Among the first people to describe what it was like to interact with Newtown shooter Adam Lanza and his mother–who lived notoriously private lives and never invited people into their home–were hair stylists Bob Skuba and Diane Harty. As investigators uncover clues about the boy’s behavior bit by bit, the comments are becoming more important as everyone involved tries to understand what the Lanza’s world was like.
“I would say, `Adam, come on.’ He wouldn’t move,” Skuba said. “And his mother would have to say, `Adam, come on, he’s ready.’ It was like I was invisible.”
Harty agreed, saying that the Lanza’s regular visits to their salon were “a very long half an hour. It was a very uncomfortable situation.”
Both stylists say they never heard Adam speak during any of his frequent visits, and that he and his mother had stopped making appointments a few years ago; employees of the salon thought the family had moved away.
Adam is said to have suffered from the learning disability Asperger’s but was extremely bright. His mother reportedly quit her job to stay home and take care of him full time, relying on her ex-husband’s substantial child support payments for income. Acquaintances say she was loathe to let anyone into her home, however, and that Adam was extremely isolated. He allegedly spent much of his time in one of the two rooms he occupied in the sprawling home, playing video games and working on the computer. Investigators have taken that computer as evidence and are trying to extract any information from the hard drive that might lead them to a motive for the shooting, or point them in the direction of what Adam was doing that morning before he killed his mother and then headed to Sandy Hook Elementary. However, the boy destroyed the hard drive with a sharp object and police aren’t sure they’ll be able to find anything useful.