“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Chapter Ten
By: “Dr. Eowyn” (aka Maria Hsia Chang) and James Fetzer

Chapter Ten is an interesting read—not because it finally, miraculously offers anything resembling compelling information (spoiler: it doesn’t), but because its claims were thoroughly debunked ages ago by Metabunk, Snopes, USA Today, and countless others. To their credit (I guess?), the authors actually acknowledge this within the first paragraph. Yet, inexplicably, the chapter doesn’t end there. Instead, James Fetzer and Maria Chang stumble through a weak counterargument that essentially boils down to “nuh-uh.” Riveting stuff.

With the exception of a truly bizarre claim about Nancy Lanza’s supposed “true” identity, this short chapter (a whopping six pages—three per author!) spends most of its time desperately clinging to the ridiculous idea that the FBI, in some kind of logic-defying move, openly admits on its website that no one died at Sandy Hook.

This nonsense hinges on a total misunderstanding of the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. Conspiracy theorists love pointing to the UCR summary, which lists zero murders reported by the Newtown Police Department for 2012. But here’s the kicker: we know at least 27 people were murdered in Newtown that year, so what’s the deal?

It’s actually quite simple. The FBI’s data, provided by the state of Connecticut (and available to anyone here), is organized by the reporting agency, which doesn’t always match where the crime occurred. Since the Sandy Hook investigation was ultimately handled by Connecticut state police—not Newtown PD—they were the reporting agency. As a result, the data is reflected under state totals, not Newtown’s.

This isn’t a mistake; it’s how the system is designed. As the FBI’s own Uniform Crime Reporting Handbook explains:

  1. Federal agencies should report offenses within their investigative jurisdictions if they are not
    being reported by a local/state law enforcement agency.
  2. When two or more local, state, tribal, or federal agencies are involved in the investigation of
    the same offense and there is a written or oral agreement defining the roles of the investigating agencies, the agreement must designate which agency will report the offense.
  3. When two or more federal agencies are involved in the investigation of the same offense and
    there is no written or oral agreement defining their roles, the federal agency having lead or
    primary investigative jurisdiction should report the data. If there is uncertainty as to which is
    the lead or primary agency, the agencies must agree on which agency will report the offense.

This completely dismantles the absurd claim made without a shred of evidence on page 172 of Nobody Died At Sandy Hook:

“After all, murders are reported in the communities or jurisdictions in which they have occurred, not on the basis of the agency or organization that investigates them.” pg. 172

The FBI has overseen the UCR program since 1930, and their own documentation confirms that this claim is flat-out false.

While local law enforcement agencies typically investigate and report crimes like murder, it’s neither required nor always the case. Sandy Hook is one such exception, a fact personally confirmed to me by both the FBI’s Crime Stats staff and Connecticut’s DESPP Crime Analysis Unit. The DESPP even cited the horrific Petit family murders as another example. That high-profile case was also handled by state police instead of local authorities.

Sure enough, while three members of the Petit family were tragically killed, the FBI’s 2007 UCR data for Connecticut lists only two murders for the Petits’ hometown of Cheshire that year:

Those two murders were unrelated to the Petit tragedy, the result of a February murder-suicide. Because that investigation was handled by Cheshire police, they reported it to the FBI, and it’s included in their totals. The Petit murders, though committed in Cheshire, were handled by state police, so they appear under state totals instead.

Despite this clear explanation, Maria “Dr. Eowyn” Chang and Jim Fetzer still try to prop up their bogus claim by directing readers to page 26 of Connecticut’s 2012 UCR report. Conveniently, they skip over the enormous full-page dedication to the victims of Sandy Hook—right there on page 4:

You’d also miss two additional references to the 27 victims of the attack, both clearly listed on page 12:

As well as on page twenty-five:

And that’s all before we even get to page 26. In total, the shooting is referenced fourteen times throughout the document.

But the authors stubbornly insist that page 26—and page 26 only—reveals “the truth.” They claim:

At the intersection of ‘Murder’ with ‘<10’ (below 10 years of age) for 2012, you will find the number ‘0’!

Technically, that’s correct! The problem? If you actually read the header for the table (which, conveniently, they cropped out of their screenshot), it clearly says “Arrest Statistics” for 2012:

What this actually means is that no one in Connecticut under the age of ten was arrested for murder in 2012—not that no one under the age of ten was murdered. You’d think two allegedly highly-educated “researchers” working together could avoid bungling something this basic. Unless, of course, they’re intentionally misrepresenting the data. Which brings me to my next point…

The authors repeatedly insist that this data reflects the number of people who have died in a given area:

“The Connecticut State Police submit information to the FBI that asserts 27 people died in Connecticut, but at the same time denies that they died anywhere in Connecticut.” pg 175

But that’s simply not true. This data, when you actually look in the right place, represents the number of offenses reported by law enforcement agencies. If it represented the number of people who have “died,” then where are the fatal car crashes? The drownings? The other accidental deaths?

And it’s not just Sandy Hook or the Petit murders. Virginia’s UCR data for 2007, as published on the FBI’s website, also “misses” something significant: the 32 victims of the Virginia Tech massacre in Blacksburg, VA:

This is especially amusing given that James Fetzer, as he admitted in his disastrous Reddit AMA, considers the Virginia Tech shooting entirely legitimate. By his own logic, shouldn’t those murders appear under Blacksburg’s totals rather than State Police totals?

And then we get to this gem from Fetzer and Chang:

“It is a federal crime to report false statistics to the FBI, so the CTSP tacked on a new category of ‘State Police Misc.’ as though that solved the problem” pg. 173

Here’s the problem: there’s nothing “tacked on” about the State Police Misc. totals. They’ve been included in every UCR document available on Connecticut’s DPS website, going back to 1992. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before Fetzer spins this into proof that Sandy Hook was in the works for 24 years. Stay tuned!

Next: Chapter Eleven: “Are Sandy Hook Skeptics Delusional With ‘Twisted Minds’?” by James Fetzer and Kelley Watt

4 Thoughts on “Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Chapter Ten

  1. Steve on March 17, 2016 at 6:53 am said:

    Just logically speaking one other thing doesn’t make sense about this claim that they make.

    If it’s a hoax, the FBI would have to participate in it or at least know about it. Why would the FBI give the whole thing away by saying there were no murders in Newtown?
    Participating some massive hoax to gin up support for anti-gun legislation is one thing, but lying on an official report is a line the FBI won’t cross, I guess. 😉

    There’s also the matter of why the hoaxers would trust an official government source.

    • Shill Murray on March 17, 2016 at 3:08 pm said:

      They trust government sources when it suits them. Otherwise they can’t be trusted. Of course.

      Like you said, the idea that the FBI could actively participate in this alleged hoax (by sending agents to Newtown, discussing the shooting elsewhere on their site, etc.) but refuse to fudge the numbers on one spreadsheet is pretty ridiculous. And that’s ignoring the fact that the spreadsheet in question is based off of a report that mentions the shooting fourteen separate times.

      Deiners have built their entire narrative on top of alleged anomalies in the official story, but their theories are so full of holes and leaps that it would be absurd to give them a second thought. Logically speaking, it’s just a total mess.

  2. Joseph Price on March 22, 2019 at 3:04 am said:

    Look up the state statistics also. Newtown is in Fairfield County, correct? Why wasn’t the correct number of murders listed in that chart? Middlesex County in Connecticut has the highest amount of murders for 2012. explain that.

    • Shill Murray on March 22, 2019 at 2:45 pm said:

      Middlesex County in Connecticut has the highest amount of murders for 2012. explain that.

      First of all, this is incorrect. In news which could not possibly come as a shock to anyone who has been there, New Haven County leads the way with 33 murders to Middlesex’s 29. So you’re off to a bad start. Secondly, did you not look at the actual UCR data for Middlesex before commenting? Page 33, top of the page.

      Murder3 29
      3 Does include 27 victims of Newtown mass shooting (see State Police Misc.)

      It’s that high because it includes the Newtown victims. Without them, there would only be two.

      Look, it’s not totally unreasonable for a layperson unfamiliar with UCR to just assume that these charts list the number of murders or crimes that occurred in a particular county. I absolutely get that because that was me before I looked into it. So I 100% understand how most people can look at the summary shown on the FBI’s website and be confused. But that’s not the reality, and refusing to educate yourself and remaining defiant in light of the actual facts surrounding the full data, which I’ve provided here for you, is inexcusable. As stated in the article, the UCR reports list the number of crimes reported by each county. It does not report on the number of crimes that occurred in each county (though those numbers are of course often the same). And because this crime was ultimately handled by the state and not Fairfield County, they are the agency responsible for reporting the murders to the FBI, which is why they’re included in the state totals. Those are the facts. The idea that this report makes numerous mentions of the shooting, includes the victims in the totals for the state as well as Middlesex County, yet somehow “admits” that the shooting “didn’t happen” is just insane.

      But don’t take my word for it. There’s an e-mail address listed on page eleven of the report: ctnibrs@ct.gov. It says questions regarding the UCR should be directed there, and it sounds like you have questions. So e-mail away.

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