Jillian Soto planned the day for months. It was the third annual race in honor of her sister Vicki Soto, a teacher gunned down at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, three years earlier. Thousands of people came out to run the November race and raise money for scholarships. The roads were dotted with pink flamingos, Vicki's favorite bird. "People were sitting on the ground afterward, enjoying cupcakes," Jillian recalls. A man approached, wearing a T-shirt that said Team Vicki. But he was not on the team.

He began taking a cell-phone video of Jillian and said he had some questions. He held up a copy of a photo he had found online. It was a picture of Vicki and her three siblings on a sunny Easter Sunday. "I knew right then and there that he was one of those people: a truther," Jillian says. In other words, a conspiracy theorist who believes that the shooting was an elaborate hoax.

So-called gun truthers, or hoaxers, believe that mass killings, such as the one at Sandy Hook, were organized by the government to promote more restrictive gun laws. Some believe that no one died and actors played the parts of victims and grieving relatives. They call the events false flags, a military term for covert operations designed to deceive.

Jillian Soto lost her sister Vicki Soto in the Sandy Hook massacre. Then she was confronted by a man who claims she invented it. Christopher Wahl

As hard to believe as the theories may sound, they have caught fire on blogs, talk radio, and social media. Increasingly, the families of gun-violence victims, already reeling from the loss of their loved ones, are reporting being subjected to a wave of surreal harassment.

Jillian tried to stay calm when confronted. She sent her young cousins to play in the kids' tent, then suggested she and the man find a private place to talk. Her plan was to walk with him to the main tent, where she could seek support from family and friends. "He was asking why I was pretending my sister existed," she says. "He said the picture was Photoshopped." As they approached the tent, the man realized something was up, and he fled. Jillian followed him, demanding he give her the photo, screaming, "How dare you? You have my sister's shirt on!"

Her younger sister came and pulled her back. Police on hand for the event approached, and the man ran from them, according to police reports, until a squad car caught up with him. He was arrested and charged with breach of peace and interfering with an officer. Identified as Matthew Mills, he agreed to a plea deal in April that found him guilty of interfering with an officer, although he did not admit guilt. He received a one-year sentence, to be suspended if he stays out of trouble for two years and has no contact with the Soto family. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

"Never did I ever think that people could truly think things like Sandy Hook didn't happen," says Jillian. Now 27, the same age as Vicki when she died, she is a junior in college, studying psychology. When she lifts her sleeve, she reveals a tattoo on her inner arm, a playful note her sister had once written to her on a birthday card: "Love you always, actually, sometimes."

Vicki felt the urge to teach so strongly, Jillian says, she began collecting children's books in high school for her future students. She was a first-grade teacher at Sandy Hook when she was killed in December 2012 along with 20 students, all 6 and 7 years old, and five other adults. "She gave her life to protect those kids, and I didn't expect anything less out of her," her sister says. "Her kids were her world."

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The first time Jillian was confronted by a conspiracy theorist in person, she was in class in college, not long after her sister's funeral. The professor asked the students to introduce themselves. When Jillian did, someone asked if she was Vicki's sister. "I said that I was. I just wanted to leave it there," she says. But another student had something to say: "He stood up and went into this rant about how I was a paid actress and that Sandy Hook never happened and that my sister didn't really exist." It was so jarring, she left the room, then dropped the class.

The family has been fending off attacks ever since. Blogs such as SandyHookHoax and NoDisInfo dissect family photos, deeming them a fraud. A YouTube video claims to have spotted Vicki alive at a concert. Tweets come in regularly to family members, saying they should be "put on the stand under oath." Fake accounts such as @JillianLucifer25 — Jillian's account is @JillianLouise25 — have impersonated the family. Jillian was once confronted in a Dunkin' Donuts. Her younger sister's home address was posted online. "People ask us to prove that Vicki is dead," Jillian says. "They want to see the autopsy report."

Social-media consultant Ryan Graney saw the onslaught and volunteered to help. So far, she says she has blocked some 300 Twitter accounts from the Team Vicki Soto Twitter account, which the family maintains to inform supporters of events. She also tries to vanquish the fake accounts — making Graney, too, a target of conspiratorial bloggers, with one site calling her a Mossad agent. Web hosts aren't generally required to remove such content absent a court order, says David Levine, associate professor at Elon University School of Law and affiliate scholar at the Center for Internet and Society. "The Communications Decency Act would protect a speech platform from liability for merely hosting defamatory speech," he says. There have been several attempts to revise the act to expand liability, but none have succeeded.

A Twitter spokesperson said that the site prohibits "targeted harassment, impersonation, and posting other people's private information" and "when this type of content is reported to us, we will remove it and suspend the account." But Graney says that hasn't always been her experience. She says Twitter is slow to respond to reports of abuse. She once sent 15 reports in a day about a repeat offender who had set up a fresh account to impersonate Vicki. She is now trying to trademark Vicki Soto's name, in the hopes that it will help her get abusive posts removed.

Chris Hurst lost his girlfriend, Alison Parker, in the televised shooting near Roanoke, Virginia. Christopher Wahl

Tens of thousands of people witnessed the murder of television reporter and anchor Alison Parker and a cameraman colleague last summer. The shooting unfolded on live TV, and the gunman posted a video of his crime online before killing himself. Chris Hurst, Alison's boyfriend and a news anchor who worked with her at the CBS affiliate in Roanoke, Virginia, appeared on the national news that night along with her father.

They wanted to focus attention on Alison, not the killer, Chris says. "I needed to share with the world how much in love she was, how fierce and tenacious of a journalist she was, how promising her career had already become." Alison had just celebrated her 24th birthday, taking a weekend trip with Chris to go white-water rafting in North Carolina. While there, she window-shopped bridal boutiques. Chris had given her a promise ring days earlier.

After Chris appeared on the news, he got blasted on social media. "The comments began to pour in, saying it was a hoax," he says. Blogs like BeforeItsNews zoomed in on his description of the relationship as "white-hot." Says Chris, "They thought that was a very curious way to describe the relationship. I said it purposefully, with all that it entails. We were intensely in love with each other." He also received death threats, which he says police vetted and addressed. Disparaging messages on Facebook claimed Alison was living in Israel, where she had undergone facial-reconstructive surgery. One recent note: "Well, look who it is, the false-flag hoax crisis actor. You're not even a good actor, you fucking filthy bastard. You fucking conspired a lie to the American people — how you feel about that?"

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People continually send him videos of the shooting, demanding that he answer questions. He doesn't watch them, but images are often embedded in the messages, and he has seen some graphic things he did not want to see. "She was shot a few times while she was running away," he says, his voice breaking. "I learned that detail after they confronted me with those videos. People asked me how she could have been shot so many times before she would fall. My feeling on it now is: You're damn right she didn't go down after the first bullet. She was way stronger than any of these people."

Especially confounding is the fact that some people in his own social circles are seduced by the theories. "So many of my friends and Alison's friends have been approached by their friends saying, 'Hey, I saw this thing on Facebook that says that what happened to Alison was all fake. Is there any truth to that?'"

Alison's father, Andy Parker, came under fire as well. After the shooting, his YouTube page got bombarded with "vile and ugly" comments, he says. He had used the page to post videos of his kayaking trips and of his daughter's childhood ballet recitals, like one of his favorites: Alison in sixth grade, dancing Waltz of the Flowers. "She was the youngest dancer in the history of that studio to get en pointe," he says. "I cried when I watched her then. I cry when I watch it now." He "locked down" the page, he says, making it private. But the insults continued online. Andy had once worked as an actor, so blogs used that fact to question whether he has been hired by the government to fake his grief.

Andy and his wife, Barbara Parker, try to block it all out. They recently visited Paris, a city Alison adored. They left pewter charms — a heart, a peace sign, a globe — in special corners of the city. "We will do that everywhere we go, for the rest of our lives," Barbara says.

Sandy Anglin Phillips lost her daughter, Jessica Redfield Ghawi, in the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado. Christopher Wahl

What would drive someone to confront grieving families? According to Joseph Uscinski, a University of Miami professor and coauthor of American Conspiracy Theories, "They're true believers, acting on their beliefs." Some people are naturally predisposed to "see the world as a product of conspiracy," he says, whether it's the theory that Elvis Presley faked his death or that the CIA killed John F. Kennedy. Indeed, the man who confronted Jillian Soto once interrupted a Super Bowl press conference, grabbing the microphone to say that the 9/11 attack "was perpetrated by people within our own government."

The so-called truthers aren't all anonymous bloggers. Some hold prominent positions. James Tracy was a professor at Florida Atlantic University when he questioned on his blog, Memory Hole, whether the Sandy Hook shooting was staged. His theories gained attention in part because the parents of a 6-year-old victim, Noah Pozner, wrote a newspaper essay accusing Tracy of tormenting their family. The university fired Tracy, citing his failure to submit forms detailing outside activities that might be perceived as a conflict of interest, including the blog. Tracy has filed a lawsuit against the university and others, alleging that the firing violated his right to free speech.

Alex Jones, who publishes the site InfoWars and reaches millions of listeners with his radio show, syndicated by Genesis Communications Network, has also suggested that the government was behind high-profile shootings and other events. Among them: the killing of 12 people at a movie theater showing The Dark Knight Rises in Aurora, Colorado, in July 2012.

Sandy Anglin Phillips lost a child in that shooting. Her 24-year-old daughter, Jessica Redfield Ghawi, was a senior in college, planning to pursue a career as a sportscaster, when she was shot six times. Jessi, as her mom calls her, had been excited for a big job interview set for the next day. Sandy and her husband, Lonnie Phillips, were later confronted by Alex Jones at a gun-safety event in Texas, hosted by the group Moms Demand Action.

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Jones had come from a nearby rally in support of open-carry laws, where he wore a rifle strapped to his back. He approached people at the moms' event to argue about gun laws. When Lonnie said he had lost his daughter in Aurora, things got heated. Jones accused the couple of being paid by President Obama, Sandy recalls. "I was very close to tears because I was so angry," she says. "I was just like, Oh my god, what is wrong with you? How can you do this to people? It's cruel." InfoWars ran a video of snippets from the incident, calling it "Gun Control Useful Idiots Are Losing." Representatives for Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

Other sites call Sandy's daughter "the ultimate fake" and a criminal and scam artist who is now living it up somewhere, perhaps in the Bahamas. "When people are attacking your dead loved one who cannot fight back, it's devastating," says Sandy, now a gun-safety activist who travels the country in a Winnebago to speak at events. "The pain of losing someone gets deeper and deeper, and then you have to fight this too."

When people are attacking your dead loved one who cannot fight back, it's devastating.

Targets of hoaxers have little recourse. The First Amendment protects the right to free speech, even if it's "offensive and controversial," says Lee Rowland, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. The law also "protects your right to speak ill of the dead," she says. What's not legal: threats that put people in fear for their physical safety. Families could sue for defamation, but those cases can be hard to win because people have to prove that someone "knowingly told a falsehood," says Rowland, and conspiracy theorists believe their claims are true.

Noah Pozner's father has started a site, HONR.com, to offer support and advice to families targeted by conspiracy theorists. Jillian Soto says the need is acute. "We have to help these families," she says.

At a recent hearing for Matthew Mills, Jillian sat quietly, hands in her lap, in a busy courtroom in Bridgeport, Connecticut, waiting to face down the man who says her sister did not exist. "Enough is enough. I need to stand for my family," she says. "Everybody's entitled to their opinions. You want to think this is all a conspiracy? That's fine. But you also have to respect me."

Even after the resolution of the case, Jillian says, "I believe Mills thinks this is a lie, a joke. I wish he could stop and at least see that the tears are real. The videos I watch from my childhood of the four of us mean that I will never have my complete family again. I wish it were fake. I wish I would wake tomorrow and find out this is all a dream. But for the past three years, four months, 12 days, it hasn't been a dream. It's real. It's my new real life."

This article was originally published as "Three Young Women Were Killed In Random Shootings. Why Are Strangers Accusing Their Families of Making It All Up?" in the July 2016 issue of Cosmopolitan.

Abigail Pesta Abigail Pesta is an award-winning journalist who has lived and worked around the world, from London to Hong Kong.

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