Four years before Adam Lanza massacred more than two dozen people in Newtown, Conn., in 2012, police officials were warned of his homicidal plans, according to documents released by the FBI this week.
In one entry dated Dec. 26, 2012, 12 days after the shooting, a man said he had been privy to a conversation in which Lanza said he had an assault weapon and was planning to kill children at Sandy Hook Elementary School and his mother.
The man, whose name was redacted, was so troubled by this information that he reported it to the Newtown Police Department in 2008, according to the document, which was among about 1,500 pages released by the agency on Tuesday. But he said the police told him that “Lanza’s mother owned the guns and that there was nothing NPD could do about it.’’
It is indeed unclear what officials could have done to stop the attack at the point they were alerted to Lanza. All the firearms had been legally purchased by Nancy Lanza, whom Adam Lanza shot and killed in her bed the morning of Dec. 14 before going to the school and fatally shooting 20 children and six staff members. The rampage ended when Lanza, 20, shot and killed himself at the school.
The documents — large portions of which were redacted, including the names of numerous interviewees — include accounts by people who knew Lanza or his mother.
In one entry, a woman who had connected with Lanza online about 2½ years before the massacre said she knew he had been obsessed with mass shootings.
“Lanza was working on a list, or spreadsheet, meticulously documenting the details of hundreds of spree killings and mass murders,’’ agents with the FBI wrote of their interview with her. They said he had devoted all his time to researching these events.
The woman said she communicated with Lanza about once a month through the beginning of December 2012, but never heard his voice. He was “the weirdest person online,’’ she told investigators.
Lanza also portrayed himself to the woman as someone who lived an isolated and uncomfortable life, the investigators noted.
