Divorce records reveal Adam Lanza’s mother had full authority over him as portrait of killer’s family life emerges

Associated Press | Dec 17, 2012 11:12 AM ET | Last Updated: Dec 17, 2012 11:28 AM ET
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ABC NewsSandy Hook Elementary shooter Adam Lanza in a 2005 photo obtained by ABC News.

 

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Newly public divorce paperwork shows that the mother of Connecticut school shooter Adam Lanza had the authority to make all decisions regarding his upbringing.
The court papers were made public Monday. The divorce was finalized in September 2009, when Adam Lanza was 17.

Lanza killed his mother before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Friday morning and killing 20 children and six adults before taking his own life.

His parents married in June 1981 in Kingston, N.H. The file says their marriage broke down “irretrievably” and that there was no possibility of getting back together.

Photo courtesy of Family of Nancy Lanza/ABC News via Getty ImagesIn this handout image provided by ABC News, shows Nancy J. Lanza mother of suspected mass shooter Adam Lanza at an unspecified time and place.

 

Under the terms of the divorce, Lanza’s mother, Nancy Lanza, received $289,800 in alimony this year. It makes no mention of any mental health issues regarding Adam Lanza.
There is no evidence of bitterness in the court file, no exchange of accusations or drawn out custody disputes.

As part of the divorce, the mother was ordered to attend a parenting education program. The provider, Family Centers Inc., certified that she completed the program on June 3 and June 10, 2009. The document says only that Lanza “satisfactorily completed the program.”

Nancy Lanza has been described in recent reports, however, as a “prepper” — a survivalist who had been preparing for society’s economic and infrastructural collapse, raising questions about the sort of influence she may have had over her son.

The three weapons Adam Lanza used in Friday’s shooting were registered to his mother, and reports indicate she owned another two guns. She was also said to have taken Adam and his older brother Ryan to firing ranges.

Some friends and family went so far as to describe the mother as “paranoid,” claiming that she would stockpile food and other materials in preparation for an anticipated global meltdown, The Independent reports.

AP PhotoThis undated photo shows Adam Lanza posing for a group photo of the technology club which appeared in the Newtown High School yearbook.

 

She also seemed to have been growing increasingly worried about Adam’s behaviour, telling those around her that she was “having trouble reaching him.”

Such concerns did not spring up overnight, however. Ryan Kratft, a former babysitter of Adam’s says his mother warned him to never turn his back on her son or even use the washroom, according to CBS News.

A fuller picture of Adam Lanza’s history is beginning to emerge.

A spokesman for Western Connecticut State University said Monday that Lanza began taking college classes there when he was only 16.

Paul Steinmetz, spokesman for the Danbury school, confirmed that Adam Lanza earned a 3.26 grade point average while a student there. He dropped out of a German language class and withdrew from a computer science class, but earned an A in a computer class, A-minus in American history and B in macroeconomics.

He participated when called on by the teacher in his evening course on introductory German, according to Dot Stasny, who was one of about a dozen other students in the class in the spring of 2009. She said she and a classmate once invited him out to a bar but he declined, saying he was only 17.

“We attributed him being quiet to him being so much younger than the rest of us,” said Stasny, 30. “I assumed he was this super smart kid who was just doing extra course work.”

Ms. Long describes a typical test of wills with her 13-year-old son Michael. Like a lot of parents, she argues with him about clothes and behaviour. But in Michael’s case, the arguments end with threats of suicide and murder. And these are not mere emotional outbursts: When Ms. Long does something that Michael doesn’t like, such as take him to the mental hospital, he calmly describes how he will exact retribution when he returns home.

At these times, Ms. Long collects all the sharp objects in the house and puts them in a Tupperware container she keeps for this purpose. (Unlike the Lanza household, the Long home apparently contains no assault rifles.)

Michael is quite brilliant, as many children disturbed in this way often are. And at times, he is sweet and quiet. But then he moves into a dark, violent phase. And no one knows quite what combination of mental illness and personality disorder is causing it.

The chances that Michael will ever kill someone are low: Most mentally ill people never harm others. But it is also likely he will never be “cured” in the same way that many physical diseases can be cured. His mother, siblings and neighbours always will have to live with the knowledge that he could do something horrible at any minute. And when he gets older, he will have other options for weaponry besides a bunch of kitchen knives hidden away in Tupperware. If his record is clean, America being America, he might even be able to gain access to guns.

Stasny said she saw him later when he came in as a customer at a video game store where she was working. She said she shared a laugh with him about how difficult the German class was. She told him she failed one of the exams, and he mentioned he got a D.
“I just remember him as a nice, quiet kid,” she said.

Steinmetz says Lanza was among a small group of 16-year-olds among the school’s 5,000 undergraduates.

The Hartford Courant and The Wall Street Journal first reported Lanza’s academic record at Western Connecticut State.

Steinmetz said Lanza took his last class in the summer of 2009 and didn’t return.
Even as a high school student, Lanza made an impression on classmates.

At Newtown High School, he had trouble relating to fellow students and teachers, but that was only part of his problem. He seemed not to feel physical or emotional pain in the same way as classmates.
Richard Novia, the school district’s head of security until 2008, who also served as adviser for the school technology club, said Lanza clearly “had some disabilities.”

“If that boy would’ve burned himself, he would not have known it or felt it physically,” Novia told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “It was my job to pay close attention to that.”

Novia was responsible for monitoring students as they used soldering tools and other potentially dangerous electrical equipment.

He recalled meeting with school guidance counselors, administrators and with the boy’s mother to understand his problems and find ways to ensure his safety. But there were others crises only a mother could solve.

“He would have an episode, and she’d have to return or come to the high school and deal with it,” Novia said, describing how the young man would sometimes withdraw completely “from whatever he was supposed to be doing,” whether it was sitting in class or reading a book.

Adam Lanza “could take flight, which I think was the big issue, and it wasn’t a rebellious or defiant thing,” Novia said. “It was withdrawal.”

Authorities on Saturday continued a wide-ranging investigating into the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history, trying to understand what led the young man to kill his mother in their home and then slaughter 26 children and adults at a Connecticut elementary school before taking his own life.

Back in their teenage years, Adam and his older brother, Ryan, were both members of the tech club, which offered students a chance to work on computers, videotape school events and produce public-access broadcasts.

It was popular among socially awkward students. But Adam, while clearly smart, had problems that went beyond an adolescent lack of social skills, Novia said.



“You had yourself a very scared young boy, who was very nervous around people he could trust or he refused to speak with,” Novia said.

The club provided a setting for students to build lasting friendships. But while other members were acquainted with Adam, none was close to him.

“Have you found his best friend? Have you found a friend?” Novia asked. “You’re not going to. He was a loner.”

Adam was not physically bullied, although he may have been teased, Novia said.

The club gave the boy a place where he could be more at ease and indulge his interest in computers. His anxieties appeared to ease somewhat, but they never disappeared. When people approached him in the hallways, he would press himself against the wall or walk in a different direction, clutching tight to his black case.

“The behavior would be more like an 8-year-old who refuses to give up his teddy bear,” Novia said. “What you knew with Adam is it was a possession. It was not a possession to be put at risk.”

Even so, Novia said, his primary concern was that Adam might become a target for abuse by his fellow students, not that he might become a threat.

“Somewhere along in the last four years, there were significant changes that led to what has happened,” Novia said. “I could never have foreseen him doing that.”

Jim McDade, who lives a few houses from where Nancy Lanza was slain, said his family became acquainted with the two brothers and their mother because their children were about the same ages and rode the school bus together.

“There was certainly no indication of anything unusual that lets you think that a kid’s going to do something like that,” said McDade, who works in finance in New York. “There was nothing that would indicate anything going on behind the scenes that would lead to this horrible mess.”
He recalled Adam Lanza as “a very bright kid.”

Olivia DeVivo, a student at the University of Connecticut, was in Adam Lanza’s 10th grade English class.

“He was very different and very shy and didn’t make an effort to interact with anybody,” she said.
DeVivo said Lanza always carried a briefcase and wore his shirts buttoned up to the top button. She said he seemed bright but never really participated in class.

“Now looking back, it’s kind of like `OK, he had all these signs,’ but you can’t say every shy person would do something like this.”

On Saturday, a police car was parked in the driveway of the Stamford, Conn., home of Lanza’s father, Peter Lanza. An officer stopped reporters who tried to approach the house.

AP Photo/David Goldman    A U.S. flag flies at half staff outside the Newtown High School before President Barack Obama is scheduled to attend a memorial for the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, Sunday, Dec. 16, 2012, in Newtown, Conn. 

 

With files from National Post staff and Associated Press writers Adam Geller, Michael Melia, Jim Fitzgerald and Denise Lavoie