I don't want to jump to the wrong conclusions, but the dots are there, begging to be connected, and they're driving me crazy!
What the hell happened? :arghh:
Post #15 sums up my big questions really well. It's an odd set of circumstances, and it doesn't seem to fit the profile of matricide, as Singledad points out. Some things that really stood out to me from what little has been reported, is that 1) Adam Lanza seems to have had no support network beyond his mother, and 2) their family arrangements are very unusual.
So onto some baseless speculation in the meantime. My first observation specifically, is he was reported to be shy and had no friends, and his mother home-schooled him for several years until adulthood. Although he was 20, there is no information suggesting he had a job, or any regular activites or hobbies besides target practice (with his mother). Some college courses were mentioned, but they didn't seem to be part of any specific study program, and may have just been a way to meet district educational requirements. Singledad mentioned that abuse was a prevailing motive in these types of murders. Well it was certainly the perfect setting for his mother to abuse him - having no regular contact with anyone. I don't know, but the big red flag for me here was the homeschooling. (Please don't interpret that as a bash on homeschooling; I know many wonderful, well-adjusted families who homeschool, and my own parents did so for a short time too. But in the context of what we know, I think homeschooling may have been part of a scheme to isolate him.)
Now onto family arrangements. His mother had some kind of financial position, so we can assume she was probably educated and made a decent income. Fast forward to Adam Lanza in high school, and suddenly she's not working and she's homeschooling him. Not outrageous on its own, but an unusual change. And the fact that this arrangement was generously funded by the ex-husband in what court records suggest was an uncontested divorce... red flag. Why would the ex-husband/father agree to pay over $400K per year to his ex-wife after the divorce, when she worked during their marriage? I mean, it's usually the other way around, where a woman might stay at home if her husband has a good salary, but ends up getting a job if they separate. Some articles noted that it was uncontested, so I have to wonder if she was getting paid off. Perhaps the father was the abuser, and this lavish alimony was "hush money." The father's subsequent estrangement and the son's isolation would support this possibility. Perhaps it was the mother's way of preventing further abuse, and also preventing her son from confiding it in any one. That might also explain her rather extreme fascination with guns (self defense?) and eagerness to involve her son. Did she feel he had a serious need to learn self-defense, and why?
Perhaps the first murder was revenge for what his mother had done all those years (or not prevented), and the mass shooting was retaliation at the school for not having given him the help he needed at the time. Yes, this is very speculative at this point. But can you imagine how angry you might be if you were abused and confided in a teacher or school counselor, and in the end your mom just pulls you out of the school entirely and no one intervenes? He might feel pretty betrayed. Who knows? There aren't a lot of competing explanations. "Mental illness" is pretty vague and I have trouble swallowing the suggestion that every element of his crime was completely random.