Nancy Lanza Not a Teacher?

Nancy Lanza Not a Teacher?

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A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to the place. At least one parent said Lanza’s mother was a substitute teacher there. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the law enforcement official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

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TPM Editor’s Blog
Josh Marshall
December 14, 2012, 9:52 PM

There have been a lot of factual errors in the chaotic rush to get details about today’s shooting in Connecticut. But one fact that seemed established across the board was that victim Nancy Lanza, the mother of alleged shooter Adam Lanza, was a teacher at the Sandy Hook Elementary School — specifically that it was her class that Adam Lanza massacred.

But this story just out in the Journal suggests that’s not true.

Oddly, it’s buried down at the bottom of the story, almost as an afterthought …

A former school board official in Newtown called into question earlier reports that Nancy Lanza had been connected to Sandy Hook Elementary School, possibly as part of the teaching staff. “No one has heard of her,” said Lillian Bittman, who served on the local school board until 2011. “Teachers don’t know her.”

It’s mentioned so offhandedly. And this apparent fact was so widely reported that I’m still wondering if I’m misreading these two grafs. But it seems hard to read it any other way.

As embarrassing as it for news organizations to get facts wrong on a story like this (and I’m proud of how our staff held back on a number of ‘facts’ today that turned out to be wrong), we shouldn’t be surprised that there’s a great deal of confusion in such a chaotic situation. But this would seem to upend even our tentative understanding of the motive for the massacre itself.

Late Update: The story still up on the Times website suggests otherwise but in a much less specific way …

His mother, Nancy, kept their home in Newtown, a prosperous, hilly enclave of spacious, newer homes about five miles from the elementary school where she taught kindergarten. Adam Lanza is thought to have been living in the house, too.

Later Update: The Post also still identifies her as a teacher at the school in a piece timestamped less than an hour ago …

His parents, Nancy and Peter Lanza, separated about a decade ago, and his mother, a kindergarten teacher at Sandy Hook, remained in the family’s home with her sons, Adam and Ryan Lanza, according Ryan Kraft, now 25, who was a neighbor.

Still Later Update: In itself I would not see it as dispositive. But the Newtown School District website does not list Lanza as a teacher or administrator in the district school system.

Later Update #5: Here we seem to be getting a bit more of a handle on the origins of this. According to the AP, the origin of Lanza’s alleged tie to the school seems tenuous …

A law enforcement official speaking on condition of anonymity said investigators believe Lanza attended the school several years ago but appeared to have no recent connection to the place. At least one parent said Lanza’s mother was a substitute teacher there. But her name did not appear on a staff list. And the law enforcement official said investigators were unable to establish any connection so far between her and the school.

Nancy Lanza Not a Teacher? | TPM Editors Blog

SCHOOL SHOOTING VICTIMS PUSH BACK AGAINST VULTURE MEDIA

by BREITBART NEWS 15 Dec 2012, 9:05 AM PDT 5POST A COMMENT
Daily Caller:

An ABC News editorial producer earned the online equivalent of a hard slap to the face Friday, after she used Twitter to approach two people for interviews who were painfully close to the morning massacre of a Connecticut elementary school.
Nadine Shubailat tweeted interview requests to a man who said his “good friend” had a child in kindergarten at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and to a woman whose cousin was a first-grade teacher killed in the Friday morning gun rampage.
In the second case, Shubailat was not the only reporter to go after a victim’s relative. A second ABC producer, a New York Times reporter and a Los Angeles-based producer of a YouTube-only news program also approached the grieving woman for interviews just hours after her 22-year-old relative was shot to death. ...
Late Friday night, @artayd2 retweeted a message from a friend who asked, “Why do shooters get famous? Maybe because reporters are so desperate for ratings, they’ll interview freshly-traumatized children.”

Full story here.

Sandy Hook mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, 'deeply disturbed kid'

Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind.

BY MATTHEW LYSIAK , DENIS SLATTERY AND RICH SCHAPIRO / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

UPDATED: SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2012, 12:13 PM

He was dark and disturbed, a deeply troubled boy from a wealthy family who unnerved his neighbors and classmates.

Mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, was a ticking time bomb, people who knew him told the Daily News.

“This was a deeply disturbed kid,” a family insider told the Daily News. “He certainly had major issues. He was subject to outbursts from what I recall.”

Lanza, who friends and officials said suffered from Asperger’s syndrome or a personality disorder, had a tortured mind.

He was socially awkward and at times unstable, but also extraordinarily bright.

“He was smart,” the insider said. “He was like one of these real brainiac computer kind of kids.

A “longtime” family friend said Lanza had a condition “where he couldn’t feel pain.”

“A few years ago when he was on the baseball team, everyone had to be careful that he didn’t fall because he could get hurt and not feel it,” said the friend. “Adam had a lot of mental problems.”

Lanza’s strange behavior was well-known among his well-heeled neighbors in leafy Newtown, Conn. His antics irked several residents.

“Adam Lanza has been a weird kid since we were 5 years old,” a neighbor and former classmate named Tim Dalton wrote on Twitter. “As horrible as this was, I can't say I am surprised . . . Burn in hell, Adam.”

He was also seen as an odd figure at Newtown High School.

Even before that, Lanza walked the halls of his middle school carrying a black briefcase while most students lugged their belongings in backpacks. “That stuck out,” said Tim Lalli, 20, who graduated with Lanza in 2010. “It was different.”

Lalli said Lanza wasn’t a total outcast, but he didn’t speak much.

“Everyone just assumed he was a smart kid and that’s why he didn’t like talking to people all the time,” he said. “He hung out with the smart crowd.”

And he lived in luxury.

Lanza was living with his devoted mother, Nancy, in the family’s four-bedroom, 3,100-square-foot estate.

Nancy Lanza divorced Adam’s father, Peter, in 2008. Peter Lanza, now a vice president of taxes for GE Energy Financial Services, agreed to annual alimony payments that started at $240,000 and would have reached $298,800 in 2015.

The couple had married on June 6, 1981, in Kingston, N.H. — where Adam Lanza was born — and the divorce hit Peter Lanza hard, his lawyer said.

“He was very upset that he was getting divorced, but he didn’t want to take it out on anybody,” said attorney Gary Oberst.

He said the Lanzas were deeply devoted to their children. In fact, Peter Lanza insisted on handing over more money than his lawyer initially suggested.

“He did more than he had to with the divorce,” said Oberst. “When he came in to consult with me, I said, ‘This is what your obligation is.’ He said, ‘That’s not enough. I want to do more.’ ”

The family insider described the Lanzas as “lovely, very generous people who were very kind to each other during the divorce.”

Peter Lanza was blindsided by news of the shooting. When he drove up to his red-brick home in Stamford, Conn., Friday afternoon, a reporter was waiting outside.

“Is there something I can do for you?” Lanza asked, according to the Connecticut Post.

When told his address had been linked to the Newtown massacre, his face dropped, he rolled up the window of his blue Mini Cooper and drove into his garage without commenting.

He had arrived home just after a group of cops left. The sight of the officers freaked out neighbor Geralyn Petrafesa.

“Around 3 p.m., I drive by and saw the police wearing vests,” said Petrafesa. “They were approaching the house. I ran home and told my kids to stay in the house. I figured it was connected with what was going on in Newtown.”

The 52-year-old Peter Lanza had only recently moved in with his new wife, Shelley Cudiner, who works in the library at the University of Connecticut.

Peter Lanza also has an academic background. He has served as an adjunct professor at Northeastern University in Boston since 1995 and has taught classes on tax partnerships at Fairfield University, according to the Connecticut Post.

Nancy Lanza, 54, whom Adam murdered inside the home the two shared, reportedly had worked at Sandy Hook Elementary School. But more recently, she was taking care of her son.

“She needed to be home with Adam,” the family insider said.

Nancy was known as a pillar of the community, while neighbors viewed her troubled son as a terror.

“My daughter went to school w/adam lanza,” a former neighbor who identified herself as Beth Israel wrote on Twitter. “We lived 6 houses away. He was troubled for sure for a long time. RIP nancy.”

Early news reports suggested Adam Lanza’s 24-year-old brother, Ryan, had launched the rampage — but Beth Israel believed otherwise.

“It has to be Adam, not Ryan,” she tweeted.

Ryan Lanza, who lives in Hoboken and works at Ernst and Young, didn’t talk about his younger brother while attending Quinnipiac University.

“I knew he had a brother, but I never knew anything more than he existed,” said a college friend.

Ryan Lanza told cops he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.

One family friend described Adam Lanza as a gamer who “rarely spoke.”

“He was weird,” said the friend, who asked to remain anonymous. “He was quiet.”

Lanza’s maternal grandmother, Dorothy Hanson, told a Tampa Bay Times reporter she was too shaken to speak.

“(I’m) just trying to absorb it,” said Hanson, 78, who spends winters in a modest mobile home park in Brooksville, Fla.

A friend of Hanson’s said Lanza’s elderly grandmother was “beside herself right now.”

Late Friday night, Peter Lanza’s neighbors said they wondered how he was going to cope with the news that his ex-wife was dead and his youngest son would forever be known as a murderous monster.

“This whole thing is just tragic,” said one neighbor. “I can’t image what he’s dealing with right now.”

rschapiro@nydailynews.com

Read more: Sandy Hook mass murderer Adam Lanza, 20, 'deeply disturbed kid' - NY Daily News

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