Sandy Hook families sue conspiracy theorist
After the body of Jesse Lewis, age 6, was recovered from his classroom at Sandy Hook Elementary School, his father, Neil Heslin, cradled him for a final time. At the top of Jesse’s forehead was the gunshot wound that ended his life. “It meant a lot to be able to see him,” Heslin said in an interview. “When he was born, I was the first to see him, and I was the last one to hold him.”
Alex Jones, an online conspiracy theorist whose InfoWars website is viewed by millions, seized on this agonizing recollection to repeat the bizarre falsehood that the 2012 shooting that killed 20 first-graders and six adults at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn., was an elaborate hoax invented by government-backed “gun-grabbers.”
On his radio show, Jones said Heslin needed to clarify “because the coroner said no, the parents weren’t allowed to have touched the kids or have seen the kids.” He played a video in which InfoWars “reporter” Owen Shroyer says of Heslin, “He’s claiming that he held his son and saw the bullet hole in his head. … That is not possible.”
More than five years after one of the most horrific mass shootings in modern history, the families of Sandy Hook victims are still enduring daily threats and online abuse from people who believe bogus theories spread by Jones, whom President Donald Trump has praised for his “amazing” reputation.
Now, for the first time, the families are confronting Jones in court.
“When anybody’s behind a machine, whether it’s a gun or a computer or a car, a dehumanization takes place that makes it easier to commit an act of violence,” Veronique De La Rosa, the mother of Noah Pozner, another victim, said in an interview. She is suing Jones, she said, because she wants to force him to admit to his devotees that “he peddled a falsehood, that Sandy Hook is real, and that Noah was a real, living, breathing little boy who deserved to live out the rest of his life.”
In three separate lawsuits — the most recent was filed Wednesday in Superior Court in Bridgeport, Conn. — the families of eight Sandy Hook victims as well as an FBI agent who responded to the shooting seek damages for defamation. The families allege in one suit, filed by Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport, that Jones and his colleagues “persistently perpetuated a monstrous, unspeakable lie: that the Sandy Hook shooting was staged, and that the families who lost loved ones that day are actors who faked their relatives’ deaths.”
More broadly, the families are seeking society’s verdict on “post-truth” culture in which widely disseminated lies damage lives and destroy reputations, yet those who spread them are seldom held accountable. The suit filed Wednesday emphasizes Jones’ reach and connection to Trump. On his show last year, Jones called himself and his listeners “the operating system of Trump.” Later he said: “I’m making it safe for everybody else to speak out just like Trump’s doing, on a much bigger scale.”
Jones pitches the false claims, along with diet supplements and survivalist gear, on his InfoWars website, radio program and YouTube channel. His videos have been viewed more than 1 billion times. He likely sells between $7 million and $12 million worth of diet supplements a year, according to an analysis in New York Magazine.
Sandy Hook families have been followed, videotaped and harassed by people demanding “proof ” their loved ones died. Monuments to the slain children in Newtown have been stolen and defaced. An Alex Jones devotee went to prison last year after phoning and emailing Leonard Pozner, Noah’s father, with death threats, including “LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH.” The family relocated to a gated community with 24-hour security. Their daughters, who survived the shooting, check doors and windows before going to bed, and sleep with the lights on.
Nate Wheeler, 15, who hid in a school supply closet during the shooting that killed his 6-year-old brother, Ben, struggles to understand false online claims that both boys and their parents were “crisis actors” and that his brother never died, said his father, David Wheeler, in an interview. Wheeler has found messages on his social media accounts telling him that he will face divine judgment for lying when he dies, he said.
Wednesday’s suit follows twin defamation lawsuits filed in Texas in April by the parents of two other victims — Heslin, and De La Rosa and Pozner.