About the book

Why?

It was the question that I and many others were left with one Friday in December of 2012, when we first heard the news: that a young man in Connecticut had just taken a gun to his old elementary school, where he killed twenty first graders and six staff members before ending his own life.

And in the aftermath of the shooting, it seemed we would be denied any answer. Not only was the shooter dead, he had been a shut-in for most of his life. The only person who was close with him, his mother Nancy, was dead too. And when police searched their home, they found he had left behind little more than a destroyed hard drive. We knew his final destination, but not the path that brought him there.

I have been writing about the Sandy Hook shooter since 2013. It started as a blog, compiling the evidence that the subject of this blank profile had existed at all: through tracing his online activity and combining it with evidence from the police and FBI investigations into the case. Now, twelve years later, the real picture can be seen. The story of The Sheltered Storm documents how his path through life led to isolation in a darkened bedroom, and choosing a calamitous end at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

While the answer to “why?” unfolds behind a closed door, just down the hall from where Nancy Lanza slept, Nancy’s own life helps answer a more complex question the tragedy left in its wake: how could this happen?

Nancy is the primary focus for much of the story. The purpose is to, as much as possible, see it through her eyes: her 20-year effort to find out what is wrong with her son, and guide him to adulthood — a quest that eventually, tragically, leads her to purchase him an AR-15 rifle.

At the same time, it is not enough to isolate the search for answers to two people in one house on a hill. There is also a third path we must examine: that of the murder weapon, into the home. Powerful groups invested their resources into ensuring that course was clear. They are part of this story.

By interweaving these three paths — that of the gunman to the school, his mother to her decision, and the murder weapon to her hands — the truth behind the tragedy at Sandy Hook comes into view: that although only one person was pulling the trigger that day in December of 2012, what happened was the result of many human failures, and failures of human institutions. It was unjustifiable, and it was preventable. It shouldn’t have happened, but it happened.

The Sandy Hook shooting was a man-made disaster.