A few months ago I found a now out of print book in a thrift store. Newtown, An American Tragedy by Matthew Lysiak. Lysiak interviewed practically anybody he could get to talk. He noted that Peter and Ryan Lanza refused to be interviewed, but that the vast majority of people he approached talked.
Lysiak's book paints a portrait of a severely mentally ill Adam, one who was obsessed with murder and death from a surprisingly young age, and how Nancy tried again and again to get him help and NOBODY at all would listen. Most of them just blew it off, oh he's a little weird, he'll grow out of it, seemed to be the consensus of anybody who Nancy approached.
Nancy clung to the few people who showed an interest in helping Adam, such as the technology teacher at Newtown High, and when he left she pretty much gave up on Adam. She tried to get him to attend a local college, but he quickly dropped out. He spent the last THREE YEARS of his life playing extremely violent video games such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and doing research on serial killers. He corrected tiny details on the wikipedia pages of killers, at one point taking offense when a 9mm pistol was described as a ".9mm".
Starting in the spring of 2010 Adam ceased to post on wikipedia and online discussion forums. ALL he did was play shooter video games, so far as anybody knows. He barely ate or slept. He basically moved between his basement dungeon and his upstairs bedroom so that he could sleep. By then Nancy decided he was a lost cause and decided to globetrot and enjoy herself-without him-and left him TV dinners for food, which he barely touched.
Nancy had once been her son's biggest advocate, but by 2010 she gave up on him. The brick wall won. Then Adam killed her and drove to Newtown High, but there was a cop in a marked cop car parked in the lot, so he drove to Sandy Hook Elementary as plan B. It reminds me of that old Johnny Cash song Mama Tried, where the boy turns into a crook despite mama's efforts.