EXCLUSIVE: Inside the mind of Newtown killer Adam Lanza; he ‘was like a ghost’
His mother spotted his precipitous withdrawal before he went on his rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School. ‘He didn’t understand why she wanted him to go out into the world. She told me she couldn’t reach him — and she was worried,’ says a family friend.
'I am the devil': Former classmate reveals school gunman Adam Lanza had 'online devil worshiping page.'
4 comments:
It looks like I was not so wrong on my assessment. Adam Lanza was deeply troubled by his mother looking into possible interventions. The fact that she was pushing to send him into the world pushed him over the limit, and in his troubled mind he thought she had chosen the school children over him.
Poor tortured soul. Not only he was miserable, but he destroyed twenty young lives, and spread his own misery over so many other souls.
I like the way you look at it, Charles. It is terribly sad. I agree.
I wondered if Adam Lanza had discovered that his mother was seeking to institutionalize him. In fact, days ago I so opined -- at my own site, I think.
Adam Lanza's case reminds me a great deal of what Nathan Cheatham did on Christmas Day 2005. See THIS. Excerpt:
"On the night before she died, Sheila Cheatham was desperately worried about her son Nathan, saying he hadn't slept in 48 hours and was suicidal because he believed he was in trouble with the law.
"Billy R. Hicks, a Springfield criminal lawyer who represented Nathan Cheatham in a 2002 drug case, said yesterday that Sheila Cheatham called him Christmas Eve for advice on how to help Nathan, 27, who had vowed to kill himself rather than allow police to arrest him.
"'She was frightened for him,' Hicks said. 'She said he was suicidal and extremely paranoid because of something that occurred two or three days earlier.' Hicks said he recommended that she seek to have her son committed for psychiatric treatment....
It appears that Adam Lanza had no criminal record.
It is very difficult to get a family member committed if that family member has no criminal record. Perhaps Nancy Lanza had asked Sandy Hook Elementary School for records there and Adam found out that she had done so.
I do have the strong feeling that Adam had his "reasons" for going to that school.
Thank you AoW for the reference and links to the Cheatham case. There seems to be a common denominator in both cases. Both boys were deeply affected by their parents' divorces. But there seem to be many differences too. The Lanza father seems to have bought his freedom and a new life with a generous annual allowance to his ex-wife. The eldest son, Ryan seems to have cut ties with both mother and brother. And it is not apparent that the mother sought early interventions for his son. When and how was he diagnosed autistic? It is revealed now that she had taken him to a psychiatrist recently, and that since then and after her efforts to get him out of the house he had become more withdrawn and had not talked to her for days.
On the other hand, Nathan Cheatham's mom had looked for all kinds of interventions since the time the boy started changing, which coincided with the time of his parents' separation. There seemed to be a tight-knit relationship among the five brothers, and by all accounts Nathan adored his mother.
Both his obituary and the Guest Book maintained by his father and brothers describe a boy and young man far different from Adam Lanza, although this may be unfair since we don't know much about him yet.
If you feel like cranking up a notch your level of misery, here is the link to the Guest Book:
http://www.legacy.com/guestbooks/washingtonpost/guestbook.aspx?n=nathan-cheatham&pid=16144753&cid=full
But here is the one entry I believe best portrays Nathan Cheatham:
"It's been a year and the pain is no less today than it was then... His sweetness, gentleness to all, and his sensitivity to the needs of animals and people made him easy to love. He cared about our animals and did his best to take good care of them... He did so many dear,thoughtful things for me that made my duties at the farm so much easier. Nate even would come in on his days off to do messy, unpleasant jobs for me and never mention that he was the one who had done them. I adored him...
I am a retired teacher and was much older than Nate, but he never made me feel older or out of place. We had a friendship that was so easy and comfortable. He had exquisite manners and was always so considerate... He went home two days later drenched to the skin sitting on feed bags so he wouldn't get the seat of his mother's car wet... There were times when we knew that Nate was struggling, but he dealt with his medications and treatment with such dignity and privacy that he protected us from his illness. It hurts so that we didn't know the depths of his suffering. I don't know if we could have helped, but we could have told him more often how much he meant to each of us. His mother did everything within her power to help him and did it with such grace. Nate adored her and I have to remember that there are things in life that are beyond our control. We are only human and can only do our best.
I am grateful that I knew Nate. He made a difference in my life. I miss him very much."
This is a wonderful time in which to live because of material comforts and medical advances, but the level of mental suffering in our youth due to isolation and family disintegration seems to be a high price to pay for our 21st century life ...
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