The Reckoning- The father of the Sandy Hook killer searches for answers.
BY ANDREW SOLOMON
In Peter Lanzas new house, on a secluded private road in Fairfield County, Connecticut, is an attic room overflowing with shipping crates of what he calls the stuff. Since the day in December, 2012, when his son Adam killed his own mother, himself, and twenty-six people at Sandy Hook Elementary School, strangers from across the world have sent thousands upon thousands of letters and other keepsakes: prayer shawls, Bibles, Teddy bears, homemade toys; stories with titles such as My First Christmas in Heaven; crosses, including one made by prison inmates. People sent candy, too, and when I visited Peter, last fall, he showed me a bag of year-old caramels. He had not wanted to throw away anything that people sent. But he said, I was wary about eating anything, and he didnt let Shelley Lanzahis second wifeeat any of the candy, either. There was no way to be sure it wasnt poisoned. Downstairs, in Peters home office, I spotted a box of family photographs. He used to display them, he told me, but now he couldnt look at Adam, and it seemed strange to put up photos of his older son, Ryan, without Adams. Im not dealing with it, he said. Later, he added, You cant mourn for the little boy he once was. You cant fool yourself.
Since the shootings, Peter has avoided the press, but in September, as the first anniversary of his sons rampage approached, he contacted me to say that he was ready to tell his story. We met six times, for interviews lasting as long as seven hours. Shelley, a librarian at the University of Connecticut, usually joined us and made soup or chili or salads for lunch. Sometimes we played with their German shepherd. When Peter speaks, you can still hear a strong trace of rural Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, where he and his first wifeNancy, Adams mothergrew up. He is an affable man with a poise that often hides his despair. An accountant who is a vice-president for taxes at a General Electric subsidiary, he maintains a nearly fanatical insistence on facts, and nothing annoyed him more in our conversations than speculationby me, the media, or anyone else. He is not by nature given to self-examination, and often it was Shelley who underlined the emotional ramifications of what he said.
Peter hadnt seen his son for two years at the time of the Sandy Hook killings, and, even with hindsight, he doesnt think that the catastrophe could have been predicted. But he constantly thinks about what he could have done differently and wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam. Any variation on what I did and how my relationship was had to be good, because no outcome could be worse, he said. Another time, he said, You cant get any more evil, and added, How much do I beat up on myself about the fact that hes my son? A lot.
Depending on whom you ask, there were twenty-six, twenty-seven, or twenty-eight victims in Newtown. Its twenty-six if you count only those who were murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School; twenty-seven if you include Nancy Lanza; twenty-eight if you judge Adams suicide a loss. There are twenty-six stars on the local firehouse roof. On the anniversary of the shootings, President Obama referred to six dedicated school workers and twenty beautiful children who had been killed, and the governor of Connecticut asked churches to ring their bells twenty-six times. Some churches in Newtown had previously commemorated the victims by ringing twenty-eight times, but a popular narrative had taken hold in which Nancya gun enthusiast who had taught Adam to shootwas an accessory to the crime, rather than its victim. Emily Miller, an editor at the Washington Times, wrote, We cant blame lax gun-control laws, access to mental health treatment, prescription drugs or video games for Lanzas terrible killing spree. We can point to a mother who should have been more aware of how sick her son had become and forced treatment.
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http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/03/17/140317fa_fact_solomon?currentPage=all
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)messing with schools and start to educate parents. If they did that, the schools would automatically improve over time.
We have so much information about how to raise children to be better human beings than we are, how to teach them to deal with impatience, impulsive behaviors and anger, how to solve problems, how to get along with others, how to resolve disputes, how to find out who they are. The list of knowledge about children and raising children that we now have is very long. But it is sitting in articles and textbooks that busy parents have no time or inclination to read.
We need a national program of parenting education. Maybe we will change our minds about what lessons should be learned. That's OK. Let's at least start where we are.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)On the anniversary of the massacre, Peter and Shelley finally went through the stuff, reading letters of support they previously hadnt felt able to face. Peter wanted the writers to know how much their words helped him. There was a woman whose brother shot up a church, Peter said. Killed a bunch of people and himself. Saying how sorry she is. There was a woman whose husband stabbed and killed a child. People having Masses said for Adam. Some included phone numbers and said to call if he needed anything. Other letters were peculiar: one suggested that Adam had been drugged by the C.I.A. and forced to his acts in order to foment support for gun-control legislation. The anniversary itself felt insignificant. Its not like I ever go an hour when it doesnt cross my mind, Peter said when we met that day.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)The psychiatric profession doesnt consider mass killers to be necessarily insane, which distresses Peter. For him, the crime defines the illnessas he said, soon after we met, youd have to be crazy to do such a thing. He found the idea of Adams not being insane much more devastating than the thought of his being insane. Peter has searched the psychiatric literature on mass killers, trying to understand what happened to his son. He came across the work of Park Dietz, a psychiatrist who, in 1986, coined the term pseudocommando. Dietz says that for pseudocommandos a preoccupation with weapons and war regalia makes up for a sense of impotence and failure. He wrote that we insist that mass killers are insane only to reassure ourselves that normal people are incapable of such evil.
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There has been a very high percentage of mass shootings done by "pseudocommandos" -- Virginia Tech, Columbine, Montreal, etc...I was wondering if there was a term for them...
But ultimately, I can't put my finger on it, but I just feel there is some huge, unexplored aspect to this story getting left out...Because I don't feel like I understand the mindset of the shooter any better than I did before I read the story...
undeterred
(34,658 posts)He just wants to distance himself from his kid as much as possible. He does not want any share of blame or responsibility for the terrible events at Sandy Hook.
BlueInPhilly
(870 posts)to find his answers.
What kind of father would say "I wish he was never born"? For better or worse, he was his son. He supplied 50% of the kid's DNA. Nothing in this world would change that fact. A parent's love should always be unconditional.
I read the article yesterday and I just wanted to reach out and slap Peter Lanza. He could have done so much more. He knew his ex-wife was in over her head, and yet he thought that as long as he wrote the alimony / child support check, he would be absolved and everything was alright in Peterworld.