Reports: Adam Lanza Smashed His Hard Drive Before Spree
Source: Slate
By Josh Voorhees | Posted Tuesday, Dec. 18, 2012, at 10:21 AM ET
As authorities continue to search for Adam Lanza's motive, it looks like they might not be able to rely on the 20-year-old's hard drive for help. Police tell multiple media outlets that someonepresumably Lanza himselfdid his best to destroy his hard drive at some point before Friday's shootings that killed 20 children, six elementary school staff members and his mother.
The Hartford Courant with the details:
Two law enforcement sources said the hard drive had been removed from Lanza's computer and broken in pieces. They said that forensic electronics experts at the FBI will examine the drive in an effort to determine with whom Lanza corresponded electronically and how he otherwise used the device. One of the sources said that Lanza used the computer to play a violent video game in which life-like characters engage in graphic battle scenes.
Sources told ABC News, meanwhile, that the hard drive appeared to have been damaged by a hammer or screw driver.
Forensic experts don't yet know whether they'll be able to recover the lost files or not, although from the sounds of it they are cautiously optimistic that they'll be able to salvage at least some of the digital information. Given Lanza's apparent lack of an online presence, authorities hope that the hard drive's files, if recovered, will provide crucial details into Lanza's life and mental state in the lead up to Friday's tragic school shooting.
Read more: http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2012/12/18/adam_lanza_s_hard_drive_shooter_reportedly_covered_his_digital_tracks_before.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr:content
Huskeerdo
(1 post)hrmjustin
(71,265 posts)hedgehog
(36,286 posts)some sort of altercation with school officials in the days before the shooting?
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)BeyondGeography
(39,384 posts)kooljerk666
(776 posts)ReRe
(10,597 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)They indicate "examing the hard drive" but not " examining all his past emails for the last 8 years".
sadly, when the FBI DOES announce it has "recovered" some e-mail information, they will again NOT mention the spy files
but
very soon now some mouth piece will blare a reason for MORE overt computer tracking "because the Lawton shooter destroyed his hard drive to prevent vital information from being used by FBI"
tj_crackersnatch
(82 posts)Creepy. Are nerdy, introverted young men the new threat?
maxsolomon
(33,419 posts)Alienated is.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)maxsolomon
(33,419 posts)lots of them are simply Schizophrenic - including the recent Cafe Racer killer here in Seattle, and the quadruple cop-killer in Lacey, WA, the Giffords shooter, the Aurora shooter.
do you think that society consciously tries to alienate introverted young men?
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)Really? I don't feel alienated at all...
Maybe that's simply an excuse many of the nerdy and introverted use to better validate a conscious dismissal of social skills-- which is precisely what I did in my early teen years: blamed everyone else rather than addressing my lack of social skills and working on them. If you try, it works...
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I was doing fine, married for thirty years, kid, grandkids, home with white picket fence, the whole nine yards until the economy and my own brain stabbed me in the back about nine years ago.
Thanks for your advice though, the Horatio Alger school of psychiatry is an old and respected one indeed.
Scairp
(2,749 posts)That's the way I see it anyway. The adults just seemed to get in his way. I don't think we will ever know what made him target that school and those kids. They said he never attended there at all, had no known connection to that school in any way. It will never make sense and we need to accept that, if we can.
Posteritatis
(18,807 posts)maxsolomon
(33,419 posts)He was smart, he was genetically damaged, he was angry, hurt, humiliated, resentful, and wanted to lash out at the world, to make it hurt like he hurt, to make it remember his name and what it made him do. He wanted to kill himself in such a way that he would be infamous as the worst, most callous killer in mass killing history.
Mission accomplished.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)they have read or heard about previous mass shootings. When Holmes did his deed in the movie theater in July, did Adam Lanza react in any way? Did he ever talk about Columbine, or Virginia Tech, with friends or family? I would think their reactions to such big news events would be very telling in terms of their mental/emotional state and capability for doing something similar.
Auntie Bush
(17,528 posts)He didn't get along with his mother so he had no one to talk too.
obamanut2012
(26,154 posts)rrneck
(17,671 posts)patrice
(47,992 posts)Nevernose
(13,081 posts)Family friends describe him as politically knowledgable for his age, and extremely politically conservative.
slackmaster
(60,567 posts)Chilling.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Shivering Jemmy
(900 posts)to inflict maximum damage.
patrice
(47,992 posts)sir pball
(4,761 posts)Dunno what game he was playing, but in a lot of them, body armor provides a blanket layer of "extra life" no matter what - somebody with a knowledge of guns would realize that it's at best limited protection, even if you do take a round in the armor it's generally pretty unpleasant and potentially incapacitating (like a beanbag from a shotgun), and most of your body isn't protected. Not to say that knowing that would keep him from wearing it, just saying the perception could be vastly different from the reality.
JHB
(37,163 posts)...but Lanza did, or gained access to one his mother had.
Either way, it's still so much hot air. Recall that at this stage after Columbine, the talk was still all about trench coats, goths, bullying, cliques, etc. In the end, none of that was really a factor.
Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)NT
JHB
(37,163 posts)Harris, a senior, read voraciously and got good grades when he tried, pleasing his teachers with dazzling prose then writing in his journal about killing thousands.
***
Klebold, on the other hand, was anxious and lovelorn, summing up his life at one point in his journal as "the most miserable existence in the history of time," Langman notes. Harris drew swastikas in his journal; Klebold drew hearts. As laid out in their writings, the contrast between the two was stark.
Harris seemed to feel superior to everyone he once wrote, "I feel like God and I wish I was, having everyone being OFFICIALLY lower than me" while Klebold was suicidally depressed and getting angrier all the time. "Me is a god, a god of sadness," he wrote in September 1997, around his 16th birthday.
See also the book Columbine by Dave Cullen (who is one of the sources to the article at the link), and other sources to be found on a Google search.
patrice
(47,992 posts)associated with the guns and an accessory related to planning associated with those big magazines, for his chances of actually using those magazines would be increased by the vest.
Shivering Jemmy
(900 posts)I can't assign probabilities with zero evidence.
patrice
(47,992 posts)orient information seeking in pursuit of what could turn out to be evidence.
obamanut2012
(26,154 posts)Much harder for a headshot to be accurate than a center of mass shot.
patrice
(47,992 posts)4 more years
(100 posts)They both went to the shooting range from what I read. un stable kid gets schooled on loading and shooting a AK 14 rifle. WTF was she thinking ? Rambo @ age 20 and people ask why?
Eric J in MN
(35,619 posts)Maybe she thought her son would protect her from mobs.
SemperEadem
(8,053 posts)which means that young man wasn't so far out of his mind not to know what he was doing was wrong.
lbrtbell
(2,389 posts)It messes with a person's emotions. So you mix tortured emotions with the mind of an intelligent young man, and here's what you get.
That's why I really don't like it being called "mental illness". It should be "emotional illness" or "mood disorder".
patrice
(47,992 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)It did put me in mind of an old movie called "Bad Seed"
or maybe it was a tv show.
patrice
(47,992 posts)that! It's an excellent rather detailed description, case study almost, of the issues in terms of the science that addresses this question. Does a lot of comparison and contrast stuff about the variations between ADHD etc. and full-blown psychosis, what they call CU (callous-unemotional) children. One of the best things I have read in a long time AND written by a relatively new comer there at the Times, Jennifer Kahn.
I registered to the NY Times some years ago and that registration has always just followed me from computer to computer, because I've never changed the email associated with it, so I forget, when I post that others, who can't or don't register for whatever reason, don't get to read this stuff. It's a free registration, btw.
I looked for a download, but can't find one. I wonder what would happen if I tried to copy & past, as long as I retain the attribution?
dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)then often one can paste the headline into Google and get a cached copy of the story in the NY times, no log in needed.
I often do it that way to avoid havnig to register for sites.
patrice
(47,992 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)from my DSM 4....most definitions of disorders are age related, don't remember at this point what definition is for a 9 year old who shows symptoms for psychopathy.
Plus, the symptoms for sociopathy and psychopathy are fairly close to each other.
Do I think a 9 year kid can demonstrate a lack of consicience and disregard for the feelings of other people?
Yep.
But then, so can most politicians and Wall St. types.
patrice
(47,992 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)SemperEadem
(8,053 posts)"he wasn't "'so far out of his mind'".
patrice
(47,992 posts)be important.
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)If this was a rotating disk hard drive, and he did not crack the casing to get to the platters, it will be no problem to get the data off of them.
If it was solid state and he broke chips on the device, it may be difficult.
patrice
(47,992 posts)Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)Randomly smashing them may cause short circuits that cause problems, I don't know.
sir pball
(4,761 posts)I wouldn't be surprised if he just emptied a magazine into the drive. That would make it beyond "difficult".
Atypical Liberal
(5,412 posts)But initial reports were that he used a hammer or screwdriver.
yellowcanine
(35,701 posts)First it has to be found and if it is ever found any data would likely be irretrievable.
high density
(13,397 posts)It wipes the drive and rewrites garbage over it multiple times, preventing forensic data recovery.
kentauros
(29,414 posts)I've read of them being able to recover data even from drives that have been partially destroyed by fire, or "wiped" by software. I don't know about 'dban' but would guess that unless you pull each platter out and feed it into an industrial grinder and then set fire to the bits, that someone somewhere knows how to retrieve the data anyway.
Xithras
(16,191 posts)We already know that the guy was mentally unbalanced. What if he went off after his mother found kiddie porn or something on his computer? It might explain why he killed his mother, why he smashed the drive, AND why he targeted small children in his shooting spree (it's relatively common for the more deranged pedophiles to blame children for "tempting" them).
It's pure speculation at this point, but it makes about as much sense as any other theory.
TwilightGardener
(46,416 posts)hard drive was just to leave zero clues in his wake. I remember someone here showing a 4chan screen shot on the day it happened in which a young man from CT said he was going to commit suicide in a big way and that everyone should watch the news. Maybe he wanted the infamy, but wants his motives to remain a mystery?
Poll_Blind
(23,864 posts)...hard drives quite significant. Physically smashing a hard drive is also a bit difficult. It seems he put quite a bit of effort into that and, I suppose, it stands out because of that.
PB
Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Remember the aircraft pilot and employee that went crazy during the flight? They both had medication side effects.