza was bullied while he attended Sandy Hook Elementary, family member says

Sun, 14 Apr 2013 15:11:00 +0000

Adam Lanza was bullied while he attended Sandy Hook Elementary and his mother Nancy considered suing the school for turning a blind eye to the abuse, an unnamed Lanza family member told the New York Daily News.

"Adam would come home with bruises all over his body," the relative told the Daily News. "His mom would ask him what was wrong, and he wouldn't say anything. He would just sit there."

The family member went on to say that Lanza's mother was distressed by the abuse, and didn't believe school officials were protecting her son: "Nancy felt fiercely protective of him. She was convinced the school wasn't doing enough to protect Adam. It made her irate."

The relative also appears to attribute Lanza's emotional and mental health problems to the experience, telling the Daily News that he never "seemed right" after his time in Sandy Hook.

“He was a sick boy,” the relative said.

Making sense of Adam Lanza

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 16:13:00 +0000

In an ongoing bid to understand the unintelligible, news outlets have been digging deeper and deeper into the details of Sandy Hook shooter Adam Lanza's life. PBS Frontline and the Hartford Courant Tuesday published an extensive investigation into the young man and his sheltered life with the mother he ultimately murdered before gunning down 20 children at his local elementary school.

The piece details the severe learning disabilities that seemed to haunt Lanza's education and alienate him from his peers. At age 6 he was "diagnosed with a condition that made it difficult for him to manage and respond to sights, touch and smell" and in middle school was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. Based on interviews with "family members and friends on both Nancy Lanza's and Peter Lanza's side [Adam's divorced mother and father]," the Courant and PBS pieced together a narrative of a life before the massacre:

Nancy Lanza let Adam use guns to “teach him responsibility”

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 04:06:00 +0000

Adam Lanza's days leading up to the Newtown massacre remain shrouded in mystery because he was so cut off from the rest of the world. And according to a new Wall Street Journal report, that very isolation is a frustration to investigators trying to determine why he killed his mother, Nancy, and then murdered 26 more people last Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary.

The Journal, in what may be the deepest account yet of the inner workings of the Lanza family reports that:

* Adam Lanza stopped talking with his father, Peter, during summer 2010, which coincided with the time a relationship with Peter Lanza's now-wife turned serious.

* That Christmas, Lanza stopped communicating with his older brother Ryan.

* Nancy Lanza let Adam use her guns at a local shooting range in order to bond with him and "teach him responsibility."

The story suggests Adam Lanza's problems started in first grade, at Sandy Hook (where he attended classes through fourth grade). After a stint of home schooling, he was back in the Newtown system for middle school, but remained shy, socially awkward and isolated from classmates.

Andrew Solomon: There’s no meaning to be found in Sandy Hook

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000

"It’s weird to feel as though you're very much wanted because of something so ghastly and unspeakable," Andrew Solomon says when he answers the phone on Monday evening.

But Solomon's brilliant "Far From the Tree: Parents, Children and the Search for Identity" -- a staple on year-end best book lists -- has been about the only book on my mind since Friday's horrific massacre in Newtown, Conn.

The great genius of Solomon's book comes in its empathy for the parents and children who find themselves in situations they never imagined. There's a chapter on children with autism and Asperger's. And in another, he writes about getting to know the parents of one of the Columbine shooters, Dylan Klebold, as he sought to understand how two loving parents could end up, unknowingly, raising a killer.

Imagining Nancy Lanza

Tue, 18 Dec 2012 12:45:00 +0000

In a tragedy like Sandy Hook, grief comes at us from all directions. First it was the children. First graders make us smile and feel uncomplicated joy at being alive. As parents, we can feel the stabbing pain of newly bereaved Newtown mothers and fathers, but we don't have to be parents to feel that loss.

Then Victoria Soto's memorial overwhelmed me. Two of my daughter's best friends are elementary school teachers; I felt their bravery and vulnerability in a whole new way. On Monday a CNN interview with principal Dawn Hochsprung's teary, 20-something daughter Erica, begging her mother to "come back, just come back" undid me, making me miss my own mother and think about my daughter someday missing me. All of us have multiple identities that let pain find us in many different ways.

The only person I haven't been able to think about is Nancy Lanza, the first victim, shot in her bed with her own gun by her own son, the terminally mentally ill Adam. I shrink from the story despite the fact -- or because of it -- that we had things in common. She was close to my age, divorced, with children in their 20s. But I've been blessed; my daughter is as much a joy today as she was as a first grader.

Adam Lanza was a vegan

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 23:11:00 +0000

It was a shared love of live music that sparked a close friendship between Russ Hanoman and Nancy Lanza more than five years ago. Now, in light of the tragedy at Sandy Hook and recent reports suggesting she was a paranoid survivalist, Hanoman is speaking publicly about the woman he knew. As he told PIX 11, “She was a wonderful, beautiful, elegant woman who loved life, and most importantly she loved her son, Adam.”

Another small detail emerged in the course of the interview, this time about Adam Lanza.

Lanza was vegan, according to Hanoman, because he "didn’t want to hurt animals.”

You can watch the full interview below.

Baby sitter warned not to turn back on Adam Lanza

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:51:00 +0000

A former baby sitter of Adam Lanza spoke to reporters in the wake of Friday's school massacre to recall overseeing a "very intelligent and introverted" child.

CBS News highlighted that Ryan Kraft, who now lives in California, recalled stern warnings from Nancy Lanza, Adam's murdered mother, to never turn his back on Adam, "not even to go to the bathroom." He did not expound upon reasons for these instructions.

Kraft said he was shocked and devastated when he heard news of the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary (also his alma mater). He remembers Adam as an intense, quiet child: "Whenever we were doing something, whether it was building Legos, or playing video games, he was really focused on it. It was like he was in his own world," Kraft said.

What’s a “prepper”?

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:38:00 +0000

In an interview with local NBC affiliate WHDH 7 in New Hampshire this weekend, Marsha Lanza recalled that the last time she saw her sister Nancy, the conversation turned to disaster preparedness.

“Last time we visited with her in person we talked about prepping and, you know, are you ready for what can happen down the line when the economy collapses."

Since then, subsequent reports have suggested Nancy Lanza — the mother and first victim of Newtown, Conn., shooter Adam Lanza — may have been part of a survivalist movement known as "preppers." And while it may prove impossible to confirm her affiliation in this loosely organized network of gun enthusiasts, back-to-the-land types and the generically cautious, the tragedy at Sandy Hook has invited increased scrutiny.

Lanza parents’ divorce offers no clues about gunman

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 17:07:00 +0000

Scrambling to make sense of the Newtown school massacre, investigators and reporters are searching for clues in Adam Lanza's life that might help explain his horrific actions last Friday. The 2009 divorce of Lanza's parents gives no such explanation.

As CBS reported Monday, legal documents from the divorce of Nancy and Peter Lanza "offer no hints of an acrimonious split and make no mention of any lingering mental health or medical issues for the then-teenage boy."

Adam Lanza shot his mother four times in the head at the Newtown home where had lived his entire life, before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School where he killed 20 children and six adults before taking his own life. As Salon noted earlier, Nancy Lanza kept a large collection of guns as a part of a survivalist mentality.

Nancy Lanza was a “prepper”

Mon, 17 Dec 2012 02:24:00 +0000

The Telegraph reports that Nancy Lanza was a "prepper" a part of the survivalist movement that we're sure to hear more about in coming days. According to the paper:

Nancy Lanza, whose gun collection was raided by her son Adam for Friday’s massacre at Sandy Hook school, was part of the “prepper” movement, which urges readiness for social chaos by hoarding supplies and training with weapons.

“She prepared for the worst,” her sister-in-law Marsha Lanza told reporters. “Last time we visited her in person, we talked about prepping – are you ready for what could happen down the line, when the economy collapses?”

It also emerged that Mrs Lanza had spoken of her fears less than a week before the attack that she was “losing” her son. “She said it was getting worse. She was having trouble reaching him,” said a friend of Mrs Lanza who did not want to be named.

Newtown investigators: Still no note or motive

Sat, 15 Dec 2012 21:04:00 +0000

Investigators on Saturday worked to understand what led a bright but painfully awkward 20-year-old to slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school, while townspeople took down Christmas decorations and struggled with how to get through a holiday season that has suddenly become a time of mourning.

The tragedy spurred soul-searching and grief around the globe. Families as far away as Puerto Rico began to plan funerals for victims who still had their baby teeth, world leaders extended condolences, and vigils were held around the U.S.

Amid the sorrow, stories of heroism emerged, including an account of the Sandy Hook Elementary School principal who lost her life lunging at the gunman, Adam Lanza, in an attempt to overpower him.

Police shed no light on the motive for the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, though state police Lt. Paul Vance said investigators had found "very good evidence ... that our investigators will be able to use in painting the complete picture, the how and, more importantly, the why." He would not elaborate.