In a series of interviews with The New Yorker, Peter Lanza, father of Newtown, Ct., shooter Adam, writer Andrew Solomon concludes, “Peter declared that he wished Adam had never been born, that there could be no remembering who he was outside of who he became.” Solomon quotes James Knoll, a forensic psychiatrist at SUNY, as saying that “that Adam's act conveyed a message: ‘I carry profound hurt—I'll go ballistic and transfer it onto you.’ That's as much motive as we're likely to find.”
Solomon says it’s difficult to find generalities about mass murderers because the sample size is tiny, and most die before they can be examined. Almost half of all mass murderers commit suicide in the act, and many others are killed by police. Examining the evidence, Solomon says, “the more Adam hated himself, the more he hated everyone else.” Scientists are sequencing Adam's DNA to seek “anomalies that might explain what was broken in him,” although that would not necessarily prove that biology compelled him to murder.