Peter Lanza Speaks: The Lethal and Unvarnished Truth about His Son Adam

by Mike Roche

While working on repairing my holiday lights during Christmas 2012, I heard the laughter of children next door. The carefree innocence brought a smile to my face. Our joy was quickly dashed when a worried 9-year-old neighbor asked my wife if something like Sandy Hook could happen to her school. My wife tried to calm her frayed nerves. One of the fathers of a child, who escaped physical harm at Sandy Hook, had a similar conversation shortly before the shooting. He told his child the odds against a shooting at school were astronomical.

This past week, Adam Lanza’s father, Peter shared his thoughts with the New Yorker. Peter and Nancy struggled to manage Adam’s declining mental health. Peter felt that his son’s Asperger’s disorder could well have been masking a more serious mental health disorder such as schizophrenia. Peter’s early joy of having a second son was of course challenged as it became increasingly clear that his son’s problems were serious, and that concern became horror when his son became the killer of his ex-wife, six brave public servants (teachers) and twenty small innocent children. Peter Lanza confided with the New Yorker that he wished that his son, Adam, had never been born. Can you imagine the despair that Peter Lanza must feel because his son was the person responsible for this mass killing?

The Newtown shootings engendered passionate debate on mass killings and, in particular, on the issue of mental health. Yet, a year and a half after the horrible murder of the schoolchildren, as the debate on this grave issue continues, the endless rhetoric has brought little change to policy or practice.

Schizophrenia is a fractured thought pattern. The name stems from the Greek “splitting the mind.” The onset is typically in the late teens to early 20s. Schizophrenics often suffer from delusions, auditory and/or visual hallucinations. The real concern arises when they listen to those voices and act upon their commands.

In 1998, Russell Weston entered the U.S. Capitol and killed two police officers that he believed were cannibals. He believed that President Clinton was a Russian clone and that Weston himself was a clone. He traveled to the capitol in his belief that time was running out to avoid the “Black Heve,” an imaginary deadly disease spread by cannibals. Only the “Ruby Satellite” kept in the U.S. Capitol vault could stop the disease. Weston had been in and out of psychiatric facilities for most of his adult life. He was also habitually non-compliant with medication and until that tragic day in 1998, no one thought he was a danger.

Adam Lanza suffered from Asperger’s syndrome, which is a milder form of autism and makes communication challenging. There are various levels of severity, but those with autism have not been previously associated with premeditated acts of violence. In all probability, the deeply disturbed Adam, as his father asserted, may have been impaired with other far more serious mental health disorders.

Lanza penned disturbing writings while attending Sandy Hook in a book titled The Big Book of Granny. One of the characters in the graphically violent text states, “I like hurting people…especially children.” Granny is armed with a cane that conceals a gun. This disturbing portrait of a murdering granny was written by Lanza in the fifth grade. As his conditioned worsened, his contact deteriorated with the outside world including his relationship with his mother.

His mother, like so many other parents of children affected by mental illness, cared deeply about her son and struggled with the frustration of trying to deal with him. It was no easy task. In 2005, she took Adam to Danbury Hospital for an emergency evaluation when he was afflicted with acute anxiety. He was discharged after he was assessed not to be a danger and was referred to his physician. Adam’s mental health continued to deteriorate. Being an outcast in her son’s reclusive world, Nancy sought a common area of interest. Guns! Nancy Lanza stockpiled weapons, and took her son target shooting. One of those weapons was used by her son to shoot her four times while she slept.

Nancy became alarmed weeks prior to the shooting when she discovered graphic depictions of murder victims among her son’s “creations”. She was reluctant to confront her Adam. Her only contact with him during this period was via email sent to his his darkened room. There is a lack of evidence that Adam received any ongoing treatment from a psychiatrist and his autopsy failed to detect any prescribed medications.

1.8 billion dollars was slashed from mental health budgets between 2009 and 2011. An already poorly funded mental health system has been ravaged by budget cuts. E. Fuller Torrey, the author of The Insanity Offense advocates that only 1% of the mentally ill are violent. This select group is responsible for half of all rampages. (I spend countless hours in mental health facilities interviewing subjects in crisis and have never had a physical confrontation.) Most states prohibit gun ownership from those adjudicated mentally ill, which means that at one point a judge committed them to a mental health facility. It does not prevent those from acquiring weapons that have mental health conditions and have been committed voluntarily or through law enforcement actions. Illinois requires a 5-year waiting period after mental health hospitalizations prior to purchasing a firearm, which is one of the strongest positions in the country. The Northern Illinois University school shooter, Steven Kazmierczak, waited the required 5 years before acquiring his handguns and the shotgun that he used in his rampage. As reported in USA Today, the sharing by states of patients who have been adjudicated mentally ill with the gun database has been woefully inadequate.

The current commitment process can be traced back to the result of O’Conner v. Donaldson. In 1975, The U.S. Supreme Court set the threshold for incarcerating the mentally ill based on whether they were a danger to themselves or others. Essentially, are they homicidal or suicidal? This was to prevent the unnecessary incarceration of mental health patients for lengthy periods of time despite them posing no danger.

This decision severely limits hospitalization for those in need of treatment. The current course is to conduct an initial assessment of dangerousness. Due to limited bed space, staffing, budget and legalities; many patients are released within hours of their admission with a handful of pills and a referral to an outpatient clinic. It is what I refer to as the “Pharmacology Cycle” and leads to a revolving door for many suffering from mental illness. I feel most sorry for the families, who are burdened with unimaginable hardships, not unlike the hardships that Nancy and Peter Lanza had to endure. The commitment process must be examined to help those that need treatment, as well as keeping the community safer. Some states have reconsidered the budget cuts, but little has been done concerning the commitment process.

There are no easy answers in this complex situation. We cannot stand by and keep our fingers crossed that it will not happen again. Something similar will happen again. Still, we have made tremendous strides in mitigating these assassins. The team integration of students, counselors, teachers and parents has prevented numerous potential school shootings. Despite our best efforts, though, on some fatal occasion, we will inevitably miss the warning signs before the lethal postscript. How many more Aurora’s, Tucson’s and Newtown’s will occur? We all want the sound of genuine children’s laughter to return to our playgrounds and schools. And we want it to be based on real safety. But how do we get there? That is the burning question that hasn’t been answered.

Please click here to view Mike Roche’s previous posts:

FHP Officer Jimmy Fulford Fields Pipe Bomb Intended for Young Mother with His Bare Hands and Dies Instantly

Fire Department and California Highway Patrol Go 9 Rounds: Win, Lose or Draw?

The Boston Bombers: A Tale of Two Troubled Brothers

Don’t Text at the Movies, The Life You Lose May Be Your Own!

Killers and the Catcher in the Rye

Mike Roche has over three decades of law enforcement experience. He began his career with the Little Rock Police Department, and spent twenty-two years with the U.S. Secret Service. The last fifteen years of his career were focused on conducting behavioral threat assessments of those threatening to engage in targeted violence. He is the author of three novels and two nonfiction works on mass murder and also rapport building. Retired, Mike is currently a security consultant at Protective Threat LLC, and an adjunct instructor at Saint Leo University. He resides in Florida with his family.