There was a common refrain among acquaintances of Adam Lanza: I knew of him but I didn't know him.
Lanza kept to himself. Over several bloody minutes on Friday morning, armed with a rifle, Lanza emerged from his shell long enough to destroy the lives of 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Primary School. He'd gone to the school as a youth, a
former classmate said.
On Friday morning, he drove to the school after killing his mother, Nancy Lanza, 52, in her home two kilometres away on Yogananda Street, law enforcement sources said. She was still in bed when he shot her, the sources said.
Adam Lanza had lived with his mother in the 376 square metres, $US500,000 ($A477,076) house. His parents were divorced in 2009.
He had two bedrooms that were clean and orderly when law officers swept into the house after the shootings Friday morning.
Lanza apparently lived in one of the rooms and kept his computer gear and other items in the other one, the sources said. Law officers found evidence that Adam Lanza played graphically violent video games, the sources said.
Lanza was estranged from his brother, Ryan Lanza, 24, and hadn't talked to his father since 2010, according to people who have known the family. Ryan, a graduate of Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut, works for the financial firm Ernst & Young and lives in an apartment in Hoboken, New Jersey
Marsha Lanza, Adam Lanza's aunt, said it was her understanding that Nancy Lanza kept three guns in the home.
"Nancy was meticulous," Marsha Lanza told reporters outside her home in Crystal Lake, northwest of Chicago. "She would never leave the guns out."
Marsha Lanza called Nancy Lanza "self-reliant."
"The only reason she would have guns," Marsha Lanza said, "was for self defence."
Two law enforcement sources said the murder weapon was one of those guns, a semiautomatic rifle. The others were a pair of semiautomatic pistols.
But why Adam Lanza embarked on the deadliest rampage at a primary school in US history is an open question. Law officers have a sense of his home life, but they have yet to nail down a motive.
The sources said investigators believe Adam Lanza's isolation and social awkwardness were consistent with Asperger's syndrome.
Asperger's is a disorder that is part of the autism spectrum. It is marked by difficulty with social interaction. Many with Asperger's are otherwise high-functioning people. There is no predisposition towards violence, experts said.
"It's very important for people to know that there is absolutely no correlation between the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome and a predilection toward violent behaviour," said Dr Harold Schwartz, chief psychiatrist at the Institute of Living in Hartford.
The reasons someone may suddenly commit unfathomable violence are, at best, elusive.
Those who know Adam Lanza's parents were grieving for the mother and expressing sympathy for the father.
His father, Peter Lanza, an accountant, lives in Stamford with his second wife.
On Saturday afternoon, Stamford police stood guard outside his home, and residents from the affluent north Stamford neighbourhood slowed down while driving past the line of press cars and SUVs parked along the street.
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