Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza kept spreadsheet of massacres

 
Daniel Bates26 November 2013

The US gunman who killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School was so obsessed with mass shootings that he kept a spreadsheet of massacres going back decades.

Adam Lanza, 20, drew up the tally as he planned his attack in Newtown, Connecticut on December 14 last year, the official report into the killings reveals today.

He researched newspaper articles as far back as 1891 related to the shooting of school children and had a book about the murders of five Amish girls in Pennsylvania in 2006.

The report by the Danbury State Attorney General found that Lanza acted alone and that even though he had mental problems he knew what he was doing, although his motive is a mystery. He shot dead his mother Nancy, 52, at their home shortly before the massacre and killed himself minutes after the attack.

The report details how “the shooter” spent hours playing computer games including Doom, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto. Another favourite was School Shooting, where the player controls a character who fires at students.

Lanza would only communicate by email and had not spoken to his mother for three months, the report says. She thought he had autism and he did not appear aggressive. “Over time he had multiple daily rituals, an inability to touch door knobs, repeated hand washing and obsessive clothes changing, to the point that his mother was frequently doing laundry,” the report states.

Lanza also created a children’s book, “The Big Book of Granny”, in which a grandmother shoots people with a gun hidden in her cane. In one chapter Granny and her son rob a bank before the son shoots her in the face.

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