One of the more persistent zombie myths peddled by the Sandy Hook denialist cult is the absurd claim that Sandy Hook Elementary School quietly closed in 2008, leaving it conveniently empty when Adam Lanza (who, depending on which conspiracy enthusiast you ask, may not have even existed) carried out his attack on December 14, 2012. This supposed closure was so stealthy that not a single local media outlet bothered to report it. Impressive, right?
This fantasy appears to have originated with professional conspiracy theorist James Fetzer—a bloated carny who pads his retirement by cranking out increasingly unhinged (and laughably lazy) books like Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. Nearly every word in that masterpiece, by the way, is lifted straight from pre-existing blog entries. Fetzer’s modus operandi? Declare everything—moon landings, the Boston Marathon bombing, you name it—a grand hoax.
Despite an Everest-sized pile of evidence proving the school was open (think: countless photographs of a bustling campus, years of PTA meeting minutes, facilities surveys, news articles, job listings, etc.), Fetzer has staked his ludicrous claim on a shaky foundation of outdated information and a total—and likely willful, though that might be giving him too much credit—misunderstanding of how the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine works. That’s his entire case.
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