As with every tragedy that takes place in America in recent decades, it didn’t take long for “truthers,” racists, and other freaks, idiots, and assholes to concoct conspiracy theories about the Sandy Hook massacre. Myths that would be laughable if they weren’t so ghoulish and offensive.

I originally wasn’t going to debunk the ludicrous Sandy Hook conspiracy theories. I didn’t want to give them any unwarranted attention. But given that I have a platform (however small) to help others from falling for these sick theories, I went ahead and tried thus hopefully preventing them from being unjustly spread further. And that can’t be a bad thing.

Here I’ll detail and debunk some of the main talking points that conspiracy theorists use to “prove” that Sandy Hook didn’t happen or that it was staged in advance by the government for some hidden agenda.

Firstly though I need to point out that there are dozens of different Sandy Hook conspiracy theories discussing and presenting a wide range of different stories. Most conspiracy theorists contradict each other and no one theory has as of yet seen any substantial following. Various theories range duping Americans into accepting a United Nations weapons treaty that will rob them of their gun rights, other plots to restrict or revoke gun rights, secret Israeli hit squads (anti-Semitism almost always finds a way in), the Illuminati, the Freemasons, multiple shooters, the anti-Christ (most of the time Barak Obama), The Hunger Games (Author Suzanne Collins lives in Newtown, Connecticut), and Satan worshippers. Many of these theories I’m not going to go into detail on, because there really is no point, but I will address many of the more popular talking points.

Like many conspiracy theories, the myths of Newtown begin with a grain of truth and grow by way of a series of honest mistakes, unconfirmed rumors, and deliberate fantasy, then evolve into a kind of narrowly accepted allegation of some evil globe-spanning plot. The idea of “one world government” encroachment via the small weapons treaty is a popular fear, but one that’s been thoroughly debunked in the past. The treaty is real, but hasn’t been written yet, will never be ratified by the Senate, and has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.

Conspiracy Theory: There are websites in Google that discuss the massacre before the shooting even took place!

The assertion is that there are websites on the Internet clearly marked by Google as being published before the date of the shooting.

I’ll start here because this is the easiest to debunk. Google timestamps are incredibly inaccurate, especially when dealing with pages that use dynamic content – what I mean by this is the dates next to the search results do not accurately reflect the date that webpage was created. The easiest way to debunk this theory is to test it yourself. Go to Google.com and type in “Sandy Hook Massacre” and use Google’s Advanced Search to search only between the dates Jan 1 2012 and Dec 10 2012; you will see thousands of results related to the massacre, dating as far back as January.

Or you can just click this link which hyperlinks to a search that shows the same thing.

Conspiracy Theory: Emilie Parker can be seen sitting on President Obama’s lap after the shooting, even though she was one of the victims.

One of the sicker yet most popular talking points is that victim Emilie Parker can be seen sitting on President Obama’s lap after the shooting. Conspiracy theorists claim that the killing of Emilie Parker was staged.

Quite simply, this is not Emilie. Rather it’s her younger sister Madeline, who closely resembles Emilie, them being sisters and all. The photo below is the one used by conspiracy theorists, who used the fact that Madeline is wearing an identical dress (most likely the same dress) Emilie wore in a previous family photo a year or so prior.

And this photo below is said family photo. As you can clearly see using the comparison below that the girl on Obama’s lap is Madeline, not Emilie. The assertion that not only Emilie’s death was staged but she was then later seen posing for Whitehouse photos after she supposedly died is as preposterous as it is offensive.

Conspiracy Theory: Police can be seen on video arresting a second man, thus proving multiple shooters.

Much of the “second shooter” speculation was spurred by a man who was detained and released after being spotted in the woods outside the school. Numerous witnesses and TV stations reported seeing a man handcuffed and placed in a police car that morning. After he was interviewed and released, police moved on to other matters but the record was never fully cleared up and the event got lost in the larger story, leading many to believe the arrest was being actively suppressed.

It took a bit of digging to discover what others had figured out, that the man in question was Chris Manfredonia, the father of a Sandy Hook student, who attempted to sneak into the school after the shooting started. Police can be heard relaying his name over their radios, but few outlets managed to follow up with that detail.

Conspiracy Theory: Crisis actors played grieving parents, law enforcement officials, witnesses and media personnel.

This is one of the most absurd allegations and a key component holding many of the more popular theories together. This is a difficult claim to debunk considering conspiracy theorists don’t provide any actual evidence of this to be true. So instead of debunking non-existent evidence we have to rely on common sense and logic.

Many YouTube videos and websites have claimed that such actors have been inserted into Newtown to help convince viewers that Sandy Hook happened the way it was reported. However of all the reports we have seen the “evidence” of this is demonstrated merely by comparing photos of the parents/law enforcement officials/witnesses with photos of other people taken elsewhere who have vague similarities in order to come to the conclusion that they must be the same person and thus in actuality a crisis actor. This method of reasoning is absurd. If you look through enough photos of people you will inevitably find photos of others who look similar to the people involved with Sandy Hook. This does not mean you have found a photo of the same person. Some videos even resort to finding these lookalikes from America’s Funniest Videos.

I can only really highlight how illogical this theory is. This theory relies on the assumption that these actors are inserted into the scene to play out certain roles without anyone from the public realizing what is going on. One popular example claims that Nick and Laura Phelps (parents of 2 children at Sandy Hook) were portrayed by actors. Of course for this to work it would involve families, friends and people who work at the school to keep quiet to the fact that they did not know who these “actors” were and thus exposing the truth. Other crisis actor theories suffer the same illogical downfall. For example the students who gave eye witness accounts were also accused by conspiracy theorists to be actors.

Conspiracy Theory: Many of the parents display a lack of visible grief.

This point certainly wins the prize of most ignorant and narrow minded. Anyone who has been around people who are in the grieving process will explain that there is no one way – or correct way – to grieve and people display grief in many different ways. Some parents of Sandy Hook appear more upset than others during TV appearances.

These vile claims in particular highlight how twisted, ignorant and narrow-minded some of these conspiracy theorists can be and we have seen firsthand some sick and frankly bizarre posts made by individuals who question the “lack of tears” and composure of certain grieving parents and (even more bizarrely) try to claim that this is proof that they are crisis actors, not grieving parents.

Conspiracy Theory:  Sandy Hook was staged as a cover up to the LIBOR scandal.

This assertion claims that Peter Lanza, Adam Lanzas father, was involved with the LIBOR scandal and was about to give testimony to the US Senate committee. Snopes.com notes that the company Peter Lanza works for is not involved with the LIBOR scandal and he was not scheduled to give any testimony. Also conspiracy theorists have not provided any documentation that suggests Peter Lanza was due to give any testimony.

Snopes.com Link here.

Conspiracy Theory: The name Sandy Hook appeared in The Dark Knight Rises.

While it is true that the name Sandy Hook does appear on a map seen in the new Batman move The Dark Knight Rises, this isn’t evidence that Sandy Hook was a staged or planned event.

The south part of Gotham, near the sports stadium has been named Sandy Hook in what appears to be a creepy coincidence. If Sandy Hook was staged, why would the Powers That Be plant the town name in a Hollywood movie? What would this achieve? Further claims that the term Aurora also appeared in the movie are false. A building with the lights Aurora can however be seen in the movie Skyfall.

Conspiracy Theory: The principle was interviewed by the Newtown Bee after she was killed.

This was a mistake. The Newtown Bee offered a retraction and apology here.

Conspiracy Theory: There are inconsistencies in the media report surrounding details of what happened.

When breaking news occurs and competing news channels rush to gather the facts and break the news as soon as they can, mistakes will be made. It is an inevitability and occurs in almost every major breaking news story. Sandy Hook has probably got more than its fair share of mistakes, that include the identity of the shooter (initially identified as Ryan Lanza, the shooters brother) the weapons used in the shooting (discrepancies with automatic weapons, shotguns and rifles) and which classes the victims belonged to (some accounts claimed all of Victoria Soto’s class died, others claimed she managed to save her students).

In the case of Sandy Hook you have competing news channels aiming to be the first to break the details, and for the most part the only people they can initially acquire details from is people in a very emotive, panicked state, meaning much of the early information that gets published on the media is going to be inaccurate. The fact that there are inconsistencies in the early reporting proves nothing other than people didn’t immediately know exactly what had happened.

To imply these inconsistencies somehow show that Sandy Hook never happened is simply irrational. If Sandy Hook was a staged event, or if it was pre-planned by the government then why would these inconsistencies exist in the first place? It seems less likely for these inconsistencies or mistakes to occur if the event was planned in advance. One could argue (and conspiracy theorists probably would argue this) that it would be more suspicious that given the circumstances there were no inconsistencies, discrepancies or mistakes made. That everything went perfectly, just as if it were scripted.

While there are still questions that need to be answered, the primary components to most of these conspiracy theories are easily “debunkable” or are so irrational and illogical that they border on lunacy (Newtown is not full of Satan worshippers) When you are left with the inconsistencies that do still need answering you are not left with a massive government cover-up and conspiracy, rather just an example of sloppy mainstream media reporting and natural human error.

Conspiracy theorists will always be conspiracy theorists. There are some questions that need answering, and when they are answered these theorists will just see it as the government covering up the cover-up, but then again if they leave the questions unanswered the theorists will derive the same conclusions. Conspiracy theorists will always be conspiracy theorists.

For many of the “believers” attempts to correct misinformation are merely proof of the larger cover up. This new strain of conspiracy mongering has its roots in the September 11 “truther” movement, but goes back much further than that, to the most ancient forms of racism and anti-Semitim and an almost mystical belief that there are forces beyond our control that can also be conveniently blamed for all our troubles.

While I am a strong supporter of independent thought and not relying on blind faith these conspiracy theories are nothing but irrational, unreasonable, illogical and deeply offensive to anyone affected by the massacre.

I will try to continue to update this page pending further investigation and when more facts come to light, so remember to check back.

*Update: 24 January:

Conspiracy Theory: There are no records of Gene Rosen in Sandy Hook, proving he is an actor – furthermore he is a member of the Screen Actors Guild

The search that claimed he was a member of the Screen Actors Guild was done on Intellius, which is notoriously inaccurate. Searching for Gene Rosen in Connecticut does show a result for a person who attended the Screen Actors Guild – however this person is the incorrect age (62, when Gene Rosen is 69) and there is no indication that this person lived in Sandy Hook. Typing in Eugene Rosen (Gene is short for Eugene) then you can retrieve a correct result – a 69 year old man who lives in Sandy Hook.
The record can be seen here.

Sadly Gene Rosen has been the target for harassment by “truther” conspiracy theorists since the shooting.

Conspiracy Theory: There weren’t any (or little) ambulances or other emergency vehicles at the scene, as well as no (or little) photos of evacuated students at the scene.

This point again is very easy to debunk. Simply doing a Google search provides ample images of both dozens of emergency vehicles at the scene, as well as multiple photos of students being reunited with parents at the firehouse staging area. For many of these photos you can check this NewsTimes.com article.