Report: Conn. shooter kept mass-murder 'score sheet'

Doug Stanglin, USA TODAY | USATODAY

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.

Dewey Cornell, director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project, says .Lanza appears to fit a class of mass murder involving a type of severe mental illness that may be vulnerable to media influences from movies, to news coverage of other slayings.

Those media images "becomes incorporated into their delusion," he says.

"The Virginia Tech shooter admired the Columbine shooters and thought he was doing something heroic and noble to follow in their footsteps," Cornell says.

Contributing: Donna Leinwand Leger and Liz Szabo, USA TODAY