(ANTIMEDIA) — On Tuesday, the F.B.I. released 1,500 pages from its investigation into the 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. The documents, while heavily redacted, nevertheless paint a dark portrait of Adam Lanza, the young man who would go on to kill 20 children and six teachers before turning a gun on himself.
As for the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary itself, the F.B.I. concluded that Lanza could have been planning it since March of 2011.
“The shooter did not ‘snap,’ but instead engaged in careful, methodical planning and preparation,” investigators wrote in one report. “The shooter was fascinated with past shootings and researched them thoroughly. The shooter shared many similar characteristics and behaviors with other active shooters.”
In a summary of an interview with an unidentified woman who had an online relationship with Lanza, investigators wrote the young man was “singularly focused and obsessed with mass murders” and that he “devoted almost all his internet activity to researching and discussing mass murders and spree killings.”
They also wrote that Lanza “spoke about school killings and those who committed them with respect and understanding.”
The witness described Lanza as “depressed” with “no effective coping mechanisms to deal with his depression” and that he “seemed to have no friends or people he could turn to for support or assistance and did not appear to have any enjoyment of life.”
The unnamed woman’s account (as well as much of the rest of the information with the cache of F.B.I. documents) describes a young man growing increasingly isolated in the days and weeks before the shooting.
Even more disturbing, the agency’s behavior analysis of Lanza found he “had an interest in children that could be categorised as paedophilia,” though no evidence is provided to show that he ever acted on such impulses.
It does fit in with some of what Lanza’s online friend told investigators, however. She claimed that in a lengthy email, Lanza — who she described as “the weirdest person online” — once expressed his view that a sexual relationship between an adult and a child could be “possibly beneficial to both parties.”
This friend said Lanza pitied children as they were being unfairly controlled by people in authority, and that she suspects Lanza thought he was “saving” or “protecting” the kids he killed at Sandy Hook.
Additionally, investigators found a file on Lanza’s computer “advocating pedophiles’ rights and the liberation of children” as well as a screenplay describing a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 30-year-old man.
Perhaps the most interesting item in the cache of 1,500 pages was a document revealing Adam Lanza popped up on the F.B.I.’s radar years before the shooting took place.
When he was in ninth grade, Lanza hacked into an unspecified government computer and made it through two levels of security before he was stopped. It was enough to catch the attention of the F.B.I., which then had agents pay a visit to his mother’s house.
“Nancy had to convince the authorities that her son was just very intelligent and was challenging himself to see if he could hack (his way in),” investigators wrote in the report.
Nancy Lanza was killed by her son that morning before he set off for Sandy Hook Elementary. That day years ago, however, agents apparently told the woman her son could have a future working for the government.
“The authorities told her that if her son was that smart, he could have a job with them someday,” the report said.