From: Mike Fahy
Do you remember when a PanAm stewardess was put through a woodchipper by her Eastern Airlines husband? That horrific November 1986 “woodchipper murder” was committed in Newtown, Connecticut. Yet this weekend’s news stories paint Newtown as a quiet, pristine, crimeless community.
The wealthy stewardess and her pilot-husband lived in a Newtown ranch home with their three children and au pair. She was murdered in her bedroom, stuffed into a freezer purchased for the occasion, then woodchipped into the river running through Newtown at 3:30 a.m. during a blizzard. Only two-thirds of an ounce of her body was ever recovered. The three-year investigation, hung-jury trial, and conviction trial made forensic examiner Henry Lee famous before he became a television star at the O.J. Simpson acquittal. The pilot-husband (with mental issues) will be released from prison in nine years.
Newtown’s Crazy Adam Lanza may have been taking the anti-psychotic drug Fanapt (iloperidone) which can have side effects including delusional and suicidal thoughts and self-inflicted wounds. During the past year, Adam Lanza was occasionally burning himself with a cigarette lighter. His mother, Nancy Lanza, never talked about his insanity. Marsha Lanza of Crystal Lake, Illinois says her nephew, the murderer, had “learning issues,” but his mother never talked about “behavioral issues.” Nancy Lanza was not as secretive about disparaging her ex-husband, Peter Lanza. She was awarded the Newtown mansion, a quarter million dollars annually in alimony, and Red Sox season tickets. Less than a week before her violent death, Nancy Lanza admitted that her son Adam “was getting worse.” But she did nothing about it.
A generation ago, Crazy Lanza would have been placed in a mental health facility. But the state closed Newtown’s large Fairfield Hills Psychiatric Hospital in 1995. This year Newtown has been debating what should be done with that expansive hospital real estate. Maybe they should use it for the graves of those 28 who would still be alive if Crazy Lanza had been institutionalized.
Since 1950, with only one exception, all mass murders (three or more victims) using bullets have occurred in venues where guns are banned. Private schools where a gun is kept by a teacher, administrator, guard, or custodian have never been targeted by the likes of Crazy Lanza. The Joker murderer in Aurora, Colorado had seven theaters in his area showing that midnight movie; he chose the only theater that banned guns. Air Force officers in that targeted theater had to leave their sidearms in their automobiles. Our societal guardrails have been torn down.
With a complete disregard of the facts, political gun-grabbers will now be leveraging their one-size-fits-all panacea of banning the instrumentality rather than preventing the evil.
Mike Fahy
– 30 –
Blithe Spirit 
Excellent post containing much information that is new to me. After the victims of the Newtown Massacre are eulogized and buried, the news media will turn to the perpetrator, baring his life history and hearing from those wno knew him and always thought him strange. Experts will declaim, on the 14/7 news channels, how this and that would have been enough to put him away before he could do so much damage. The same things happens after every catastrophe, as it did after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and, probably the sack of Rome. The conclusion is always that we had all the pieces, if only we had put them together.
That’s the rub? In the real world, puzzles don;t come with a picture on the cover of the box. We don’t know where we’re going until we get there and are looking back.
LikeLike