The claim that Sandy Hook Elementary School ceased all “Internet activity” between 2008 and 2012, part of a larger theory that the school permanently closed its doors in 2008, is pure fiction, the result of remarkably sloppy research. In addition to the technical explanation debunking this myth, there is also clear evidence of activity on the school’s website during that supposed gap. One notable example is Sandy Hook’s 2011-2012 “scrapbook,” a series of sixteen online photo albums containing over 200 images of students, faculty, and guests participating in various school events. These photos are just another piece of indisputable evidence proving the school was open and functioning during that time.
If you’re interested in viewing the albums for yourself—and I highly recommend it, especially if you’ve ever entertained any denier nonsense—you can access them here, courtesy of the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. I’ll be highlighting just a handful of these photos, focusing on the ones that I believe are the most significant in corroborating the “official” (i.e. correct) account.
Note: This entry is (obviously) very picture-heavy! You can click on any photo to view it full-sized in another tab.
4th Grade Chorus Rehearsal (11 photos):
The school’s music teacher, Maryrose Kristopik, is shown leading the 4th grade chorus in a rehearsal before their upcoming concert, which was held at the high school on December 8th, 2011:
The Newtown Bee wrote about the rehearsal in their December 16th, 2011 edition. A photograph included with the article is still featured on the newspaper’s site:
Clicking on the photo’s “Info” button allows us to view its Exif data, which verifies that it was taken on December 7th, 2011:
As far as I can tell, this feature works with every photo available on The Newtown Bee’s photography website, as we’ll demonstrate throughout this entry.
Members of Dance China NY performed for the students of Sandy Hook Elementary School on Monday, January 30th, 2012:
The group’s visit is outlined in the January 26th edition of The Sandy Hook Connection (which has a “created” date of January 25th, 2012):
Chinese New Year 2012 (14 photos):
The children of Sandy Hook celebrated the Chinese New Year on Monday, January 23rd, 2012. Here’s the sign that stood in the lobby that day:
This is not insignificant: “The Year of the Dragon” only comes once every twelve years, with the most recent one being—surprise—2012. Cue the denier response: “But that doesn’t prove anything!” they might frantically type, sausage fingers at the ready, somewhere between threatening phone calls. “Obviously they took those photos in 2008! They just swapped the sign out, held onto the pictures for four years, and then posted them online!”
It’s ridiculous, but that’s the nature of the logic we’re up against here.
Thankfully, some of the other evidence in these photos is harder to deny:
In this photo, one student is wearing a t-shirt from the 2011 Marshwoods New Hampshire Youth Wrestling Classic (circled in yellow), which clearly wasn’t available in 2008. Also, take note of the hallway—it’s not cluttered with storage items, completely debunking the absurd claim that the school was being used as a storage facility, as alleged by “Dr. Eowyn” (Maria Hsia Chang) in Chapter Two of Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.
The date—January 23rd, 2012—is also visible on the whiteboard in this photo, providing another clear timestamp that directly contradicts any claims about the school being closed or used for storage during this time:
Also included in this album is the following heartbreaking photo of 1st-grade teacher and victim Victoria Soto, joyfully watching the parade from the doorway of her classroom, where she would ultimately lose her life:
Again, this is the exact hallway that was claimed to be used as storage at the time this photo was taken.
The Newtown Bee also shared a photo from the school’s Chinese New Year festivities on their Facebook page:
Like many other children in attendance that day, the boy on the left is wearing a New York Giants t-shirt. This isn’t the last we’ll see of the Giants gear; the team were NFC East champions at the time, heading toward the Super Bowl.
This album offers another glimpse into a vibrant school environment, bustling with children, their parents, school staff, and volunteers:
These nineteen photos showcase the school’s “Family Fun Night,” held on October 21st, 2011. This event is highlighted in the October 6th, October 13th, and October 20th, 2011 editions of The Sandy Hook Connection. The October 20th issue provides additional context:
The aforementioned haunted house, fortune teller, and games are all represented in the album. Additionally, the album includes instructions advising against parking along either side of Dickinson Drive for the event. It’s crucial to note that Dickinson Drive is the location of Sandy Hook Elementary School. If the school had truly closed in 2008 and relocated over seven miles away to the former Chalk Hill, as some have claimed, such disclaimers would be unnecessary—and frankly, nonsensical.
Members of Sandy Hook’s volunteer fire and rescue, including Robert Sibley, taught children about fire safety inside the school’s cafetorium on October 25th, 2011:
1st Grade 100th Day Parade (8 photos):
Taken in February of 2011, this album captures Sandy Hook’s 1st grade students celebrating their first 100 days of school with a parade. Here’s an excerpt from the Newtown Bee:
Newtown schools celebrated the arrival of the 100th day of school on Tuesday, February 15, with parades, counting games, and more.
At Sandy Hook School first grade students lined up at 9:20 am to march through the school with vests made out of paper bags. Each student’s vest was decorated with a differently with objects that add up to 100.
Shortly after the parade began, the students walked past collection boxes for this year’s 100th Day of School Food Drive, overseen by math/science specialist Kris Feda. Sandy Hook School Principal Dawn Hochsprung joined the students near the end of the line of marchers to parade through the school as classrooms of students watched.
Teacher and victim Victoria Soto is proudly leading her class through the hallways, which are adorned with holiday decorations:
These decorations differ significantly from what is seen in the crime scene photos taken a year later in December 2012, categorically proving that the school’s interior has not remained stagnant since 2008:
As you can plainly see, the snowmen between classrooms #3 and #5 in the photo from 2011 have been replaced by an “Olden Days vs. Now” display. Just below that, various unknown papers and a “Brains At Work” poster have been swapped out for Post-it note height markers (shown in greater detail here). Across the hall, a board that once held even more papers has now become a “How Much Snow Will We Get?” display.
Mrs. Cao Xue Zhen’s Visit to SHS (10 photos)
A large number of students and faculty attended Mrs. Cao Xue Zhen’s presentation, which took place in the school’s gymnasium:
Accompanying the speaker was school principal and victim Dawn Hochsprung:
Olessa Stepanova – One School One Read Guest Reader (8 photos):
The first page of the March 15th, 2012, edition of The Sandy Hook Connection (created on March 14th, 2012) reads:
Guest Readers Visit Sandy Hook for OSOR
We welcomed guest readers Mrs. Nancy Crevier, reporter from The Newtown Bee, who read to Mrs. Wexler’s 2nd grade class; Mrs. Diane Sherlock, Principal of Newtown Middle School, who read to Mrs. Clement’s 3rd grade class; Dr. Linda Gejda, Assistant Superintendent in Newtown, who read to Ms. MacMillan’s 2nd grade class; Ms. Olessa Stepanova, traffic reporter from WFSB-3 TV, who read to Mr. Varga’s 4th grade class; and Mr. Chip Dumais, Principal of Newtown High School, who read to Mrs. Usher’s 4th grade class.
This album contains eight photos from that visit. Olessa herself shared three additional pictures (alongside the eight posted on Sandy Hook’s website) from this trip on her personal Facebook page on March 23rd, 2012:
Included in both albums (the school’s as well as Olessa’s) is the following photograph (I’ve used the version taken from Olessa’s Facebook page as it’s of much better quality):
Notice anything? Let’s take a look at one more photo:
Once again, Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists are done in by a child’s t-shirt.
Although partially obscured by his copy of Stuart Little, it’s not too difficult to make out that the boy in the front is wearing a New York Giants Super Bowl XLVI tee, which I’ve circled in yellow. The underdog Giants, of course, beat the Patriots 21-17 in that game, which took place on February 5th, 2012. Obviously, this merchandise would not have been available in 2008 (or 2009 or 2010 or 2011)… unless, of course, whoever produced the shirt is capable of predicting the future, in which case they may want to reconsider their current line of work.
One School One Read – Culminating Evening 2012 (18 photos):
The school hosted students and parents on March 22nd, 2012, for a Stuart Little-themed night of activities to celebrate the completion of their “One School One Read” event. This album includes a look at the night’s program, which, of course, features the date:
This is corroborated by the March 22nd, 2012, edition of The Sandy Hook Connection (created on March 21st, 2012):
One School, One Read Family Night Tonight
Come and join in the fun of our school and family celebration of Stuart Little tonight, Thursday, March 22, at our One School, One Read SHS Family Night. Parking and space are limited, so we ask that families attend according to last name. If there is a conflict, please feel free to come to either session:
Last names A– M, Session 1, 5:30–6:30 p.m.
Last names N– Z, Session 2, 7–8 p.m.Parking will also be available at the Sandy Hook Firehouse, and overflow parking for those who can carpool will be available at Newtown United Methodist Church at 92 Church Hill Road in Sandy Hook.
Once again, the parking instructions for these events—taking place after the alleged closure and relocation of the school to Chalk Hill—only make sense in the context of Sandy Hook’s original location on Dickinson Drive. After all, why would parking for an event in Monroe, CT, be arranged at a firehouse seven miles away?
Additional corroboration comes from the 2012 “SHS One School, One Read Family Homework Guide”:
shs_one_school_hw_2012One School One Read – Guest Readers (10 photos):
Some of the guests featured in this album are mentioned in the March 22nd, 2012 edition of The Sandy Hook Connection, while others were highlighted in earlier issues:
Second Week of One School, One Read Welcomes Local Guest Readers!
SHS students and staff welcomed some local celebrities as guest readers for our second week of Stuart Little. On Monday, Newtown Police Chief Mike Kehoe read to Mrs. Vollmer’s kindergartners. On Tuesday, Newtown’s First Selectman Pat Llodra read to Ms. Anderheggen’s 4th grade students and answered several questions about her personal reading and writing interests. On Wednesday, Newtown Police Youth and School Resource Officer Gladys Pisani read to Mrs. Kazlauskas’s 1st graders, who also enjoyed a special surprise from Officer Pisani; and Board of Education member Mr. Keith Alexander read to Mrs. Mackenzie’s 2nd grade students. On Thursday, Board of Education Vice-Chairperson Mrs. Laura Roche read to Mrs. Usher’s 4th grade class. We are grateful to our guest readers who were so willing to come in and share their reading talents with our students. The students loved them all!
Tony Salvatore — Assistant Principal
One photo captures children being read to in a classroom, while also providing a glimpse of the busy playground outside:
Second Grade Math Night (21 photos):
For more information about the SMART Technologies projector featured here, you can refer to Sandy Hook Elementary Was Open, Part Four: SMART Technologies.
Shelly Gets A New Home (12 photos):
Starting in January 2012, “Project Eagle” initiated fundraising efforts to buy a new tank for Sandy Hook’s school pet, a red-eared slider turtle named Shelly. Details about these fundraising activities are documented in the January 5, 2012 edition of “The Sandy Hook Connection,” which was created on January 4, 2012:
Shelly Needs a New Home For The New Year!
Shelly has outgrown her tank! Project Eagle needs your help to raise the funds to place her in a new home for the new year. For every dollar donated to the Shelly Fund, each donor will have a turtle with his/her name on it placed in a “tank” on the wall in the cafeteria and receive one raffle ticket for a chance to win one of multiple fun prizes. Please complete the information below and submit along with your donation today. The more dollars we collect toward our goal, the quicker we can move Shelly to her new home. And the more you donate the more chances you have to win a fun prize! Raffle prize winners will be announced on our next Spirit Day on February 1. Completed donation forms can be dropped off before school in the SHS lobby to Shelly Fund representatives (look for the raffle box) or returned to the main office in an envelope marked Shelly Fund through January 31.
This album documents the relocation of Shelly from the lobby…
…to her new home just outside of the school’s library:
This album contains a couple of pictures from the lobby area, which can be directly compared to the crime scene photos:
And the area just outside of the door to the cafetorium:
The differences between the photos—taken less than a year apart—are obvious. Yet Sandy Hook conspiracy theorists expect you to believe that all of these changes were made in an abandoned school and conveniently documented by an ongoing school newsletter. All while somehow “forgetting” to update their website… or something.
SHS Welcomes Patricia Polacco! (15 photos):
Children’s author Patricia Polacco visited Sandy Hook on September 15th, 2011, to speak with and read to all of the school’s students:
In this particular photo, Patricia Polacco appears to be speaking to a group of very young children, likely Kindergarten age—exactly the age of the children who would become the victims of Adam Lanza just a year later. Based on her distinctive hair, it looks as if that is Catherine Hubbard on the right, wearing a light purple shirt.
Another photo from the same album offers a much closer view of the same girl. While it’s still only the back of her head, comparing it to other photos of Catherine Hubbard taken around this time makes it difficult to argue that it could be anyone else:
Here is Patricia with school principal and victim Dawn Hochsprung:
Mrs. Polacco’s visit is corroborated by the September 8th, 2011 edition of The Sandy Hook Connection (created on September 8th, 2011)…
…as well as the September 23rd, 2011 edition of The Newtown Bee. Much like the holiday chorus rehearsal shown above, photos from the article can still be found on their website:
The photo’s Exif data confirms it was taken on September 15th, 2011:
I wonder if conspiracy theorists believe that Patricia Polacco A) is complicit in this (wholly imaginary) hoax, widening that circle of co-conspirators even further, or B) was somehow lured—along with a number of children—into an empty and unused school to read to juvenile “actors,” as those are the only scenarios compatible with their theory.
Sandy Hook School principal and victim Dawn Hochsprung hosts the school’s annual “Sock Hop,” which took place at Reed Intermediate School in April 2011:
This event has been held off-premises since at least 2006, as evidenced by the pictures included in Sandy Hook’s 2006 photo album:
This album features school principal and victim Dawn Hochsprung, along with assistant principal Anthony Salvatore, dressed as an astronaut and alien to promote reading. In this photo, the date on the planner behind Mrs. Hochsprung clearly reads Monday, November 21st, 2011:
This event is corroborated by the December 1st, 2011 edition of “The Sandy Hook Connection,” which was created on the same date:
Space Visitors Tour SHS
Two space visitors visited every classroom last week in search of readers who could help NASA Astronaut Commander I.M. Bookman find the home of A. Li-En. Upon the students’ first sighting of A. Li-En during morning arrival, NASA sent Cmdr. Bookman immediately to Sandy Hook. It seems that A. Li-en was hiding in the book fair book bins nibbling on books!
Every class shared their reading expertise that helped A. Li-En learn how to open a book, to understand that reading is for learning about people, places, and things and to have fun! Most of all, they shared that books are not to be eaten! At the end, A. Li-En was able to show everyone in the space book that Mars was home.
Many students also experienced the “shape-shifting” ability of A. Li-En to make the visitors look very similar to Mrs. Hochsprung and Dr. Salvatore so making friends would be easier. Who knows when the next visitors will appear at Sandy Hook??
Dr. Anthony Salvatore — Assistant Principal
Sandy Hook School’s 2011 Veterans Day breakfast—an annual tradition—is likely the most well-documented event in the school’s photo album. Firstly, there’s this mention in the November 10th, 2011 edition of “The Sandy Hook Connection,” which was created on November 9th, 2011:
Wear Red, White and Blue for Veterans Day
Show your support of our veterans by wearing red, white and blue tomorrow, Friday, November 11 in celebration of Veterans Day. If your child is hosting a veteran, please remember to arrive by 8 a.m., and please bring breakfast contributions if you signed up to do so! If you have any questions, please contact Beth Hegarty at hegartyb@yahoo.com. Thank you!
As far as photographic evidence goes, in addition to the seventeen photos available here…
…fifteen more are available on The Newtown Bee’s website, including:
As well as the following tragic photo showing victim Jesse Lewis standing in the school’s lobby with his grandfather (and notice that the display behind them has changed yet again):
In the glass display case behind Jesse and his grandfather is the Highlights 2012 “Puzzles & Games” wall calendar:
Much like the chorus rehearsal and Patricia Polacco photos we looked at earlier, we can use the tools available on The Newtown Bee’s site to view the Exif information embedded in these photos and confirm that every last one of them was taken on November 11th, 2011.
With that in mind, it would certainly be extremely difficult (I’d say impossible) for anyone—even someone as detached from reality as some conspiracy theorists—to claim that these are not legitimate photographs taken inside of Sandy Hook Elementary School on November 11th, 2011. So I’m forced to once again wonder if these theorists believe that these veterans are fraudulent (a bold accusation to level against a room full of vets, especially as the obituary of Anthony Barbagallo, photographed in attendance with his grandson, Max, confirms that he is who the paper says he is and that he did, in fact, serve in World War II), complicit (which would be an even bolder accusation), or simply never considered it odd that they were attending a breakfast in their honor at a school that had been sitting empty for four whole years.
And I haven’t even scratched the surface of what’s available on The Newtown Bee’s website. Between Sandy Hook’s own photo album, The Newtown Bee, and various photos available on social media, there are literally hundreds of photographs taken in and around the school from 2008 to 2012.
For more in the “Sandy Hook Elementary Was Open” series, please read:
Part One: The Lobby
Part Two: The Obstinate Pen
Part Three: Holiday Decorations And Calendars
Part Four: SMART Technologies
Part Five: Dawn Hochsprung’s Twitter Feed
Part Six: The 2011-2012 Scrapbook
Part Seven: Children’s Authors Visit Sandy Hook
Part Eight: Charitable Causes
Part Nine: The Library
Part Ten: 92 More Photos From Sandy Hook School
Part Eleven: Over 195 Articles Referencing Sandy Hook School, Written Between 2008-2012
Part Twelve: The Glass Display Cases
Part Thirteen: Google Earth
Part Fourteen: The November 2012 Scholastic Book Fair
Part Fifteen: Sandy Hook School Enrollment For 2008-2017
Part Sixteen: School Documents From 2008-2012
Great work as usual, Murray! Thanks to the hard work of others, I have provided links to most of the available PDF versions of The Sandy Hook Connect at https://screeningsandyhook.net/2016/06/08/the-sandy-hook-connection/
Thanks, Deanna. I have about 95 issues of the Connection saved locally. If you’re interested, I can ZIP them up for you. I’ll e-mail you a link.
http://maps.newtown-ct.gov/ags_map/ great work again , I’m sending a link from the newtown assessors office , , if you click on the BASE MAPS you can see the sat, photos of the school from 2003, 2007, and 2012 , , where the roof is in the same condition as in the aerial view from the day of the shooting , and the majority of the cars are facing the same direction in 2007 ,as the day of the shooting
Good stuff. I’ve noticed in some of the other photographs that feature the parking lot, the cars are almost always parked in the same direction. It makes sense, or at least it should make sense to everyone who isn’t a lunatic.
further info with the BASE MAPS ,if you click on the school you can then click on the BIRDS EYE VIEW from 2010,, there are a few differences in the outside of the school . 1 is that the no parking lane in front of the school was painted with yellow stripes,, 2, the 4 square and basketball court was installed, 3 the reading area in DAWN HOCHSPRUNGS twitter photo ( center of school ) was redone with pavers , 4, shed and container was put in place
Hi Brian,
Excellent observations. Thank you! I’ll likely weave these into an update, either existing or new, if you don’t mind.
SM
it’s all free to used ,, also I forgot to put the sate on the twitter photo , it was Nov.16, 2012
Here is another strange thing. Go to the FBI murder stats page for 2012 in Conneticut. Look at Newton. The number of murders listed is a big fat 0!!
Sharon, this particular piece of stupidity has been debunked time and time (and time) again. I personally covered it at length here. Please at least perform a cursory search of the site for this stuff before you continue embarrassing yourself.
Shill, stupid is a strong word. And Sharon is not stupid for mentioning the FACT that at least one section of an official FBI’s website lists 0 murders having taken place in Newtown in the entire year 2012, here:
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2012/crime-in-the-u.s.-2012/tables/8tabledatadecpdf/table-8-state-cuts/table_8_offenses_known_to_law_enforcement_by_connecticut_by_city_2012.xls
I don’t think it’s Sharon who is embarrassing herself.
“Shill…” ha ha ha. What a sick sense of humor you people have. You really are a bunch of very, very, sick puppies.
Mike, the UCR has been addressed many, many times already. Here and elsewhere. If you would have bothered to click on the “Data Declaration” (and why would you when you can simply remain ignorant?), then you would have seen the following, listed under “General comment”:
This table does not list the number of violent crimes that have taken place in those cities. That is a fact. You are either misunderstanding or intentionally misrepresenting the data. Again, what you are looking at is the volume of violent crime “as reported by city and town law enforcement”. As reported by. And since the shooting was handled by Connecticut state police rather than Newtown PD, the former (that means the first thing I said!) submitted the information to the FBI.
Why don’t you look at the full annual UCR report for 2012? You won’t even have to go that far. Look at page four, for starters. Then try page twelve. Or twenty-five.
Did anyone notice the address and city? 375 Fan Hill Rd.. Monroe CT.. That’s the address for Chalk Hill School
The address and city where? Where do you see the address for Chalk Hill (which is where the students moved after the shooting, and before construction on the new school was completed)?
the “address” on YOUR scrapbook link says Sandy hook Elementary 2011-2012…seems someone forgot to change the address in the bottom right header corner while changing the “name of the school” in the top !!!..and ooops NOT same “multi-purpose room ” as Sandy Hook”.. ( see: 4th grade chorus rehearsal photos)
It’s not my scrapbook and I don’t know why you’ve made the bizarre decision to put address in quotes, but let’s try and ignore all of that for now.
On January 3rd, 2013, Sandy Hook School operations were temporarily moved to the site of the former Chalk Hill Middle School, which closed (as in actually closed) at the end of the 2010-2011 school year. Chalk Hill’s address is 375 Fan Hill Road, Monroe, CT. Now, look at the date of that snapshot, located at the top of the page: November 4th, 2014. So, at that point in time – at the time the snapshot was taken – Sandy Hook School was in fact located at that address. Nobody forgot anything. The address is/was entirely accurate. Look any snapshot taken before the shooting (like this one from January 17th, 2012), before they temporarily relocated to Chalk Hill, and you’ll see that the Dickinson Drive address is listed.
As for the 4th grade chorus rehearsal photos, those were taken in the school’s gymnasium, and not the multi-purpose room. It says as much in the Newtown Bee’s description of the photo, linked in the article.
The gymnasium and multi-purpose rooms are different rooms.
“Ooops” indeed.
Parts 1-3 are terrible points, because if they truly were trying to “stage” it, those would all be easy to plant. The rest however is very compelling. I still believe Sandy Hook is clearly a hoax. But at least I’m like 80% it wasn’t closed since 2008.
Of course they would be easy – or at least relatively so, depending on how “easy” you believe it is to obtain and then organize the most up-to-date issues of a particular parenting magazine, all for the sake of a few photographs – to plant. But if you’re going to go the “a wizard did it” route and simply dismiss this stuff without providing any evidence, then why stop at holiday decorations or children’s books? Why not claim that the entire scrapbook was staged? Or that all of the guests who have come through the school over the years were paid off? After all, if some of it is staged, then all of it is. If they felt the need to sneak a random children’s book from 2012 into a couple of photographs, I guess in the hopes that someone may notice it and then look up the published date, then they also purchased and installed tens of thousands of dollars worth of technology for that same reason. And you have to believe all of this stuff while simultaneously believing that they somehow forgot – for years – to update the website for every single school in the district. Is it impossible? No, not if you subscribe to the idea that nothing is impossible, but it’s certainly far beyond improbable.
As I believe I’ve stated elsewhere – likely in a reply to a comment much like yours – the point is not to consider each entry in this series independently. Because if someone really sold on this “hoax” nonsense only looks at part two for example, then they could (and likely will, as demonstrated here) say, “Well, this is just one book! Clearly someone knew that conspiracy theorists would make the claim that the school closed in 2008, found a recently published children’s book, and planted it there in that bin, in the school’s hallway, so that it would be barely visible in two (out of thousands of) crime scene photos!” And while that book, in my opinion, is still stronger than anything put forth by deniers showing that the school was closed, someone such as yourself will not find it particularly convincing, at least not on its own. That’s why this stuff really needs to be taken as a whole and weighed against the spectacularly weak evidence cited by deniers; the same stuff that they’ve been repeating for four years now, all of which I believe has been thoroughly debunked here. And I challenge any reasonable, truly open-minded person to take all thirteen parts of this series (if not the entirety of this site) and stack it up against the best the deniers have to offer: the technologically ignorant and wholly incorrect claims regarding the Wayback Machine, the baseless (and again incorrect) claims regarding an imaginary “asbestos infestation”, etc. Stack it up, approach it from a logical, scientific perspective, and be honest with yourself when you ask which evidence is stronger.
Wow…The footnote on that link even STATES that it included the 26 who died at Sandy Hook. You probably think 9/11 was faked too. I swear….no hope for the insanity of these fucking hoaxers…(pardon my language everyone else)
A recurring subject in the hoaxers’ claims is that what has been publicly shown of the slain children are mostly older images, when young, of still-existing people — who are not necessarily even connected with Sandy Hook Elementary.
This notion (at least) could easily be put to rest with a certified copy of the school’s 2011-2012 yearbook (school year lapsed between Sep 2011 – May 2012), showing pictures of the affected children when they were alive and well and definitely being pupils at SHE, about a year prior to Dec 14th, 2012.
I’ve looked for this yearbook extensively, to no avail. I wonder if it exists…
And that’s a very stupid claim, one they’ve provided zero evidence for, as per usual.
Let’s cut the shit: there is nothing that will put this insanity to rest. There’s already a mountain of evidence out there showing that these children existed, that the school was open, and that twenty-six people were murdered there. And yet here we are, still having this absurd conversation. After Lenny Pozner was told that all he needed to do was release a death certificate for Noah, that’s exactly what he did. And did these nutjobs apologize and then crawl back under their rocks? No, of course not. Instead, Lenny was told that it was a “fake” (despite the fact that anyone can order their own copy) and they then intensified their attacks.
As for the yearbook itself, where do you expect to obtain one? What right do you believe you have to it? These yearbooks – which would have been produced in limited quantities, as all yearbooks are – would only be in the hands of the students, as well as their parents. What makes you think that any of these people would make such an item available to ghouls like you? People who make up a very small (yet unfortunately very vocal) minority. Get real. Even those that may have thought about it likely learned their lesson from Lenny Pozner and his misguided attempts to satiate the conspiracy theorists.
He shouldn’t EVER have had to release those documents. They are private and these idiots have no right to ask for them.
EXPLAIN THIS….GOOD LUCK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kStVhwUyKJE
What exactly am I supposed to explain? This is all old footage, uploaded nearly a year after it was first aired, and intentionally mislabeled/misrepresented as “rehearsal” footage. It’s low effort misinformation backed up by zero credible evidence. It’s no different from Jim Fetzer and Maria Chang presenting crime scene photos out of order and pretending that they show the school being used as storage. Not to mention the whole idea is absolutely absurd. Are we supposed to believe that “rehearsal” footage was not only filmed (from a helicopter, nonetheless), but also aired on television and then left on the Internet for years?
Also, you can clearly see the crime scene tape at the school’s entrance at the very beginning of the video. Are we also supposed to believe that crime scene tape was added for an alleged rehearsal, removed the day of the shooting (or “drill”, if you’re an idiot), and then re-added in the exact same spot?
Can someone help me locate a 2010-2011 Sandy Hook yearbook?
I don’t think you’re going to have much luck with this one. They are not making superfluous yearbooks for elementary schools, and I doubt the families that have them are going to part with them.
Can I Purchase a copy of the 2010-2011 yearbook?
See my recent reply on Jan 27 , 2018 . Maybe it will help you find a copy from the company that had the contract for the yearbook . I know for sure high school and college yearbooks are always available in case one has misplaced theirs and wants a new copy .
I’ll pay $1,000 for any authentic copy of a 2010-2011 Sandy Hook yearbook.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and assume that the parents and students in possession of these yearbooks are not going to sell them off to some mentally ill creep so that him and his Internet cult can learn the names of and then stalk hundreds of innocent children. Just a guess though!
I’ve concluded that you cannot reason with them. No matter the contrary evidence or direct proof given, they will always warp the narrative to fit the new info OR, claim your evidence fraudulent.
All because they’re simply not keen enough to realize they’re listening to an entertainer and carny.
You’re absolutely correct. When they haven’t seen evidence, it doesn’t exist. But when they finally do, it’s fake. Their delusions become bulletproof. Now I’m certainly not under the impression that I will ever change the minds of people that ill, but I can (and have) been able to talk some sense into the outliers, or the people who have maybe heard a couple of things and are just beginning to look into it. There are a million fraudulent hoax websites out there, because it’s easy to just blurt out nonsense without backing any of it up, so my real hope is to balance out the signal-to-noise ratio a bit.
Look at the photos the kids first 100 days, then the one you say is the crime scene. All the bulletin boards are redecorated but the last one on the right side. When you zoom in you can see it’s the same image. Then look at the hallway pic that is cluttered and that board is up close and you see it’s a tree that matches the blurred boards in both the other photos. I do agree with you that the photos of the cluttered hallway had to be after the shooting. I really don’t know what to think about everything. I hate it for the families if it did happen and I’m scarred for America if it’s a hoax.
This is not some outrageous, baseless claim that I am personally making; it is a crime scene photo. There is zero evidence that it is anything but. There are magazines in the lobby area from December of 2012, so the idea that they were taken any time prior to that – especially years earlier – is absolutely bonkers.
This is false. While there certainly is a tree on that particular board in February of 2011 (during the “First 100 Days” celebration) as well as in December of 2012 (in the crime scene photos), they are decorated differently. In many of the crime scene photos (I used one of Walker’s in my example below), you can see that snow has been added to the tree, very likely as part of their December holiday decorations (many of which can be seen in the other crime scene photos, and are documented here). However, in the “First 100 Days” photo, taken back in 2011, there is no snow anywhere on the board. So they are not the same. Take a look:
The photo on the left is from the “100 Days” album. I cropped it, zoomed in on the board 500%, and did some color correction to brighten it up, etc. It is unfortunately still not very clear, but it’s the best I could do. The photo on the right is from Walker’s crime scene photos. I can’t remember which page I snagged it from. But even with the generally poor quality of the photo on the left, they are clearly different. At the very least, there is no snow – no white patches – anywhere in 2011 (or “100 Days”) photo. Other differences are speculative, based on the poor quality of the photo. For instance, it looks to me as if there are a number of red areas in the “100 Days” photo. Since it’s February, they could be hearts. I don’t know for sure; they may simply be photographic anomalies. I’m also not entirely convinced that it’s even the same tree as they look like they could be shaped a bit differently, but perspective and photo quality make this a tough call.
Even if the trees were exactly the same (and they’re not), I’m not sure what the point – if any – would be. The rest of the boards have still changed, and this is just a tree inscribed with some platitudes (“Respect”, “Caring”, “Responsibility”, etc). Why can’t that remain in place for ten months? How often are elementary schools supposed to change every last deocration, lest they be accused of secretly being closed?
The evidence – the actual evidence – can only lead you to one conclusion.
Why can’t we see the Yearbooks for 2008-2012? That would quash SHES conspiracy theories in an instant. If someone has some PDF links for them, please upload and link to the world wide web!
Because, as I’ve explained probably a hundred times or so at this point (which is why yearbook requests have been banned, and this is the absolute last one I will approve and reply to), yearbooks are printed in small batches that are meant for students and their families only. They only print enough to fulfill orders, which are made in advance. They aren’t extra copies just laying around, waiting to be shipped out to any rando looking for books full of small children’s names and photos. I’m not making this up; this information is clearly posted on the Josten’s website, which is where Sandy Hook got their yearbooks.
Now it wouldn’t totally surprise me if years from now, as some of these kids get even older, at least one of them scans their yearbook and puts it online or auctions it off or whatever. Hopefully that never happens, but I wouldn’t be shocked.
Hah. Cute, but we both know full well that this couldn’t be any further from the truth. After all, if actual death certificates aren’t going to satiate you ghouls, what are yearbooks going to do? Get real.
I see dates.from early 2012 but none of students from the 12-13 class….
The victims would have been in Kindergarten at the time these photos were taken, and many of them simply do not feature the Kindergarten class. One of the reasons for that is the fact that Kindergarten was broken up into separate AM and PM classes. So the victims would have only spent half the day at the school, and that would not have presented them with as many opportunities to participate in these activities.
That said, I’m pretty certain that some of the victims can be seen in the first photo of Patricia Polacco’s visit. I’m almost positive that’s Catherine Hubbard’s distinctive hair seen on the right.
And I see Chase is also there with the blond hair and glasses. Also , I would like to see a 2012/13 yearbook, especially since the class picture provided by Katie Curric as well as Ben Wheeler ‘s family for room 8 is incredibly blurry. It has no ID placard in the front center as all school class pictures do , and the teacher ‘s face on the right is not visible above the chin . I used to work at the elementary school for Michael Phelps for 5 years when he was there , and extra yearbooks (for his picture ) could be ordered from the yearbook company that had the contract for that school . These are accessible online . I haven’t tried yet for SHES because the info has probably been blocked because of the tragedy there or because of the parents’ request .
Not every school class picture has a placard front and center. If you use Google Images and search for class photos, even elementary school class photos, you’ll see that there are plenty where there is no placard at all. There is no set of rules that schools must follow when taking class photos: some are taken inside, some are outside, some have a placard, some don’t, some are “silly”, some are serious, etc.
Also, in regards to yearbook availability, it’s mentioned in an issue of the Sandy Hook Connection that SHES uses Jostens for their yearbooks, and they are printed in limited quantities. I assume this is true for all of Newtown Public Schools. This makes sense as it would keep costs down for everyone. As for whether or not you can order copies directly from Jostens, they include the following on their website, under “Help & Customer Care”:
So, in this case, extra yearbooks – especially yearbooks that are now over five years old – cannot be ordered directly from the yearbook company. And this is true for any school using Jostens to publish their yearbooks, not just Sandy Hook Elementary.
There’s also the matter of whether or not the 2012/2013 yearbook would have even been available yet, which I don’t believe it would have. Remember that the shooting took place only a few months into the school year, which would have been awfully early to not only complete the contents of the yearbook, but to have them printed and released.
One final thought on the subject: it should be fairly obvious to anyone who pokes around a bit that I approve nearly every comment I receive here, positive or negative. As long as this site has existed, I think I have removed or denied maybe less than half a dozen comments, tops. And I think that’s a generous estimate. That said, I am no longer approving any requests for Sandy Hook yearbooks. Anything that can be said about the subject has already been said, and I refuse to let this site turn into some sort of macabre eBay for those obsessed with the shooting. Those that say yearbooks post 2008 will quiet deniers are either hilarious naive or lying through their teeth, and the only thing a yearbook will do is expose more students to harassment. So I’ll have no part in it.
Yes , and Chase is there with blond hair and glasses .
This is in response to the K class photo with Catherine Hubbard during Patricia Polacco’s visit .
After looking and reading all of it, including all the comments, I’m afraid I came away with not a single compelling point or photo. Soto in a photo, someplace and sometime, but why none of the victims or parents we’ve seen so much of?
The most mystifying part of this entire event is the lack of compelling evidence. Insults, assertions, emotion. The patterns we see with propaganda and since the event (whatever it was) in Newtown, a pattern we’ve seen repeated over and over and over. Emotion, ridicule, shame, assertions and any questions, regardless of how basic, are met with scorn.
Ridicule is probably the least compelling argument technique, sadly, it’s the most effective.
You read every word of all sixty-nine entries, all five hundred and fifty-nine approved comments, looked at all six hundred fifty-two photos, and you couldn’t find a single “compelling” anything? Right. So what, pray tell, do you personally believe to be “compelling”? I’d certainly love to see an example.
She’s seen in two photos, and that “someplace” is the school, and that “sometime” would be either Monday, January 23rd, 2012, or February 15, 2011, depending on the photo.
Very few of them feature the kindergartners, which is the class that the victims would have been in at this time. But you can see Catherine Hubbard (and possibly some of her classmates) in the Patricia Polacco photos as well as Jesse Lewis in one of the Veterans Day photos. So I’m not sure what you’re talking about. As for the parents, there are maybe a handful of photos total that feature any parents, and with hundreds and hundreds of students, the odds are against you here.
Thousands of crime scene photos, dozens of witness reports as well as hundreds of other official documents included in the final report, death certificates (a copy of which you yourself can order), etc. The list goes on and on. Again, what do you consider “compelling”? I’m honestly dying to know at this point.
Ask a question that has been answered, and was likely answered years ago, and you fully deserve any and all scorn.
Look at the compelling police over here.
This is really interesting! I had the same thought as many of the others who already posted: What about the yearbook! Putting that query into Bing brought me here.
As of right now, I have two daughters in Elementary school. I’ve only recently really done any research into Sandy Hook, having only recently even learning there was a conspiracy. (I live in Michigan, so stuff that happens in other States hold little interest for me normally)
Since I learned about the conspiracy, I’ve specifically avoided Infowars videos and concentrated on videos that highlight newscasts and interviews specifically.
I find them incredibly compelling.
There are videos that go through the “Find a person” databases and highlight connections to aliases and other home locations that are really interesting.
Now, that all being said, I have no idea what story is correct.
Listening to the newscasters that made videos the day it happened, there was mass confusion. It seemed to me that the confusion was out of place for a school that had only recently gone through specific training not to mention the other school that was supposed to have a training the very same day and time. Looking at the chopper video and watching people mill about and go in and out of the firehouse was just confusing beyond all logic.
Seeing one of the parents “get into character” before a news conference doesn’t really help his case either.
Then there’s a guy who posted a video showing photos of the kids and some of the adults as older than they should be.
The kids who sand with Alicia Keyes looking like older versions of some of the kids who were killed.
One of the most compelling to me was the lack of Gunshot Holes in the building. I bring this up because if there’s anything that the news organizations love to feature is gunshot holes and other damage.
Now, I admit that I’m not completely convinced that this whole thing is a hoax or false flag, but I’m also not convinced that it’s real.
If there is any link to a compelling video of The Lanza father giving an interview, or better yet, Ryan Lanza, please share it.
One last thing, I noticed that the media keeps using the same photos over and over again of both Adam Lanza and all the children who were killed. Why didn’t they use more current photos like the yearbook photos? That question is what brought me down this rabbit hole in the first place.
Anyway, I definitely like what you’ve done with this website. Your attention to detail is excellent and while I do not think that negative language is ever appropriate, I applaud your continued interest in defending the town and school.
Hi, Paul. Good to hear from you.
Spoiler: there was no conspiracy. Still isn’t. Adam Lanza, acting alone, murdered his mother at home before driving to Sandy Hook Elementary School, where he slaughtered twenty children and six adults before taking his own life. There is a mountain of evidence – actual evidence – to support this. It’s a terrible tragedy, and it happened.
There are key words and phrases spread throughout your comment that make me a bit suspicious of this claim as some of it appears to be ripped directly from popular hoaxer sources. Maybe not Infowars specifically, but different, equally worthless purveyors of the same kind of pap, which is really where InfoWars gets their information from anyway.
Now that certainly doesn’t sound like something you saw on a newscast. Still, I have no idea which video or videos you’re referring to, so I can’t offer you any rational explanation. There’s nothing here for me to work with.
The one where Adam Lanza murdered twenty-seven people. Follow the evidence, not spooky YouTube videos.
Of course there was. Why wouldn’t there be? Someone shot up an elementary school, and reports were flooding in before police even secured the building. What about that wouldn’t breed chaos?
I’d challenge you to show me just one breaking news situation that didn’t result in at least some misinformation. I don’t think that you can, and that’s because it’s a well-known – though still unfortunate – side effect of the twenty-four hour news cycle, not evidence of any kind of conspiracy. Entire books have been written about the subject. “No Time To Think” is one of them. Or, if you don’t feel like reading an entire book on it, just do a Google search on it and take a quick look at the results. For example, When I search for “media accuracy breaking events”, the top result is an article titled “When news breaks, scanners and social media can create a cloud of errors for news outlets”. Go to the second page and you’ll see an article from the Columbia Journalism Review titled “Fast and wrong beats slow and right”. Etc.
I’m having a hard time following you here. Who was confused? It seemed like you were talking about the media earlier, but now it sounds as if you’re talking about the school itself. Why would chaos and confusion be “out of place” in an active shooter situation? If anything, wouldn’t confusion be much more “out of place” in a pre-planned, staged event, full of well-prepared participants? Didn’t they allegedly have a script to work from? If so, how did they fuck it up so badly? How does that make any sense?
Furthermore, are you claiming that there had been an active shooter drill at Sandy Hook shortly before the shooting? Because I’m pretty, pretty positive that’s not at all true. I also don’t know which “other school” or training you’re speaking of, though I suspect you’re referring to FEMA’s “Planning for the Needs of Children in Disasters”, a course on natural disaster preparedness that was held at St. Vincent’s Medical Center, a hospital roughly a half hour away from Sandy Hook. If that’s not it, then I’m going to need better information.
Why is that confusing? People went into the firehouse to meet up with loved ones and then out of the firehouse for a number of reasons (they couldn’t stay in there forever). What else are people supposed to do while waiting? Is this truly suspicious to you, or were you simply told that this was suspicious? Were you also duped by the fraudulent “walking in circles” video?
Now this idea is of course pure conspiracy schlock. What conspiracy kooks call “getting into character”, other, maybe more rational people may call “composing yourself”, or “gathering your thoughts”, etc. What did Robbie Parker – and I can only assume you’re talking about Robbie Parker – chuckle at before speaking? I really have no clue. Maybe he wasn’t reacting to anything anyone said and it was simply nerves. Again, I don’t know. What I do know is that until a real, trained psychologist tells me that Mr. Parker’s reaction is 100% out of the realm of possibility for someone who had recently lost a child, I’m not going to judge him, because I know that there isn’t one standard, expected reaction to this kind of grief or loss.
Besides, if he truly needed to “get into character”, why did he choose to do it after exiting the building? Why not do it out of view of the cameras? And after the cameras mistakenly captured the moment, why didn’t they perform another take, or simply edit the video? After all, we’re told all of the time that the media is complicit in this alleged hoax, yet they not only filmed and later aired this incriminating footage, but have kept it alive on their sites for nearly six years now. Again, what sense does any of this make?
I have no idea what you’re referring to here. Again, if you’d like me to address it, I’ll need specific information and sources.
First of all, it was Jennifer Hudson, not Alicia Keys. This wouldn’t be the first time she’s been mis-identified, either: according to James Fetzer’s putrid book, she’s Beyonce. If these self-professed researchers can’t even get that easily-obtained information correct, how can anyone reasonably trust them to get anything right? But I digress.
Secondly, I’m not sure what’s more absurd: the claim that some of the Sandy Hook victims – now magically fourth graders – were trotted out in front of the world, on what is arguably professional sport’s biggest stage, to sing a tribute to themselves just two months after the shooting or the fact that I need to continually explain to people just how ludicrous the whole idea is.
For whatever reason, conspiracy theorists really, really wanted to make the Super Bowl thing happen. I guess it made for great YouTube clickbait. But there was one very big problem, and that is that the children who performed with the school choir, beyond bearing what is maybe only a passing resemblance to the victims, were also 3-4 years older than a first grader would have been in February of 2013. But again, they really wanted this one to work, so they took an already ridiculous claim and just launched it into the stratosphere by now alleging that the victims were actually older than we had been told, and any photos of happy six and seven year-olds released by the families must have been taken in 2008-2009. But beyond being completely outrageous, this is also impossible as a number of those photos contain objects that would have been unavailable to a six or seven year-old in 2008-2009. I’ve posted an example here. Additionally, some of the victims’ older siblings performed as part of the choir. Caroline Previdi’s older brother, Walker, for example. There are photos of a clearly five-to-six year-old Caroline posing with the eight-to-nine year-old Walker. However, at the Super Bowl, Walker doesn’t appear to have aged much, if at all, while Caroline – or the girl alleged to be Caroline – has somehow aged three-to-four years in the span of a couple of months. This is, again, totally impossible.
On top of all of this, I asked facial feature expert Joelle Steele, author of the book “Face To Face: Analysis And Comparison Of Facial Features To Authenticate Identities Of People In Photographs”, to weigh in on this nonsense. Not surprisingly, after being provided with high-quality photographs of one of the girls who performed with the choir and the Sandy Hook victim she is alleged to be, she stated that there was no possible way they were the same person, confirming what most of us already knew. You can view my correspondence with Joelle here.
The crime scene photos are full of photos of bullet holes. I found these “non-existent” bullet holes throughout the Walkley’s crime scene photos, specifically on pages 54-61, 404-431, 448-454, 513, 622-624, 626-630.
The photos mentioned above were not available to anyone until almost a year after the shooting, and the media obviously was not allowed inside of the school, so where do you expect these photos to come from? They simply did not have access to them. Once they were released to the public, these photos were all over the news. Again, Google “sandy hook crime scene photos” and you’ll see results from just about every mainstream news source on the planet. They were published everywhere because, like you said, they always feature this stuff. And they did, as soon as they could.
If the entire thing were faked, what would have stopped anyone involved from shooting up this allegedly empty school, taking a number of dramatic photos and video showing the many holes in the walls, and sending them off to the media immediately after the shooting? What could be easier to fake than a bunch of bullet holes?
In many cases, the photos used by the media were the most recent photos. And in other cases, I have to imagine that parents chose to use their favorite photos of their children, rather than the most recent one. It’s up to them which photos they choose to share with the world, if any. That’s not up to us to decide.
As far as any yearbooks go, no one would have had the yearbooks from the 2012-2013 school year as they weren’t released yet. Yearbooks are released at the end of the school year, usually sometime around March or April. Some parents released the previous year’s yearbook photos. I know that I’ve seen yearbook photos of a number of victims, though those would have been from the 2011-2012 school year.
Anyone can order a certified copy of the victims’ death certificates from the town of Newtown. The victims are also listed in the Social Security Death Index. These two things alone should be compelling to anyone than a lack of photos from a yearbook that had yet to be released.
Thank you. If you haven’t already, please browse the rest of the site. I’ve tried to address a lot of your concerns here in my reply, but some of the other entries on the site go into much greater detail and include photos, sources, etc.
They said Chalk Hill Middle School was almost an exact replica of Sandy Hook Elementary.
Why does door to the right of the lobby, behind the famous Noah Pozner photo, have blue trim – and the official photo of the lobby 12/14/12 have brown?
No, “they” said that they attempted to recreate Sandy Hook – “down to crayons on the desk” – at Chalk Hill shortly before the children moved there in January of 2013, in an effort to make them feel more at home at their new, albeit temporary school. So if you’re suggesting that, back in 1969 (or really any time before the shooting), the town of Monroe decided to model one of their middle schools after another district’s elementary school, that idea has no basis in reality.
What is the implication here? That the “famous” Noah Pozner photo was actually taken at Chalk Hill, rather than Sandy Hook? And your evidence for that is what? This near-recreation of Sandy Hook, which took place after the shooting?
It’s obvious that the lobby seen in the Pozner photo is the same one shown throughout the crime scene photos, from the floor to the furniture to – yes – the blue door frames. Just look at the first forty or so pages of Walkley’s scene photos and there can be no question that the frames and trim are all blue, the exact same color seen in Noah’s photo. Look… here’s that same doorway, lit up from the camera’s flash, from page 33 of Walkey’s photos:
It’s blue. Not brown. Or maybe you’re colorblind. I don’t know.
Of course I have no idea what you mean by the “official” photo of the lobby. Care to elaborate?
If it makes you feel better I thought the school wasn’t open due to lack of evidence and after reading this topic I now know that it was open and I don’t question the events anymore.
-former crackpot.
Not sure if you’re being facetious, but I’m going to roll the dice, assume that you’re not, and say thanks.
Is the address at the top correct?
Which address are you referring to?
Just want to commend you on going through the effort to create a page like this. I stumbled across the link to this page whilst watching a video about the victims of this tragic event. As the anniversary approached, I found myself still confused and angry at what happened that day – after all these years.
In the video I was viewing, there were debates going on in the comments about this disaster’s staging. After all these years, I truly believed that sort of nonsensical POV had died down. Hating our government is one thing, but hating them to the point that you believe in a delusion so incomprehensible…now that’s a truly deadly perception that endangers our very humanity.
Finding your scrapbook and reading through your replies has given me hope though; someone does exist to combat the ignorant. You’ve done a wonderful job here. Keep up the great work.
Thank you, I appreciate it.
The majority of Americans do not trust the government to do the right thing. I don’t have the information handy, but I believe that is based on a poll taken in 2011 or 2012. And I have to assume that number has only gone up since then. Of course all of those people do not believe that Sandy Hook was faked or that the government would actually go through with faking an elementary school shooting in order to launch an ineffectual “gun grab”. Like you said, now we’re just dealing with delusion.