Newtown school shooter Adam Lanza’s father Peter is a guilt- and grief-wracked “broken” man who still can’t deal with the unspeakable atrocity perpetrated by his deranged son, a relative said. Peter, saw him regularly until he was 18, the official report on the tragic affair said. They went hiking and played video games, and went shooting twice. Adam had a cellphone but never used it. His father had to contact him by e-mail, but had lost contact with Adam two years before the 20 year old fatally shot his mother Nancy and massacred 20 first-graders and six staffers at Sandy Hook School on Dec. 14, 2012.
Peter and ex wife Nancy had split in 2001 and later divorced, leaving Nancy with sole custody of Adam.
“Peter is a changed man. He’s broken. How can you ever begin to try and deal with that? It’s just impossible,” his sister-in-law, Marsha Lanza, told reporters.
Peter Lanza, 55, can hardly talk about the mass murder, Marhsa said from her home in Crystal Lake, Ill.
“Peter has only spoken about it to a very, very small number of people including my husband Michael, his brother, as they are very close. It’s still too much even for Michael and sometimes he tells me not to ask about it,” she said.
Lanza has managed to avoid the media’s glare since the Sandy Hook massacre in December. He has lived in the Bartina Lane home owned by his second wife, Shelley Cudiner, for about five years. At the time of the shooting, he was a vice president of taxes at GE Energy Financial Services. Cudiner is a librarian at the University of Connecticut. He and his present wife have since put up their home for sale.
In the days after the massacre, Peter Lanza released a public statement, in which he said his family’s “hearts go out to the families and friends who lost loved ones and to all those who were injured,” and that he too was “asking why” such a tragedy could have happened.
