why did adam kill his mom

Never seen anyone talk about it much but why do you think Adam killed his mom that morning? I heard theories of how he was jealous because she loved the school kids more then him, which is complete BS and how he thought she was working against him by making him move out of the house with her, etc. Any thoughts?

Because he was nuts

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

.

imgview wrote:

Because he was nuts

No doubt there.

Adding another number to his kill count, maybe.

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

imgview wrote:

Because he was nuts

No doubt there.

It's actually more than a little sad, because Adam was practically living in constant agony due to his tortured mental state. Thanks to his malnutrition he was probably in a great deal of pain physically too.

QuestionMark wrote:

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

imgview wrote:

Because he was nuts

No doubt there.

It's actually more than a little sad, because Adam was practically living in constant agony due to his tortured mental state. Thanks to his malnutrition he was probably in a great deal of pain physically too.

Don't get me wrong I know he was a mess both mentally and physically as well.

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

imgview wrote:

Because he was nuts

No doubt there.

It's actually more than a little sad, because Adam was practically living in constant agony due to his tortured mental state. Thanks to his malnutrition he was probably in a great deal of pain physically too.

Don't get me wrong I know he was a mess both mentally and physically as well.

I tend to think that this pain cocktail might've been what led him to kill, out of resentment that other people didn't feel the same sort of pain he did. Same could be said of Dylan Klebold IMO.

QuestionMark wrote:

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

ShadowedGoddess wrote:

imgview wrote:

Because he was nuts

No doubt there.

It's actually more than a little sad, because Adam was practically living in constant agony due to his tortured mental state. Thanks to his malnutrition he was probably in a great deal of pain physically too.

Don't get me wrong I know he was a mess both mentally and physically as well.

I tend to think that this pain cocktail might've been what led him to kill, out of resentment that other people didn't feel the same sort of pain he did. Same could be said of Dylan Klebold IMO.

I've never had much interest in this case. Mostly because I have two kids around the same age as his victims. Just hits way to close to home. I don't need more nightmares. I barely sleep as it is.

That's easy. Read what he wrote about Travis the chimp. Or about teachers.

Wehn he writes about interactions between adults and children, (or chimps) he seems to phrase it in terms of control and power projection. I think that's how he saw him mother - someone who just wants to control him and made his life a mess.

In some sense, he might have been right.

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

MysteryMan wrote:

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

I don't think this is really true.

In many cases of familicide the killers do not have negative feelings toward their family, rather they believe they are saving them from something worse. most of the time this is cause by a delusion they have ( in this specific case Nancy learning of the crimes he committed ) would be worse than death for them.
Of course this way of thinking is illogical but given the level of his mental health by this point this is a very real possibility.


Other than him writing women were selfish (which could perhaps itself be a hint towards his dislike of Nancy) he never showed any signs of having hatred for her, not love.

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

Myll wrote:

Other than him writing women were selfish (which could perhaps itself be a hint towards his dislike of Nancy) he never showed any signs of having hatred for her, not love.

We do not have much evidence of him showing any love to her either. That's the thing, the evidence for direct interactions between Lanza and his mom that we have are quite "neutral" (at least from Adam's side, Nancy cared about Adam for sure).

I am only inferring that he might have felt some sort of anger at her because of the way he writes about adults and teachers. To him, adult-child interactions are seen as bad and the adults are peerceived as trying to control and manipulate the children for their own purposes.

I think this inherent negativity might come from Adam's school experiences, but I also think it is a reflection of his relationship with his mother. He was isolated from the world and from his perspective his mother was in fact very much "controlling" his life. I think this might be reflected by him describing child-adult relations as being primarily about control.

That's also the way he talks about Travis the Chimp. Travis was a very, very important example for Lanza.

QuestionMark wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

Agreed, Especially with .22LR.

QuestionMark wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

I based on Lysiak's books he used almost exactly the same words. I didn't see her post mortem photos and I assume neither you but it's only a technically thing. You may have right but it doesn't change my previous comment that in my opinion he felt some negative emotions towards her. Whitman as I remember correctly before he killed his mother and wife had written a letter where he explained that this was an act of mercy towards them also Kinkel did the same.

MysteryMan wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

I based on Lysiak's books he used almost exactly the same words. I didn't see her post mortem photos and I assume neither you but it's only a technically thing. You may have right but it doesn't change my previous comment that in my opinion he felt some negative emotions towards her. Whitman as I remember correctly before he killed his mother and wife had written a letter where he explained that this was an act of mercy towards them also Kinkel did the same.

Whitman also killed his loved ones in an extremely brutal manner, strangling and stabbing them to death.

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

I haven't heard anything suggesting that he nearly decapitated Nancy.

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Based on her position in the bed and the position of the wounds (mostly toward the left side of her head), it's very likely that Adam walked up to her and killed her in her sleep without waking her up. He put four bullets into her head, yes, but this is no proof that he hated her (as silly as that may sound to some people). Instead, putting four bullets into her head at point blank range would mean that Nancy probably lost consciousness and died a lot more quickly than she would have if he had only shot her once so opposed to most of the alternatives, he basically did "gently put her out of misery." In fact, every shot that Adam took increased the chances that a concerned neighbor would call the police but he shot his rifle four times anyway. It's possible that he was trying to avoid a confrontation with Nancy but he probably could have incapacitated her with one or two shots without killing her so I think it's reasonable to believe that he may have chosen to kill her without any specific intent to cause pain.

Several other mass shooters who killed before their main attack actually chose much more brutal (and potentially stealthy) methods of killing. Charles Whitman stabbed his wife and mother to death, Luke Woodham stabbed and bludgeoned his mother, and Elliot Rodger stabbed his housemates hundreds of times, with wounds to their head, neck, chest, back, arms, and internal organs. If he was planning to shoot Nancy multiple times anyway and risk alerting the neighbors, there were ways to make her suffer a lot more than she did. Even when using a gun as a murder weapon, someone can prolong the suffering of their victim (for example, by taking non-lethal shots to cause pain or by psychologically intimidating their intended victim with the knowledge of impending death before killing them). Based on the evidence, that was not the case for Nancy. Adam's murder of his mother was more of an expedient execution than a crime of passion or a plot to cause her pain, in my mind.

There are many reasons why he may have chosen to kill his mother and I wouldn't argue that he harbored negative feelings toward her because he admitted that their relationship was strained but there were many reasons why he may have taken her life. Some of them have been mentioned above but here are some of the potential motives that I can see.

Malicious or selfish motives would include:
- He was angry at her, hated her, disliked her or blamed her for his unhappiness and felt that she deserved to die because of it
- He didn't want someone who lived with him to be able to speak to the police or media about him after his death
- He was angry at his brother and/or his father and wanted them to suffer even more than they would if he had only attacked the school

Merciful motives would include:
- Nancy had convinced him that she had a degenerative and ultimately fatal disease so he figured that he might as well take her with him and save her the pain she would experience in the future
- He felt that life was guaranteed suffering or that we are all slaves to a broken society and one way or another, he was saving her from unhappiness ("I hate how I spend 99% of my time upset about culture, when life itself is the problem")
- He saw examples of how the media and the general public tend to blame the shooter's parents, especially the mother, for their child's crimes and he wanted to spare Nancy the distress of being vilified, especially considering his intended targets
- He wanted to spare her the knowledge that she had raised a mass murderer, someone who was capable of murdering small children, and that she had provided him with guns and training that enabled him to take so many lives

And I'll also mention that he could have been in a psychotic state with no logical motive, but I highly doubt that and I don't see any evidence for it.

When Nancy asked Adam if he would be upset if anything happened to her, he said no. I do think it's true that Adam wasn't fond of Nancy but I don't think that he was very aware of his feelings of hatred toward her, if there were any. I think he saw himself as largely apathetic toward her, whether this was accurate or not. One potential motive is definitely not possible, though it may seem plausible at first glance. This was not a murder of convenience, committed in order to allow him to leave the house with his arsenal undisturbed. We know that he specifically chose to kill her because he could have committed the shooting on 12/13/12 when Nancy was not home. It's clear that he deliberately took her life but it will always be impossible to say why without more information.

Peter Lanza has said that he thinks Adam shot Nancy four times because each bullet represented each member of the family, and that he would have killed Ryan and Peter too if he'd had the chance. I don't personally think that it's true, mostly because Adam saved a bullet for himself and put it into his own head at the end of the attack, but it's a good illustration of how everyone who looks at this situation can read into it whatever makes sense to them but they will never have a definitive answer, including Adam's father.

(I wrote this out yesterday so I am sorry if I have repeated anything that has been said since then.)

MysteryMan wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

I based on Lysiak's books he used almost exactly the same words. I didn't see her post mortem photos and I assume neither you but it's only a technically thing. You may have right but it doesn't change my previous comment that in my opinion he felt some negative emotions towards her. Whitman as I remember correctly before he killed his mother and wife had written a letter where he explained that this was an act of mercy towards them also Kinkel did the same.

Lysiak's book is not entirely accurate.

Are you saying that you believe Whitman and Kinkel's statements about killing out of mercy? If so, then why do you believe that Adam's killing of Nancy must have signified some sort of negative feelings toward her?

sscc wrote:

- He didn't want someone who lived with him to be able to speak to the police or media about him after his death

Now that I think about it I think this might be the most plausible explanation of Adam's rationale for killing his mother. He did break his hard drive and tried erasing as much of his online footprint as possible. I get the impression the he wanted to be "unpersoned", if that makes any sense.

sscc wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

QuestionMark wrote:

MysteryMan wrote:

DooMRebel wrote:

Maybe he killed her to spare her from the media and all that blame.

He didn't gently put her out of misery in contrary he nearly decapitated her head because he put four bullets into her head at point blank rage. He had to feel some negative emotions towards her.

You gotta put more bullets into someone's head before you really decapitate them.

I based on Lysiak's books he used almost exactly the same words. I didn't see her post mortem photos and I assume neither you but it's only a technically thing. You may have right but it doesn't change my previous comment that in my opinion he felt some negative emotions towards her. Whitman as I remember correctly before he killed his mother and wife had written a letter where he explained that this was an act of mercy towards them also Kinkel did the same.

Lysiak's book is not entirely accurate.

Are you saying that you believe Whitman and Kinkel's statements about killing out of mercy? If so, then why do you believe that Adam's killing of Nancy must have signified some sort of negative feelings toward her?

I wanted to emphasis the difference between Lanza and the other ones whom also killed their family members but in some sick ways they tried to explain why they did what they did at least. In Lanza's case we've got nothing. If he wanted he could have spared her life and gone on rampage when she was out of town. So if he shot her on purpose and didn't leave any word of explanation I assume he took revenge on her.
How many school shooters killed their family members before the massacre? I heard about Lanza, Whitman and Kinkel.

It's because he resented her, I believe he hated all of his family and would of murdered them if he had the chance.

QuestionMark wrote:

sscc wrote:

- He didn't want someone who lived with him to be able to speak to the police or media about him after his death

Now that I think about it I think this might be the most plausible explanation of Adam's rationale for killing his mother. He did break his hard drive and tried erasing as much of his online footprint as possible. I get the impression the he wanted to be "unpersoned", if that makes any sense.

Yeah, I thought that too. I don't think he hated her, because I think except when something really bad happen, people rarely hate their parents. They can however stop loving them and simply not care anymore. I think it could be the case with Adam and so maybe he killed her as if she were a human hard drive. After all, she was probably the only one who knew him well. And indeed, because Nancy died there are many things we will sadly never know about Adam. It may also suggest that he didn't seek fame, because usually people tend to forget the shooters when there are very few things known about them. Think about Stephen Paddock...

I know we should be very careful when assuming things based on Adam's favorite movies (especially since I did not see all of those movies and so had to read the IMDB summary). But I thought that maybe he liked several of them because he related to some of the main characters:

Willard - "A social misfit uses his only friends, his pet rats, to exact revenge on his tormentors."

Crawlspace - "A childless middle-age couple adopt a troubled youth they find living in their crawlspace and attempt to get him to rejoin society with tragic results." It could be a hint to understand Adam's feelings toward Nancy. Here the parents have a negative influence on the child because they try to force him to do something, despite his own nature.

Haunts of the Very Rich - "A group of wealthy but secretly very troubled people travel to an island resort but find themselves wondering about their existences after a while. "

The Baby - the eccentric, psychedelic Wadsworth Family, consisting of a mother, two daughters, and an adult son with the apparent mental capacity of an infant." I don't know this movie so I don't know if the son character behaves that way because his mother overprotected him or prevented him from being free or not.

The Killing Kind - "Young Terry Lambert returns home from serving a prison term [...] But his real problem is his overbearing mother, whose boarding house he resides in and who keeps bringing him glasses of chocolate milk. [...] However, while he was serving his prison sentence, Terry developed an interest in rough, violent sex, and gory death. [...]"

Don't Go in the House - "A disturbed young man who was burned as a child by his sadistic mother stalks women with a flamethrower. "

Night Warning - "An orphaned teenager finds himself being dominated by his aunt who's hell-bent on keeping him with her...at all costs."

Pin - "Isolated by his strange parents, Leon finds solace in an imaginary friend, which happens to be an anatomy doll from his father's doctor office. Unfortunately, the doll begins to take over Leon's life, and his sister's life as well."

I am aware that it is easy to find links everywhere once we know what happened, even if it is in fact coincidence but I think here it could be true.

Neah wrote:

I know we should be very careful when assuming things based on Adam's favorite movies (especially since I did not see all of those movies and so had to read the IMDB summary). But I thought that maybe he liked several of them because he related to some of the main characters:
...
I am aware that it is easy to find links everywhere once we know what happened, even if it is in fact coincidence but I think here it could be true.

I am glad that you brought this up. I have watched a number of his favorite movies and this is exactly what I noticed. I'm not sure how much there is to say and it would all be speculation but I think it would make an interesting thread for a more thorough discussion.

sscc wrote:

Neah wrote:

I know we should be very careful when assuming things based on Adam's favorite movies (especially since I did not see all of those movies and so had to read the IMDB summary). But I thought that maybe he liked several of them because he related to some of the main characters:
...
I am aware that it is easy to find links everywhere once we know what happened, even if it is in fact coincidence but I think here it could be true.

I am glad that you brought this up. I have watched a number of his favorite movies and this is exactly what I noticed. I'm not sure how much there is to say and it would all be speculation but I think it would make an interesting thread for a more thorough discussion.

There already is [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] but it is more a random discussion about the movies, not an analysis of them in order to better understand Adam. You can create the thread if you want, and I'll gladly join because it is indeed interesting (and I think there could be even more to analyze than the mother/son relationship).

I'm glad you brough up Lanza's movies. Many spree killers watch movies about violence or spree shootings, that's the common element.

You pointed out the uncommon pattern, one that Lanza does nto share with most other shooters. He doesn't just like films about violence, but in specific films that have a troubled, dangerous male protagonists. This also ties in with Travis the chimp.

I think it was a mixture of her not finding out
And so he knew there was no going back he had to go through with the shooting as he couldn’t possibly survive in prison
I can imagine him standing over her for ages contemplating if he should do it
Also makes me wonder if he ever tried and chickened out

Well, how did he get to Sandy Hook that day? Did he drive in his Mother's car? If he did, maybe he killed her to get the keys to her car so he could drive it. If she woke up and went off to work, how was he getting to the school? There was no Uber back then, like what Nikolas Cruz did.

Or maybe to put her out of the misery she'd have after he killed all those kids like Kip Kinkel did with his parents. Although I can't see someone like him really caring what would happen to his Mom after the shooting.

Or maybe he just hated her.

Who knows with this guy.

Jenn wrote:

Well, how did he get to Sandy Hook that day? Did he drive in his Mother's car? If he did, maybe he killed her to get the keys to her car so he could drive it. If she woke up and went off to work, how was he getting to the school? There was no Uber back then, like what Nikolas Cruz did.

Or maybe to put her out of the misery she'd have after he killed all those kids like Kip Kinkel did with his parents. Although I can't see someone like him really caring what would happen to his Mom after the shooting.

Or maybe he just hated her.

Who knows with this guy.

Yes he did use his mother's car. I believe the reason he killed is because he did hate her, family friends and his online posts show that not only did Adam hate his mother, but also his whole family and would of killed all of them if he had the chance.

I still don't believe he hated her. At worse I think he didn't care about her, didn't feel any positive feelings toward her and therefore was able to kill her (although it was maybe not that easy for him to do it, unfortunately we will never know). But what I can imagine better is that he had what I would call a "grumpy teenager" kind of relationship with her, that is: thinking she was too intrusive (which is not untrue), thinking that she was over protective, maybe she annoyed when he wanted to be alone and he was annoyed by the fact that she was worried about him, maybe she asked questions about how he felt and he didn't want to talk to her and he probably wasn't aware of all the care, love and well-founded worries that she had toward him... His feelings toward her was also probably influenced by his mental health issues.

But we really cannot know, we have so few information. If he really was that cold and unloving to his mother, maybe she would have told more people, maybe she would have tried to see a specialist although it doesn't really seem to be Nancy's kind.

It makes me think about one thing: was the computer used by Adam the family computer? Did Nancy have one too, and if yes, did Adam destroy it too? Because maybe information could have been found in the history of searches made by Nancy?

Jenn wrote:

Well, how did he get to Sandy Hook that day? Did he drive in his Mother's car? If he did, maybe he killed her to get the keys to her car so he could drive it. If she woke up and went off to work, how was he getting to the school? There was no Uber back then, like what Nikolas Cruz did.

Or maybe to put her out of the misery she'd have after he killed all those kids like Kip Kinkel did with his parents. Although I can't see someone like him really caring what would happen to his Mom after the shooting.

He did not drive his mother's car to the school that day. He had his own car and I believe this was something that Nancy arranged for Peter to buy for Adam in the terms of their divorce. Peter also taught him to drive and gave him the GPS device.

Adam and Nancy definitely had a rocky relationship but there was no overt hostility. There is a story that Nancy once asked Adam if he would feel bad if anything happened to her and she told him no. Nancy did do a lot for Adam, sometimes to his own detriment, but someone who knew them said that Adam never appreciated everything that she did for him. At the same time, a friend of Adam's said that they had previously discussed how his relationship with Nancy was strained. Adam told him that "he was unable to communicate with his mother because her behavior was not rational and she was unwilling to talk about certain topics that he felt were important." This is a relatively interesting statement (taken verbatim from what his friend told the cops) because there is an understanding that Adam was not particularly communicative but in this case, Adam was complaining that Nancy was impossible to communicate with. It is somewhat unexpected.

When it comes to exactly what those "certain topics" were or how her behavior was "not rational," your guess is as good as mine. It's hard to say whether Adam's perception of his mother was accurate in any way because many people did find Nancy to be pleasant but the fact remains that she was very good at keeping up appearances even when things were falling apart. Peter never knew how bad Adam's situation was because Nancy minimized it. Friends apparently never had an inkling about what was really going on with Adam, aside from a few statements in the last weeks of her life. Nancy did not seem to want to discuss real problems so Adam's statement may have been the truth.

She also seemed to invent problems that did not exist. Nancy claimed that she had a terminal diagnosis of MS to friends, family, and even on Adam's own medical records (in the family history section) without there being any evidence of a diagnosis (including the autopsy, which indicated that she did not actually have any signs of MS related degeneration). Nancy was actually advised at the time, by the neurologist that she consulted for her supposed symptoms, to acquire psychological help because she was having trouble dealing with the stress in her marriage, but there is no evidence that she pursued help. Peter only found out that Nancy was never diagnosed with MS after she died (which means that Adam may have believed that Nancy had a terminal diagnosis until the time of his own death) and authors of a report on Adam's history made special note of the fact that Peter "reversed his firm belief in the reliability" of Nancy's statements regarding her own health after reviewing her medical records, which do not indicate a diagnosis. It is possible that Nancy had her own psychological troubles that were not being addressed and that Adam was under the impression that they were affecting her behavior in some way, but she was unwilling to address them. The best we can do now is speculate, based on the very small amount of information that we do have.

There is not much that we know about Adam's relationship with Nancy in their final years because she rarely talked about him to friends and she was not being totally forthright with Peter, even when she updated him through e-mail. I would say that one of the most revealing pieces of evidence that we have regarding their relationship comes from four years before the attack, when Adam was 16 years old. It is an e-mail exchange between Adam and Nancy, apparently initiated by Adam after a disagreement between the two of them.
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As the authors of the report noted, Nancy seemed to be confiding in Adam and looking to him for emotional support when he was still a teenage boy and on top of that, a teenage boy with autism. It's clear to me that Adam did his best to comfort her in his own way, but it was not a role that he was emotionally capable of playing for her and even if he had been capable, it should not have been his responsibility to do that (both because of his age and because of his own problems). In Adam's own words, he "meant well." It's possible that he grew tired of playing "husband" to his own mother and as he became more depressed, his irritation with her grew into total apathy until it came to a point where he didn't care if she lived or died. I don't think it was a lifelong feeling of hostility though.

Getting back to the topic of her murder, Adam's mother was on a short vacation until the night before the attack. He had his own car and he could have chosen to do it the day before without her getting in the way. It was, without a doubt, a conscious choice.

sscc wrote:

As the authors of the report noted, Nancy seemed to be confiding in Adam and looking to him for emotional support when he was still a teenage boy and on top of that, a teenage boy with autism. It's clear to me that Adam did his best to comfort her in his own way, but it was not a role that he was emotionally capable of playing for her and even if he had been capable, it should not have been his responsibility to do that (both because of his age and because of his own problems).

I always find it a little troubling when I see that some mass shooters dealt with some of the same problems I have.

I have commented on this question before on another sub thread quite some time ago, but I will state my view once again. Adam killed his mother simply because he despised her. Which is putting it mildly honestly. Adam himself stated to his DDR friend that he had a strained relationship with his mom. Adam was not the direct confrontational type, being very shy, and tending to keep to himself....until the shooting that is. So he likely held all that anger inside of him and it just kind of built up.

It's funny to see that we all have so different interpretations about Adam and Nancy's relationsip.

If someone find information about that, I'm still interested:

Neah wrote:

was the computer used by Adam the family computer? Did Nancy have one too, and if yes, did Adam destroy it too? Because maybe information could have been found in the history of searches made by Nancy?

(especially since Adam and Nancy communicated by e-mails)