Shotgun Shells in Drawer

These five 12 gauge shotgun shells were found cut open, lying in a drawer.

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If he wanted to get a good look at the contents of a shell, he didn't have to cut open five of them so it seems like it was something other than curiosity. It also looks like he collected the gunpowder on the left side of the drawer and the pellets on the right. Could Adam have been toying with the idea of building some sort of pipe bomb like Eric Harris did? He purchased a lot of ammunition and accessories over time so if he really wanted to build a bomb, he probably could have bought a large amount of gunpowder online or at a store.

Why would Adam cut the shells open and why would he keep them?

He might have wanted to build a bomb using the shotgun pellets (they have been proven effective in pipe bombs before) or he was simply refilling old shells that he shot, which is a common practice.

hate99 wrote:

He might have wanted to build a bomb using the shotgun pellets (they have been proven effective in pipe bombs before) or he was simply refilling old shells that he shot, which is a common practice.

This also makes sense since it is hinted that he was planning to use the Saiga as a primary weapon in the massacre (e.g. the fact that the XM15 had a strap but the saiga did not)

hate99 wrote:

or he was simply refilling old shells that he shot, which is a common practice.

I did read about refilling old shells but it's an involved process that I doubt he would have bothered with and I don't believe that you can refill shells that are completely pulled apart like this.

Generally, when a shell is spent, the only parts that are destroyed are the crimp at the top and the primer at the bottom.
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were any materials related to making pipe bombs found in his room?

PickYourDoom wrote:

were any materials related to making pipe bombs found in his room?

If you mean information related to the construction of pipe bombs, he did have a copy of the Columbine documents, which means he was probably familiar with Eric's bomb making instructions and the explosives used during their attack. Other than that, the only specific information that I know he had regarding explosives was a text file on "TNT ingredients and weapons definitions." If you mean physical materials, I am not aware of anything in his possession that would be appropriate for constructing explosives (aside from this miniature stash of gunpowder and pellets).

Despite my guess that he could have been interested in building bombs, it doesn't seem that he was actually prepared to do that and that's why these shotgun shells are a mystery to me.

sscc wrote:

PickYourDoom wrote:

were any materials related to making pipe bombs found in his room?

If you mean information related to the construction of pipe bombs, he did have a copy of the Columbine documents, which means he was probably familiar with Eric's bomb making instructions and the explosives used during their attack. Other than that, the only specific information that I know he had regarding explosives was a text file on "TNT ingredients and weapons definitions." If you mean physical materials, I am not aware of anything in his possession that would be appropriate for constructing explosives (aside from this miniature stash of gunpowder and pellets).

Despite my guess that he could have been interested in building bombs, it doesn't seem that he was actually prepared to do that and that's why these shotgun shells are a mystery to me.

I think if he was into making bombs he would search for tutorials.

PickYourDoom wrote:

I think if he was into making bombs he would search for tutorials.

The summary of the digital evidence that was recovered came from an external hard drive on a shelf in his bedroom. As far as I know, the hard drive pictured above was the internal hard drive for his computer and he purposely damaged it so they were never able to recover information from it. I'm not saying that he definitely had any bomb making tutorials but we wouldn't necessarily know.

This leads into another question that I have been meaning to bring up. Why did he destroy one hard drive when he left another hard drive that definitely belonged to him intact?

sscc wrote:

PickYourDoom wrote:

I think if he was into making bombs he would search for tutorials.

The summary of the digital evidence that was recovered came from an external hard drive on a shelf in his bedroom. As far as I know, the hard drive pictured above was the internal hard drive for his computer and he purposely damaged it so they were never able to recover information from it. I'm not saying that he definitely had any bomb making tutorials but we wouldn't necessarily know.

This leads into another question that I have been meaning to bring up. Why did he destroy one hard drive when he left another hard drive that definitely belonged to him intact?

Based on my research about Adam Lanza, he was someone who paid A LOT of attention to detail with everything he did so leaving one hard drive intact while leaving another one destroyed was hardly an accident. He probably intended to have the surviving hard drive with documents such as the one labeled "me" to be his statement as he knew that police would end up going through his home and searching for any and all data after he died. As for the one that was destroyed, it possibly contained more personal intimate information perhaps or maybe simply information that was VERY personal about himself that he did not want revealed. It seems odd to me that the police have not been willing to disclose the "me" document among the others on the surviving hard drive. All we know about it is the descriptions of the documents that the investigators disclosed to the public. There are also numerous videos and photos of himself on that existing hard drive that police have suppressed. That is my two cents to that whole question.