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

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“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.

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Who Is “Dr. Eowyn”?

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James Fetzer frequently emphasizes both the number of contributors to his book and their supposed academic credentials, not because those credentials meaningfully inform the work, but because they lend his otherwise outrageous claims an artificial veneer of legitimacy. By surrounding demonstrably unsound arguments with an assortment of “doctors” and professors, Fetzer attempts to make ideas that would otherwise be dismissed outright appear as though they emerged from a serious academic discourse—when, in reality, they amount to little more than recycled conspiracy narratives dressed up in academic language.

One of the book’s most egregious chapters—Chapter Two—is authored by someone calling themselves “Dr. Eowyn.” This individual goes to great lengths to remain anonymous, not only within Fetzer’s book but also on their now-defunct conspiracy blog, Fellowship of the Minds. Despite this deliberate anonymity, “Dr. Eowyn” confidently presents themselves as both a professor and a professional author.

Given the sheer volume of demonstrably false and poorly reasoned claims in their chapter, I wanted to know what kind of person could write something so reckless—and then commit it to print with such confidence. Were they actually a professor? A serious academic? Or was this just another case of credential laundering through obscurity?

Without a real name, we’re asked to take “Dr. Eowyn” entirely at their word. And considering how many elementary mistakes they make, that seemed… unwise. So I did a little digging.

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Sandy Hook Elementary Was Open, Part One: The Lobby

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For the absurd theory that Sandy Hook Elementary School closed in 2008 and was later repurposed as “storage” before being used for a staged shooting in 2012 to hold up, you’d have to believe the building was meticulously dressed to look like a fully functioning elementary school—solely for the benefit of a set of heavily redacted crime scene photos that most people were never going to see in the first place. Unsurprisingly, proponents of this theory make no attempt to grapple with just how elaborate and unnecessary such staging would have been.

The photographs are packed with mundane, easily overlooked details—exactly the kinds of things that exist in an actively used school and are difficult to fake convincingly. Even the most obsessive armchair investigators have managed to miss many of them.

Let’s take a look at a few of those details, starting in the school’s lobby (with a brief detour into the kitchen), where Adam Lanza first gained entry by shooting out a large window to bypass the building’s strikeplate security system.

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