Fact Checking “Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”, Epilogue

“Nobody Died At Sandy Hook”
Epilogue
By: Dennis Cimino

This chapter’s author, Dennis Cimino, manages to out himself as an Obama “birther” by the second paragraph—because of course he does. Not just any birther, though—a particularly gullible one. The claim that President Obama attended school as “Barry Soetoro”? Yeah, that originated as an April Fool’s joke… back in 2009. So buckle in, folks, because it’s going to be a wild ride!

Cimino kicks things off with a two-page ramble about the 2011 shooting of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the 2012 Aurora movie theater attack. While his claims about these events are outside the scope of this book, I just have to share the following paragraphs, penned by an alleged PhD, in an actual book:

The key begins in Tucson where the acting Sheriff, Clarence Dupnik, and his auxiliaries, staged the elaborate hoax that a federal judge and a Congress woman named “Gabby Giffords” were shot, the judge fatally. While Gabby may have been seriously seriously wounded, I have found multiple indications that suggest this, too, may have been a hoax. Evidence of purely FEMA staged acting was apparent in the fact that, when you do careful analysis of the photos of the scene, you can find many significant clues.

One is a FEMA coach, kneeling by a stretcher, cue-card in his nongloved hands, reading that, with a small plastic cup of fake blood there, at a site where allegedly real human beings were shot by an orange hair whacko named ‘Holmes’ that is so psychologically goofy looking you can barely stand to look at him, let alone realize he is like the rest, another Greenberg Zionist actor, participating in one of a series of hoaxes.

Notice anything… off? Beyond the usual crazy rambling about FEMA coaches, cue cards, and fake blood? Yes, according to Cimino, Gabby Giffords was apparently shot by none other than James Holmes, six months before he killed 12 people in Aurora.

Of course, this is 1000% wrong: Giffords was shot by Jared Lee Loughner, who is bald, not orange-haired. But hey, when you’re spinning tales this bonkers, why bother fact-checking?

“We have Dawn Hochsprung, who was allegedly killed shielding children from the lone gunman, giving an interview to The Newtown BEE newspaper that morning.” pg. 198

Once again, Cimino seems to be deeply confused—a polite way of saying he has no clue what he’s talking about. It was never alleged that Dawn Hochsprung was killed while shielding children. She was in a parent-teacher conference when she responded to the sound of gunfire and was fatally shot in the hallway alongside Mary Sherlach. Hochsprung wasn’t near any students when this happened.

Cimino is probably thinking of Victoria Soto, who was not interviewed by The Newtown Bee (or “BEE,” I guess) that morning—or any other morning, for obvious reasons. As for the absurd claim that Dawn Hochsprung gave an interview after the shooting, that nonsense was already covered in Chapter Five.

We’re only three pages in, and this chapter is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.

“We have CNN video of SWAT team members running to the school door through a column of previously arranged orange traffic cones. Expecting someone important that day, were they? Especially since this was footage intentionally shown by CNN of a drill that had actually been staged at the school months before…  So we now know that the earlier drill was used by CNN (actually shot at St. Rose of Lima Elementary School, approximately 14 miles southwest of the closed Sandy Hook school, based upon information we now have that has matched up the helicopter vs. Google Earth view and beyond a reasonable doubt shows CNN effectively had to be in on the scam!) in more than one non-live shot of what allegedly took place on December 14th, but clearly did not.” pgs. 198-199

Speaking of enormous messes, what the actual fuck is Cimino even saying here? He starts by claiming the footage in question is from a drill conducted at Sandy Hook Elementary School “months before.” Then, after some bizarre tangent about asphalt sealant (mercifully edited out here), he shifts gears, claiming the drill actually took place at St. Rose of Lima Elementary, which he erroneously states is “14 miles southwest” of Sandy Hook:

Let’s start with the basics: St. Rose of Lima is 1.4 miles—not 14—away from Sandy Hook Elementary:

As for the clips in question, they don’t depict a drill happening anywhere. How would running two simultaneous drills at schools less than a mile and a half apart make any sense? What we’re actually seeing—albeit briefly—is the police response to St. Rose of Lima, which, like many other schools in the area, went into lockdown three separate times on December 14, as reported by CT News. Cimino provides zero evidence that these clips were filmed “months ago” or are from any kind of training exercise. Seriously, when’s the last time you saw police sprinting during a drill?

He also throws in the absurd claim about a helicopter “hovering over the scene with a DETROIT fire truck in the footage.” Here’s the problem:

• No such thing is visible in the CNN clip (still available online).
• No Detroit fire trucks—located 669 miles or a 10-hour drive from Newtown—were photographed anywhere near either school.

Cimino handwaves this with the excuse that the footage “disappeared from YouTube,” which is laughable considering that plenty of similarly idiotic claims have remained on YouTube for years:

Yet somehow, all of this made it into print.

Let’s also address the baffling “logic” (or lack thereof). If Sandy Hook was closed in 2008 (spoiler: it wasn’t), why would anyone stage a drill at St. Rose of Lima on the exact same day? And if St. Rose was part of this elaborate conspiracy, why did Sandy Hook deniers call in a bomb threat there? Even creepier, why was Wolfgang Halbig caught sitting in a car near St. Rose, filming children like some kind of deranged stalker?

Where’s the usual trappings of a supposed FEMA drill? No portable toilets, no “Everybody Must Check In” sign, no stockpile of bottled water. Why doesn’t this alleged drill look anything like the one claimed at Sandy Hook?

Cimino and Fetzer’s nonsense collapses under even the most basic scrutiny—and that’s being generous.

“Now it has been firmly established that many crisis actors were used in Newtown” pg. 199

It has?? When?? Did the folks at Snopes finally get off their lazy asses and call all those crisis actor agencies to confirm this “firmly established” revelation? Or is this just another case of Cimino “firmly establishing” nonsense in his own head?

“The most notable one is Robbie Parker, who is told ‘just read the card’” pg. 199

No one says that.

“I don’t know about you, but nobody can explain away his very poor acting here” pg. 199

Maybe that’s because it’s not acting.

“Later that day we have the coroner, Wayne Carver, who is oddly out of character” pg. 200

Seeing as this was Carver’s first-ever press conference (at least as far as I could find), I’m dying to know what Cimino’s reference point is for Carver’s supposed “character.”

Also, I’d really like to know if Cimino has considered—just for a second—that working through the night, examining the bodies of twenty murdered five- and six-year-old children, might have some impact on someone’s demeanor. Or is “human empathy” just another hoax to him?

“It is not possible that nobody would survive any shooting involving 27 people, under any remote stretch of the imagination. Someone would have been found clinging to life, yet no triage existed that day to ascertain this, and someone mysteriously, not this flakey-acting coroner, had decreed that all were ‘dead’ on the scene” pg. 200

It’s almost like Dennis Cimino has zero knowledge of the subject he’s rambling about. Two children were, in fact, found “clinging to life” after the attack. They were rushed to Danbury Hospital, where, tragically, they later succumbed to their injuries. Additionally, two adults—Deborah Pisani and Natalie Hammond—survived the shooting.

The claim that victims were not triaged is not just false; it’s laughably easy to disprove. Earlier in this very book, we saw Deborah Pisani being treated at a secondary triage area by the firehouse:

Her treatment is extensively corroborated throughout multiple statements in the final report, such as:

When I got up to the scene I was stopped by the State Police and was told the scene wasn’t safe. I then proceeded up to primary triage, located at the front of the school. The only person who was wounded was a teacher who was shot in the foot. I was walking her down to the treatment area when a group of students came running out of the school. One of the students yelled out to ask her if she was ok, and she responded “I’m just fine, I only sprained my ankle!” I think she is very brave. Once I got her to the treatment area at the firehouse I turned over her care to other personnel, and went back up to triage. (Source: Book 6, 00002134.pdf)

I exited the vehicle and proceeded to remove any medical equipment we might need into an area that would be called a triage station. EMS Captain Halsted Firefighter Berressi and myself were notified of a potential patient located at the comer of the parking lot furthest from the school. We found and rendered aid to the patient with a laceration to the foot. After wrapping the wound we transferred care to a female member of Newtown EMS. We then returned to the triage station area to continue preparing for the possibility of more patients. (Source: Book 6, 00256439.pdf)

On the way there were several vehicles that had to be moved but we managed to set up a triage post in the first parking lot between the stop signs. At some point someone came to get us and we treated a female GSW victim near one of the parked cars. We continued to prepare for casualties. But none ever came out. We were not allowed to enter the building and slowly we were moved back to a second triage center. (Source: Book 6, 00256436.pdf)

As for the children, they were (obviously) triaged inside the school by EMS personnel. This, too, is thoroughly documented in the final report, as seen in:

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 case 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 case 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). (Source: CFS 1200704597, 00118939.pdf)

Cassavechia stated that four separate patient assessments were made to guarantee no one was resuscitatable. Cassavechia said that the victims were formally triaged using the SMART triage program. (Source: Book 6, 00002113.pdf)

Reed stated they then assessed the two adult victims in the hallway and utilized the cardiac machine. Reed stated that Cassavechia had spoken to the Emergency Medical Control Physician D. Pat Broderick and they decided that all the victims with obvious non-life sustainable head wounds would be checked with the cardiac machine. Reed stated they re-assessed the victims in the rooms utilizing the cardiac machine. Reed stated that all the victims were given a triage tag, except for the victims in the bathroom. Those tags were put on the thermostat outside the bathroom door. Reed stated they did not want to disturb the crime scene any more than they already had. Reed stated with each victim that they utilized the cardiac machine on they left the EKG printout from the machine on the triage tag of the victim. (Source: Book 6, 00002358.pdf)

There were also a number of child victims in the room. I remember moving quickly among the bodies, checking for signs of life as I triaged their injuries. Some had injuries which were obviously not consistent with life; others took a little more time. It was my assessment that all victims in Room #10 were dead or gravely injured. (Source: Book 6, 00026724.pdf)

Sgt. Cario began to yell to the victims to determine if there were any live victims. There was no response from anyone. Sgt. Cario began to move the victims from their location to triage their injuries. (Source: Book 6, 00041707.pdf)

“Not at Newtown, where they all died instantaneously and were declared DEAD by someone other than the medical examiner that day. By whom? By what authority?” pg. 200

The notion that only the medical examiner can declare someone dead is pure bunk (as is the absurd claim that everyone died instantaneously, already addressed above). In reality, EMS personnel declared the victims dead at the scene, following Connecticut state law.

For a thorough explanation of how this process works, I highly recommend this excellent write-up from Sandy Hook Facts.

“James Tracy has a brilliant critique of Carver’s performance here, where, if ABC/NCB[sic]/CBS are correct in their reporting (that the body was found with only handguns and the rifle had been left in the car), then what precisely are we to make of Carver’s contention that they were all shot with the Bushmaster?” pg. 200

Considering that Carver was entirely correct in his statements, the only conclusion anyone should draw from reports claiming Adam Lanza’s body was found “only with handguns and the rifle had been left in the car” is that those reports were flat-out wrong. Once again, Cimino conveniently fails to cite a single source for these alleged claims.

For clarity, here is exactly what Carver said regarding the weaponry used, all of which has been confirmed as accurate:

Question: Doctor, on that examination, could you tell which caliber of the handgun compared to the rifle on these shooting victims were?
Carver: It’s a good thing there’s not a prosecution ’cause then I couldn’t answer that. All the wounds that I know of at this point are caused by one weapon.
Question: So the rifle was the primary weapon?
Carver: Yes.
Question: What caliber was used?
Carver: The question was what caliber were these bullets. And I know I probably know more about firearms than most pathologists but if I say it in court, they yell at me and make me answer. So I’ll let the police deal with that for you.
Question: 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. Victims I had ranged from 3 to 11 wounds apiece, and I only saw 2 of them with close-range shooting. But that’s – you know, that’s a sample. I really don’t have detailed information on the rest of the injuries.
Question: Wait, you said it was the long rifle that was used?
Carver: Yes.

So, Cimino’s contention that Carver’s statements are somehow inconsistent falls apart entirely when examined against the actual record. It’s just one more example of conspiracy theorists grasping at straws to support their narrative.

“There is even a report that Carver himself has admitted that it was ‘a hoax’.” pg. 200

No, there isn’t. Cimino, once again, fails to provide any source, evidence, or even a quote to support this claim. It’s almost like he’s just making things up.

“United Way forgot to check the schedule before they had set up the fraudulent ‘fleece America’ site to get money from bleeding hearts who wanted to donate to the HOAX fund to pay these crisis actors. Yep, on 11 December this donation site was set up by United Way.” pg. 201

This has already been addressed in Chapter Five.

“And the brochure for telling families how to talk to their kids just happened to be released that day, when anyone in the brochure printing business knows that the laying up of a brochure and the production takes days not just an hour or two. Yet it was done on December 14th. And there is evidence it was produced on 12 December, two days before the shooting, meaning again that this was a hoax–and an act of treason.” pg. 201

Of course Cimino never presents this “evidence” or even a single source for his claim, so let’s assume he’s referring to the two-page PDF titled “Talking With Children/Students About the Sandy Hook Elementary Shooting,” often cited by conspiracy theorists like Maria Hsia Chang on her dreadful blog, Fellowship of the Minds.

First, it’s not a physical brochure as Cimino claims, but a simple PDF produced by the Crisis Management Institute (CMI). It contains nothing but basic boilerplate advice—no graphics, no intricate formatting—that could easily be assembled in a matter of minutes. PDFs like this certainly don’t take hours, let alone days, to create.

According to CMI, the document was first published on December 17th, 2012. Using the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine (the same tool Fetzer’s crew loves to misuse), we can confirm it was indexed on December 21st. So where does this ridiculous claim about it being created before December 14th come from? Predictably, it’s based on misunderstanding how WordPress handles URLs.

The document’s URL includes “2012/10,” leading conspiracy theorists to believe it was uploaded in October 2012:

http://www.cmionline.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Talking-With-Your-Children-About-the-Sandy-Hook-Elementary-Shooting.pdf

This “2012/10” directory was created when CMI first uploaded any file to their site in October 2012. It’s entirely unrelated to the Sandy Hook document. As for why the document appears to be created “before the shooting,” the author, Cheri Lovre, explains it best in her own blog post:

The blog’s claims about me are based in one of them having downloaded the guidelines on how to talk with children about the Sandy Hook shooting, and having looked at the data of information electronically linked to that PDF.  It is easy to tell that the PDF I created the day of the shooting was made from a word document, and that that original word document was made prior to the shooting.  That part is true.  I have templates for a range of kinds of crises so when one occurs, I now almost never start from scratch.  I take the closest set of guidelines from the past, delete and edit and wordsmith, and create a new PDF.  Hurricanes, missing children, terrorist attacks, terminal illness, suicide, and yes – school shootings.  I have numerous templates.

That is how simple it is.  That I used a previous document to recreate the new one so I didn’t have to re-type paragraphs that were OK to use again for Sandy Hook.  When I received the first email from them suggesting that I should come clean about how I would have known about Sandy Hook before it happened (based on thinking that I’d created the PDF before it happened) I went to the web site referenced in the email and was absolutely shocked and amazed at the tirade that had unfolded on that blog.  I asked my tech support fellow what he could know by looking further into it, and he very forthrightly got on the blog and responded to every accusation.  A very few of the bloggers took his comments as information – the rest were spiteful toward Brant in their responses.  You can go to their blog to read his lengthy explanations.  He is a prince among men, and his efforts were valiant!

Her technical support associate, Brant, also provided a detailed explanation on Fellowship of the Minds—though, predictably, conspiracy theorists ignored it:

Timeline:

1. Sometime on the 14th Cheri wrote content about Sandy Hook on our Current Events page and uploaded the PDF in question (using one of the 3 different ways she can do this within the page editor and she must hae chosen the one that has a quirk when used in this way to make a simple link to a file, the user has to click on it once, then is shown a page with just a link to that file on it, after clicking on that link, you finally get the file.

(I tried just now to reproduce this, but since we are now running WordPress 3.5.1 it doesn’t work the same anymore.)

2. Cheri emails me later that day to ask if I can “fix” that. You can see that in the top part of this graphic, a screenshot I just took of my email from that day.

(Note that I put this file in the same directory that is in question, just for fun at this point)

What I did was download the file from the site myself, opened up Filezilla (FTP client), used the quick connect (remembered server logins) feature which took me to the last place I navigated to, and just dragged the file into that directory, which uploaded it to wp-content/uploads/2012/10/. That is the October directory that was auto created back the, by the way, nothing to do with “Dec 10th”. (This you can see in the lower part of the graphic I just made at the link above.)

I then would have manually edited the Current Events page link to reflect this URL.

While Cheri and Brant from CMI went above and beyond to clarify the situation, deniers—who claim to be truth-seekers—reacted to these truths… exactly as one might expect. Cheri documented the fallout in her own blog post, highlighting the relentless harassment she endured:

What has transpired has become hateful, vicious and – of course – entirely unfounded.  We receive hate emails, hate phone calls, and even more vicious harassment in their website.  It is character assassination and harassment at its finest.

Rather than let the harassment define her experience, Cheri transformed it into an opportunity to deepen her work on cyberbullying:

Prior to now, my presentation on cyber-bullying and suicide has been just like all my colleagues – based in research and observation by working with youth who are tormented by what is said about them online.  This experience with the conspiracy theorists has given me terrific insights about what the students are experiencing.

She points out a critical difference—while she had the tools and confidence to withstand the vitriol, children targeted online may not:

My sense of identity has been fully formed for decades. I know who I am, and what I do, and what my gifts are in this world. What I recognize, though, is that this same kind of hateful and vengeful anonymous attacks on youth can and does change their beliefs about whether the world is a kind and loving place.

Cheri’s response serves as a masterclass in resilience and grace. She used the experience to strengthen her mission, connecting with youth and adults alike to address the toxic culture of online bullying:

Every presentation since has brought out remarkable awareness for those in attendance, and they leave with a much greater commitment to supporting youth who are bullied online. And quite delightfully, it has generated a showering of ‘love mail’… because attendees feel badly that I’ve had to weather this experience, so they leave the presentation and then send me wonderful messages!

In typical fashion, conspiracy theorists turned their blind rage into harassment, while their target turned it into advocacy.

“Ironically, the same dress is worn by the vicSIM girl–although some maintain that she is actually her sister–when being photographed with President Obama, but we are told that dresses can be used by any child.” pg. 201

Is that something anyone really needs to be told? Does Dennis Cimino not understand how clothing works? Or is it just children’s clothing (much like the true meaning of the word “ironic”) that’s throwing him for a loop?

“We know that Gabriel Giffords and a Federal Judge were not shot in Tucson without blood being everywhere, yet not one EMS person on the scene there had any blood.” pg. 202

No blood, huh?

Wait a second… that last photo looks awfully familiar. I’m almost certain I saw it earlier in this very chapter, back on page 196:

Ah, there it is—the exact same picture! Only this time it’s been cropped to conveniently omit the blood, allowing Dennis Cimino to pretend the scene was pristine. Pretty sneaky, sis!

On that same page, Cimino also trots out a photo of Gabby Giffords being taken away on a stretcher to claim “no blood is present.” Funny thing, though—if we examine another angle of that very moment, blood is clearly visible on her head (you know, where she was shot):

“We can prove the long rifle alleged by Wayne ‘fake coroner’ Carver in Newtown was found in the trunk of a black Honda that evening” pg. 202

Wait, now Wayne Carver isn’t even a real coroner? Considering Carver’s tenure as Connecticut’s Chief Medical Examiner can be easily verified through news archives dating back to 1986, this seems like quite the bold assertion to make without offering even a shred of proof. But, hey, par for the course.

As for the claim about the rifle being found in the trunk, that’s equally baseless. The only firearm discovered in Adam Lanza’s car was a single shotgun, which Officer Pena had purposely relocated to the trunk after initially finding it in the backseat. This makes proving the existence of any “long rifle in the trunk” not just implausible but impossible. Not that Cimino even bothers trying.

As for the remainder of this chapter? It’s so spectacularly batshit that it almost—almost—makes the preceding 202 pages seem halfway reasonable by comparison. Starting on page 203, Cimino spins a wild yarn about the “entire CT State emergency communications system” being “unplugged” on December 14, 2012, and replaced with a FEMA/DHS “shadow command center.” Surely such an extraordinary claim must be backed by airtight, irrefutable evidence! Spoiler alert: it isn’t.

“Police and Dispatch, nation wide, use a very time honored ALPHA PHONETIC System to enunciate alpha numeric data between the officers and the dispatchers. It is different from what military use, and it is so ingrained and dyed into the wool of real law enforcement and dispatchers for a good reason. Any error can cost not only the officer his life, but potentially cost others their lives either by sending people to the wrong address or by implicating the wrong person in a crime, or missing a criminal during a CODE TEN run on the person through the system. During the course of the running of the black Honda, this ALPHA PHONETIC police and dispatch protocol was totally out the window and not used at all.” pg. 203

Seriously?

With hours of audio to sift through, a timestamp would’ve been helpful—essential, even—but, predictably, Cimino doesn’t bother. Instead, let’s consult the actual evidence, like Book 4, 00184096.pdf from the final report. Here’s what we find:

9:42:39 Officer Penna calls out the license plate on shooter’s vehicle as he runs past the vehicle toward the dumpster: (Newtown radio)
Officer Penna: “D5, eight seven two Yellow Echo October may be suspect’s vehicle.”

CSP Lt (MSGT) Davis: “…just be advised we may have two shooters and we may have a suspect vehicle that they might have pulled up in… CT eight-seven-two- Yankee-echo- Oscar..black Honda.”

10:35:35 Officer Penna: “I need the address of the residence of this Connecticut reg. It’s gonna be the same one I gave you before, Connecticut Passenger eight –seven- two- Yankee –echo-October (YEO).”

10:35:46 Newtown Dispatcher Barocsi: “Roger eight-seven-two (872)-yankee–echo- October (YEO), standby.”

So, unless Cimino has a groundbreaking new definition of “not used at all,” this supposed abandonment of the “ALPHA PHONETIC System” simply didn’t happen. What did happen was a bunch of professionals doing their jobs under unimaginable circumstances. Something tells me Cimino wouldn’t fare quite as well.

“The 33 frequency change modification to the communications plan for Connecticut that went into effect 5 hours before the staged hoax went down, happened for a reason. It entirely circumvented all normal radio and police functions in Connecticut on this day. The screen shots of these 33 frequency changes, which were made just hours before the event, and of the ‘dummy’ non-named frequency allocation to one ‘phantom’ that would not normally be blanked out like this in any normal frequency allocation chart, are published here.” pg. 206

This claim was already dissected on the RadioReference forums—the very site where Dennis Cimino conducted his supposed “research.” Fortunately, the users there didn’t take long to dismantle it. I think this particular exchange from the forum sums it up perfectly:

“It would not be unreasonable to conclude that Site 1-22 was the DHS or FEMA master control site, which was monitoring every communication related to Sandy Hook that day and make sure that no information that would blow its cover got out.” pg. 207

It would actually be extremely unreasonable (not to mention flat-out crazy) to conclude that Site 1-22 was some kind of “master control site.” Why? Because Site 1-22 is just… Westport or Wilton. That’s it. Nothing sinister, no shadowy command center, just a location that’s well-documented for anyone who actually bothers to check.

Next: Afterword: “Sandy Hook: Analogies With The 7/7 London Bombings” by Nick Kollerstrom