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

“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Twelve
By: Sterling Harwood

“Carver said one can control the situation better by using instead photographs of the dead to identify the victims, depending on the photographer. Snopes.com said that what Carver meant was that one can use a photograph of the face to identify the victim without showing wounds to the body of a child. This, however, hardly depends on the photographer; this depends instead on the shooter and where he shot the child. If the shooter shot the child in the face or even shot the identifying features of the child’s face off, then the photographer wouldn’t matter one little bit.” pg. 188

Much of this is beside the point. Even if it weren’t, it wouldn’t matter, because photographs are only one of several methods used to identify victims. Harwood’s fixation on this issue ignores how victim identification actually works in real-world mass-casualty investigations.

As explained in CFS 1200704597, 00118939.pdf:

The victims were first identified by assigning them a numeric number 3 thru 26. ([Redacted] and number 27 was assigned to the shooter). Then an assigned “OCME number” was written on a tag with their previously assigned numeric and was placed on each victim. Photographic and written scene documentation was completed capturing clothing worn, location of victim, and assigned “OCME number” with identifying photographs of the victim. (NOTE: Prior to processing, the victims were observed to have “triage tags” previously laid upon their bodies by EMS personnel denoting their deceased status).

Once documentation was complete, the victims were placed into a body bag with their associated OCME case number written on the bag while their OCME tag was left on the ground in the place the victim was found. Each victim was carried out of the school and into a large military-style portable tent location within the north parking lot of the school in close proximity to the front lobby. Each victim was then processed by the OCME in an effort to make a positive identification of each victim, using school photographs and clothing descriptions provided by the parents of the children yet to be accounted for.“

In other words, Harwood’s entire line of argument collapses under even minimal familiarity with standard forensic procedure.

“Suspiciously convenient, if not implausible, is Dr. Carver’s role in changing the law about a year before the Sandy Hook massacre to allow keeping the names of murdered minors secret. The names of the murdered minors did come out within about a day or two anyway, but why have such a law except to give the authorities unneeded time to get their story straight?” pg. 188

This claim collapses under its own internal contradiction.

The core premise of the book is that Sandy Hook was a “drill” planned over at least four years. So why, exactly, would authorities suddenly need an extra 24 hours to “get their story straight”? Are we to believe that after four years of planning, they somehow failed to prepare a list of twenty names? And Harwood wants to lecture others about implausibility?

As for the actual timeline: the victims’ names were released by the Connecticut State Police, who were in charge of the investigation, on Saturday—the day after the shooting, not “two days later.” The brief delay occurred because the victims had to be positively identified and their families notified. This is standard procedure in any fatal incident.

From The Huffington Post:

Police knew the names of the victims Friday, but officials said they were pending positive identification by the state medical examiner’s office.

Harwood’s vague reference to a supposed law change in 2011 is likely a muddled reference to long-standing statutes and constitutional provisions that limit the disclosure of minors’ identities in public records. These include:

• CGS § 1‐210(b)(3)(B) – Identity of minor witnesses
• CGS § 1‐210(b)(11) – Names and addresses of students enrolled in public school
• CGS § 1‐210(b)(2) – Personnel, medical, or similar files constituting an invasion of privacy
• U.S. & Connecticut Constitutions – Privacy protections (U.S. Const. Amend. XIV; Conn. Const. Art. I, § 8b)

While the FOIA exemptions are not always easy to date precisely, Article I, Section 8b of the Connecticut Constitution—pertaining to victim rights—was adopted on November 27, 1996.

So no, there is nothing “suspicious” here—only Harwood’s determination to turn routine legal safeguards into something sinister.

“Dr. Carver is worth additional investigation if only due to his cryptic remark that he hopes future disclosures don’t come crashing down on the heads of the people of Newtown (search YouTube.com with the key words of Carver’s name and “crashing down on the heads of the people of Newtown”). Over what disclosure could there possibly be negative consequences crashing down on the heads of the people of Newtown? No investigation or piece of journalism has yet pinned Dr. Carver down on that.” pg. 189

Except that this isn’t what Dr. Carver said.

Here is the relevant portion of the press conference transcript, with the context Harwood conspicuously omits:

Question: “Sir, obviously by the nature of your job, you deal with horrible things at times. Is this one over the top? Is this one a bit different than the things you’ve dealt with before, sir?”

Carver: “Did everybody hear the question?”

Unidentified Man: “No.”

Carver: “It was given what I deal with all the time, is this one over the top. I’ve been at this for a third of a century. And it’s my sensibilities may not be the average man. But this probably is the worst I have seen or the worst that I know of any of my colleagues having seen. And that all the more makes me proud and grateful to our staff who to a man have just behaved most professionally and strongly and I hope they and I hope the people of Newtown don’t have it crash on their head later.“

Read in context, Carver is plainly expressing hope that the people involved—his staff and the community—continue to endure the aftermath with professionalism and strength, not issuing a cryptic warning about a future “exposure.”

If this were all a hoax, with no one killed, what exactly was “the worst” thing he had seen in over thirty years?

And why instruct readers to “search YouTube” rather than provide an actual transcript or credible source? Because doing so predictably funnels readers toward conspiracy videos. It’s lazy at best and deceptive at worst—and entirely characteristic of this book.

“Snopes.com does a great job of plausible denial by diversion to a related issue. The main issue is why Rosen and a bus driver would babysit six children traumatized by seeing their teacher shot dead in front of them without calling the police to take custody of the children immediately.” “Again, would you sit idle for half an hour if six children and a bus driver wandered into your yard and told you a tale of a murder going on, or would you immediately dial 911?” pg. 189

The claim that Gene Rosen sat “idle” for half an hour is not just wrong—it’s demonstrably false. It follows the same familiar pattern of distortion and libel aimed at a private citizen who helped frightened children and was later rewarded with years of harassment from conspiracy theorists.

According to the bus driver’s own statement (CFS 1200704559, 00003250.pdf):

All of the children wanted to contact their parents or have [redacted] drive them home, and that along with the man’s [Rosen’s] help, they asked the children for their phone numbers.

Rosen expanded on this in his statement (CFS 1200704559, 00257146.pdf):

Rosen stated he and [redacted] tried to call a few of the telephone numbers that some of the children verbally gave them to contact their parents, but that he believed many were home telephone numbers and he wasn’t able to reach anyone. Rosen stated that [redacted] called her supervisor at the bus company and gave the supervisor the names of the children present, and stated that the supervisor was able to contact at least some of the parents, some of whom began arriving at Rosen’s house within 10 to 15 minutes later to collect their children.

So no, Rosen wasn’t “idle” for half an hour. Parents were already arriving within 10–15 minutes, and the remaining children were later taken to the firehouse and turned over to State Troopers who were already on scene. As for the fixation on whether Rosen personally dialed 911—so what? Plenty of people did, and those calls are publicly available. The idea that Rosen’s actions somehow suggest a “drill” is absurd. This is not skepticism; it’s character assassination.

“Now consider the case of what snopes.com admits is an unidentified man seen with a gun in the woods near the school on the day of the massacre, as reported in the Newtown Bee newspaper. Snopes.com reassures us that a reliable local law enforcement source says that the armed man at or near the scene of the crime was only an off-duty tactical squad police officer from another town. But this so-called (implicitly anyway) innocent explanation raises about 100 more questions than it answers. What was his name? Why can’t we know his name? Why was he armed? Why was he armed when he was off-duty? Why did he decide to spend his off-duty hours prowling the woods where a massacre was to occur or had just occurred?” pg. 189

Why do I get the distinct impression that even if all 100 questions were answered, another 1,000 would immediately replace them?

The identity and actions of the so-called “man in the woods” are explained on page 17 of the Report of the State’s Attorney for the Judicial District of Danbury on the Shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and 36 Yogananda Street, Newtown, Connecticut, on December 14, 2012:

A man from New York who was working in a nearby town and went to SHES after an application on his cell telephone alerted him to the situation at the school. He drove to the firehouse and went up to the school on foot. He was taken from the scene of the school in handcuffs and later to the Newtown Police Department. It was later determined that he did not have a connection to the shooting and had gone to SHES to see what was going on.

The report doesn’t mention a firearm, though The Newtown Bee does, identifying him as an off-duty tactical officer:

A man with a gun who was spotted in the woods near the school on the day of the incident was an off-duty tactical squad police officer from another town, according to the source.

If he was armed, that’s hardly remarkable—many off-duty officers carry firearms. What is remarkable is the authors pretending this is suspicious in a book that claims the shooting was staged to justify gun control.

Police detained him, investigated him, and cleared him. That’s the end of the story. His identity is irrelevant, and he has a right to privacy. Incidentally, officers also detained reporters in the woods that day. Should we demand their biographies too, or is this scrutiny reserved only for people who can be awkwardly shoehorned into a conspiracy narrative?

“Now consider the case of another unidentified man. This time the man was detained, handcuffed, and pinned to the ground. He might have been armed but snopes.com evidently thinks that is so unimportant that it fails to say one way or the other. But don’t worry, snopes.com reassures us that police determined he was just an innocent passerby. Snopes.com gives no citation to any source it has for that reassurance. Snopes.com fails even to rely on the prestigious Newtown Bee here, as it relied on before in trying to reassure us about the mysterious, armed tactical squad officer. Further, snopes.com fails to identify which police officer or officers made that determination that the handcuffed man was just an innocent passerby. Snopes.com also fails to give the handcuffed man’s name or physical description at all.” pg. 190

Snopes does provide its source—at the bottom of the article, where sources traditionally appear:

The cited Atlantic piece states:

We admit it took a bit of digging to discover that others had figured out that the man in question was most likely Chris Manfredonia, the father of a Sandy Hook student, who attempted to sneak into the school after the shooting started. Police can be heard relaying his name over their radios, but few outlets managed to follow up with that detail.

The irony here is rich. Harwood spends pages accusing Snopes of poor sourcing while, just one page earlier, instructing readers to “search YouTube” for evidence—without providing a single citation. He also never cites the Snopes article he’s criticizing. Complaints about sourcing ring hollow coming from a chapter that contains none.

“Police do make mistakes, you know. The man’s name should be recorded in a police report anyway if the police were engaged in due diligence and so his name should come out eventually anyway unless the police reports themselves are being sealed because there was some sort of intelligence operation going on at Sandy Hook around the time of the massacre. Fortunately, The Los Angeles Times on December 14, 2012 reported the man’s name as Chris Manfredonia.” pg. 190

Yes, police make mistakes—but Harwood’s solution is to replace documented evidence with fantasy. Manfredonia’s name was recorded in official reports, albeit redacted in public releases. Captain Rios’s interview (Book 6, 00043911.pdf) confirms this:

He arrived with Chief Kehoe’s vehicle and responded to the left side (when looking at the front of the school) of the building where he heard that Officer McGowan and Sgt. Kullgren were out with a male “suspect”, later identified as a parent, [redacted]. Rios took custody of [redacted] and turned him over to an Oxford Constable Ramirez.

The Manfredonia incident is exhaustively documented throughout Book 4, 00184096.pdf:

09:39:34 Officer McGowan encounters [redacted] running along the east side of SHES. (Newtown radio)
Officer McGowan: “Yea we got him… they’re coming at me down Crestwood.”
09:40:46 First indication that Officer McGowan has [redacted] in custody on the east side of the school near the playground. (Newtown radio)
Officer McGowan: “67 to S6, do you know if this guy I got here is involved?”
09:41:24: Officer McGowan has [redacted] prone out on the playground of SHES. First time that information is relayed that there is possibly a second shooter (Newtown radio)
09:41:24 Officer McGowan: “I need a unit up here, on the playground side, to secure this party.”
09:41:30 Newtown Sgt Kullgren: “Do you have that person yes, no?”
09:41:34 Officer McGowan: “I don’t know, I’ve got a party on the side, I have him prone out now.”
09:41:39 Newtown Sgt Kullgren: “Roger that, units be aware that we could have a secondary unit.”
Officer McGowan’s transmission draws the attention of the Newtown officers on scene. Officers Chapman and Smith respond from the south side (rear) of the school. Newtown Sgt Kullgren responds from the north side (front) of the school. Newtown Chief Kehoe and Newtown Captain Rios respond from Crestwood Drive. Officer Seabrook responds to the east side of the school upon arrival. (Dash videos and Statements of the officers)
09:44:33 Officer Chapman and Officer Smith complete a check of the perimeter (west and south side) of the school. Officer Smith stated that he and Officer Chapman made eye contact with Officer McGowan at the rear of the school, where Officer McGowan had [redacted] prone out on the ground. Upon realizing that [redacted] was not a threat, they both returned back to the front door (Statements of Officers Chapman and Smith)
09:44:33 Officer Chapman: “Myself and 92 (Officer Smith) checked the perimeter of the school. That party in custody 4901 (Newtown police radio code for unfounded)… we will continue checking.” (Newtown radio)
At this time, Officer McGowan has turned over custody of [redacted] to Newtown Captain Rios. (Newtown radio)
09:48:40 Newtown Captain Rios with (parent) in custody walking from the playground area. (Officer Seabrook’s video) [see below]
09:49:01 Newtown Captain Rios approaches the rear driver’s side of TFC McGeever’s vehicle with (parent) in handcuffs. Newtown Captain Rios walks back to the front of TFC McGeever’s vehicle. (Lt Davis’ video)
09:50:20 Newtown Captain Rios turns custody of [redacted] over to Oxford Constable Ramirez. (Officer Seabrook’s video)
09:51:35 Oxford Constable Ramirez is seen taking handcuffs off [redacted] (TFC McGeever’s video)
09:51:51 Oxford Constable Ramirez escorts [redacted] toward the Sandy Hook firehouse. (Lt Davis’ video)

While his name is redacted in some places, Manfredonia is referenced in multiple other documents, including:

• Book 6, 00044171.pdf
• Book 6, 00167449.pdf
• Book 6, 00260187.pdf

His own police interview appears in Book 5, 00014498.pdf.

This was not an “intelligence operation.” It was a frantic parent misidentified as a potential threat during a chaotic active shooter response—an entirely normal and well-documented occurrence.

“There are, however, two more suspicious facts: 1) Manfredonia was wearing camouflaged clothes when spotted in the woods behind the school; and 2) Manfredonia’s home address is ‘directly behind’ the other murder scene, the home of Adam Lanza.” pg. 191

Almost none of this is true. Manfredonia was not in the woods and was not wearing camouflage. He was wearing khakis, as confirmed by eyewitnesses and Officer Seabrook’s dashcam video:

As for his alleged proximity to the Lanza residence—even if true, it proves nothing. Their children attended the same elementary school. Of course they lived nearby. The claim that his home is “directly behind” 36 Yogananda is also misleading; the properties are merely in the same general area:

Even if Manfredonia did live next door and wore camouflage daily, none of this advances the claim that Sandy Hook was a “drill.” It’s innuendo without an argument.

“Further, it isn’t just Mr. Parker’s laugh: he also takes a deep breath and seems to right himself the way actors do before starting a scene.” pg. 191

Sterling Harwood: attorney by trade, acting coach by imagination. Taking a deep breath under stress is a normal human response, not a theatrical tell.

“It is incredibly weak of snopes.com merely to say that no crisis actor has yet been identified. I would expect snopes.com also at least to say that it has picked up the damn phone and obtained denials from all of the crisis actor firms that any of their actors were working in Newtown on the day of the massacre.” pg. 191

This inverts the burden of proof entirely. The argument boils down to: there is no evidence, therefore prove it anyway. That’s not skepticism; it’s bad faith.

The suggestion that Snopes should cold-call “crisis actor firms” is laughable, especially coming from someone who would instantly dismiss any denial as part of the cover-up. This is precisely why evidence matters.

Seriously—can you believe this guy was a practicing lawyer? This is his idea of the burden of proof: “There’s absolutely zero evidence that these people are crisis actors, the idea itself is absurd, but they’re definitely crisis actors, so now prove they aren’t.”

That kind of reasoning might explain why Harwood was disbarred in 2017:

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 19, 2016 – A San Jose attorney is facing disbarment for harming clients from the local Southeast Asian community who spoke limited English. Two of his former clients lost their cases – for wrongful death and slip and fall injury – as a result of the professional misconduct.

Sterling Voss Harwood, 58, (bar #194746) has been ineligible to practice law since Aug. 27, after a State Bar Court judge approved his disbarment. The disbarment will go into effect once approved by the California Supreme Court.

Or why his Avvo rating is a dismal 1 out of 10.

By the way, since his disbarment, Sterling Harwood has been earning a living by dancing for nickels in YMCA locker rooms. Now it’s up to him to call every YMCA in the country to obtain denials. Fair is fair, right?

“Finally on this point, snopes.com suggests that maybe the two parents of Sandy Hook victims laughing so soon on video after the respective murders might just be having a crazy reaction. That’s possible, but given how these two parents, Mr. Parker and Ms. Lynn McDonnell, were in the rest of their statements to the media, it surely is implausible. They simply don’t appear crazy yet they laugh, smile broadly, and shed no tears.” pg. 191

Yes—nothing but laughter and smiles here:

“Now I want to turn to puzzling issues that the 15-page entry on snopes.com for Sandy Hook fails to answer at all as far as I can see. Another liquid missing from the scene, besides the tears of any parent, is blood.” pg. 191

The most graphic crime scene photos were never released, as they depict murdered children and are exempt from FOIA disclosure under CGS §1‐210(b)(27). This is neither unusual nor suspicious.

That said, blood is visible in numerous released scene photos—at least eighteen by my count. The claim that there is “none at all” is simply false.

“Plenty of blood from, for example, the Manson murders, the OJ murders, Columbine and other murder scenes seems to come out but none at all come out from Sandy Hook.” pg. 192

Some perspective is in order. There are graphic, bloody photographs from the Boston Marathon bombing—easy to find if you’re inclined toward that sort of thing—but that didn’t stop James Fetzer from publishing a book insisting that attack was also an elaborate hoax. When these same conspiracy theorists were confronted with blood on Nancy Lanza’s bedding, they declared that fake too. So let’s dispense with the pretense that any quantity of blood would ever satisfy them. The goalposts don’t move; they dissolve.

For the record, I could locate precisely three widely circulated bloody photos from Columbine, compared to eighteen blood-visible images in Walkley’s Sandy Hook crime scene photo set:

• Blood on the sidewalk as paramedics assist victims
• Patrick Ireland being pulled from the library window
• The infamous photo of the shooters’ suicides in the library (illegally leaked and never officially released)

Beyond that, Columbine photos either show no visible blood or can’t be reliably authenticated. By the standards Harwood is trying to impose here, Columbine should also be declared “fake.” Curiously, it never is.

“Snopes.com also has no answer I have seen so far for the fact that there are gaps in the Internet and email usage at the school that suggest the school was not in use regularly but was used only for a drill.” pg. 192

The so-called “Internet usage” claim is a long-running favorite and manages to demonstrate two things at once. First, older folks do not understand how the Internet works. What Sterling is fumbling toward is web presence, which is not, by any definition, the same thing as “Internet usage.” Second, this claim has already been thoroughly debunked and remains one of the dumbest arguments still in circulation.

The alleged “gap in email usage” is a new flourish added for this chapter, but it fares no better. It’s presented without a single source, citation, or example—because there isn’t one. Unsurprisingly, it’s also complete nonsense. The Sandy Hook Tragedy: Focus on Facts Facebook page hosts an extensive archive of documents, including emails, that reduce this claim to absolute confetti.

“Speaking of Internet usage, another implausible fact, if the Sandy Hook massacre is totally un-staged rather than any sort of psychological operation or drill, isn’t it implausible for there to have been Internet donation pages set up for some of the victims so soon after the murders of the particular victims were confirmed?” pg. 192

This is another ancient claim. It has been debunked for years. It was stupid then, and it’s still stupid now.

“Ask yourself if you would set up such a page asking for money in honor of your dead child in the wake of the violent murder of your child or whether that would be an implausible use of your time so soon after learning of your child’s violent murder at the hands of a madman?” pg. 192

Ask yourself something simpler: who, exactly, is Harwood talking about? Once again, he provides no names, no sources, and no examples. While conspiracy theorists love to gesture vaguely at “donation pages,” the examples historically cited do not involve any of the Sandy Hook victims’ parents. This argument survives only because it is never required to be specific.

“Snopes.com also has no answer yet for a young boy interviewed by Dr. Oz on the Dr. Oz show (see the fascinating YouTube.com clip from Dr. Oz’s show) who says that the Sandy Hook emergency was only a drill. Dr. Oz changes the subject immediately instead of doing the more plausible and straightforward thing and asking the boy why he thought it was only a drill or who told him that it was only a drill. I find Dr. Oz’s changing of the subject so fast downright suspicious but maybe Dr. Oz just lacks an enquiring mind or was just obeying a producer’s shout into Dr. Oz’s earpiece to move along to another subject. Maybe a producer shouted into Dr. Oz’s earpiece: Don’t pay any attention to the man behind the curtain or the Sandy Hook victim who said it was a drill, Dr. Oz.” pg. 193

Yikes. A Wizard of Oz joke? Jesus Christ, Sterling—how long were you sitting on that one?

Let’s start with some basic facts. The Dr. Oz Show is not broadcast live. It’s taped well in advance, and even programs billed as “live” typically run on a tape delay. The idea that a child could accidentally blurt out forbidden truth on national television and that producers would just shrug and air it anyway is laughable. Even more inconvenient for this theory: the supposedly incriminating clip remains publicly available on Dr. Oz’s own website.

The interview features Sandy Hook third-grader Louis, his mother Lindsay, and his grandmother Cathy. At Louis’s request, Dr. Oz asks him what he remembers about that day. Clearly struggling, Louis responds:

I remember that a lot, a lot of policemen were in the um school. Um. [Big exhale] Well, a lot. I was like [big exhale] like (I’m under/I remember) when it, when we were having a drill, we were hiding under like…

Louis exhales again—something Sterling Harwood might generously interpret as further evidence of “acting.” He then pauses. Recognizing that a child is having difficulty recounting a traumatic event, Dr. Oz gently redirects him with a simpler question: “What would you like to say to your teachers about Friday?” Even then, Louis continues to struggle and receives help from both his mother and Dr. Oz in formulating a response.

So what does Louis mean when he says, “when we were having a drill”? There are several entirely mundane explanations:

• He is recalling an actual drill. Like most schools, Sandy Hook regularly conducted lockdown drills. Children frequently conflate similar events, especially under stress.
• He was told it was a drill. This is exactly what library clerk Mary Anne Jacobs told the children she hid in a storage closet to keep them calm. From The Washington Post:

They were children in a place built for children, and the teachers didn’t know how to answer them. They told them to close their eyes and to keep quiet. They helped move an old bookshelf in front of the door to act as a makeshift barricade. They wondered: How do you explain unimaginable horror to the most innocent?

“It’s a drill,” said a library clerk named Mary Anne Jacobs.

Drills they knew. Drills they understood.

• He misunderstood what was happening. Other teachers used similar strategies to calm students. Some read to them (Book 5, 00002236.pdf; Book 5, 00039513.pdf; Book 5, 00256442.pdf; Book 5, 00258279.pdf), while others played games (Book 5, 00006236.pdf; Book 5, 00260314.pdf). It is entirely plausible that Louis believed the lockdown was part of a drill.

In short, Louis’s halting speech, confusion, and phrasing aren’t evidence of anything nefarious. They are exactly what you’d expect from a traumatized child trying to make sense of an overwhelming experience. But that would require context, empathy, and intellectual honesty—none of which Sterling Harwood seems particularly interested in when a shaky soundbite can be tortured into yet another conspiracy.

Next: Epilogue: “The Nexus Of Tyranny: Tuscon, Aurora And Sandy Hook” by Dennis Cimino