Why did adam lanza leave nothing behind?

Adam Lanza was succesful in getting a large kill count, and targeted younger children in order to get even more attention. However he didnt make any videos, he didnt write a manifesto, didnt leave a journal, he didnt even leave a note. He was extremely familier with other mass shooters, and must have known that those who do leave videos/writings are more talked about. For example elloot rodger left much evidence behind and as a result there are several youtube channels (basedshaman, mumkey jones) that to this day, years after the incident, make content discussing him and analyzing what he left behind. (I know elliot rodger happened after sandy hook, but still.) if adam wanted maximum casualties, and maximum fame, why didnt he leave anything behind? Thoughts?

I don't think Adam's goal was to be famous, it was all about committing mass murder and killing himself, he probably knew that crime would be pretty notorious but he seem to didn't really care about it. If he did I'm pretty sure he would left some note or manifesto like Cho did. I don't he solely targeted children for attention alone but since they were unfortunately easier targets for him handle compared to older teenagers which couldve fought back but its hard to say if they definitely would but it probably factored in Adam's final decision to attack an elementary school.

I think he targeted children out of sadism.

Personally, I Believe that Adam at least considered emulating what other similar mass shooters had left behind; specifically pictures of themselves holding weapons i.e. Seung Hui Cho. I believe that the proof of this consideration comes from the fact that ‘manifesto’ or ‘iconographic’ images were deliberately taken by Adam of himself dressed in the outfit he wore during the attack, as well as with photos of himself with his weapons pointed at his head.

As to why Adam didn’t compile this into a manifesto, of some other document/exposure piece as seen with other mass shooters; it’s all purely conjecture. In my opinion, Adam saw little point in working on something that he would not see any results from, or served him no purpose. Which I think is a behaviour demonstrated through Adam’s habit of retroactively removing forum posts and perhaps even the contents of his hard drive, they served no purpose and in his desire to control every aspect of his life, it was easier to just remove them.

As to why he did any of this, your guess is as good as mine. But I do believe Adam at least contemplated leaving something, took the photos as some sort of experiment and then forgot about them, which led to them being found (if I recall correctly, the hard drive containing the phots was in the cupboard of the room containing the gun safe)

A very good question I’ve often considered myself though, so I’m interested to hear the thoughts of others.

TL;DR Adam considered leaving behind at least some photos, didn’t like how they turned out/their value and forgot about them

Here is an interesting quote from Smiggles/Adam Lanza written on SBB:

"One of the major reasons why Columbine is still a (relatively) popular topic in recent years
is because of the potential it allows for speculation. This would not exist if they had lived
because their actual thoughts and experiences, the contents of the basement tapes/Nixon
tape, and everything like that would probably be well-known." - Smiggles

I believe he wants us to speculate about his motive.

There is some information regarding Lanza, but it's inconclusive for a motive.

Source to the quote: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Thanks, "Devil", for linking us to it. I happen to agree with you on Adam Lanza wanting us to speculate and wonder about his motive, but I suspect that there was also another reason for that: to create more of a mystery about himself. Personally, I think it's a basic human nature to want to solve mysteries, and I think Adam Lanza knew about that. After all, if the Basement Tapes had been released early on - there probably wouldn't be as many "Columbiners" as there are nowadays. The mystery of the Basement Tapes is part of the mystique for some.

There was a thread discussing Adam Lanza's e-mail and people wanting to obtain access to it, and there are people wanting to read the files on his computer. Myself included, honestly. I like to learn about people, especially infamous people.

Apologies if I've gotten anything wrong in this, and hope you're all having a nice enough week.

I'm even less knowledgeable than usual about Lanza's case, but I get the sense leaving nothing behind and killing his mother was more calculated than some on here would suppose. It seems he studied mass murderers and combined aspects of several of them in the way which he felt suited his needs. Part of why Columbine is interesting and the shooters death seen almost as tragic as the victims if not more so is because of all the questions we cannot ask the. He wanted us left asking questions. Also, the aspect of matricide adds another dimension to the case.

So, in sum, I think it was partly to do with him giving his answers to the question "Hm, why is Columbine remembered? Why are Kip Kinkel and Charles Whitman remembered?"

With the recent release of the photos that were discussed earlier in this thread, I think how’s the time for me to return to the above conversation. Personally, I have a hard time believing that Adam was as meticulous and as forward-thinking as we might have once believed. I think the likely reality is that we as people fill uncertainty or ambiguity with assumed intent, after all; how many times have you considered something that was a complete fluke/accident to be a pre-determined action?

I think Adam made a lot of oversights and mistakes and I think that him leaving the one hard drive in tact was not a deliberate act to encourage speculation or to “leave something behind” as discussed. Instead, I think he simply overlooked it, which we know he would do. An often overlooked fact is that Adam never took the time to maintain the weapons he would go on to use in the attack, resulting in many (fortunately for those unlucky enough to be in a confined space with a .223 wielding Adam) weapons jams and blockages.

Also, why leave some website activity such as his postings on Glock talk intact whilst trying in 2009 (alas in vain) to remove something as trivial as his 2draw picture of “an elder crying over a nuclear explosion” that he uploaded in 2005? I just think, personally that we need to drop the pre-conceived notion of Adam being a omniscient entity who presumed our interest in him, leading to his deliberate attempts to leave us questioning him and his motives and instead; look at him for what he really was.

A lonely, depressed, suicidal misanthrope who couldn’t care less for anyone else alive, let alone those who MIGHT potentially be interested in his life post attack...

But that’s my two cents... (or more like $20...)

I'm posting here since the other thread with new Adam Lanza photos is currently locked and will soon be deleted, and didn't feel like starting a whole other thread just to discuss them.

Needless to say, don't post them here, and if you haven't seen them just search for them on Tumblr. Not sure if it's okay to say, but "cryinghampster" was the one who got the photos released through a freedom of information act or something similar. If it's not okay please edit the name out, I'm sure it's easy enough to find otherwise.

That being said, wow. It's interesting to finally see some more photos of adult Adam. We had the driver's license photos, which I believe were from 2010, and as far as I'm aware, the only other photos of him from that year.

Also as far as I can tell, the other two photos of Adam holding the guns to his head (again, don't post 'em here) were from a similar timeframe. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, the photo of him standing in the doorway with the khaki/cream colored get-up, holding the two rifles, I was quite shocked to see.

Some fairly superficial observations but his hair looks a lot different than in most other photos. It usually looks meticulously combed, apart from maybe a few when he was a child and the one from 2005 when he was in the Catholic middle school (waving at the camera in a blue shirt, my avatar).

I wonder if, like Ryan, he was maybe starting to lose his hair. It's hard to tell in that photo, but the bangs/fringe look kind of thin. Maybe it's just messy, or maybe he hadn't washed his hair that day (although Adam was a stickler for hygiene so I find that hard to believe).

The other two photos, the crouching/gun ones, his hair looks well combed, but maybe slightly thin at the front. Again I'm not sure. I remember reading in one of the autopsy, or reports finding his body, it described his hair as "wispy and light brown" so take that as you will.

I imagine if that were the case it would have no doubt contributed to Adam's self esteem issues. But also worth noting is his BMI was incredibly low and he was most likely anorexic, so maybe his hair was thinning due to that also.

Regardless it's always interesting to see new Adam stuff come out after so long. Damn, it's closing in on been 7 years since it happened. Where does the time go?

Also interesting to see him in the grey hoodie and slightly darker khaki pants, that look way to big as he's had to roll them up quite a few times at the bottom, and they look baggy as all hell. The hoodie looks slightly big, but not as much as the pants.

One last observation, it looks like Adam has some very mild acne in the photo of him in the doorway in the cream/khaki get up holding the rifles. His hair looks shorter than most other photos, but one length all over, instead of the other photos where it's like a longer bowl cut or longer on top and shorter at the back and sides. In that photo he almost reminds me of T.J. Lane looks wise, which is never good...

I'm starting to wonder whether that "Soon..." photo people always said was Adam is actually him. I never believed it was, but now I wonder...

Yogananda wrote:

TL;DR Adam considered leaving behind at least some photos, didn’t like how they turned out/their value and forgot about them

A very likely scenario, considering he was probably experiencing some degree of body dysmorphia, in relation to his anorexia. I'm guessing he took some photos, maybe just a few like the one that was posted here a few days ago, but then as you said, didn't like how they turned out and just forgot about them/deleted them.
It is of course not the sole reason, I very much also believe that he did it for the mystery of it, like Columbine. Lack of explanation = more speculation and mystery.

I think Adam was very uncomfortable with people knowing who he is.

I think he was just fascinated by mass murder and as he got more depressed he escaped into the mass murder fantasy, moreso in the last year of his life. He went through a severe depression in the summer of 2012 so this time is probably when he went off the deep end.

Fame means nothing if you’re dead
He thought it to be pointless he didn’t do it for fame

I think Adam thought he would be more of an enigma if he didn't leave a manifesto behind, as the crime had a massive shock factor. If he left too much information about his life behind he could have been seen as cringy like Randy Stair was.

There wasn't much for Adam to leave behind, the way I see it. He was in his room for the majority of his life.
While we had next to nothing in the few years following this case, as of this post we have a timeline of his life from birth to death, documents he wrote, witness testimony, school records, a good chunk of his online posts including his YouTube channels, etc. What more could we want to know about someone who spent their life not doing much of anything?
We have to remember that the only reason why we even know about Lanza is because of a singular action he took, and an action that only lasted approx. 5 mins at that. The rest of his life was extremely unremarkable, as well as indistinguishable from the lives of other lonely burnouts all across the Western World.
I think the only reason why he still has this mythological, legendary status isn't because we know nothing about him, but because there's zero records of "humanizing" -- for lack of a better word -- aspects released about his case. There's no CCTV footage of him inside the school, and no pictures of his body has been released yet, so to many it might as well be like a ghost was the one who shot it up, at least many think like this on a subconscious level.

All of this considered, I still think he did leave something behind. Why didn't he delete his videos or YouTube channel after he attempted to cleanse all of his other accounts and hard drive? Assuming he wasn't stupid and didn't lose the log in info or just forget to delete it, then he must've left it up on purpose. IMO, his CulutralPhilistine videos really tells you all you need to know about his worldview. I doubt that he recorded it with the intention that it was going to be a manifesto, but perhaps he left it up to fulfil that role, thinking that the authorities would release it once they found it or the public would pick up on it sooner. I guess it just eluded the investigators for a long enough time, unless they knew it and didn't say anything. Also, 2011-2014 YouTube was about 65% videos of people talking into their potato mics about their edgy opinions, his content didn't stick out, so perhaps that's why it took so long for people to find it and put two and two together.

I doubt it was a desire for fame, rather, a desire to strike at an institution he regarded as poisonous to the kids he killed.