2. Early indications something was wrong: Nobody Died at Sandy Hook

Part I 


Early indications something was wrong.  Medical Examiner: More 
Questions than Answers 

by James F. Tracy, Ph.D. 


“[My staff] and I hope the people of Newtown don't have it crash on their head later."
-Connecticut 
Medical Examiner D. 

Wayne Carver II, MD, 

December 15, 2012 

Inconsistencies and anomalies abound when one turns an analytical eye to 
news of the Newtown school massacre. The public’s general acceptance of the 
event’s validity and faith in its resolution suggest a deepened credulousness 
borne from a world where almost all news and information is electronically 
mediated and controlled. 

The condition is reinforced through the corporate media’s unwillingness 
to push hard questions vis-a-vis Connecticut and federal authorities who 
together bottlenecked information while invoking prior restraint through 
threats of prosecutorial action against journalists and the broader citizenry 
seeking to interpret the event on social media. 

Along these lines on December 19 the Connecticut State Police assigned 
individual personnel to each of the 26 families who lost a loved one at Sandy 
Hook Elementary. “The families have requested no press interviews,” State 
Police assert on their behalf, “and we are asking that this request be honored. 



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James F. Tracy 


[1] The de facto gag order will be in effect until the investigation concludes — 
now forecast to be “several months away” even though lone gunman Adam 
Lanza has been confirmed as the sole culprit. [2] 

With the exception of an unusual and apparently contrived appearance 
by Emilie Parker’s alleged father, victims’ family members have been almost 
wholly absent from public scrutiny. [3] What can be gleaned from this and 
similar coverage raises many more questions and glaring inconsistencies 
than answers. While it sounds like an outrageous claim, one is left to inquire 
whether the Sandy Hook shooting ever took place — at least in the way 
law enforcement authorities and the nation’s news media have described. 

The accidental Medical Examiner 

An especially important yet greatly underreported feature of the Sandy 
Hook affair is the wholly bizarre performance of Connecticut’s top medical 
examiner H. Wayne Carver II at a December 15 press conference. Carver’s 
unusual remarks and behavior warrant close consideration because in light 
of his professional notoriety they appear remarkably amateurish and out of 
character. 

H. Wayne Carver II has an extremely self-assured, almost swaggering 
presence in Connecticut state administration. In early 2012 Carver threatened 
to vacate his position because of state budget cuts and streamlining measures 
that threatened his professional autonomy over the projects and personnel 
he oversaw. 

Along these lines the pathologist has gone to excessive lengths to 
demonstrate his findings and expert opinion in court proceedings. For 
example, in a famous criminal case Carver “put a euthanized pig through a 
wood chipper so jurors could match striations on the bone fragments with 
the few ounces of evidence that prosecutors said were on the remains of the 
victim. ”[4] One would therefore expect Carver to be in his element while 
identifying and verifying the exact ways in which Sandy Hook’s children 
and teachers met their violent demise. 

Yet the H. Wayne Carver who showed up to the December 15 press 
conference is an almost entirely different man, appearing apprehensive and 
uncertain, as if he is at a significant remove from the postmortem operation 
he had overseen. The multiple gaffes, discrepancies, and hedges in response 
to reporters’ astute questions suggest that he is either under coercion or 
an imposter. While the latter sounds untenable it would go a long way in 
explaining his sub-pedestrian grasp of medical procedures and terminology. 


20 



The Medical Examiner: More Questions than Answers 


With this in mind extended excerpts from this exchange are worthy of 
recounting here in print. Carver is accompanied by Connecticut State Police 
Lieutenant H. Paul Vance and additional Connecticut State Police personnel. 
The reporters are off-screen and thus unidentified so 1 have assigned them 
simple numerical identification based on what can be discerned of their voices. 

Reporter #1: So the rifle was the primary weapon? 

H. Wayne Carver: Yes. 

Reporter #1: [Inaudible] 

Carver: Uh (pause). Question was what caliber were these bullets. And I 
know — I probably know more about firearms than most pathologists but 
if I say it in court they yell at me and don ’t make me answer [sic] — so 
[nervous laughter]. I’ll let the police do that for you. 

Reporter #2: Doctor can you tell us about the nature of the wounds. Were 
they at very close range? Were the children shot at from across the room? 
Carver: Uhm, I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged 
from three to eleven wounds apiece and I only saw two of them with close 
range shooting. Uh, but that’s, uh y’know, a sample. Uh, I really don ’ t 
have detailed information on the rest of the injuries. 

[Given that Carver is Connecticut’s top coroner and in charge of the 
entire postmortem this is a startling admission. -JT] 

Reporter #3: But you said that the long rifle was used? 

Carver: Yes. 

Reporter #3: But the long rifle was discovered in the car. 

State Police Lieutenant Vance: That’s not correct, sir. 

Unidentified reporter #4: How many bullets or bullet fragments did you 
find in the autopsy. Can you tell us that? 

Carver: Oh. I’m lucky I can tell you how many I found. I don ’t know. 
There were lots of them, OK? This type of weapon is not, uh ... the bullets 
are designed in such a fashion that the energy’ — this is very clinical. I 
shouldn ’t be saying this. But the energy’ is deposited in the tissue so the 
bullet stays in [the tissue]. 

[In fact, the Bushmaster .223 Connecticut police finally claimed was 
used in the shooting is designed for long range field use and utilizes high 
velocity’ bullets averaging 3, 000 feet-per-second, the energy’ of which even 
at considerable distance would penetrate several bodies before finally 
coming to rest in tissue.] 

Reporter #5: How close were the injuries? 

Carver: Uh, all the ones (pause). I believe say, yes [sic]. 

Reporter #6: In what shape were the bodies when the families were 
brought to check [inaudible] . 

Carver: Uh, we did not bring the bodies and the families into contact. We 
took pictures of them, uhm, of their facial features. We have, uh, uh — it s 
easier on the families when you do that. Un, there is, uh, a time and place 


21 



James F. Tracy 


for the up close and personal in the grieving process, but to accomplish 
this we thought it would be best to do it this way and, uh, you can sort of, 
uh ... You can control a situation depending on the photographer, and I 
have very’ good photographers. Uh, but uh — 

Reporter #7: Do you know the difference of the time of death between the 
mother in the house and the bodies recovered [in the school]. 

Carver: Uh, no, I don’t. Sorry [shakes head excitedly] I don’t! 
[embarrassed laugh] 

Reporter #8: Did the gunman kill himself with the rifle? 

Carver: No. 1 — I don ’t know yet. / ’//-/’// examine him tomorrow morning. 
But, but I don ’t think so. 

[Why has Carver left arguably the most important specimen for last? And 
why doesn ’t he think Lanza didn ’t commit suicide with the rifle?] 
Reporter #9: In terms of the children, were they all found in one classroom 
or — 

Carver: Uhm ... [inaudible] [Turns to Lieutenant Vance] Paul and 
company will deal with that. 

Reporter #9: What? 

Carver: Paid and company will deal with that. Lieutenant Vance is going 
to handle that one. 

Reporter #10: Was there any evidence of a struggle? Any bruises? 
Carver: No. 

Reporter #11: The nature of the shooting; is there any sense that there 
was a lot of care taken with precision [inaudible] or randomly? 

Carver: [Exhales while glancing upward, as if frustrated] Both. It’s a very > 
difficult question to answer ... You ’d think after thousands of people I’ve 
seen shot but I ... It’s ... If I attempted to answer it in court there ’d be an 
objection and then they’d win — [nervous laughter], 

[Who would win? Why does an expert whose routine job as a public 
employee is to provide impartial medical opinion concerned with winning 
and losing in court? Further, Carver is not in court but rather at a press 
conference.] 

Reporter #12: Doctor, can you discuss the fatal injuries to the adults? 
Carver: Ah, they were similar to those of the children. 

Reporter #13: Doctor, the children you had autopsied, where in the bodies 
were they hit? 

Carver: Uhm [pause]. All over. All over. 

Reporter #14: Were [the students] sitting at their desks or were they 
running away when this happened? 

Carver: I’ll let the guys who — the scene guys talk — address that issue. I, 
uh, obviously I was at the scene. Obviously I’m very’ experienced in that. 
But there are people who are, uh, the number one professionals in that. 
I’ll let them — let that [voice trails off/. 


22 



The Medical Examiner: More Questions than Answers 


Reporter [#15J: How many boys and how many girls [were killed]? 

Carver: [Slowly shaking his head] I don ’t know. 

More unanswered questions and inconsistencies 

In addition to Carver’s 
remarks several additional 
chronological and 
evidentiary contradictions 
in the official version of 
the Sandy Hook shooting 
are cause for serious 
consideration and leave 
doubt in terms of how the 
event transpired vis-a-vis 
the way authorities and 
major media outlets have presented it. 

It is now well known that early on journalists reported that Adam Lanza’s 
brother Ryan Lanza was reported to be the gunman, and that pistols were used 
in the shooting rather than a rifle. Yet these are merely the tip of the iceberg. 

When did the gunman arrive? 

After Adam Lanza fatally shot and killed his mother at his residence, 
he drove himself to the elementary school campus, arriving one half hour 
after classes had commenced. Dressed in black, Lanza proceeds completely 
unnoticed through an oddly vacant parking lot with a military style rifle and 
shoots his way through double glass doors and a brand new yet apparently 
poorly engineered security system. 

Further, initial press accounts suggest how no school personnel or 
students heard gunshots and no 911 calls are made until after Lanza begins 
firing inside the facility. “It was a lovely day,” Sandy Hook fourth grade 
teacher Theodore Varga said. And then, suddenly and unfathomably, gunshots 
rang out. “I can’t even remember how many,” Varga said. [5] 

The recollection contrasts sharply with an updated version of Lanza’s 
arrival where at 9:30AM he walked up to the front entrance and fired at least 
a half dozen rounds into the glass doors. The thunderous sound of Lanza 
blowing an opening big enough to walk through the locked school door caused 
Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Maty Scherlach to bolt 
from a nearby meeting room to investigate. He shot and killed them both as 
they ran toward him. 



23 


James F. Tracy 


Breaching the school’s security system in such a way would have likely 
triggered some automatic alert of school personnel. Further, why would the 
school’s administrators run toward an armed man who has just noisily blasted 
his way into the building? 

Two other staff members attending the meeting with Hochsprung and 
Scherlach sustained injuries “in the hail of bullets” but returned to the 
aforementioned meeting room and managed a call to 9 11. [6] This contrasted 
with earlier reports where the first 911 call claimed students “were trapped 
in a classroom with the adult shooter who had two guns.”[7] Recordings 
of the first police dispatch following the 911 call at 9:35:50 indicate that 
someone “thinks there’s someone shooting in the building. ”[8] There is a 
clear distinction between potentially hearing shots somewhere in the building 
and being almost mortally caught in a “hail of bullets.” 

How did the gunman fire so many shots in such little time? 

According to Dr. Carver and State Police, Lanza shot each victim between 
3 and 1 1 times during a 5 to 7 minute span. If one is to average this out to 
7 bullets per individual — excluding misses — Lanza shot 182 times, or once 
every two seconds. Yet according to the official story Lanza was the sole 
assassin and armed with only one weapon. Thus if misses and changing the 
gun’s 30-shot magazine at least 6 times are added to the equation Lanza must 
have been averaging about one shot per second — extremely skilled use of a 
single firearm for a young man with absolutely no military training and who 
was on the verge of being institutionalized. Still, an accurate rendering of the 
event is even more difficult to arrive at because the chief medical examiner 
admittedly has no idea exactly how the children were shot or whether a 
struggle ensued. 

Where is the photo and video evidence? 

Photographic and video evidence is at once profuse yet lacking in 
terms of its capacity to demonstrate that a mass shooting took place on the 
scale described by authorities. For example, in an era of ubiquitous video 
surveillance of public buildings especially no visual evidence of Lanza’s 
violent entry has emerged. And while studio snapshots of the Sandy Flook 
victims abound there is little if any eyewitness testimony of anyone who’s 
observed the corpses except for Carver and his staff, and they appear almost 
as confused about the conditions of the deceased as any layperson watching 
televised coverage of the event. Nor are there any routine eyewitness, photo or 
video evidence of the crime scene’s aftermath — broken glass, blasted security 
locks and doors, bullet casings and holes, bloodied walls and floors — all of 
which are common in such investigations and reportage. 


24 



The Medical Examiner: More Questions than Answers 


Why were medical personnel turned away from the scene? 

Oddly enough medical personnel are forced to set up their operation 
not at the school where the dead and injured lay, but rather at the fire station 
several hundred feet away. This flies in the face of standard medical operating 
procedure where personnel are situated as close to the scene as possible. 
There is no doubt that the school had ample room to accommodate such 
personnel. Yet medical responders who rushed to Sandy Hook Elementary 
upon receiving word of the tragedy were denied entry to the school and forced 
to set up primary and secondary triages off school grounds and wait for the 
injured to be brought to them. 

Shortly after the shooting “as other ambulances from neighboring 
communities rolled up, sirens blaring, the first responders slowly realized 
that their training would be tragically underutilized on this horrible day. ‘You 
may not be able to save everybody, but you damn well try,’” 44 year old 
emergency medical technician James Wolff told NBC News. “’And when 
(we) didn’t have the opportunity to put our skills into action, it’s difficult. ’”[9] 

In light of this, who were the qualified medical practitioners that 
pronounced the 20 children and 7 adults dead? Who decided that none could 
be revived? Carver and his staff are apparently the only medical personnel 
to have attended to the victims — yet this was in the postmortem conducted 
several hours later. Such slipshod handling of the crime scene leaves the State 
of Connecticut open to a potential array of hefty civil claims by families of 
the slain. 

Did a mass evacuation of the school take place? 

Sandy Hook Elementary is attended by 600 students. Yet there is no 
photographic or video evidence of an evacuation on this scale. Instead, limited 
video and photographic imagery suggest that a limited evacuation of perhaps 
at most several dozen students occurred. 

A highly circulated photo depicts students walking in a single file 
formation with their hands on each others’ shoulders and eyes shut. Yet 
this was the image of a drill that took place prior to the event itself. [10. See 
Correction] Most other photos are portraits of individual children. 

Despite aerial video footage of the event documenting law enforcement 
scouring the scene and apprehending one or more suspects in the wooded 
area nearby the school, [1 1] there is no such evidence that a mass exodus of 
children from the school transpired once law enforcement pronounced Sandy 
Hook secure. Nor are there videos or photos of several hundred students and 


25 



James F. Tracy 


their parents at the oft-referenced fire station nearby where students were 
routed for parent pick up. 

Sound bite prism and the will to believe 

Outside of a handful of citizen journalists and alternative media 
commentators Sandy Hook’s dramatically shifting factual and circumstantial 
terrain has escaped serious critique because it is presented through major 
media’s carefully constructed prism of select sound bites alongside a 
widespread and longstanding cultural impulse to accept the pronouncements 
of experts, be they bemused physicians, high ranking law enforcement 
officers, or political leaders demonstrating emotionally-grounded concern. 

Political scientist W. Lance Bennett calls this the news media’s “authority- 
disorder bias.” “Whether the world is returned to a safe, normal place,” 
Bennett writes, “or whether the very idea of a normal world is called into 
question, the news is preoccupied with order, along with related questions of 
whether authorities are capable of establishing or restoring it. ”[12] 

Despite Carver’s bizarre performance and law enforcement authorities’ 
inability to settle on and relay simple facts, media management’s impulse to 
assure audiences and readerships of the Newtown community’s inevitable 
adjustment to its trauma and loss with the aid of the government’s protective 
oversight — however incompetent that may be — far surpasses a willingness 
to undermine this now almost universal news media narrative with messy 
questions and suggestions of intrigue. This well-worn script is one the public 
has been conditioned to accept. If few people relied on such media to develop 
their world view this would hardly be a concern. Yet this is regrettably not 
the case. 

The Sandy Hook tragedy was on a far larger scale than the past year’s 
numerous slaughters, including the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting and the 
Batman theater shooting in Colorado. It also included glaringly illogical 
exercises and pronouncements by authorities alongside remarkably unusual 
evidentiary fissures indistinguishable by an American political imagination 
cultivated to believe that the corporate, government and military’s 
sophisticated system of organized crime is largely confined to Hollywood- 
style storylines while really existing malfeasance and crises are without 
exception returned to normalcy. 

If recent history is a prelude the likelihood of citizens collectively 
assessing and questioning Sandy Hook is limited even given the event’s 
overtly superficial trappings. While the incident is ostensibly being handled 
by Connecticut law enforcement, early reports indicate how federal authorities 


26 



The Medical Examiner: More Questions than Answers 


were on the scene as the 9 1 1 call was received. Regardless of where one stands 
on the Second Amendment and gun control, it is not unreasonable to suggest 
the Obama administration’s complicity or direct oversight of an incident that 
has in very short order sparked a national debate on the very topic — and not 
coincidentally remains a key piece of Obama’s political platform. 

The move to railroad this program through with the aid of major media 
and an irrefutable barrage of children’s portraits, “heartfelt” platitudes and 
ostensible tears neutralizes a quest for genuine evidence, reasoned observation 
and in the case of Newtown honest and responsible law enforcement. 
Moreover, to suggest that Obama is not capable of deploying such techniques 
to achieve political ends is to similarly place ones faith in image and 
interpretation above substance and established fact, the exact inclination that 
in sum has brought America to such an impasse. 


Notes 

[1] State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public 
Protection, ’’State Police Investigate Newtown School Shooting” [Press Release] 
December 15, 2012. 

[2] State of Connecticut Department of Emergency Services and Public 
Protection, “Update: Newtown School Shooting” [Press Release], December 19, 2012. 

[3] CNN, “Family of 6 Year Old Victim,” December 14, 2012, “Sandy Hook 
School Shooting Hoax Fraud,” Youtube, December 17, 2012. 

[4] Hartford Courant, “Finally ‘Enough’ For Chief Medical Examiner” 
[Editorial], January 30, 2012. 

[5] John Christofferson and Jocelyn Noveck, “Sandy Hook School Shooting: 
Adam Lanza Kills 26 and Himself at Connecticut School,” Huffington Post , December 
15, 2012. 

[6] Edmund H. Mahoney, Dave Altmari, and Jon Lender, “Sandy Hook Shooter’s 
Pause May Have Aided Escape,” Hartford Courant , December 23, 2012. 

[7] Jaweed Kaleem, “Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting: Newtown 
Connecticut Students, Administrators Among Victims, Reports Say,” Huffington 
Post, December 14, 2012. 

[8] RadioMan911TV, “Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooting Newtown 
Police / Fire and CT State Police,” Youtube, December 14, 2012. At several points 
in this recording audio is scrambled, particularly following apprehension of a second 
shooting suspect outside the school, suggesting a purposeful attempt to withhold 
vital information. 


27 



James F. Tracy 


[9] Miranda Leitsinger, “You Feel Helpless: First Responders Rushed to School 
After Shooting, Only to Wait,” US News on NBC, December 20. 

[10] http://thenetng. com/wp-content/uploads/2012/1 2/Sandy-Hook-Elementary- 
School-600 x400.jpg. 12/25/1 2 Note that this photo of approximately fifteen children 
allegedly being evacuated from Sandy Hook Elementary was reportedly produced on 
December 14. See Connor Simpson, Alexander Abad-Santos et al, “Newtown School 
Shooting: Live Updates, ” The Atlantic Wire. December 19, 2012. Still, the paltry 
number of children confirms the claim that little photographic evidence exists of Sandy 
Hook’s 600 students being moved from the facility on December 14. This photo was 
from a Tweet of a Sandy Hook drill published by the school s slain principal Dawn 
Hochsprung titled, “Safety First. ” See Julia La Rouche, “ Principal Killed in Sandy 
Hook Tweeted Picture of Students Practicing an Evacuation Drill, "Business Insider, 
December 16, 2012. [Editor ’s note: See the Prologue and Ch. 6, among others.] 

[11] Rob Dew, “Evidence of 2nd and 3rd Shooter at Sandy Hook,” Infowars Nightly 
News , December 18, 2012, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nCFHImNeRw. 
A more detailed yet less polished analysis was developed by citizen journalist 
Idahopicker, “Sandy Hook Elem: 3 Shooters,” December 16, 2012. See also James 
F. Tracy, “Analyzing the Newtown Narrative: Sandy Hook’s Disappearing Shooter 
Suspects,” Memoryholeblog.com, December 20, 2012. 

[12] W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion 9th Edition, Boston: 
Longman, 2012, 47. 

NOTE: Andrew Whooley provided suggestions and research for this article, which 
originally appeared as “The Sandy Hook Massacre: Unanswered Questions and 
Missing Information ” (24 December 2012), on memoryholeblog.com. 


28 



Six signs the school was closed 


2