The shooter who slaughtered 20 first-graders and six teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, was a pedophile and thought he was “saving” children by murdering them, new FBI documents revealed.
A trove of more than 1,500 documents released Tuesday reveal Adam Lanza planned the attack in Newtown, Connecticut for more than a year, obsessively researching other mass shootings of students, particularly the 1999 Columbine High School massacre.
The FBI’s behavioral analysis unit concluded Lanza “had an interest in children that could be categorized as pedophilia,” though there is no evidence to suggest Lanza ever actually sexually abused any children.
But investigators did find some curious evidence. They described a file recovered from Lanza’s smashed hard drive as “advocating pedophiles’ rights and the liberation of children.”
Another file included the text of a screenplay portraying a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man.
The documents also mention an unidentified woman who claimed to have spoken with Lanza online. He allegedly told her “adult-child sexual relationships could be possibly beneficial to both parties.”
The woman also told the FBI about a blog Lanza kept up on a website dedicated to the mass shooting at Columbine, which left 13 people dead. The writings offer insight into what motivated Lanza to murder 26 people on Dec. 14, 2012.
Lanza wrote that he felt “pity” for school children and reviled the way teachers and parents controlled them. In killing them, Lanza believed he was “saving them” and “taking them away from harmful influences” who were going to “brainwash” them, the woman reportedly told the FBI.
The documents suggest Lanza didn’t simply snap one day but show evidence he had been meticulously planning some type of attack for months, even more than a year. He suffered from Asperger’s syndrome but refused to admit his disability or take any medication. In the months leading up to the massacre that would become one of the deadliest in U.S. history, Lanza’s relationship with his mother — his only friend — deteriorated and could have triggered the killing spree. Lanza shot his mother to death before heading to Sandy Hook.
