Connecticut state investigators should release the full report on the Newtown school shooting if they want to stop details from leaking, to quiet conspiracy theorists and to help the state grapple with the one of the worst crimes in its history, editorializes the Hartford Courant. The Courant reported new information that paints killer Adam Lanza as a calculating assassin who parked his car at the school so that it could be used to ambush approaching police.
Meanwhile, social media fabulists spread what the newspaper calls “cuckoo speculation that the government is propagandizing the Dec. 14 massacre to disarm citizens and other wacko theories.” The delay in releasing the report feeds the sick conspiracy mill and prolongs the victims’ pain. What is stopping the report’s release, the Courant asks. It notes that State Rep. DebraLee Hovey, who represents Newtown and is on the Victim Privacy & Public’s Right to Know Task Force, wants to suppress the shooting information. She describes “the idea of the public’s need to know and the public’s intrusion versus the victims’ rights” as “obscene.”