Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Chapter Six

“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Six
By: James Fetzer

Chapter Six, nominally authored by James Fetzer, is nothing more than a verbatim transcript of a thirty-minute interview conducted in May 2014 with a man named Paul Preston. That’s the entirety of the chapter—no analysis, no commentary, no added context. Just a transcript. It’s difficult to imagine a lazier way to pad a book, but it does neatly illustrate the level of respect Fetzer appears to have for his readers. Making matters worse, this interview isn’t even exclusive content; it has long been freely available online.

So who is Paul Preston? Much like Wolfgang Halbig, he is repeatedly described as a “school security expert,” a title that is asserted often and substantiated rarely. Despite the weight this label is meant to carry, any concrete credentials that would justify it prove frustratingly difficult to pin down.

What’s also worth knowing is that Preston—much like the other self-appointed “experts” in this orbit—is a committed conspiracy theorist in his own right. In April 2012, a full eight months before Sandy Hook, he launched an internet radio show called Agenda 21 Radio, devoted to a grab bag of familiar paranoia: Agenda 21 hysteria, Obama’s birth certificate (fake), ISIS (also fake, apparently), and a steady diet of pro-gun, anti-Obama rhetoric. Unsurprisingly, Sandy Hook denial would later become part of that cursed lineup.

Trying to pin down his actual professional background led me to a poorly formatted biography hosted on another conspiracy site, Patriots Around The Lake. There, Preston is described as having served as an administrator or assistant principal at El Dorado High School in California in 1988. Contemporary reporting tells a less impressive story. In an LA Times article from that period, Preston is quoted extensively, but only as the school’s director of activities. A yearbook page from that year confirms that title, and another from 1989 shows the same role—well after he supposedly taught environmental and biological sciences. Also mentioned in the bio, for reasons known only to Paul, is his apparent hatred of surfing.

Preston has been pushing “staged event” narratives for decades. Among his more absurd claims is the assertion that Orange County’s 1994 bankruptcy was orchestrated as part of a “Cloward and Piven Strategy” by the Clinton administration—because of course it was.

His biography further claims that he “has for years worked with law enforcement in implementing successful anti-drug and anti-gang awareness” and that he “has been trained by law enforcement in drug and alcohol recognition,” which he allegedly used to identify “several thousand adults and students” under the influence. Notably absent is any verifiable connection to school security or emergency response. The only tangential reference to “safety” comes from supposed service as a county School Attendance and Review Board chairman (for which I could find no evidence) and as a member of Governor Schwarzenegger’s “Cyber Safety” committee, representing the Association of California School Administrators through the Department of Consumer Affairs. The committee’s own materials list Preston merely as a workshop moderator, not a member—and even if he had been listed, it’s difficult to see how an internet safety panel would qualify someone as an expert on the mass murder of elementary school children.

There’s also a faint paper trail suggesting involvement in a charter school scandal. Preston claims to have founded “two charter schools and one private school,” yet curiously names none of them. After some digging, I did find documentation related to one institution he founded in 2011: the California College, Career and Technical Education Center. Multiple sources have since identified it as a sham operation plagued by mismanagement, with extensive reporting available on sites such as Charter School Scandals and White Chalk Crime. State records detail the charges brought against Preston and the school. Despite his claims, I found no evidence of any additional charter or private schools he supposedly established.

I reached out to Preston directly to ask about his credentials. Unsurprisingly, he did not respond. A former colleague I contacted did recall Preston’s ability to “identify students who were using drugs.” So, if nothing else, he appears to have been something of a drug-detection superhero.

In short, Preston’s credentials are thin, inconsistently represented, and dwarfed by a long-standing commitment to conspiratorial thinking.

With that context established, let’s take a look at the interview itself.

Paul opens the interview with this little bombshell:

I’ve been involved in many, many situations at schools that have been, you know, emergency-type situations and was involved even to some degree with the Columbine situation.

Whoa—hold up. Involved with Columbine? That’s a hell of a claim. How exactly does a school activities director in California end up tangled in one of the most infamous school shootings in U.S. history? Let’s hear the explanation.

We had an individual who was trying to blow up the school, our school, at the time. In a similar fashion to what was a predicted bomb threat that occurred at Columbine three days before the Columbine shooting, and that’s how we kind of got in touch with the Columbine people. They got in touch with us because it turned out to be a similar neo-Nazi group that was related to the Trenchcoat Mafia, of all people.

…Oh.

So, to be clear: no actual involvement with Columbine at all. No consultation, no response coordination, no firsthand knowledge—just a supposed bomb threat at his school that he later decided was “similar,” which somehow morphed into being “involved to some degree” with Columbine. That clears things up considerably.

It also helps explain his wildly distorted understanding of the so-called “Trench Coat Mafia.” According to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office, the Trench Coat Mafia was a loose social affiliation of students with no formal structure, leadership, ideology, or national reach, and no evidence of affiliated groups elsewhere in the country. Yet Preston confidently reimagines them as a neo-Nazi organization plotting coordinated attacks nationwide—including, apparently, against his California school.

And where did he acquire this insight?

And so our staff, myself, we all wanted to sit down and figure where this was all going to and we studied a lot of the Nazi websites and so on, and we figured out that yes,  something big was going to happen.

Right. Naturally. A school activities director and his staff, browsing “Nazi websites,” divining impending mass-casualty events, and retroactively upgrading themselves into Columbine insiders.

Perfectly reasonable.

“Now I have always told everybody when you’re seeing these things play out in real time, the best news reporting is what’s happening in real time – that day of, you know, the moments that are around the incident.” pg. 103

Who told him that? Because it couldn’t be more wrong.

Early, real-time reporting is notoriously unreliable, and this isn’t a problem unique to the modern 24-hour news cycle. The media has been getting breaking news wrong for well over a century—from the Titanic, to the JFK assassination, to virtually every major mass-casualty event since. Initial reports are incomplete, chaotic, and often flat-out incorrect, precisely because information is still unfolding.

This isn’t controversial. It’s so well understood that journalism itself routinely reflects on it. Politico once ran an article bluntly titled “Are breaking news mistakes even worth covering anymore?” noting that “getting it wrong seems to have become the industry standard.” The Tampa Bay Times has addressed the same issue in the specific context of Sandy Hook, documenting how early reports were revised as facts became clearer.

In short, treating day-of coverage as the most reliable source of information is exactly backward. It’s when reporting is most prone to error, speculation, and misinformation.

So yes—by all means, do not take media literacy advice from Paul Preston.

“People weren’t rushing around. People weren’t panicking.” pg. 103

First, a minor but important point: panic doesn’t require running, just as movement doesn’t automatically imply panic. People can be frozen, stunned, or quietly distraught—and still very much panicking.

But even setting that aside, Preston’s claim doesn’t hold up if you actually watch the full Channel 12 helicopter footage he’s referring to, filmed at approximately 10:54 a.m. In that video, you can plainly see people moving with urgency, along with others who are visibly distressed.

More importantly, context matters. By that point in the timeline, there was little reason for mass movement. The school had already been cleared, children evacuated, and many had likely been reunited with their parents. Aside from Deborah Pisani, who remained on the triage tarp, the surviving victims had already been transported to Danbury Hospital.

What remained at the firehouse wasn’t chaos—it was anxious waiting. Parents, staff, and first responders were standing by for information about students and teachers who were still unaccounted for. The absence of frantic motion at that stage says nothing about whether a tragedy occurred; it simply reflects that the most urgent phase of the response was already over.

“They ran that one guy off into the woods and then they arrested him. They took him away and there was no connectedness to that.” pg. 103

None of that is true.

Nobody was “run off into the woods,” and nobody was arrested. Being briefly detained—especially during an active shooter response—is not the same thing as being arrested. One would expect a self-described school security expert to understand that basic distinction.

Despite this having been clarified repeatedly over the years, conspiracy theorists continue to cling to the myth of the ominous “man in the woods.” After all, the woods sounds spooky. Unfortunately for the narrative, the facts are boring—and well documented.

In reality, three different people were encountered near wooded areas that day, and only one was briefly detained:

• An off-duty New York tactical officer who was working nearby heard the alert and responded toward Sandy Hook. When he approached the school, officers—who had no way of knowing who he was—briefly handcuffed and questioned him before releasing him. He had no connection whatsoever to the shooting.
• Two reporters were temporarily held at gunpoint until they could be identified and cleared.

Then there’s Chris Manfredonia, the father of a Sandy Hook student—often incorrectly folded into the “man in the woods” mythology. He wasn’t in the woods at all. According to his police interview (Book 5, document #00014498), he arrived on school grounds roughly ten minutes early for a scheduled activity. When he saw children fleeing the building and heard gunshots, he instinctively moved around the exterior of the school in an attempt to locate his child’s classroom. Officers, understandably treating any unidentified adult near the building as a potential threat during an active shooter response, ordered him to the ground and briefly detained him.

His account is corroborated by Newtown Patrol Sergeant David Kullgren (Book 6, –1.pdf):

I then heard Officer McGowan radio that he had an adult male attempting to gain access to the school on the back left side. Thinking this may be the shooter attempting escape we made a determination that I would break off from Officer Chapman and Officer Smith and assist Officer McGowan. I ran around the left of the school and observed Officer McGowan who had an adult white male with his hands up. The white male had short brown hair he appeared to be in his early forties wearing a navy blue or black tweed type jacket. He stated he was a parent tying to get his child. I had the male prone out and began handcuffing him when Captain Rios took over.

There’s your “connectedness,” Paul.

“And I didn’t see any students either and that really bothered me.” pg. 103

By the time of the helicopter footage Preston is referring to—roughly between 10:30 and 11:00 a.m.—there were no students left to see. They had already been evacuated from the school, reunited with their parents at the firehouse, and sent home. The building itself had been fully cleared.

“Well, just within the first 10 or 15 minutes, it just all looked too staged to me, and I know about staging these things since I’ve staged a number of them.” pg. 104

Preston says he’s “staged a number of them.” Them being what, exactly? School shootings? Mass-casualty events? Or are we talking about routine drills and safety exercises that he’s now dramatically reframing after the fact?

If he’s actually claiming some kind of hands-on experience staging events comparable to a real-world mass murder—and that this somehow allows him to declare Sandy Hook “fake” within fifteen minutes of watching TV—then he really needs to show his work. Of course, he doesn’t. No examples, no specifics, no documentation—just another outrageous claim meant to sound authoritative.

“I know it’s a high school, but you know, you saw the kids right away and you saw their plan of evacuation of the school unfolding” pg. 104

No—you really wouldn’t have seen any evacuation “unfolding” at nearly 11:00 a.m. By that point, it was already over. The kids had been evacuated well before the helicopter footage Preston is reacting to.

Multiple students later told police that they did follow their evacuation plan: they exited through the front doors and moved in a single-file line. That’s exactly what an orderly evacuation is supposed to look like. Chris Manfredonia, a parent who arrived on scene, backed this up in his police interview, saying that after parking and getting out of his car, he saw “a group of children running in a straight line down the sidewalk in front of the school.”

So the evacuation plan didn’t look “wrong,” “missing,” or “staged.” It looked completed. Preston is basically faulting the scene for not showing something that had already happened.

“Normally if you have the tarps out there…in every active shooter situation you have ever see, there’s somebody on the tarp” pg. 105

This was already covered back in Chapter Five, but it’s worth repeating because Preston just keeps missing the obvious. Almost everyone inside the school was already dead, and anyone who still had a chance of survival was treated inside the building. That’s how triage actually works.

There were only three injured victims transported to the hospital—one adult and two children—and they were rushed out immediately. The two children were later pronounced dead at the hospital. Deborah Pisani was briefly treated on a tarp (and yes, she was photographed there) before being moved to the hospital for surgery.

So…who exactly was supposed to be lying on all these tarps? Preston is inventing an expectation that doesn’t line up with the reality of what actually happened.

“We–a side note to this is that I have a lot of sources in and around and in that area. I have a lot of sources in regards to as to what’s going on with the president and the administration and so on, and every one of my sources said it was a false flag.” pg. 106

Right. Sure, Paul. You’ve got “a lot of sources.” We just never get to meet them. Maybe they go to another school. In Canada.

So now, apparently, this wasn’t just the entire town of Newtown—population about 27,560—keeping a massive secret. Now the entire Obama administration is in on it too. And somehow, members of that administration—people with careers, reputations, and prison sentences on the line—decided the best person to confide in was Paul Preston: conspiracy radio host, Sandy Hook denier, and operator of a sham charter school.

And, of course, they all agreed he should keep their identities secret, while casually spilling this earth-shattering revelation in a podcast interview like he’s commenting on the weather.

“I was already being told about these charity sites that had been developed. By the way, they were put up the day before the shooting.” pg. 107

Except they weren’t. This was already addressed back in Chapter Five.

And let’s pause for a second, because Paul just quietly smuggled in a much bigger claim. He’s now implying that he knew in advance about these so-called “charity sites.” Think about that. If he was being told about them before the shooting—before they supposedly went live—why didn’t he say anything at the time? Why didn’t he warn anyone? Take screenshots? Why did this alleged foreknowledge only surface after Sandy Hook became a magnet for conspiracy theories?

As usual, we’re expected to believe that Paul had inside information of enormous significance, yet somehow forgot to document it or even mention it until years later, when it could no longer be checked or challenged. Funny how that keeps happening.

“And of course the funerals to me…you go and look at the whole funeral process. It looked like they were all staged, from the Robbie Parker one in Utah, or the Sarah Parker one with the Parker family.” pg. 107

Based on…what, exactly? What about the funerals supposedly made them look “staged”? Paul never says. He just asserts it and moves on, as if that’s enough.

And then there’s the small matter of “Sarah Parker.” Who? Sarah Jessica Parker? I’m fairly confident she wasn’t involved—unless there’s an entirely new layer of conspiracy we’ve somehow missed. More likely, Preston meant Emilie Parker, one of the actual victims. But once again, we’re dealing with a self-proclaimed expert who can’t be bothered to get even the most basic facts—like the names of murdered children—right.

This is a recurring problem throughout the interview: sweeping accusations, zero evidence, and a casual indifference to accuracy. If you can’t keep the victims straight, maybe you shouldn’t be accusing their families of staging funerals.

“And then I started getting information from people that actually had attended that funeral who lived in Utah and said that was something very funny about it.” pg. 107

Ah yes—something was “funny” about it. What, exactly? No details, no examples, no follow-up. Just a vague hand-wave to unnamed people who allegedly attended the funeral, felt some unspecified weirdness, and then ran straight to a known conspiracy theorist to pass along this crucial, yet completely unarticulated, revelation.

Are we really meant to treat this as evidence? Anonymous sources, offering nothing more than “trust me, it was off,” with zero explanation of how or why? This is a pattern with Preston: make a dramatic claim, attribute it to invisible insiders, and never bother to explain what they actually observed. At that point, it’s not information—it’s just rumor dressed up as insight.

“And so, it’s a good question. It really is a fair question to ask whether or not they were real families.” pg. 108

No, it is not a “good question.” It’s an offensive, asinine one—the kind only an insensitive numbskull would think to pose about grieving parents, though it is very on brand for conspiracy theorists. If you’re going to accuse real families of being actors, then the burden is on you to provide evidence. Produce something concrete, or stop pretending this is serious inquiry. Put up or shut up.

“When you see a couple, if they seem really like an odd couple, then that kind of strikes you as weird. And I saw that. I saw a very odd coupled-ness with lots of these Sandy Hook families. It seemed to me, why would this person marry this person and live with them? They’re so totally different.” pg. 108

Odd coupled-ness? Really? What is that even supposed to mean? How, exactly, is anyone meant to judge the compatibility of grieving parents based on a brief television interview about their murdered child? The sheer arrogance—and absurdity—of this claim is breathtaking.

“And I’ve see a lot of the pictures and so on, and some of the pictures don’t match up, especially the one of the Parkers in the White House. And it looks like to me that’s Sarah Parker sitting there that’s, you know, supposed to be a victim.” pg. 108

Once again, Paul can’t even get the most basic facts right—and somehow this nonsense still made it into a book people paid real money for. He means Emilie Parker, and the child in the photo with Barack Obama is her younger sister, Madeline. Confusing the two would require either not paying attention at all or genuinely believing they’re the same person, which is absurd on its face.

And let’s be clear: the photo was not taken in the White House. Thinking otherwise requires either ignorance or an impressive level of imagination (no, the White House did not briefly relocate to Newtown).

For anyone who wants the full breakdown of this particular claim, the photo of Madeline with Obama is covered in greater detail in Chapter Five.

“What do you think of this privacy issue that has been bandied about by the authorities, that all the privacy needs to be respected, and you can’t reveal this or that…? P – That to me just adds more fuel to the fire because that’s not what you do in the normal situation of an incident command system.” pg. 110

Is it really “not normal” to ask for privacy after a tragedy—especially one as horrific as Sandy Hook? Of course it is. Requests for privacy are standard practice in the aftermath of death, grief, and trauma. Has Paul ever read a death announcement for a celebrity or public figure? Nearly all of them explicitly ask for privacy.

You can verify this in about thirty seconds with a quick search. But apparently, in Paul’s world, even the most routine, humane response to loss is rebranded as “suspicious.” By that logic, every grieving family, every hospital, and every public figure who asks to be left alone is part of some grand cover-up. At some point, the problem isn’t privacy—it’s paranoia.

“Well there’s many things about him. I just …I …first of all, I didn’t understand why all of a sudden there’s 26 bodies and then there’s no coroner or doctor who’s looked at the bodies and they’re declared dead.” pg. 110

This is simply false. Before the bodies were transferred to Western District Medical Examiner’s Office (WDMC) and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner (OCME), EMS personnel made presumptions of death, which they are legally authorized to do under Connecticut law. Black triage tags were placed on the victims to indicate deceased status (CFS 1200704597, 00118939.pdf).

Michael Cassavechia, Director of Emergency Services at Danbury Hospital, later explained that four separate patient assessments were conducted to ensure that no one was resuscitatable (Book 6, 00002113.pdf). This process followed the SMART triage system and reflects standard mass-casualty protocol.

In other words, the victims were not arbitrarily “declared dead,” nor was this some procedural anomaly. It was exactly how emergency medicine is supposed to work in a mass-casualty event.

“And then all of a sudden the coroner comes out and everybody says that there was an automatic gun or a handgun that was used, and the coroner, on his own, comes out and says ‘oh no, that was an AR15 that was used.’” pg. 110

This is a strange—and incorrect—reading of Wayne Carver’s press conference. To start with, Carver never explicitly stated that the weapon was an AR-15. What he did say was that the wounds he had examined were caused by a “long weapon,” i.e., a rifle. That’s it.

So what’s the supposed problem here? The press was confused in the early hours of the investigation (something that is extremely well documented), and the state medical examiner understandably had more accurate information than reporters speculating in real time. That’s not suspicious—it’s exactly how these situations normally unfold.

Here’s the relevant exchange from Carver’s press conference, in full:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: Doctor, on that examination, could you tell which caliber of the handgun compared to the rifle of these shooting victims were?

CARVER: It’s a good thing it’s not a prosecution because then I couldn’t answer you that. But, all of the wounds I know of at this point were caused by the long weapon.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: So the rifle was the primary weapon.

CARVER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: What caliber were the —

CARVER: The question was what caliber were these bullets. I know, I probably know more about firearms than most pathologists but if I say it in court they yell at me and don’t make me answer. So I’ll let the police deal with that for you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: Doctor, can you tell about the nature of the wounds? Were they at very close range? Were the children shot from across the room?

CARVER: I only did seven of the autopsies. The victims I had ranged from 3 to 11 wound apiece. I only saw two of them with close range shooting. But, you know, that’s a sample. I really don’t have of detailed information on the rest of the injuries.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: But you said it was the long rifle that was used?

CARVER: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE REPORTER: I thought the long rifle was discovered in the car. That’s not correct?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That’s not correct, sir.

Nothing Carver said here was inaccurate, contradictory, or unusual. He carefully stayed within his lane, declined to speculate about caliber, and deferred weapon specifics to law enforcement—exactly what a medical examiner is supposed to do. Preston’s claim isn’t exposing anything; it’s just another example of confusion being retroactively repackaged as suspicion.

“A classic example of the blanks comes up when you talk about where are the kids that are evacuating the school. There were helicopters that were circling overhead. They certainly would have been able to show, you know, hundreds of kids exiting the school.” pg. 111

This is just Preston inventing a “blank” by ignoring the timeline.

The helicopter footage he’s referring to was shot around 10:45 a.m., long after the evacuation had already taken place. By then, the children had exited the building, been moved away from the school, reunited with their parents at the firehouse, and in many cases sent home. There were moments earlier in the morning when large numbers of children were evacuating—but those moments had already passed.

So no, helicopters wouldn’t have captured “hundreds of kids exiting the school” at that point, because there were no kids left to exit. Expecting to see an evacuation nearly an hour after it occurred isn’t evidence of staging; it’s evidence of Preston not understanding (or deliberately misrepresenting) basic sequencing.

Once again, the alleged “blank” exists only because he’s looking at the wrong time and pretending it proves something.

“But you did see a picture out in a parking lot, which by the way if you take a long look at this picture of all these kids being led out, about 15 or 20 kids being led out by teachers and adults from this parking lot, if you take a look at the parking lot from the aerial views, you can see that there are different cars in the parking lot in that area.” pg. 111

The photo he’s talking about—children being led away by teachers—has been scrutinized endlessly. There is no “mysterious car swap,” no shifting lineup of vehicles, no inconsistency between that image and the aerial footage. When you actually compare the images instead of waving your hands at them, the parking lot looks exactly like what it is: a chaotic emergency scene viewed from different angles, at slightly different moments, with vehicles belonging to staff, responders, and parents arriving and leaving.

What Preston is doing here is classic cherry-picking. He gestures vaguely at “aerial views,” claims they show something odd, and then never identifies which cars, which angles, which timestamps, or what specifically changed. That’s not analysis—that’s insinuation. If there were real discrepancies, he could point to them directly. He doesn’t, because there aren’t any.

This claim has already been thoroughly debunked, and it collapses immediately under even the most basic comparison of the available images. Once again, the pattern holds: assert something dramatic, offer no specifics, and rely on the audience not bothering to look for themselves.

“Gene Rosen was the man who was very close to the school and he took the kids in and offered them juice and cookies” pg. 112

Here we go again—the “Gene Rosen” non-controversy, dusted off and treated like it’s suspicious because… kindness happened.

Yes, Gene Rosen lived near the school. Yes, a group of terrified children ended up on his lawn. And yes, he brought them inside, gave them juice and cookies, and kept them safe until authorities and parents could sort things out. That’s not a mystery, and it’s certainly not evidence of anything nefarious—it’s basic human behavior. If your instinct, when confronted with shaken, crying kids, isn’t to offer comfort, that says far more about you than it does about Gene Rosen.

This has already been covered in detail back in Chapter Five, and every attempt to turn it into something sinister relies on the same warped logic: normal, compassionate actions are reframed as “too normal,” therefore suspicious. It’s conspiracy thinking at its laziest—take an ordinary act of decency, strip it of context, and wink knowingly at the audience.

There is no “Gene Rosen conspiracy.” There is just a man who did what most people hope someone would do if their own child were lost, frightened, and alone. Anyone determined to see villainy in juice and cookies isn’t uncovering hidden truths—they’re projecting paranoia.

“I can comment on this because this points to this proves my point that these kids …did they get off a bus? Where did they go? OK, I think that one of the stories was that the kids got off the bus and they made their way to his house, and there was all this panic or whatever was going on. OK, there’s something really wrong with that picture to begin with.” pg. 112

This is just complete fantasy. None of what Preston is describing actually happened.

There was no bus. No kids “getting off” anything. No chaotic mystery journey to Gene Rosen’s house. The real sequence of events is straightforward and well documented:

A school bus driver—who was not driving a bus at the time, but her own personal vehicle—noticed a small group of children running along Riverside Road, which intersects with Dickinson Drive near the firehouse. Recognizing immediately that something was wrong, she pulled over to help them. Gene Rosen, who lives right next to the firehouse, saw this unfolding and came outside to assist.

That’s it. No missing steps, no unexplained panic narrative, no bizarre transportation subplot.

Crucially, this account isn’t based on a single source. Gene Rosen and the bus driver independently gave the same version of events. The bus driver’s police interview is documented in Book 5 (00003250.pdf), and the account is further corroborated by an unnamed parent in Book 5 (00002296.pdf). Multiple statements, consistent details, official records.

Preston’s version—kids mysteriously “getting off a bus” and somehow wandering into a stranger’s house amid vague “panic”—has no basis in reality. It’s not an alternative interpretation; it’s just wrong. Once again, he’s swapping documented facts for a muddled story that sounds suspicious if you don’t bother checking it.

“S: So what…would the protocol be that the children…the children, according to the story, left the school on their own. P: Well, that to me, that’s very suspicious in and of itself.” pg. 112

What, exactly, is supposed to be “suspicious” here?

Children fleeing from danger is about as normal a human response as it gets—especially five- and six-year-olds who had just experienced something unimaginably traumatic. Has Paul Preston never heard of the fight-or-flight response? When most people, especially children, are faced with immediate danger, they run. That’s not suspicious; it’s instinct.

On top of that, this wasn’t random chaos. At least one child told police that once they left the classroom, they knew where to go and what to do because of previous fire drills. In other words, they followed the very procedures schools drill into kids precisely for emergencies like this. If anything, that’s evidence of preparation and training—not staging.

And let’s take Preston’s logic to its absurd conclusion. If this were some elaborate “false flag” operation designed to push gun legislation, why on earth would the planners allow survivors to escape at all? Wouldn’t a higher casualty count better serve their supposed goal? Why leave behind living witnesses whose stories could contradict the narrative?

As usual, the “suspicion” evaporates the moment you apply even a shred of common sense. What Preston is pointing to isn’t evidence of anything sinister—it’s just children doing exactly what terrified children would do when trying to stay alive.

“How did the kids get out and just run down the road, you know?” pg. 112

Through the door.

That’s it. That’s the answer. There’s no mystery here, no missing piece, no conspiracy-shaped gap to fill. The children exited the building the same way people normally leave buildings: through a door.

Multiple survivor accounts describe students leaving their classrooms, exiting through the front of the school, and running in a straight line along the sidewalk—exactly as they had been taught to do during drills. A parent on scene, Chris Manfredonia, independently corroborated this, describing children running in an orderly line down the sidewalk in front of the school.

Preston’s incredulity isn’t evidence of anything except his refusal to accept straightforward explanations. Kids didn’t teleport. They didn’t “appear” on the road. They didn’t need a bus, handlers, or a script.

They opened a door and ran.

“You know, they had a couple of guys that were chased through the woods. What were they all about? And there were no answers about any of that, about where they came from and even my people couldn’t come up with an answer about that.” pg. 113

First it was “that one guy” being chased into the woods; now it’s “a couple of guys.” Pick a story already.

Regardless, none of this is true.

No one was “chased through the woods,” and there was no unresolved mystery. The people found near the school were identified, their presence was explained, and the issue was settled years ago. The fact that Preston either doesn’t know this—or pretends not to—says far more about his research habits than about the events of that day.

This has already been addressed in detail. The answers exist, they’ve been public for a long time, and they don’t support the narrative he’s trying to sell. At this point, repeating the same disproven claim isn’t skepticism—it’s willful ignorance.

“And to me the people that were there-–they weren’t dressed for December.” pg. 114

Is Preston now suggesting the helicopter footage wasn’t even filmed on December 14th? Because that’s where this kind of hand-waving leads. This is the same chapter in which he insists that the earliest footage is the most reliable, yet here he is casting doubt on video taken that very morning because he personally disapproves of people’s jackets.

As for the clothing itself, this was already addressed earlier, but it’s worth restating how flimsy this claim is. It was roughly 38°F at the time the footage was shot. Many people were dressed appropriately. Others were wearing fewer layers—because people have different tolerances for cold, especially during the daytime, and especially in New England where 30s and 40s are not remotely unusual in December.

And then there’s the most obvious point of all: people were fleeing an active crime scene involving murdered children. Some ran outside without grabbing their heaviest coats. Some had just arrived at work or at the school. Some were first responders or parents focused on finding their kids, not fashion-coordinating for the weather.

Using subjective vibes about winter clothing as evidence of a staged mass murder is not analysis—it’s desperation.

“If there’s a signal to get them out of the building, and there’s always a signal of some sort to get them out of the building safely, they go directly out. Period. End of subject.” pg. 114

Great—so which is it?

Earlier, Vivian Lee solemnly informed us that the lack of winter coats was suspicious because children would obviously stop to retrieve them (Chapter Five). Now Paul Preston is confidently declaring the exact opposite: that once the signal is given, everyone exits immediately. Same book, same conspiracy, completely incompatible claims.

Here’s the actual answer—one that doesn’t require clairvoyance or vibes-based forensics: you do not stop to get your coat when someone is actively shooting up a school. The priority is to get out as fast as possible. Full stop. Fire drills, lockdown training, and emergency protocols all emphasize immediate evacuation when escape is possible. Coats are irrelevant. Survival is not.

So yes—be cold and alive, not warm and dead.

Ironically, Preston’s own statement completely undercuts the earlier “no coats” argument. If students exited immediately—as they did—then the absence of winter clothing is not suspicious at all. It’s exactly what you’d expect.

“And there were some people said that they were in closets for up to four hours.” pg. 114

Yes—and this is one of the least mysterious claims in the entire chapter.

School nurse Sally Cox and the school secretary did in fact shelter in a supply closet until approximately 1:15 PM. Cox explained on 60 Minutes that she briefly emerged around 11:15 AM, at which point she saw what she believed were SWAT officers in the courtyard. That observation lines up with Book 2 (00250882.pdf), which documents the courtyard being cleared around that time.

Crucially, Cox did not assume the situation was fully resolved. Fearing the possibility of additional shooters—a completely reasonable concern given the uncertainty of the scene—she returned to the supply closet and stayed there until she heard unmistakable police radio chatter indicating it was safe to come out.

This timeline is independently corroborated by multiple sources:

• Statements from the school secretary
• Police and first-responder reports
• Major Fusaro (Book 8, 00230019.pdf)
• TFCs Voket and Rief (Book 6, 00122995.pdf)

All of them confirm that Cox and the secretary were not encountered until after two full searches of the school had already been completed and while tactical operations were underway at Lanza’s residence on Yogananda Street, which began at approximately 12:18 PM (00003262.pdf).

Fusaro’s account makes this explicit:

Captain Fusaro advised us that he had received word that people were found alive hiding at the school and that the West team was to report back to the school to research it. The East Team remained on site at the suspect residence and conducted the search efforts. Refer to TFC Rief’s supplementary report.

West Team members responded directly back to the Sandy Hook Elementary School and met with Major Meraviglia in the lobby area inside the school, directly in front of the main office. Major Meraviglia stated that he had located two females, [redacted], inside the main office where the command post was located, and demanded that the school be researched.

That’s the entire explanation. No contradictions. No missing time. No “gotcha.”

People hid because they were terrified, unsure whether the threat was over, and following the most basic survival instinct imaginable. The documentation is consistent, the timelines align, and the behavior is exactly what you’d expect in the aftermath of a mass shooting.

No conspiracy required—just reality.

“And the idea of Kaitlyn Roig and some of these teachers bundling up all their kids into the bathroom and having a few sit on the toilet…I even heard the toilet roll holder, my God, that’s pretty tough to do even for a six year old. But what do you think of that? That doesn’t make sense to me.” pg. 115

Why doesn’t it make sense? Because he personally can’t picture it? “I can’t imagine it, therefore it didn’t happen” isn’t analysis—it’s a failure of imagination dressed up as skepticism.

Here’s what actually happened, according to Kaitlyn Roig’s police interview:

We all push into the bathroom and when there isn’t a millimeter of space left, I begin lifting students and piling them inside. I place one student, then two, then three on top of the toilet and hoist up my littlest girl and sit her on the toilet paper dispenser.

Crucially, that child—the smallest one—was only placed there briefly, while Roig rearranged the others:

Roig stated she put the littlest one on the toilet dispenser for a moment and held her there with one arm as she moved the kids around.

Also note the wording: “dispenser,” not “roll holder.” That distinction matters. Roig is not describing a flimsy, residential toilet paper holder screwed into drywall. Schools use large, commercial-grade dispensers—the kind designed to hold oversized rolls and withstand constant use. They are solid, boxy fixtures mounted into masonry or reinforced studs, not the delicate hardware Preston seems to be imagining.

While there are no unredacted photos from inside that specific classroom bathroom, video footage from other bathrooms in the school clearly shows these large commercial dispensers, easily capable of supporting the temporary weight of a small child—especially when the teacher is actively holding and stabilizing them:

And even then, the arrangement wasn’t static:

“At one point, there were 5-6 kids standing on the toilet, all at once, so she could make room, and only one child remained there the whole time”

This wasn’t some carefully choreographed tableau. It was a terrified teacher improvising under extreme pressure, using every inch of space available to keep her students alive. That Preston finds this hard to visualize says nothing about the event—and everything about the limits of his own reasoning.

All of this comes directly from Kaitlyn Roig’s police interview (Book 5, 00091247.pdf). So once again, the story is internally consistent, physically plausible, and well documented. The only thing that “doesn’t make sense” here is why anyone keeps pretending it doesn’t.

“If there is a shooter there to take the challenge. We used to do these things where we had these dummy books and we’d bring in an active shooter as the stage person and throw books at them, you know, because that really throws them off. You’re taught those kinds of little techniques to throw the active shooter off.” pg. 115

There’s a bitter irony here that Preston never seems to notice—despite the fact that it’s literally the premise of his own book. Nobody Died at Sandy Hook: It Was a FEMA Drill to Promote Gun Control claims the massacre wasn’t real at all, but a staged drill meant to push gun legislation. That isn’t some side theory or minor detail. It’s the entire argument. It’s right there in the title.

And yet, throughout this chapter, Preston repeatedly treats the events of December 14, 2012 as suspicious precisely because they did not follow drill protocols.

That contradiction is doing all the work. Conspiracy theorists retroactively declare a real mass shooting to be a drill, then complain that the people involved—especially small children—failed to behave like trained drill participants. The absence of orderly procedures or “correct” responses is then framed as evidence of fraud, rather than what it obviously was: chaos and terror.

Nowhere is this more detached from reality than in the suggestion that children should have “taken the challenge” by throwing books at the shooter.

Even setting aside how grotesque that expectation is, it collapses instantly under the physical facts. Roughly 15 bodies—mostly children, plus two adults—were crammed into the small in-class bathroom in Lauren Rousseau’s first-grade classroom. That group accounts for nearly three-quarters of all the student victims inside the school. There was no space to move, no room to maneuver, and no possibility of forming some kind of coordinated counterattack. The idea that children packed shoulder-to-shoulder in a tiny bathroom could “fight back” is not just unrealistic—it’s physically impossible.

Beyond that, the premise misunderstands how active-shooter training actually works. While some controversial “run–hide–fight” or ALICE-style programs include a counter component, those tactics are intended for adults and older students, and only as an absolute last resort when escape and hiding are impossible. Even proponents of these programs generally restrict such training to middle- and high-school ages, explicitly acknowledging that confrontational strategies are not developmentally appropriate for young children.

Many school-safety experts and child psychologists have criticized these programs even at the secondary level, warning that they can increase trauma and create dangerous expectations. Best-practice guidance for elementary students emphasizes simplicity—lock down, stay quiet, get out if directed—not aggressive or complex actions under extreme stress.

Federal “run, hide, fight” guidance that mentions throwing objects not written for first-graders. It does not describe what children should do; it outlines last-ditch survival behavior for people capable of making those decisions under fire.

So when Preston treats the absence of book-throwing by five- and six-year-olds as something “suspicious,” he isn’t exposing a flaw in the Sandy Hook accounts. He’s exposing the flaw in his own logic: labeling a real mass murder a drill, imposing adult training expectations onto terrified first-graders packed into a bathroom, and then using their inability to meet those imaginary standards as evidence that the event wasn’t real.

No credible safety authority—none—suggests that the failure of young children to attack an armed gunman is proof of a staged event. The only thing being demonstrated here is how conspiracy thinking bends itself into knots to avoid the simplest explanation: this was real, and the children reacted exactly as children do when faced with unimaginable danger.

(Regarding Adam Lazna) “And of course if you’re doing a fictionalized event like this, you want to have the most crazed individual that you can have looking at you through the picture there, and that’s exactly what you have. That’s my speculation” pg. 116

Maybe he looked “crazy” because—stay with me here—he was crazy, as evidenced by the fact that he murdered 27 people, including 20 small children and his own mother. Or, given that Adam Lanza famously hated having his photo taken and left behind very few images, the media simply used the one that looked the most unsettling. Either explanation is infinitely more plausible than this cartoonish speculation about casting a villain for a made-for-TV psy-op.

And there’s another problem with this theory that Preston never addresses. If the goal of a “fictionalized event” is to make the perpetrator look as deranged as possible, why do the photos typically used for the 9/11 hijackers—or the Tsarnaev brothers, both of which Preston and Fetzer also insist were “false flags”—show them looking completely ordinary? Calm. Neutral. Almost boring.

So which is it? Are the photos too normal, or too crazy? Or is this just another case of conspiracy logic changing shape depending on what’s convenient at the moment?

“And he has a history and what is the history? We’re not real clear on the history.” pg. 116

There is a history—and there’s an entire publicly available report that goes into it in detail. How much more does he expect to know about a private citizen he never met? At some point this stops being “research” and turns into voyeurism.

And yes, HIPAA is a thing. You don’t get unrestricted access to someone’s medical or psychiatric records just because you’re “not real clear” and feel entitled to answers. Even mass murderers retain medical privacy protections. That’s how the law works.

So the problem here isn’t that Lanza’s history is unknown—it’s that it isn’t unlimited. And Preston’s apparent belief that anything less than full disclosure is suspicious says a lot more about his expectations than it does about reality.

“You know, first of all, they found out that he’s got his brother’s driver’s license. Then there’s some confusion. And you know it one of these kind of scenarios that just didn’t quite fit. And as a school person that to me was one of the big pieces of evidence. Why does he have his brother’s license?” pg. 116

This one’s been dead for years, and it only survives because people keep recycling early, bad information.

Adam did not have Ryan Lanza’s driver’s license on him. That claim came from initial media confusion in the first chaotic hours after the shooting, when reporters were scrambling and facts hadn’t been nailed down yet. Once police actually sorted it out, the story collapsed.

Here’s what we do know: Ryan’s driver’s license was with Ryan, in his own possession, when police detained him in Hoboken later that day. That alone completely disproves the idea that Adam had it. There’s no official report, evidence log, or police document that supports Preston’s version—because it didn’t happen.

So no, this isn’t some mysterious clue that “doesn’t quite fit.” It’s just Preston elevating a debunked rumor into “one of the big pieces of evidence,” which tells you a lot about the standard he’s using. If your argument depends on misinformation that was corrected almost immediately, that’s not evidence—it’s just sloppy recycling of a bad headline.

“That’s a very very good point, Paul. Excellent. And we should add that the mug shot that they gave us of Adam Lanza was very painterly. It wasn’t even a photo,” pg. 116

No. None of that is true—on any level.

First, Preston doesn’t even include the image he’s talking about. Not in the chapter, not as a figure, not as an appendix—nothing. That omission matters, because it forces the reader to guess what photo he means. But there really isn’t much mystery here. Given how frequently it’s been circulated, it is almost certainly Adam Lanza’s Western Connecticut State University student ID photo, taken when he attended classes there in 2008–2009.

That image—Lanza staring wide-eyed into the camera—is otherwise a perfectly ordinary college ID snapshot. It’s not “painterly.” It’s not stylized. It’s not manipulated. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a low-resolution institutional ID photo.

Second, and more importantly, it is not a mug shot. Adam Lanza was never arrested for the Sandy Hook murders because he was dead at the scene. Dead people do not get booked. They do not get processed. They do not get mug shots. So the claim fails at the most basic procedural level. That’s strike two.

And this is a fitting place to end the chapter, because this single claim neatly encapsulates the entire method on display. A mundane object is misidentified. The evidence isn’t shown. Basic facts are ignored. Then the confusion created by that ignorance is repackaged as suspicion.

Next: Chapter Seven: “Fixing A Prop: Furnishing The Lanza Home” by Allan William Powell (with Kelley Watt)