TheSandy Hook Elementary School shooting occurred on December 14, 2012, inNewtown, Connecticut. The perpetrator,Adam Lanza, fatally shot his mother before murdering 20 students and six staff members atSandy Hook Elementary School, and latercommitted suicide.[1] A number of fringe figures have promotedconspiracy theories that doubt or dispute what occurred atSandy Hook. Various conspiracy theorists have claimed, for example, that the massacre was actually orchestrated by the U.S. government as part of an elaborate plot to promote strictergun control laws.[2]
The more common conspiracy theory, adopted initially byJames Fetzer,James Tracy, and others, and further popularized byAlex Jones,denied that the massacre actually occurred, asserting that it was faked. The massacre was described by Fetzer and Tracy as a classified training exercise involving members of federal and local law enforcement, the news media, andcrisis actors, which they claim was modeled on Operation Closed Campus, an Iowa school-shooting drill that was canceled in 2011 amid threats and public outcry. Jones described the shooting incident as "synthetic, completely fake with actors; in my view, manufactured [...] it just shows how bold they are that they clearly used actors."[3][4]
No evidence supports the conspiracy theories, which make a number of implausible claims.[5][6][7] Moreover, many Sandy Hook conspiracy theories contradict one another.[6] A number of sources have published articles debunking various claims put forward by conspiracy theorists.[6][8][9][10] In 2018, the parents of several children killed in the Sandy Hook shooting launched a lawsuit against Jones and other authors of conspiracy videos for defamation, accusing them of engaging in a campaign of "false, cruel, and dangerous assertions".[11] In 2019, Jones reversed his stance and stated that the massacre was real.[12]
Some conspiracy theorists claim that the shooting was a hoax[13] and afalse flag operation staged by the United States government.[14] Others say the attack is being used by politicians to push through newgun control legislation,[15][16][17] or to otherwise persecute gun owners.[6]
Lawyer and dentistOrly Taitz—best known for her promotion ofBarack Obama citizenship ("birther") conspiracy theories—was quoted as asking "Was Adam Lanza drugged and hypnotized by his handlers to make him into a killing machine as an excuse as the regime is itching to take all means of self defense from the populace before the economic collapse?"[18]
Talk show host Clyde Lewis wrote: "Don't you find it at all interesting that Adam Lanza, the alleged shooter at Sandy Hook, woke up one day and decided to shoot up a school and kill children at about the same time that Barack Obama told the U.N. that he would sign the small arms treaty?"[19]
According toLive Science, "No one, regardless of what side of the gun control issue they are on, can deny that guns played a key role in the Sandy Hook killings. So the conspiracy theorists must instead challenge the claim that the attack even occurred. They believe it's all a hoax to scare people into supporting more gun control and a step toward an outright repeal of theSecond Amendment." They also found that the vast majority of evidence used by conspiracy theorists to support the concept that Sandy Hook was a hoax is contradictory.[20]Snopes.com also debunked several claims of alleged United States government involvement in the shootings.[8]
Fetzer, Tracy, and others have claimed the shooting was a classified training-exercise modeled on Operation Closed Campus, a "full-spectrum" school-shooting drill involving theDepartment of Homeland Security, Iowa emergency-management agencies, state and local police, prosecuting attorneys, emergency radio operators, emergency medical personnel,moulage, local doctors and hospitals, theRed Cross, medical examiners, news media reporters, and crisis actors that was canceled in 2011 amid threats and public outcry.[21][22][23][24]
Press TV, the officialstate media outlet ofIran, has promoted variousantisemitic conspiracy theories blaming "Israeli death squads" for the shooting.[6][5] Press TV interviewedVeterans Today website writer Gordon Duff, who quoted Michael Harris, a former Republican candidate forgovernor of Arizona, who made the "Israeli death squads" claim.[7] Harris has publicly associated withneo-Nazi groups in the past and has previously claimed that Israel was responsible for the2011 Norway attacks.[7] Duff asserted that the attacks were an act of "revenge" for the perceived cooling ofIsrael–United States relations under President Obama, especially as a response to Obama's decision to nominate former senatorChuck Hagel, a perceived critic of Israel, for the position ofUnited States Secretary of Defense.[7] In another broadcast by Press TV,Holocaust denierJames H. Fetzer claimed that the massacre "appears to have been a psy op intended to strike fear in the hearts of Americans" that was conducted by "agents of Israel."[5]
The Washington Post reported that claims broadcast on Press TV contain a large number of "obvious logical fallacies" typical of Iranian propaganda, which "has a well-earned reputation for incendiary anti-Israel stories and for wild conspiracy theories."[7]The Atlantic wrote that the story "obviously plays on the worst fears of those who believe in secret Jewish cabals that run the world, but it's a pretty pathetic attempt at slander, even for Iran."[6]
Ben Swann, a Cincinnati news anchor for Fox affiliateWXIX-TV, has suggested on his personal YouTube channel that Adam Lanza was accompanied by another shooter; he has made similar claims about theAurora shooting and theWisconsin Sikh temple shooting from earlier in 2012.[25][26] Other conspiracy theorists have claimed that as many as four shooters were present.[6]
There is no credible evidence that any additional shooters were present at the event.[8] Some such reports may have been influenced by confused early news reports of the events.[6]
Other conspiracy theories have focused on the claim that Adam Lanza's father was an executive withGE Energy Financial Services.[6][27] According to these theories, Lanza's father was supposed to testify before theSenate Banking Committee with information about theLibor scandal. However, no such hearings were scheduled. Similar claims had been made about the father ofJames Holmes, the convicted perpetrator of the2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting.[6][28]
Conspiracy theories have claimed that various timestamps for creation dates,whois records, andGooglecaches of various memorial websites, fundraising sites, andFacebook were created before or immediately after the date and time of the shooting and are therefore "evidence" of a conspiracy or cover up. However, timestamps are frequently incorrect, particularly on search engines. Some timestamps are initially created and assigned to URLs that are then repurposed, meaning that a URL linked to a current event can have a much older date.[9][10]
In September 2014, conspiracy theoristAlex Jones, who runs the websiteInfoWars, which had previously claimed that the murders were a "false flag" attack perpetrated by the government, made a new conspiracy claim that "no one died" at Sandy Hook Elementary School because theUniform Crime Reports showed no murders in Newtown for 2012, and that the victims were "child actors."[29][30] This claim is false and misrepresents the FBI report. In reality, because theConnecticut State Police was the lead investigator after the attack, the Sandy Hook victims were included in Connecticut's statewide records (under "State Police Misc.") rather than under the Newtown statistics.[30][31]
In November 2016, Erica L. Lafferty, daughter of Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung, the school principal who was shot and killed at Sandy Hook School, wrote open letters to then-President-electDonald Trump (published inMedium andUSA Today), calling upon him to denounce Jones,[32] after Trump had appeared onInfoWars during his presidential campaign and lavished praise on its presenter, saying that the conspiracy theorist had an "amazing" reputation and pledging not to let him down.[32] On February 20, 2017, the Newtown School Board wrote to President Trump and urged him to recognize the murders of 26 people at Sandy Hook and to "remove your support from anyone who continues to insist that the tragedy was staged or not real."[33][34][35] Trump did not respond to the letter.[33][34]
On April 16, 2018, parents of two victims of the shooting sued Jones inTravis County, Texas (where Jones' media company is based), for $1 million each.[36][37][38] The trial was expected to be scheduled by the end of 2020.[39]
On May 23, 2018, six families of victims of the shooting, as well as an FBI agent who responded to the attack, filed a defamation lawsuit in Bridgeport Superior Court in Connecticut[40] against Jones for his role in spreading conspiracy theories about the shooting.[41][42][43][44]
In a deposition in the last week of March 2019, Jones acknowledged the deaths were real, stating he had "almost like a form of psychosis", where he "basically thought everything was staged."[45]
By 2021, Jones did not provide information to support his claims, defaulting in favor of the plaintiffs.[46][47][48]
James Tracy, a former professor atFlorida Atlantic University (FAU) who taught a course on conspiracy theories, has suggested the shooting either did not actually occur or occurred very differently than accounted in mainstream reports, claiming political motives for the coverup.[49][50] FAU presidentMary Jane Saunders issued a statement that Tracy's views were "not shared by" the university.[51] In response to his comments, the university opened an investigation of Tracy, who hadtenure.[52]
In December 2015, after the family ofNoah Pozner—one of the children murdered at Sandy Hook—claimed that Tracy had harassed them, FAU moved to fire Tracy.[53] Chan Lowe of theSun-Sentinel speculated that the comments were apublicity stunt by Tracy.[54] Tracy later declined an appearance onCNN withAnderson Cooper, suggesting that Cooper wanted to bring him and his family members harm by identifying him in a prior broadcast.[55][56] The university fired Tracy on January 5, 2016, citing his refusal to file required paperwork related to outside employment for several years.[57]
In 2016,James Fetzer and Mike Palacek published the bookNobody Died at Sandy Hook, which claimed that the event was a classifiedFederal Emergency Management Agency drill involving federal and local law enforcement and the media, and that the government had created false death certificates to claim there were victims. Fetzer stated that the parents displayed old photos of their real children and made up new names for the photo subjects, thereby creating non-existent younger siblings. Fetzer also claimed that several of these older-age real children, who were unnamed and billed as "Newtown's Children," sang "America the Beautiful" at the2013 Super Bowl withJennifer Hudson, arguing there were strong facial similarities with the victims.[58][59]Lenny Pozner, father of victim Noah Pozner, filed a defamation lawsuit against Fetzer and Palacek. Pozner won a summary judgement from the court in June 2019. The book's publisher, Moon Rock Books, apologized to the Pozner family and agreed to take the book out of circulation at the end of June.[60][61] On October 16, 2019, a jury awarded Leonard Pozner $450,000 for defamation by James Fetzer. Fetzer announced his intention to appeal against the decision.[62][63] A video similarly questioning official accounts of the shooting received several million views onYouTube within a week of its posting,[64] although the video has since been modified to display a disclaimer explaining that its creators "in no way claim this shooting never took place, or that people did not lose their lives."[65]
Other sources have continued to claim that the entire event was a hoax. On September 12, 2014, during a political debate,Colorado Republican Party candidate Tom Ready (who was running forPueblo County Commission) was accused by his opponent,Sal Pace, of posting an article on hisFacebook page claiming the Sandy Hook shootings "never happened". Ready responded: "Well, there is some question of whether it happened, Sal." This was followed by more statements of the same tenor, prompting outraged yells from the audience. After allegedly receiving a death threat the next day, Ready reportedly apologized for his remarks.[66][67]
Other conspiracy theorists have tried to connect the shooting to references in popular culture. Prison Planet, a website owned by British conspiracy theoristPaul Joseph Watson, mentioned that Newtown-based authorSuzanne Collins wroteThe Hunger Games books, in which 23 children are "ritualistically" killed, while 20 children were killed in the shooting.[68] Some conspiracy theorists have referred to this as "predictive programming".[68] Others pointed out that "Sandy Hook" can be seen on a map ofGotham City in the 2012 Batman filmThe Dark Knight Rises—the New Jersey peninsula just south ofNew York Harbor is namedSandy Hook.[68]
Several conspiracy theorists have also claimed a six-year-old victim of the shooting subsequently appeared in a photograph with PresidentBarack Obama. In fact, the child in the photograph is actually the victim's sister, wearing her deceased sister's dress.[69][70]
Writing about the Sandy Hook conspiracy theories,Benjamin Radford argued that most conspiracy theorists who allege contradictions in official accounts ignore contradictions in their own accounts, citing research from theUniversity of Kent that conspiracy theorists selectively focus on or ignore particular details in order to fit their preferred narrative.[71][69] The conspiracy theories have also been called evidence of "the need for a national debate on mental illness."[70]
Thedebunking websiteSnopes ran an editorial debunking the "Sandy Hook Exposed" video, explaining how many of the theories make little sense, and answered many questions conspiracy theorists wanted answers to.[72]
Gene Rosen, aNewtown resident who was reported to have sheltered six Sandy Hook students and a bus driver in his home during the shooting, has been subject to harassment online alleging he was complicit in a government coverup,[73] among other things.[74] Some journalists have cited such incidents as part of a "Sandy Hook Truther Movement" analogous to the9/11 Truth movement.[58][75][64] A writer for theCalgary Herald reported that the movement self-identifies as "Operation Terror."[70]
In May 2014, Andrew David Truelove stole a memorial sign from playgrounds dedicated to victims Grace McDonnell and Chase Kowalski.[76] He then went on to call the parents of Grace McDonnell, proclaiming that he stole the sign and that he believed their deaths were a "hoax".[77] He was arrested on May 30, and the signs were found in his home.[78] Truelove was convicted of the theft and sentenced to one year in prison.[79]
After doing a CNN interview on the day after the shooting, Robbie Parker, the father of victim Emilie Parker, became the target of conspiracy theorists, who claimed the interview was staged.[80] Parker has been attacked by theorists who believe he is a "crisis actor" and was "getting into character" before going on CNN to grieve over the loss of his child.[80]
In April 2016, Matthew Mills, a man fromBrooklyn, accepted aplea agreement with prosecutors on one count of interfering with police arising from an incident in November 2015, when Mills angrily approached the sister of murdered teacher Victoria Soto—who is regarded as a heroine for her attempt to protect her students from the shooter in the Sandy Hook attack—shoved a photograph in her face, "and began angrily charging that not only did the Sandy Hook tragedy not take place, but that Victoria Soto never existed."[81][82] Mills entered anAlford plea and was thus found guilty; he was given asuspended sentence of one year in jail and two years' probation.[81]
In December 2016, Lucy Richards, a woman fromTampa, was charged with four counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce for sending death threats toLeonard Pozner, whose son Noah was the youngest of 20 children murdered.[83][84] Pozner has been particularly targeted by Internet trolls and conspiracy theorists because he has vocally fought back against them.[85] Richards had been expected to plead guilty to one count of transmitting threats, with both the prosecution and defense to recommend a sentence of probation and house arrest. However, in March 2017, Richards—who was free on bond—failed to show up to court for a change-of-plea hearing and sentencing. Anarrest warrant was issued, Richards' bond was revoked, and she was soon apprehended.[86] On June 7, 2017, Richards was sentenced to five months' imprisonment.[87]
Leonard Pozner, the father of Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner, founded an organization called theHONR Network, which takes legal action against harassers of Sandy Hook survivors and families.[88]
Wolfgang Halbig, a past contributor toInfoWars, was arrested in January 2020 for unauthorized possession of personal information of Leonard Pozner. Halbig had illegally obtained Pozner's private information and attempted todox Pozner by sending those to a long list of recipients. Under Florida law, unauthorized possession of such information carries a maximum prison term of one year.[89]
School Shooting: March 26, 2011
Updated 22 November 2015