By Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY
Adam Lanza, the gunman in the shooting rampage at a Connecticut
school, was obsessed with past mass killings and even created a
detailed spreadsheet more than 7-feet long documenting hundreds of
killing sprees and attempted murders, the New York Daily News reports.
Mike Lupica, a Daily News
sports columnist, quotes an unidentified "law enforcement veteran" as
saying the chilling details of the Newtown massacre were presented at a
conference of the International Association of Police Chiefs and
Colonels last week in New Orleans.
Lupica's source says Danny
Stebbins, a colonel from the Connecticut State Police, gave a lengthy
address at the conference and provided details of the Dec. 14 shootings
at Sandy Hook Elementary School that left 20 students and six adults
dead.
Stebbins released a statement to USA TODAY that confirmed
that the Newtown case was discussed at a law enforcement conference and
that "sensitive information" was shared, including,"tactical operational
approaches employed by first responders on the day of the shootings at
Sandy Hook Elementary School."
"The victim's families continue to
be a priority in this investigation and this fact was clearly stated at
the seminar, it is unfortunate that someone in attendance chose not to
honor Colonel Stebbins request to respect the family's right to know
specifics of the investigation first," the statement said.
The statement also said that the investigation is ongoing and that a final report is still several months away.
The Hartford Courant also reported that Lanza had conducted extensive research on several mass murders prior to the Newtown massacre.
The Courant,
quoting unidentified sources, said state police updated victims'
families, teachers and first responders on the case and discussed the
theory that Lanza was trying to outdo other mass killers.
Police
found several articles in Lanza's room about Norwegian mass murderer
Anders Breivik who shot and killed 69 people in 2011, most of them young
people attending a summer camp.
The Stamford Advocate, citing an unidentified source, has also reported
that officials found documents in the Lanza home on "virtually every
mass murder" in the United States and elsewhere, particularly articles
on the 2006 shooting spree in Pennsylvania in which five girls were
killed in an attack on an Amish schoolhouse.
Lupica's source said Connecticut police believe the spreadsheet that Lanza compiled was in fact "a score sheet."
"This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put
his own name at the very top of that list," the source tells Lupica,
referring to what he learned at conference. "They believe that he picked
an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least
resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That's
what (the Connecticut police) believe."
According to this view,
the 20-year-old Lanza operated like a video gamer in not wanting to be
killed by police, because that would have cost him "points" in his very
bloody "game" at Sandy Hook.
"In the code of a gamer, even a
deranged gamer like this little bastard, if somebody else kills you,
they get your points," the source said, quoting the Connecticut police
officer. "They believe that's why he killed himself.
The source also told Lupica that police have photo of of Lanza from two years ago showing him "all strapped with weapons, posing with a pistol to his head."
The police believe that Lanza aimed to be a "glory killer" whose massacre would rival that of other mass murderers.
"He didn't snap that day, he wasn't one of those guys who was mad as hell and wasn't going to take it anymore," the law enforcement official said.
"He had been planning this thing forever. In the end, it was just a
perfect storm: These guns, one of them an AR-15, in the hands of a
violent, insane gamer. It was like porn to a rapist. They feed on it
until they go out and say, enough of the video screen. Now I'm actually
going to be a hunter."
The source also said the Connecticut
officer referred to Lanza only as "the shooter" and not by his real
name because he did not want to give him any more fame.
He also
said, according to the source, that police believe that Nancy Lanza,
Adam's mother, was his "enabler" and was making straw purchases of guns
for him while ignoring that he was becoming increasingly fixated on
them. Police say she was killed first that morning at their home before
Adam went on his shooting spree.
Contributing: Donna Leinwand Leger, USA TODAY