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Sandy Hook probe ends; motive still unknown

Lanza’s obsession with mass killings detailed in report

A knitted angel and a sign hung near a cemetery last December in Newtown, Conn. In a report Monday, Adam Lanza was described as having “mental health issues.”John Moore/Getty Images

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Adam Lanza spent the final months of his life mostly alone in his bedroom. His windows were covered with black trash bags. He was preoccupied with violent video games and created a spreadsheet of some of the worst massacres in American history.

Lanza refused to speak even to his mother, communicating with her only by e-mail, even though their bedrooms shared the same floor of their house on Yogananda Street.

He would not eat unless his food was arranged in a particular way on his plate. He hated birthdays and holidays, and forbade his mother from putting up a Christmas tree.

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He also made her get rid of a cat he did not like.

No one else was allowed into his room, including his mother, who nevertheless did her son's laundry daily because he changed his clothes often.

Among their few outings together were trips to the shooting range. She planned to buy him a gun for Christmas last year.

Lanza, 20, could not connect with people but obsessed over "Dance Dance Revolution," an interactive video game he played in the lobby of a nearby movie theater, spending as long as 10 hours at a time trying to follow dance routines as they flashed on the screen.

Last year, four days before her son killed 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School and then shot himself, Nancy Lanza cooked him some of his favorite meals and then left for a three-day trip to New Hampshire.

She returned on Dec. 13 at 10 p.m.

The next morning, her son shot and killed her in her bed.

A 48-page report released Monday by the state's attorney in Danbury, Stephen J. Sedensky III, offers a vivid and chilling portrait of the young man responsible for one of the nation's worst mass shootings, and chronicles his rampage in the school.

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But what it does not answer is why.

The long-awaited report does not suggest a motive for Adam Lanza's actions, even as it offers a glimpse into his strange, troubled life. It comes nearly a year after the shooting set off a national discussion about gun control, mental health and violence in American popular culture.

In that time, families of the Sandy Hook Elementary victims have struggled to put their lives back together, the town has tried to heal and the school has been razed. But, until Monday, little information compiled by investigators had been publicly released.

Even basic facts, like the path Lanza took inside the school, were kept secret.

The report was based on voluminous evidence and interviews conducted by the Connecticut State Police and the state's attorney's office, along with federal authorities. It marks the end of the investigation.

Investigators struggled to make sense of "contradictory" descriptions of Lanza by those who knew him.

The report notes that while "significant mental health issues" affected his ability to live a normal life and interact with others, it remained unclear whether they contributed in any way to his actions last December. Lanza received a diagnosis in 2005 of an autism variant known as Asperger's syndrome, but there is no evidence that people with Asperger's are more likely than others to commit violent crimes.

Lanza was treated by mental health professionals, according to the report, but none of them saw anything that predicted his future behavior.

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"Tutoring, desensitization, and medication were recommended," the report said. "The shooter refused to take suggested medication and did not engage in suggested behavior therapies."

There were reports of troubling behavior as early as the fifth grade, when Lanza produced "The Big Book of Granny" for a class project. The main character had a gun in her cane and shot people.

In 2006, as a seventh-grader, Lanza was described by a teacher as intelligent but obsessed with violent imagery.

His mother noted a change in his behavior around that time. He stopped riding his bicycle or climbing trees. He no longer showed interest in his saxophone, dropping out of a school band. His life turned increasingly inward.

Investigators found a wealth of disturbing digital evidence at the Lanza home, but were not able to recover any information from one hard drive that he had destroyed.

Lanza had two videos showing suicide by gunshot, a five-second video dramatization showing a child being shot, and images of Lanza himself holding a gun to his head.

He collected information on gun violence, including newspaper articles from 1891 "pertaining to the shooting of schoolchildren," the report said. He used spreadsheets to chronicle mass shootings. He also had "materials regarding the topic of pedophilia and advocating for the rights for pedophiles." The report made a point of noting that the materials were not child pornography, and the report did not otherwise address pedophilia.