Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them. Gaesy, Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 1: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 1: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 1: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. How one father determined to reclaim his daughter's
Speaker 2: memory brought down Alex Jones. On December fourteenth, twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: Robbie Parker's daughter Emily was killed at Sandy Hook Elementary,
Speaker 2: a tragedy that changed Robbie's life and the country forever.
Speaker 2: By the next day, Alex Jones was on air claiming
Speaker 2: the shooting was a hoax. So begins Parker's David and
Speaker 2: Goliath's story, a tale of hope and resilience amid hatred
Speaker 2: and division. While Robbie and his family spent the next
Speaker 2: decade attempting to grieve, Jones's fans harassed them, calling them
Speaker 2: crisis actors. The hatred pushed Robbie inward, disconnecting him from
Speaker 2: the world and his family. Four years after Sandy Hook,
Speaker 2: an Infra War's listener accosted Robbie three thousand miles away
Speaker 2: from Newtown, Connecticut, repeating the same lies Alex Jones had
Speaker 2: spread for years. Soon after seventeen students were murdered at
Speaker 2: Florida's Marjorie Stonemason Douglas High School, Robbie and his wife
Speaker 2: spoke with one of the victim's parents and learned when
Speaker 2: they were also being bombarded with hateful messages. He realized
Speaker 2: he could no longer avoid this terrifying reality, and with
Speaker 2: the help of Sandy hook parents, lawyers, and supporters, Robbie
Speaker 2: stood up to Alex Jones in court to heal and
Speaker 2: reclaim his daughter's memory. A father's Fight is more than
Speaker 2: a memoir. It's a stirring portrait of an unbreakable human spirit.
Speaker 2: It's a testament to a father's love and perseverance in
Speaker 2: the face of insurmountable grief. The book that were featuring
Speaker 2: this evening is a father's fight, taking on Alex Jones
Speaker 2: and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook with my special
Speaker 2: guest author, Robbie Parker. Welcome to the program, and thank
Speaker 2: you very much for this interview.
Speaker 3: Robbie Parker, thank you Dan for reaching out and for
Speaker 3: having on. It's really a pleasure.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book.
Speaker 2: You say. It came out late last year. A Father's Fight.
Speaker 3: It came out late last year. It's obviously been a
Speaker 3: work in progress for a while, and that's just my
Speaker 3: own personal journey and then getting to the point where
Speaker 3: I felt like I actually wanted to share something I'd
Speaker 3: been writing for a long time just for my own
Speaker 3: healing and cathartic process and just trying to understand who
Speaker 3: I was through this brief process and what I was
Speaker 3: experiencing with the conspiracy theory people and all of that.
Speaker 3: Some very kind people were really encouraging for me to
Speaker 3: put it more out there and to share it, and
Speaker 3: so it finally made it into people's hands and yours,
Speaker 3: and so here we are.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank you. Let's talk about your family's move to
Speaker 2: a new town, Connecticut in twenty twelve, and just tell
Speaker 2: us about your family, Alissa, Emily, Madeline, and Samantha, and
Speaker 2: also about you write about. In spring twenty twelve, Alissa's
Speaker 2: father qualified for the Boston Marathon and he was also
Speaker 2: very helpful with remodeling your new home. So just tell
Speaker 2: us where you were at in twenty and twelve and
Speaker 2: your moved to Newtown, Connecticut and your professional life at
Speaker 2: that time, and also your wife.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no's that's a loaded question. There was a lot
Speaker 3: happening for our family in twenty twelve, even just even
Speaker 3: just briefly moving up towards that, like I mean a
Speaker 3: listen and I we don't ever really remember meeting each other.
Speaker 3: We know we met in middle school at some point,
Speaker 3: but we started dating like after high school. And so
Speaker 3: all this build up to twenty twelve was just this
Speaker 3: culmination of us going to school, working, putting ourselves through college,
Speaker 3: and starting a family at the same time. So it
Speaker 3: was just really really busy. In twenty ten, I had
Speaker 3: graduated as a physician assistant and my passion is in
Speaker 3: the newborn intensive care unit, and so we had taken
Speaker 3: a job in New Mexico right out of school, where
Speaker 3: I got some wonderful training, and then we took this
Speaker 3: job opportunity in Connecticut, which seemed really just bizarre and
Speaker 3: out there for us because we grew up on the
Speaker 3: west side of the country. I grew up in Texas
Speaker 3: and Utah, Alyssa grew up in California and Utah, and
Speaker 3: I went to school in the Pacific Northwest, so it
Speaker 3: was a brand new area. Our family was small, but
Speaker 3: we had like accomplished all of this stuff, right. This
Speaker 3: was like what all that hard work was for, was
Speaker 3: to be able to be done with school, launch into
Speaker 3: my career. I could support this young family of ours
Speaker 3: with our three young girls. Emily was turning six, matt
Speaker 3: Aline was four, Samantha was three, and it was just
Speaker 3: a really exciting time with a lot of new growth
Speaker 3: and a lot of new places and new people, and
Speaker 3: we were just happy to be there and lo and
Speaker 3: behold too. Like you mentioned Elissa's dad, Doug, he had
Speaker 3: qualified to run the Boston Marathon. So we moved to
Speaker 3: Connecticut end of December twenty eleven beginning of the new
Speaker 3: year twenty twelve, and then he came out in April,
Speaker 3: right after we had closed out on this new house
Speaker 3: that we had bought that needed a lot of updating
Speaker 3: and a lot of work. And he was really handy.
Speaker 3: He had helped us with some other projects on other
Speaker 3: houses that we had owned previously, and so he came
Speaker 3: out and was able to help us with some work.
Speaker 3: We were just a few hours away from Boston, so
Speaker 3: we could go and support him in the Boston Marathon.
Speaker 3: I'm a huge Texas Ranger baseball fan. The Rangers were
Speaker 3: in town that same week. So there's just a lot
Speaker 3: of fun things happening throughout that whole year, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of like what set us up. We were just
Speaker 3: finally living the life that we had worked so hard
Speaker 3: to live with the people we wanted to be with,
Speaker 3: and we had our nuclear family that we were ready
Speaker 3: to start kind of putting down roots and get to
Speaker 3: finally experience all this stuff that we had been working towards.
Speaker 2: You're right though, that the disaster arrives. Five months later,
Speaker 2: Alyssa's dad was involved in a horrible bicycling accident while
Speaker 2: in a race and passed away.
Speaker 3: Right, So they run the Boston Marathon in April, and
Speaker 3: then in September. The second weekend in September, every year,
Speaker 3: there's a bike race that starts in Logan, Utah, in
Speaker 3: northern Utah that goes all the way to Jackson, Howayoming.
Speaker 3: It's a one day, two hundred and ten mile race
Speaker 3: that goes up and over three different mountain divides. And
Speaker 3: this was going to be my father in law's tenth
Speaker 3: year doing that race, or eleventh year. Alyssa and I
Speaker 3: had participated driving cars and stuff for a few years.
Speaker 3: This is something that he loved doing and we loved
Speaker 3: supporting him with it, and we were actually really sad
Speaker 3: that we weren't going to be able to be there
Speaker 3: with him as he was going to accomplish this milestone again.
Speaker 3: Shortly they it cressed over the first pass and he
Speaker 3: was coming down, probably going somewhere between thirty five and
Speaker 3: forty miles an hour, and somebody came alongside of him
Speaker 3: and accident just clipped handlebars and he he hit his
Speaker 3: head really hard. He had a pretty traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 3: He didn't have a big, large brain bleed, but he
Speaker 3: was suffering from a traumatic brain injury, and it really
Speaker 3: just shook us up. We were on the other side
Speaker 3: of the country at this point, and we spent the
Speaker 3: whole next month flying back and forth from Connecticut to
Speaker 3: Utah to support and be there. And when he got
Speaker 3: discharged from the hospital, he was sent to this kind
Speaker 3: of nursing and rehab center. They weren't equipped to handle
Speaker 3: somebody in his case. He was supposed to go to
Speaker 3: the VA, but they didn't have rooms, so there's this
Speaker 3: little mix up. He was just confused and he needed
Speaker 3: somebody with him at night, and this place couldn't do that.
Speaker 3: So with my medical training and I had been a
Speaker 3: nurse assistant early on in my career and stuff, and
Speaker 3: so I actually flew out and was going to take
Speaker 3: night shifts and be with him. One of the knights
Speaker 3: that I was there, he was trying to get out
Speaker 3: of bed. I went to get the bedside commode for him,
Speaker 3: and then this two second time period where I just
Speaker 3: had my back turn on for a second, he stood
Speaker 3: up and I wasn't expecting him to be able to
Speaker 3: do that. He stood up and he lost his balance
Speaker 3: and I lunged for him and he fell right through
Speaker 3: my hands. He ended up hitting his head on the
Speaker 3: ground again, and from that experience with a fresh traumatic
Speaker 3: brain injury that he was already suffering from and then
Speaker 3: having another head injury, he ended up developing a massive
Speaker 3: brain bleed and then he passed away just a few
Speaker 3: days later. And so this idea of tragedy and heartbreak
Speaker 3: and grief and death came to us first through Alissa's
Speaker 3: dad in September, and he died on September twenty ninth.
Speaker 3: That was a blow because he obviously what he meant
Speaker 3: to all of us, he was the father figure for
Speaker 3: me in my life. I had never felt so personally,
Speaker 3: just so accepted by somebody, especially like a father figure
Speaker 3: like that, accepted and loved the way that he brought
Speaker 3: me into his family, And so was that was hard
Speaker 3: to go through and experience. And then again being away
Speaker 3: from family as we were processing all of that, that
Speaker 3: was Yeah, my words are lost describing how that felt
Speaker 3: alone by itself.
Speaker 2: Yes, And and what was interesting or interesting later in
Speaker 2: retrospect was that the information that was in an article
Speaker 2: in a newspaper provided a lot of misinformation. So later
Speaker 2: when it was important to consider what would be in
Speaker 2: a newspaper article, that misinformation became important. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: Emily and her sister's relationship. But just the character of
Speaker 2: this six year old, this precocious Emily. You talked about
Speaker 2: this in that run up to Christmas, she had been
Speaker 2: inspired to get a family toy box together. Just tell
Speaker 2: us about this little initiative that indicates sort of the
Speaker 2: character of Emily.
Speaker 3: Right, No, it's a yeah, that's a great question because
Speaker 3: it highlights so much of who she was, even as
Speaker 3: this very talkative, very bidable, pleasant six year old girl,
Speaker 3: constantly thinking of other people. And it was Christmas time
Speaker 3: there was like these Christmas shows on. She got inspired
Speaker 3: to start like a toy drive, and there was this
Speaker 3: during our remodel process, we went to this like thrift
Speaker 3: store a lot just to kind of pick up things
Speaker 3: that we could refurbish and different stuff like that, and
Speaker 3: she loved this store, and so she wanted to do
Speaker 3: this toy drive so we could donate it to this
Speaker 3: store so that she knew that other kids could get it,
Speaker 3: and she wanted to incorporate her sisters in the project,
Speaker 3: and that in and of itself is a just show so
Speaker 3: much of who she was. Her sisters didn't really loved
Speaker 3: the idea of giving some of their toys away or
Speaker 3: participating that very much with it, And so to watch
Speaker 3: her use her negotiation skills and talk to them, even
Speaker 3: willing to bribe one of them with her own money
Speaker 3: at one point, turned out to be a huge success.
Speaker 3: And the box that she got and put together was
Speaker 3: filled to the brim and for like a special bow,
Speaker 3: she even put in some of her own artwork. Emily
Speaker 3: was a like a ferocious artist. She would go through
Speaker 3: stacks and stacks of papers and projects and stuff that
Speaker 3: she would work on.
Speaker 2: And she.
Speaker 3: Knew that giving something of herself in this made it special.
Speaker 3: And that's just how she viewed people. That's how she
Speaker 3: viewed the ones that she loved and people that she
Speaker 3: didn't know. And that's just what exuded from her.
Speaker 2: Now, what just to give us the situation where this
Speaker 2: Sandy Hook Elementary where that Emily attended. You talk about
Speaker 2: sandy Hook being a village, So is that tell us
Speaker 2: the just a situation where Sandy Hook is a small
Speaker 2: village within Newtown?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah. It was kind of bizarre to us when
Speaker 3: we moved out there because we were in an incorporated
Speaker 3: town of Newtown, but this little car about part of
Speaker 3: Newtown and Sandy Hook, and I don't I never really
Speaker 3: learned the full history of how how that happened. And
Speaker 3: I'm just assuming just before there were incorporated towns, you know,
Speaker 3: this is this area with Sandy Hook and so, but
Speaker 3: it was so quaint and so just you know what
Speaker 3: you think about when you think of colonial Northeast United
Speaker 3: States era, It was a place that felt like it
Speaker 3: was back in time. The geography and the houses and
Speaker 3: the roads, and the and the stone walls and the lush,
Speaker 3: lush trees like it was just I mean, it was
Speaker 3: a postcard, It was a it was a it was
Speaker 3: a storybook place to live. So it was a place
Speaker 3: that still felt I mean, we had been moving all
Speaker 3: across the country from my schooling and different jobs and stuff,
Speaker 3: and this was a place that finally you felt like
Speaker 3: your neighbors had your back. And even though we were
Speaker 3: new to the town and trying to establish things, we
Speaker 3: hadn't really got to know a lot of people. Yet
Speaker 3: it felt very homelike right away for us, and we
Speaker 3: were starting to incorporate ourselves into this beautiful tapestry of
Speaker 3: what Newtown and Sandy Hooker like.
Speaker 2: You take us to December fourteenth, twenty twelve, and you
Speaker 2: are working and you get a disturbing voicemail that morning
Speaker 2: from Pat Laudra, Newtown first Selectman, calling you to inform
Speaker 2: that all Newtown public schools have been placed in lockdown
Speaker 2: do to a we reported shooting at one of our schools. Now,
Speaker 2: what do you do as a result? You call a us.
Speaker 2: What's the conversation, like, what do you know? What do
Speaker 2: you find out from that voicemail, tell us what happens
Speaker 2: after that voicemail is received by you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Sure, I'll even take you back to just even
Speaker 3: that morning because that Friday was the Friday for the box.
Speaker 3: So waking up in the house that morning, there was
Speaker 3: just a ton of excitement because that was going to
Speaker 3: kick off the Christmas break. I was going to be
Speaker 3: working a twenty four hour shift, so I wasn't going
Speaker 3: to be able to participate in this. But the plan
Speaker 3: was that for school that day, the girls were going
Speaker 3: to take the box. They were going to take it
Speaker 3: to the donation center. They were going to start doing
Speaker 3: all of our start our Christmas traditions and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So there was just in our house that morning, just
Speaker 3: a lot of excitement and a lot of love. As
Speaker 3: I was getting ready to leave, and everybody was in
Speaker 3: Samantha's room, my youngest, because she was the last person
Speaker 3: to donate things, so that's where the box was. Everybody
Speaker 3: was in there, just excited, and that's where I went
Speaker 3: and gave everybody hugs and kisses and was saying goodbye
Speaker 3: to them and noticed the box off to the corner,
Speaker 3: just kind of pushed up against the wall underneath the
Speaker 3: window seals. So that was the feeling that I had
Speaker 3: leaving the house this morning. That morning, as I was
Speaker 3: starting to go to work, going through my normal work stuff,
Speaker 3: rounding on patients, getting ready to do our rounds, talking
Speaker 3: to parents who had babies in the nick you and
Speaker 3: I get that voicemail that you're talking about because we
Speaker 3: had just started rounds, and so I dismissed the phone call.
Speaker 3: Then in between patients listening to that, and then Alyssa's
Speaker 3: phone call coming to me directly, and she's nervous and
Speaker 3: she's scared, And unfortunately I met Alyssa in that moment
Speaker 3: in like my work brain. You know, working in the
Speaker 3: NICKU has a lot of challenges. It can be very
Speaker 3: high stress. A big part of my job is remaining
Speaker 3: hopeful and calm and handling stressful situations as you would
Speaker 3: with patients, in these situations that I find myself in.
Speaker 3: And I mean I mentioned this and I talk about
Speaker 3: it because I just I didn't meet alissas as like
Speaker 3: a loving husband right then. I met her with kind
Speaker 3: of like my work brain and trying to convince her,
Speaker 3: but not convince her, but just let's just be calm,
Speaker 3: let's be patient, let's think about this, let's not jump
Speaker 3: to conclusions, you know. And she was scared, and she
Speaker 3: was kind of able to snap me out of my
Speaker 3: work brain. And when she was like, because I was like,
Speaker 3: these shootings don't happen at an elementary school. It's got
Speaker 3: to be at the high school. You know, we don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on. Don't drive to the school, whatever
Speaker 3: you do like that kind of stuff, she just kind
Speaker 3: of was done hearing me talk for a little bit
Speaker 3: like that, and she just said, Robbie, if it was
Speaker 3: at the elementary school, Emily's room is in that front hallway.
Speaker 3: If it was there, she would be in real danger.
Speaker 3: I need to know and I need to do something.
Speaker 3: And so that's kind of how our process started. And
Speaker 3: so she was with Samantha doing some Christmas shopping. She
Speaker 3: had dropped Madaline off at preschool. I was at work,
Speaker 3: So we just started trying to find out information and communicate,
Speaker 3: and very quickly Alysa ended up going and getting Maddline
Speaker 3: from preschool. She went to the elementary school, and I
Speaker 3: unfortunately was stuck at the hospital because the hospital had
Speaker 3: gone into lockdown for as they do for a community disaster,
Speaker 3: so nobody's allowed in or out. As reports were starting
Speaker 3: to kind of come through, and we did learn that
Speaker 3: there were children that were wounded and taken to the hospital.
Speaker 3: I stayed for a little longer to see if what
Speaker 3: I could find out because at that point Alyssa hadn't
Speaker 3: been reunited with Emily and had Emily been hurt and
Speaker 3: taken in the hospital, and I was where she needed
Speaker 3: to be. So this is just kind of where our
Speaker 3: mind's that's where. And as the minutes passed and as
Speaker 3: the hours passed. During this time, just the stress and
Speaker 3: the tension of not knowing was just building and building
Speaker 3: and building, and there wasn't anything you could do except
Speaker 3: for just wait and wait and wait.
Speaker 2: You're right that there's a conference room set up and
Speaker 2: for people waiting, and you say, waiting and waiting for
Speaker 2: an update from state police. But it is confirmed that
Speaker 2: twenty children had been killed. So there was no more details,
Speaker 2: no more names. So everyone is sitting around a bunch
Speaker 2: of different people, first responders and then people that are
Speaker 2: inquiring about their children. But people are waiting there for
Speaker 2: hours with no updates. Tell us about that wait for
Speaker 2: information exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, So like, eventually I was able to leave
Speaker 3: the hospital and I made it to the the schools
Speaker 3: located down the street from the school, on the corner
Speaker 3: was this firehouse, and in the firehouse was this conference room.
Speaker 3: So they started. I can't even describe the scene there.
Speaker 3: It was so chaotic and none of that made sense, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, nothing about this, it's logical, nothing about this
Speaker 3: as something that you'd ever encountered before. I didn't even
Speaker 3: notice that there was TV cameras and crews and this
Speaker 3: podium of microphone set up. And when you think about it,
Speaker 3: when you do look into what happened in the school
Speaker 3: and the shooting, the first victims were the principal and
Speaker 3: some of the leaders of the school. So immediately the
Speaker 3: whole the chain of command was taken out. And so
Speaker 3: it makes so much sense why there it was so
Speaker 3: much chaos. There wasn't somebody in charge and leading from
Speaker 3: the very first moments of that whole ordeal. And so
Speaker 3: it had been hours and finally they decided, if you
Speaker 3: still hadn't encountered your child, you still haven't been reunited,
Speaker 3: then we're going to put bringing you over to this
Speaker 3: conference room. And that's where do unification processes, and that's
Speaker 3: kind of what we were told. So Alissa was in there.
Speaker 3: I finally make it into that room, and when I
Speaker 3: walked into the room, emotionally, it was like just running
Speaker 3: into a brick wall. I mean it was it was hot,
Speaker 3: and there it was thick. And Alissa sees me, and
Speaker 3: I go over to her, and you could just I
Speaker 3: could just feel her her angst and her worry and
Speaker 3: her love and her concern just pouring out of her.
Speaker 3: And she had been holding all that in so much.
Speaker 3: She had been watching the girls. Luckily, she had found
Speaker 3: a neighbor to take the girls home that lived next
Speaker 3: to us. And that was the feeling in the room.
Speaker 3: Everybody now knew right before I got there is what
Speaker 3: you talked about. A state police spokesperson came in and
Speaker 3: said that they were able to confirm that twenty children
Speaker 3: had died, but they weren't going to release any more
Speaker 3: information or details because they hadnt accounted for all the
Speaker 3: children in the school yet, and that he would be
Speaker 3: back in an hour with another update, and then he
Speaker 3: just left it like that, like the absolute worst cliffhanger ever.
Speaker 3: And so we don't know if our child is one
Speaker 3: of the twenty that are dead, or one of the
Speaker 3: children that hadn't been accounted for that could be hiding somewhere.
Speaker 3: And so this idea of hope, and I had never
Speaker 3: thought in my entire life before of the emotion and
Speaker 3: the idea of hope being a dangerous thing, started away
Speaker 3: heavy on us. And again as the minutes ticked away,
Speaker 3: and they would come back in an hour and say,
Speaker 3: we have nothing to update you on. We'll be back
Speaker 3: in an hour, and they do that a number of times.
Speaker 3: It that tension and that thickness just it's really hard
Speaker 3: to know what to do with that.
Speaker 2: Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 3: Now to you.
Speaker 2: It's a very vivid scene in this book. Governor Danel
Speaker 2: molloy enters the conference room. You write that it's packed
Speaker 2: with first responders, social workers and clergy and lots of nuns,
Speaker 2: and somebody, a mother interrupts his speech and says, so
Speaker 2: are you trying to tell us that all of our
Speaker 2: kids are dead? And the governor is stunned, but he
Speaker 2: says yes. And then your wife Melissa spoke up, what
Speaker 2: about the children that went to the hospital, what is
Speaker 2: their status? And what did he have to say? What
Speaker 2: was his response?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've spent a lot of time processing Governor Malloy's response.
Speaker 3: Obviously isn't an impossible situation, but it was as if
Speaker 3: nobody updated him that we had not been updated, And
Speaker 3: the fact that the governor was there talking to us
Speaker 3: was just really confusing. I didn't understand what the point
Speaker 3: of that was, Like, what did he have to why
Speaker 3: was he even here, And so as he's trying to
Speaker 3: just fumble his way through it, ye had this this mom,
Speaker 3: who I grew later to love for her directness, kind
Speaker 3: of just called them out on that and just like
Speaker 3: give it to us, tell us that if our kids
Speaker 3: are dead. And when he confirmed that, that flicker of
Speaker 3: hope that we had all been kind of huddled around
Speaker 3: and just trying to keep this little flame ali have
Speaker 3: just expired and just left this but used to be
Speaker 3: so much emotion and so much tension and now just
Speaker 3: felt like a vacuum. When Alyssa asked about the children
Speaker 3: that had been taking in the hospital because that there
Speaker 3: that was the last shot up hope available, he said
Speaker 3: that those children had also expired, and then it was
Speaker 3: like just smoke from like a blown out candle, just
Speaker 3: like the flame was gone and there was nothing left
Speaker 3: to hold on to. And that that was how the
Speaker 3: news was bird to all of the families and for
Speaker 3: everybody else that was in there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you write that you and your wife saw
Speaker 2: a back door to the conference room and you ran out.
Speaker 2: You just wanted to go home. Your wife, Alyssa, said
Speaker 2: there's nothing here for us, and so you went home
Speaker 2: and then became that living nightmare from that day on.
Speaker 2: Your church, your church leadership, you write, was immediately comforting
Speaker 2: and came to the home and alleviated you both of
Speaker 2: the funeral arrangements for Emily. So right away you had
Speaker 2: the support of the church in that community and understanding,
Speaker 2: understanding better than anyone the processes that you needed to
Speaker 2: go through after this, the confirmation of the death of
Speaker 2: your daughter.
Speaker 3: What wonderful people that we did have on our corner.
Speaker 3: Like I said, we hadn't been there very long, so
Speaker 3: the church that we had been attending, those were people
Speaker 3: that we knew, and they stepped up and they were
Speaker 3: there immediately. Just so grateful for them and that role,
Speaker 3: because I mean, you can't think, you can't make decisions,
Speaker 3: you can't do anything and so, and there was a
Speaker 3: lot that needed to be done. You know, we weren't
Speaker 3: going to bury Emily in Connecticut where there was no family,
Speaker 3: there was no history of us being there really, and
Speaker 3: so planning a funeral that was going to take place
Speaker 3: in Utah, how to they even go about that? We
Speaker 3: had other family coming into town and they were able
Speaker 3: just to take so much off of our shoulders in
Speaker 3: those first few hours and days, and will be tremendously
Speaker 3: grateful and loved those people for how they stepped up
Speaker 3: in those moments, and as the years went on, showed
Speaker 3: me exactly ways in which I can help other people
Speaker 3: in unimaginable citys. You know, people always ask you in
Speaker 3: those scenarios like what do you need? What can I
Speaker 3: do to help you? And you don't even know what
Speaker 3: that is? And it being asked that question over time
Speaker 3: starts to kind of become a burden because it's not
Speaker 3: like I was being prideful and wanted to do everything
Speaker 3: on my own, but it's just you don't know and
Speaker 3: you don't know what to ask for. You don't know
Speaker 3: what your needs are, You don't know who you are
Speaker 3: as a person, You don't know who you are as
Speaker 3: a father, you don't know anything about yourself anymore. Nothing
Speaker 3: in your life makes sense, and so to have people
Speaker 3: that could come in and alleviate some of that stuff
Speaker 3: for us was amazing. And being able to then now
Speaker 3: and years later be able to pay that for it
Speaker 3: in other situations for other people is great.
Speaker 2: You were inundated with requests from media for interviews. At
Speaker 2: some point, you have an idea that you think that
Speaker 2: will stop the media from pestering you. So what is
Speaker 2: the idea that you expressed to your family? What's their
Speaker 2: response to your idea? And tell us about this idea?
Speaker 3: Right, So it was you know, this is happening to us,
Speaker 3: and then we knew that there was other families involved.
Speaker 3: But this is so insular. There is no comprehension of
Speaker 3: what's going on in the outside world other than trying
Speaker 3: to get like our parents into town or family and
Speaker 3: stuff like that. The media presence that was growing in town.
Speaker 3: I was the only way I even knew about it
Speaker 3: was one of our church leaders just warned us it
Speaker 3: would be best if we probably didn't go out into
Speaker 3: town because of how much media was out there. But
Speaker 3: you know how this was in the early years of
Speaker 3: social media. So as friends and family were starting to
Speaker 3: post things on sites like Facebook and Twitter and stuff
Speaker 3: like that about losing Emily and their memories of Emily
Speaker 3: and who Emily was. And we had friends that started
Speaker 3: this Facebook page, a memorial page for Emily because their thought,
Speaker 3: their brilliant idea was they just wanted to a little
Speaker 3: bit of money to help cover the cost of transporting
Speaker 3: Emily's body back to Utah. Right, So as these breadcrumbs
Speaker 3: were starting to be laid out online, then media was
Speaker 3: able to kind of triangulate who I was, and who
Speaker 3: our family was and where we were. So even that
Speaker 3: first night of the shooting Friday night, I started getting
Speaker 3: phone calls from reporters. Saturday morning, started to have reporters
Speaker 3: come to our door, starting to bring our phones, and
Speaker 3: it was so invasive because again, like we're just faced
Speaker 3: with trying to figure something out that we had no
Speaker 3: idea what to do where our hearts are broken, and
Speaker 3: to be pestered like this was awful. And like you
Speaker 3: mentioned the experience that we had with the Lyssa's dad,
Speaker 3: I mean, there was this little article that was written
Speaker 3: in our local newspaper in northern Utah, right, and they
Speaker 3: didn't get some of the facts right, which led to
Speaker 3: some assumptions and online comments. We were saying things about
Speaker 3: my father in law that were really hurtful. And so
Speaker 3: I'm sitting there looking at all of this, looking at
Speaker 3: this family that I feel like I failed to protect
Speaker 3: and that I need to protect, and needing to do something,
Speaker 3: because like this was just it was very obvious it
Speaker 3: wasn't going to go away, and so what I wanted
Speaker 3: to do was I wanted to try and get ahead
Speaker 3: of it. And I didn't want anybody because as we
Speaker 3: stayed silent and I wasn't talking to the media, they
Speaker 3: were reaching out to, you know, the next level of
Speaker 3: family and then further family and then friends, and eventually
Speaker 3: somebody was going to say something, right, and I didn't
Speaker 3: want to see anybody to say something about Emily that
Speaker 3: was going to get out there and be erroneous and hurtful,
Speaker 3: And so I thought the best thing would be for
Speaker 3: me to make a statement, something that came from our parents,
Speaker 3: to make a statement about who Emily was and what
Speaker 3: we were going through. And really all I wanted to
Speaker 3: do was just communicate that to the people that cared
Speaker 3: about us, you know, most of our family was back
Speaker 3: in Utah out on the west coast, just kind of
Speaker 3: tell them that we were okay. So I set up
Speaker 3: this what I wanted to be this recorded statement. I
Speaker 3: only contacted one news outlet and let them know that
Speaker 3: they could meet me at the church at this time,
Speaker 3: that I would provide the statement, they could record it,
Speaker 3: and I actually just wanted them just to send that
Speaker 3: back to Utah and they could play it there because
Speaker 3: that's where I thought the only people that cared about
Speaker 3: anything that I'd have to say lived in Utah. That
Speaker 3: was the idea, and my thought was if we throw
Speaker 3: the media bone, they'll go and chew on that for
Speaker 3: a while and they can leave us alone. That was
Speaker 3: what the plan was. And I'm sure your follow up
Speaker 3: question will be along the lines of how well that
Speaker 3: worked out for us.
Speaker 2: But what you did include in there worked with very
Speaker 2: very interesting and I think would be interesting to very
Speaker 2: many people, was that you had made a statement about
Speaker 2: the shooter's family and what they must be going through,
Speaker 2: and that you had some empathy for the shooters family
Speaker 2: at this time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we put a lot of thought into
Speaker 3: what we even wanted to include in that statement, and
Speaker 3: that was one thing. Like Alyssa and I sat there
Speaker 3: even in the firehouse, and we said, could you imagine
Speaker 3: if this is one of your kids that did this,
Speaker 3: Like I can't imagine. Like we knew nothing about the
Speaker 3: shooter or their family or what the situation was, but
Speaker 3: just being a parent and thinking about what was going on,
Speaker 3: and there was some compassion just for another parent, Like
Speaker 3: we knew what we were dealing with, but we kind
Speaker 3: of immediately recognized that there was another side of this
Speaker 3: story as well. So that was just something that was
Speaker 3: on our minds. And you know, I know this is
Speaker 3: going to sound cliche, but that's also I was giving
Speaker 3: this statement and I included it in the statement because
Speaker 3: that is also how Emily viewed people and what she
Speaker 3: thought about people. So it encompassed who she was as
Speaker 3: a person too, that thoughtfulness and just compact for people
Speaker 3: where they're at in life at that moment in time.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.
Speaker 2: Now as a result of the press conference that you
Speaker 2: put forth that you organized, and you say that your relatives,
Speaker 2: your family members thought that you did real well. Your
Speaker 2: brother congratulated you, but the back to the memorial page.
Speaker 2: You looked at the memorial page and saw some disgusting,
Speaker 2: deplorable comments. The next day, tell us what happened from
Speaker 2: this event of hope that you thought might make a change.
Speaker 2: Tell us about some of the comments and the fire
Speaker 2: that was ignited.
Speaker 3: Right, So, my beautiful idea of throwing the media bone
Speaker 3: just showed my ignorance and how the media actually worked. Somehow,
Speaker 3: the one reporter that we had set up to do
Speaker 3: the the recording with blossomed into every reporter, it seemed like.
Speaker 3: So when I came out to give the statement, I
Speaker 3: was expecting to just talk to one person, but instead,
Speaker 3: by that time, it was dark, and I came outside
Speaker 3: of the church and there's all these floodlights, and I
Speaker 3: could tell that there was lots of people there. There
Speaker 3: had been this podium that had been set up, and
Speaker 3: I had no idea that this was being recorded live.
Speaker 3: I had no idea that it was being broadcast on
Speaker 3: every station that you can think of. I didn't know
Speaker 3: any of that, and so I gave the statement and
Speaker 3: did what I needed to do. And so I was
Speaker 3: very unaware of the reach that that statement had and
Speaker 3: who was watching, and so they're on that Facebook page
Speaker 3: that you talked about that in the short amount of
Speaker 3: time that they my friends, had created it. I'd gone
Speaker 3: on after they had told me about it. I was
Speaker 3: surprised to feel some solace when I had gone on
Speaker 3: there before, because these were people who knew our family,
Speaker 3: they had known Emily. They were sharing stories about Emily,
Speaker 3: a lot of which I had never heard because these
Speaker 3: were one on one interaction with that Emily had with
Speaker 3: these people. So as a place where I could just
Speaker 3: feel some love and feel some solace. Immediately, as you
Speaker 3: talked about some people that had been watching the press
Speaker 3: conference that prescribed to these conspiratorial thoughts and notions and
Speaker 3: listen to people who can invent a different narrative from reality,
Speaker 3: they had also been watching and they had also found
Speaker 3: the Facebook page, and they were inundating Emily's a memorial
Speaker 3: page for a six year old loving girl, with threats
Speaker 3: and harassment and saying awful things you know about me
Speaker 3: as a person, about Emily, and just vile, vile, vile,
Speaker 3: evil stuff. And that really shook me again because this
Speaker 3: is a place where I had gone to before that
Speaker 3: was that was beautiful and full of love, and now
Speaker 3: it was mixed with just the most evil things I'd
Speaker 3: ever really come across being shared from one person or
Speaker 3: another like that.
Speaker 2: You're right that previous to this, you were not aware
Speaker 2: of Alex Jones, and then you saw that Alex Jones
Speaker 2: on this Info Wars broadcast was saying that, and others
Speaker 2: were commenting the followers were saying that the shooting was
Speaker 2: all fake. They said that you were a crisis actor
Speaker 2: getting into character and you were playing a role in
Speaker 2: cahoots with government to stage this fake shooting. How shocking
Speaker 2: were those statements to you?
Speaker 3: So the things that were really mean and really you know,
Speaker 3: all the all the like the you and your fucking
Speaker 3: daughter bitch, like all that kind of stuff, Those things
Speaker 3: were shocking because I don't understand why you would talk
Speaker 3: to anybody that's grieving in that way.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: The conspiracy stuff took some time to make sense. It
Speaker 3: was just really bizarre and really confusing. You know. It
Speaker 3: wasn't like I knew that there was people out there
Speaker 3: that denied nine to eleven, thought nine to eleven was
Speaker 3: an inside job. I grew up in the nineties and
Speaker 3: for a while was even convinced that Kurt Cobaine didn't
Speaker 3: commit suicide but was actually killed by Courtney Love. You know,
Speaker 3: like it's not like I wasn't aware of conspiracy things,
Speaker 3: but the way they were talking just didn't make any sense.
Speaker 3: Like calling me a crisis actor that I mean, that
Speaker 3: sounds like I'm in an improv group or something, you know.
Speaker 3: But over time you start to learn that crisis actor
Speaker 3: is this code word for somebody that is part of
Speaker 3: the cabal or whatever term they have, all these terms
Speaker 3: that they use for it. It's a code word that
Speaker 3: says you were in cahoots with the government and at
Speaker 3: that time and age the Obama administration because you want
Speaker 3: to make away our guns. Like that's really what it means. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I had no idea who Alex Jones was. People were
Speaker 3: linking videos to Alex Jones's website and clips of Alex
Speaker 3: Jones on air. I had no idea who this guy was.
Speaker 3: Things that he was saying, in the way he was
Speaker 3: saying it just just made me think that it wasn't hurtful,
Speaker 3: but it scared me because at that moment, I wo
Speaker 3: now was fully aware of what one person was capable
Speaker 3: of doing to another person. This guy from our own community,
Speaker 3: this loving Sandy Hook community, walked into the elementary school
Speaker 3: and accomplished what he set out to accomplish, which was
Speaker 3: to do as much harm and kill as many people
Speaker 3: as possible, including Emily. But he had no idea who
Speaker 3: I was. He had no idea who Emily was. And
Speaker 3: so these people now I know exist and what they
Speaker 3: are capable of. And now I have people that have
Speaker 3: expressed their hatred towards me for what they think that
Speaker 3: I'm a part of, and they obviously know how to
Speaker 3: reach me. And just like I had been getting phone
Speaker 3: calls and stuff from media people, now that still continued
Speaker 3: because the media never went away like I thought they
Speaker 3: were going to. But now also on top of that,
Speaker 3: conspiracy people reaching out either online, on the phone, on
Speaker 3: my own personal email, like they were finding me. And
Speaker 3: so the threat of what they who they were, and
Speaker 3: what they were was very very real.
Speaker 2: What did you do in response to the Facebook pages
Speaker 2: and the other social media what did you attempt to
Speaker 2: do to try to get them to stop proliferation of
Speaker 2: these messages and these comments.
Speaker 3: I mean, initially you think logic might work. My friends
Speaker 3: that had set up the page, they allowed some other
Speaker 3: friends to be administrators and they were just on there
Speaker 3: trying to just clean the page up. Whenever something would
Speaker 3: come up, they would, you know, they would report the comment,
Speaker 3: they would delete it. I told people not to engage there.
Speaker 3: There was a few people that try to engage with them,
Speaker 3: and it turned into this like battleground and it was
Speaker 3: really ugly and that definitely was not who Emily was.
Speaker 3: Emily was not contentious. Emily was not somebody who would
Speaker 3: bicker and argue, and so that was totally taking away
Speaker 3: from everything. And so at first we just tried to
Speaker 3: just engage in a way that we felt like was safe,
Speaker 3: that wouldn't put fuel on the fire. But it became
Speaker 3: so hard, and even I was spending a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of time that I really shouldn't have been spending. I
Speaker 3: needed to be supporting my wife and my kids, and
Speaker 3: I was spending time on this Facebook page trying to
Speaker 3: defend Emily, who I felt like I had failed and
Speaker 3: get this filth off of there, and eventually we just
Speaker 3: needed to take the page down, and so we just
Speaker 3: removed the page from Facebook for a long period of time.
Speaker 3: And even then, my thought was, you know, these conspiracy people,
Speaker 3: you know, they're just this is the hot thing right now.
Speaker 3: Eventually they're going to move on and go start looking
Speaker 3: for Bigfoot again. That was one thing that actually told
Speaker 3: my friend Brad, who was one of the people that
Speaker 3: started a Facebook page. And again just my ignorance of
Speaker 3: just the age that we were coming into between this
Speaker 3: crossroads of media, social media, proliferation of disinformation, all of
Speaker 3: that was very brand new, and Sandy Hook was just
Speaker 3: an ignition point for all of these places to come
Speaker 3: in collide with each other.
Speaker 2: You write about your family's plan to focus on your
Speaker 2: grief and to deal with the grief of losing your daughter.
Speaker 2: Your wife had a blog that she was encouraged to
Speaker 2: go public with it and it dealt with her dealing
Speaker 2: with grief. You have alluded that you felt guilty for
Speaker 2: not protecting your family in the first place somehow from
Speaker 2: this school shooter. But now with the assault coming from
Speaker 2: Alex Jones and his supporters at Info War, you again
Speaker 2: felt this guilt and this need to protect your family.
Speaker 2: In terms of dealing with your own grief and protecting
Speaker 2: your family. What did your wife do to deal with
Speaker 2: grief and what, unfortunately did how did you deal with
Speaker 2: your grief?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so we're living this really fragmented life where on
Speaker 3: one hand, we had a very clear understanding and we
Speaker 3: were getting help from wonderful people right away, And it
Speaker 3: became obvious that our first concern was how do we
Speaker 3: approach this in a way that's going to be the
Speaker 3: best outcome for our girls. And what we learned was,
Speaker 3: you know, the girls are going to mimic how you
Speaker 3: guys handle grief, right, so they're going to look to
Speaker 3: you to be the examples of how to process this
Speaker 3: in a very healthy way. So that became our first
Speaker 3: priority was we are going to learn and focus on
Speaker 3: what healthy grief means and what that looks like for us.
Speaker 3: And so, but like you said, I mean, at the
Speaker 3: same time, I'm dealing with all those things that are
Speaker 3: accompanied from that. I felt like I failed Emily as
Speaker 3: a father. Elyssa felt like she failed Emily as a mother.
Speaker 3: Like he made promises to our kids that we would
Speaker 3: always protect them, that we wouldn't ever let anything bad
Speaker 3: happen to them, and that now was shown that we
Speaker 3: were incapable of really being able to fulfill that promise,
Speaker 3: and so you carry a lot of guilt and shame
Speaker 3: for doing that, even though you know there wasn't anything
Speaker 3: you could really do or do anything wrong. But I'm
Speaker 3: looking at my girls and I know that I can't
Speaker 3: make that same promise to them. And so when you
Speaker 3: have conspiracy people like I said, who are a real threat,
Speaker 3: and that's no joke. And the letters that got sent
Speaker 3: to my home and the phone calls and voice messages
Speaker 3: that were left on my phone prove exactly that they
Speaker 3: not only are they capable of doing something, they wanted
Speaker 3: to do something if they ever had an opportunity to.
Speaker 3: And so I'm split in this now. I'm doubling down
Speaker 3: on wanting to be this father that protects his family
Speaker 3: and try and grieve. And I learned painfully that those
Speaker 3: two things at that point in my life couldn't exist
Speaker 3: in the same place at the same time. If I
Speaker 3: could focus on grief, I could set time around and
Speaker 3: I could go to my counseling and I could help
Speaker 3: with issues that were coming up at home, and I
Speaker 3: could learn good ways and bad ways about what healthy
Speaker 3: grief was and just learn those processes. But then I
Speaker 3: would have to shift gears and focus on conspiracy theory
Speaker 3: people and what was going on, what was being said,
Speaker 3: where were they, And that was just so debilitating to
Speaker 3: try and keep that up for a long period of time,
Speaker 3: and it leaves you constantly feeling like you're not doing enough.
Speaker 3: And growing up, I grew up in a very high
Speaker 3: demand religion that constantly always makes you feel like you're
Speaker 3: not good enough and you're not doing enough, and so
Speaker 3: it was kind of just wired into me as a
Speaker 3: young child to feel this way. And you just keep
Speaker 3: plowing through, and you just keep plowing through, and your
Speaker 3: tank gets empty and you're burning through your own personal
Speaker 3: resources and you are just totally unaware that that you're
Speaker 3: just burning out and that it's having severe negative impacts
Speaker 3: on your emotional, mental, physical help, your relationships with your
Speaker 3: family and with your kids, and that there wasn't any
Speaker 3: other way that I knew how to go about it.
Speaker 2: Let's Jesus as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages. Now,
Speaker 2: what do you find out? You say, you watched a
Speaker 2: program with Piers Morgan and interviewing Alex Jones, and you
Speaker 2: realize that this what he was ranting about was the
Speaker 2: Second Amendment and people's gun rights, and he was appealing
Speaker 2: to their sense that they're coming for your guns coming
Speaker 2: from your guns. This is a false flag event. No
Speaker 2: one got shot at this school. The FBI claims that
Speaker 2: there was no shooting. So these followers blindly believe Alex
Speaker 2: Jones that all of it is a false flag, a
Speaker 2: shooting that never occurred. To your horror, after this shooting
Speaker 2: in Newtown, the shootings don't go away. The shootings persist.
Speaker 3: Don't they exactly? And that became clear. I talk about
Speaker 3: it kind of like the worst fraternity that you could
Speaker 3: be initiated into. So right after our shooting, it was
Speaker 3: surprising that all these other shootings that you heard about,
Speaker 3: these communities were reaching out places like Virginia Tech and Aurora, Colorado,
Speaker 3: and in August of twenty twelve there was a shooting
Speaker 3: in Wisconsin at a Sikh temple. These people and these
Speaker 3: families were reaching out to us in solidarity and to
Speaker 3: provide their hindsight things that we needed to look out for.
Speaker 3: And then so you get made part of this community
Speaker 3: again you'd only ever read about before, and now now
Speaker 3: you're receiving this intuition that they were providing us. There
Speaker 3: were things that they were warning us about what was
Speaker 3: going to happen. They had experienced in their own version
Speaker 3: of these things, and so and also people raising money
Speaker 3: for nefarious purposes, like the United Way and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: They're really big on warning us against letting the United
Speaker 3: Way get involved. And it was already too late that
Speaker 3: the United Way had already raised tens of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars that they just wanted to keep. And so, so
Speaker 3: that that adds another layer of something that you have
Speaker 3: to deal with and something that you have to focus
Speaker 3: on to protect because I did not want to be revictimized.
Speaker 3: And then you see the Boston bombing the next year
Speaker 3: at the marathon, and then you see other shootings start
Speaker 3: to take place, and you start to see the repetitive
Speaker 3: patterns that come along with these, and I get so
Speaker 3: irritated when these events happened. And you hear somebody say,
Speaker 3: you know, there's no playbook for this, and there absolutely
Speaker 3: has been a playbook written and nobody wants to look
Speaker 3: at it. So again, every one of these things just
Speaker 3: adds another layer on top of you, on top of
Speaker 3: you with something that's just weighing you down. They feel
Speaker 3: like you either have to fight or that you have
Speaker 3: to deal with or you have to problem solve and
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, all I really really
Speaker 3: wanted to do was just grieve. I just I missed
Speaker 3: my daughter so much, and I didn't even have time
Speaker 3: to really focus on what I was feeling about her
Speaker 3: loss or seeing my girls and what it was that
Speaker 3: they were actually really going through. I was trying my
Speaker 3: best to do it, and then again just felt like
Speaker 3: I was failing all the time. I just felt like
Speaker 3: I was failing.
Speaker 2: You say that your attempt to deal with your grief
Speaker 2: made you more and more insular and altered your character
Speaker 2: and your behavior to something that you didn't really recognize.
Speaker 2: Even at one point you got word that some of
Speaker 2: the Sandy Hook families had filed the lawsuit against Alex
Speaker 2: Jones and Info Wars, and they had asked you if
Speaker 2: you wanted to join tell us about that conversation and
Speaker 2: that contemplation that you might join in such a.
Speaker 3: Thing, right, I mean, so years and years go by
Speaker 3: with this, and yeah, in that timeframe, I became very isolated,
Speaker 3: very self terron and developed severe social anxiety. You know,
Speaker 3: my wife's grief process was heard juggling her own emotions,
Speaker 3: looking out for the kids and looking out for me,
Speaker 3: and I didn't even realize that was part of her
Speaker 3: how I was interrupting her grief process. And so it's
Speaker 3: all concluded, and so I get contacted. So there was
Speaker 3: two lawsuits some families. There were two families that sued
Speaker 3: Alex Jones in Texas and then there was a group
Speaker 3: of families that sued him in Connecticut. So I was
Speaker 3: first approached by one of the families that sued him
Speaker 3: in Texas asking if I wanted to join them because
Speaker 3: of that press conference. I didn't know it at the time,
Speaker 3: but I was the first person that spoke out. So
Speaker 3: I kind of became for a short period of time
Speaker 3: like the face of Sandy Hook and so and that's
Speaker 3: what the conspiracy people really like, lashed onto and I became.
Speaker 3: So I became their target when conspiracy people talk about
Speaker 3: they and you know that I all of that became
Speaker 3: me and I became the one person that they could
Speaker 3: zone in on. And I'm not taking anything away from
Speaker 3: other Sandy Hook families. That was just and what they
Speaker 3: went through. I'm not trying to you know, we're not
Speaker 3: making comparisons there, but it was just the order of
Speaker 3: events just made it that my name, in my face
Speaker 3: was recognizable amongst the conspiracy people in a different way.
Speaker 3: I had no intention of wanting to join the lawsuit.
Speaker 3: I didn't I had spent years and years and years
Speaker 3: trying to protect my family by by growing more and
Speaker 3: more isolated. I didn't want to put myself out there.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to give them more fuel. I definitely
Speaker 3: didn't want to confirm any of the things that they
Speaker 3: were saying that the government had paid us to do this,
Speaker 3: And so then if I started suing somebody, I didn't
Speaker 3: want them to have AMMO that I was trying to
Speaker 3: make money off of my daughter's death. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: like we didn't think about it, wasn't like I didn't
Speaker 3: want to support the families. My wife and I thought
Speaker 3: about it long heard, and we just decided that was
Speaker 3: just not the direction we wanted to go. And then
Speaker 3: a few months later the lawsuit in Connecticut got filed,
Speaker 3: and we had a group of families that we had
Speaker 3: done a lot of work together when we lived in
Speaker 3: Newtown before we moved away, and one of the families
Speaker 3: that we really trusted and really had become really good
Speaker 3: friends with, the Pinto family. They're both lawyers, the mom
Speaker 3: and dad are lawyers. They looked through the lawsuit and
Speaker 3: saw that my name was all over in this thing,
Speaker 3: that a lot of the evidence that they were using
Speaker 3: for the claims that they were making had to do
Speaker 3: with me, because Alex Jones would put my face on
Speaker 3: his show, he would say my name. So she advised
Speaker 3: us to look at it again from a different angle
Speaker 3: and consider joining the lawsuit because she was like, you know,
Speaker 3: your name is all over this thing, so you're going
Speaker 3: to be involved, whether you want to be or not,
Speaker 3: and you could get subpoenaed to testify at the hearing,
Speaker 3: not just by the Sandy Hook lawyers like Families lawyers,
Speaker 3: but by Alex Jones's lawyer as well. And so that
Speaker 3: was the first time where it, I don't even want
Speaker 3: to say it dawn on me because it wasn't like
Speaker 3: a strong thing, but where the notion of using my
Speaker 3: voice came to me because I'd use my voice at
Speaker 3: the press conference and I got slammed because of it
Speaker 3: and just eviscerated because of it. So the idea of
Speaker 3: me using my voice again wasn't something I was interested in,
Speaker 3: but she reframed it in a way that made me
Speaker 3: start to think that this might be a possibility for us,
Speaker 3: and eventually led us to join the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: Another thing that swung your decision, I think, as you
Speaker 2: write that, there was another shooting victim from another school
Speaker 2: shooting that encountered the same kind of super disturbing confrontation
Speaker 2: that you had yourself, and you said, basically you didn't
Speaker 2: want people to keep experiencing these same sorts of things,
Speaker 2: and so I think it added to your desire to
Speaker 2: stop this and to get aboard this lawsuit and confront
Speaker 2: your demons.
Speaker 3: And Alex Jones absolutely yeah, I mean that was not
Speaker 3: an easy decision to make. It took me a long
Speaker 3: time still. I mean that conversation I think happened in
Speaker 3: May with the Sandy Hook mom, and then I didn't
Speaker 3: join the lawsuit for a few more months. There was
Speaker 3: a lot of things that had to come into place,
Speaker 3: but one of the big catalysts is what you're talking about,
Speaker 3: and that was we had this weird series of events
Speaker 3: where the Parkland High School shooting that was on February fourteenth,
Speaker 3: I was on Valentine's Day of twenty and eighteen. I
Speaker 3: believe we somehow had somebody that we knew knew one
Speaker 3: of the families that had been impacted by that, and
Speaker 3: so had made a connection, and we had just offered, like,
Speaker 3: if you if you ever wanted a talk, we're more
Speaker 3: than willing to talk with you. And so, in a
Speaker 3: conversation that we had months later after the shooting, that
Speaker 3: got brought up, they were talking about the conspiracy people
Speaker 3: and what they were dealing with, and how the father
Speaker 3: had a very similar story to mine, that he had
Speaker 3: given a statement to the press and that he was
Speaker 3: attacked because of it. You know, at that point, I
Speaker 3: was five and a half years down the road, and
Speaker 3: so I had developed some space and some hindsight, and
Speaker 3: I knew that now I could articulate their grief as
Speaker 3: being stolen from them. And when I talk about these
Speaker 3: people being evil, and Alex Jones being evil for what
Speaker 3: he did, because he pounced the moment that the shooting
Speaker 3: happened in Sandy Hook to start attacking and sewing doubt
Speaker 3: and attacking families, and in doing so, he robbed us
Speaker 3: of our ability to grieve. I now look at grief
Speaker 3: as as scary as it was, and as much as
Speaker 3: I hated it in the beginning, grief is a very
Speaker 3: sacred process. That has so much to offer and so
Speaker 3: much to teach you, and to rob somebody of that
Speaker 3: process is very evil act, in my opinion, And I
Speaker 3: saw that replaying in this family, and what that family
Speaker 3: did for me was basically just hold a mirror up
Speaker 3: to my own experience so that I could see it
Speaker 3: because I was so close to it in my own head,
Speaker 3: and I could see that that's what was happening to them,
Speaker 3: and I knew that they had no energy. I knew
Speaker 3: that they had just at least had a sense of
Speaker 3: what it was that they were going through because I
Speaker 3: had been there. And so for me to be able
Speaker 3: to have this opportunity to say, like I could step
Speaker 3: in and do something, yes for me and my family,
Speaker 3: but also potentially for that family and hopefully for families
Speaker 3: in the future, and that's a very altruistic way to
Speaker 3: look at it. Ultimately, I had to do it for myself,
Speaker 3: but those kinds of experiences really were catalysts that got
Speaker 3: me around to join in the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: For sure, you're right about the court case itself. And
Speaker 2: Clint Watts, a former FBI agent turned investigative consultant, broke
Speaker 2: down Jones tactics and also the following of the money,
Speaker 2: he denied that there was any kind of motivation. But
Speaker 2: this Chris Watts broke or Clint Watts broke everything down
Speaker 2: in terms of the guy's greed, motivation and knowing he
Speaker 2: was lying, and yet continued to incite his followers into
Speaker 2: the kinds of threats and the kinds of the kinds
Speaker 2: of threats that they issued to victim's families and the
Speaker 2: disgusting nature of the accusations that Jones leveled against the
Speaker 2: victim's families.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was the court process, like just litigating this
Speaker 3: thing for four years before we even made it to court.
Speaker 3: You know, it's just it's not worth writing a whole
Speaker 3: lot about. But it's just infuriating, just learning, just being
Speaker 3: exposed more and more to Alex Jones and who he
Speaker 3: is as a person and what he's willing to go,
Speaker 3: the extents of which he's willing to go to to
Speaker 3: avoid accountability or just horrendous. And then you get into
Speaker 3: the court setting and I thought, I I talk a
Speaker 3: lot about how just ignorant, naive I wasn't a lot
Speaker 3: of things, and this is another example of that. I
Speaker 3: went into the court proceedings just figuring that I knew
Speaker 3: everything about what was what had been happening, and what
Speaker 3: was going on. And there were moments during the court
Speaker 3: during the trial hearing testimonies mainly from family members and
Speaker 3: getting to know them better that was very eye opening
Speaker 3: to me. But Clint watts testimony just blew me away.
Speaker 3: The dots that he was able to connect, the timeline
Speaker 3: that he was able to construct, because again I was
Speaker 3: experiencing this in these weird fragments and through the lens
Speaker 3: of PTSD and trauma and grief, he was able to
Speaker 3: articulate so clearly the series of events. How minutes after
Speaker 3: the shooting, he was already I was still sitting in
Speaker 3: the firehouse waiting for a policeman to come and give
Speaker 3: us an update, and he was already telling his viewers
Speaker 3: that this was a false flag event and that the
Speaker 3: government was lying, that the government had staged this, And
Speaker 3: that was before I even had confirmation that Emily had died.
Speaker 3: After my press conference, Clint Watts learned through his investigative
Speaker 3: skills and what he was able to obtain from info
Speaker 3: Wars was there was a meeting immediately after my press
Speaker 3: conference that info Wars had where they had a brainstorming
Speaker 3: session about how they were going to be able to
Speaker 3: use this press conference to their advantage. And I had
Speaker 3: carried so much shame and guilt for that press conference
Speaker 3: because I thought that me doing what I did, in
Speaker 3: what I considered mistakes that I had made in that
Speaker 3: press conference was what caused the conspiracy people to come
Speaker 3: after us. So there was a catharticness in realizing that
Speaker 3: I could kind of rid myself of that because it
Speaker 3: didn't matter what I said or what I did, they
Speaker 3: were going to use it to their advantage anyway. But
Speaker 3: it was also very disturbing to see all this laid
Speaker 3: out because then I realized that even more so, that
Speaker 3: Alex Jones isn't just this crazy guy out there, and
Speaker 3: these conspiracy people are just these like lunatics, right that
Speaker 3: just kind of just go off of chance or whatever,
Speaker 3: Like it feels safer to put them in this orbit
Speaker 3: that is far enough away from you that you can
Speaker 3: just say that they're crazy and they they live out
Speaker 3: there in this other world and I'm over here in
Speaker 3: this safe place. And that's a really big mistake for
Speaker 3: us to do as individuals and as a society, because
Speaker 3: they showed how calculating they are, how deliberate they are,
Speaker 3: and they sent to what they're able to go to
Speaker 3: to accomplish their goals, and so there wasn't any chance
Speaker 3: about it. This was calculated, it was planned, and they
Speaker 3: were in pursuit of doing something very specific, and they
Speaker 3: were accomplishing that until somebody could stand up and try
Speaker 3: and put a stop to it.
Speaker 2: You're right about the talented lawyers at the at this lawsuit,
Speaker 2: Josh Koshkoff, Chris Mattey, alanor Sterling, and Matthew Blumenthal, And
Speaker 2: you talk about the despicable narrative that was spewed by
Speaker 2: Norman Pattis, the defense lawyer. You gave him the benefit
Speaker 2: of the doubt that he would just protect his client,
Speaker 2: but then he continued with the defamin to statements and
Speaker 2: narrative of Alex Jones. So you lost all respect fro
Speaker 2: him in that regard. The settlement from the judge and
Speaker 2: the denouncement, the very dramatic denouncement from the judge is
Speaker 2: indicative of quite a bit. So tell us about the
Speaker 2: settlement what it was. You might that it's unlikely that
Speaker 2: anybody would see any of this incredible sums of money However,
Speaker 2: it is satisfying to realize that Alex jones empire, the
Speaker 2: empire that he built on lies, would be destroyed.
Speaker 3: So there was a it was a jury trial. The
Speaker 3: weird thing about what ended up happening was the judges
Speaker 3: in Texas and Connecticut both found Jones in default, meaning
Speaker 3: he he was such an awful player. He never complied
Speaker 3: with any core orders to turn over documents, anything that
Speaker 3: was relevant. He just played these games to the point
Speaker 3: where it was so atrocious that the judges were like,
Speaker 3: your behavior just proves that you're guilty, and default is
Speaker 3: the death sentence of things. Judges hate to do that.
Speaker 3: They want a chance for there to be a trial,
Speaker 3: They want a chance for all the facts to come out.
Speaker 3: But because of his behavior and the way that he
Speaker 3: was going about things, they said, your behavior is proof
Speaker 3: enough that the claims against you are valid and true,
Speaker 3: and so you're guilty of defamation. You're guilty of the
Speaker 3: emotional harm that you caused these families. And so the
Speaker 3: trial was focused on compensatory damages. And so the point
Speaker 3: of the trial at that point, we didn't have to
Speaker 3: prove it he was guilty. We just had to prove
Speaker 3: the extent of the harm that he caused. So for
Speaker 3: the jury, and I didn't get to write about this
Speaker 3: a whole lot in the book, the amount of respect
Speaker 3: that I gained for the jury members for what they
Speaker 3: had to go through to sit there for weeks on end,
Speaker 3: to listen to arguments from Norm Pattis and and what
Speaker 3: Jones was saying even in the courtroom hear about all
Speaker 3: these awful things that he was doing, and what we
Speaker 3: went through the jury. I just have a tremendous amount
Speaker 3: of member of respect for the members of the jury
Speaker 3: and what they had to put themselves through, and in
Speaker 3: their verdict was just a confirmation of what we already
Speaker 3: knew that Jones and his followers are dangerous people. They
Speaker 3: they the harm that they inflict in the impact that
Speaker 3: it has on people's individual lives and on society as
Speaker 3: a whole, are very real. And their verdict of nine
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty five million dollars in compensatory damages to
Speaker 3: the families was the only way our system has to
Speaker 3: say that. And so they did a very admirable job
Speaker 3: of painting that picture of this is exactly what this
Speaker 3: man does in the harm that he causes, and what
Speaker 3: it's capable of doing.
Speaker 2: What did that settlement do for you personally?
Speaker 3: So the juries, reward or however you want to say it,
Speaker 3: I mean it was validation right to everything that we
Speaker 3: had been through. For me personally, what I ultimately I
Speaker 3: joined the lawsuit because I realized that along the way,
Speaker 3: I had totally given up my voice and I had
Speaker 3: given up all my power, and yes, Jones was doing
Speaker 3: all of these things. And when I did try and
Speaker 3: try and put a stop to it in some way
Speaker 3: by trying to get social media companies to take them
Speaker 3: off or whatever, and I was just put down, like
Speaker 3: I lost so much, and I gave up so much
Speaker 3: of my own sense of self and my own worth.
Speaker 3: So for me reclaiming that and that's why even the
Speaker 3: subtitle of the book is about reclaiming the truth about
Speaker 3: Sandy Hook And for me, it was reclaiming just it
Speaker 3: started out just reclaiming myself. I am a good father
Speaker 3: and I am somebody that can protect my kids, and
Speaker 3: I needed to stand up and speak truth to that.
Speaker 3: And the process of this litigation in the courtroom and
Speaker 3: then me getting to witness Alex Jones on the stand,
Speaker 3: and then me being able to take the stand myself.
Speaker 3: That was what I gained out of this whole process
Speaker 3: was and I know it sounds so cheesy, but it's
Speaker 3: like I was able to reclaim my voice and what
Speaker 3: that has done for me and how I now approach
Speaker 3: my life and how I approach my relationships and my
Speaker 3: family and grief has catapulted me into a much much
Speaker 3: healthier state of mine, in the state of being. And
Speaker 3: that's what I got out of this whole process. I
Speaker 3: walked off the stand elated with knowing that I had
Speaker 3: accomplished with what I had intended to set out in
Speaker 3: this and that accomplishment has now snowballed as we've gone
Speaker 3: on in the future. I love the jury's verdict and
Speaker 3: it shows a validation of what it is that we
Speaker 3: went through. It didn't give me personally anything other than
Speaker 3: that validation. But what I needed out of this experience
Speaker 3: was was that was what I was able to provide
Speaker 3: for myself in going through it and reclaiming those things
Speaker 3: that I felt like i'd lost.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I want to thank you so much for coming
Speaker 2: on and talking about your extraordinary a father's fight, taking
Speaker 2: on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook.
Speaker 2: For those people that might want to find out more
Speaker 2: about this book. Do you do have a website and
Speaker 2: do you do any social media that week refer to.
Speaker 3: I have a very limited social media presence. I was
Speaker 3: off social media for years because of these guys. But
Speaker 3: I do have a website. It's my name, Robbie Parker,
Speaker 3: Robbie's Robbie, so Robbie Parker dot net. I do have
Speaker 3: an email that people can contact me at info at
Speaker 3: Robbie Parker dot net. Those would be the best basic
Speaker 3: to get a hold of me, or if anybody's interested
Speaker 3: in purchasing the book, that would be the way to
Speaker 3: find out more about it.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Robbie Parker for a father's fight,
Speaker 2: taking on Alex Jones and reclaiming the truth about Sandy Hook.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for this interview, and you have
Speaker 2: a great evening and good night.
Speaker 3: My pleasure, Dan, thank you, thank you,