Mass Murders Captivated Online User Believed To Be Adam Lanza

Who was the Newtown shooter? Watch Raising Adam Lanza, a joint investigation by FRONTLINE and The Hartford Courant into who he was and his relationship with his mother, Nancy. Read The Courant‘s full coverage here.

In posts on gun message boards and gaming chat rooms, a user who authorities believe was Newtown gunman Adam Lanza showed a technical prowess about weapons and computers, a “fetish” for a certain bullet and a near-fixation with correcting Wikipedia articles about mass killers.

He would have been 17 years old at the time of the posts, which are being examined by investigative agencies. The posts linked to Lanza reflect his interests and thoughts, publicly revealed for the first time in the killer’s own words.

Although Lanza did not use his name, investigators linked the poster’s user name to Lanza, according to sources familiar with the probe of the Dec. 14 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The same user name appears in the Wikipedia edits, discovered by The Courant. A Wikipedia spokesman said the website could not identify the poster, citing privacy policies. Investigators are now looking into whether the same person did the Wikipedia editing.

The Courant, which is not revealing the user name, reviewed several dozen posts written from April 2009 to February 2010.

Read the full story here.