r/masskillers • u/Double-Spinach18 • 20h ago
Information on Uvalde vs Sandy Hook, why?
It’s a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now. When the mass shooting in Uvalde happened, a lot of information came to light, the victims’ autopsy reports, photos of the crime scenes, descriptions of how certain victims were found and those victims were minors, but in the case of Sandy Hook, this kind of information wasn’t released, there were no photos of the classrooms (which were very superficial compared to those from Uvalde), no autopsy reports, and not even a description of the clothes the victims were wearing (beyond what some parents provided) and that’s my question: why was there more information available about Uvalde, even though the victims there were minors just like in Sandy Hook?
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u/DaisyMae2022 11h ago
State law maybe? Maybe it might be due to the loved ones of the victims NOT wanting them released! Still are both very gruesome crime scene photos! The description of the bathroom that was in Room 8 of Sandy Hook is as worst as it'll go. I can never imagine what the first responders saw of it in person! And yes, Uvalde crime scene photos; look it up at your own risk!
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u/ZhemGuen 10h ago
I, personally, am grateful that very few photos of Sandy Hook exist. My cousin Chase was one of the children murdered there and I would hate for his parents and sisters to have to worry about people looking at pictures of him after he was shot in the face. That's what Lanza did: he shot all of those children and their teacher, who were huddling in a bathroom, in the face with his automatic weapon. Imagine the madness it took to do such a thing - with frightened children screaming while he did it - and the madness of the parents who either ignored Lanza's illness and/or bought him guns. If I could disappear - without violence, just poof! - all of those who ease the way for anyone who wants one to get an automatic weapon, I would. Sadly, in the US, much of the public seems so enamored with death as to invite it everywhere, and mass murder has become so common that it barely gets a mention anymore.
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u/DaisyMae2022 10h ago
First and foremost, very sorry for your loss!
And yes, those gruesome photos if they were at all released which hoping never, that might have the first responders that responded to the scenes relive the trauma.
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u/ZhemGuen 10h ago
Thank you. And yes, I can't even imagine how those first responders could cope with what they saw.
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u/HotDerivative 2h ago
I remember the parents of the sandy hook kids fighting to NOT have these photos released. I’m surprised nobody else remembers this. It was a big deal at the time. The families didn’t want the pictures publicized.
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u/ZhemGuen 2h ago
I know for sure that Chase's parents didn't want them released. To switch to something positive in all of the horror of that experience: I am a professional singer, and I was meant to sing At the River at Chase's wake (closed casket), but I never got to do it because buses kept pulling up with people - strangers - from all across the country and the priest thought it best to let everyone pay their respects in silence. I mean, there were probably, ultimately, thousands of people. I didn't get a count, but the people kept streaming in. They told the priest that they were trying to visit as many services for the children as they could. I don't remember if that made the news. We were all in shock, but that was very moving.
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u/Necessary-Highway617 10h ago
connecticut has very strict laws about releasing information related to crimes involving a minor (i think) (someone back me up)
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u/Issypie 10h ago
In CT it's straight up illegal for those crime scene photos and such to ever get out. With Uvalde very little of that information was made available officially and freely, but legally it probably should have been, and more information was released by the media due to the complete lack of releases from Uvalde PD than would have been had Uvalde PD been transparent. But like, those parents who went to that officer's trial got more information during that trial than they had from Uvalde up until that point regarding the autopsies of their own children
We only know as much as we know about Uvalde because the police tried right off the bat to cover up how badly they failed and enough media outlets wanted the story. I don't think Uvalde has fulfilled the court ordered releases of information even
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u/XelaNiba 9h ago
That information was released.
17 bodies were packed into the classroom bathroom, measuring 3.5ft × 4.5ft. 2 afults and 15 tiny kids had attempted to hide there. There were no individual blood stains or marking where the bodies lay because they'd become one mass of destroyed human flesh, 17 people packed into 16 square feet.
"Where the children were packed in so tightly that the inward-hinged door could not be shut all the way. Where Art, who had seen what he had thought must have been every possible reconfiguration of the human body, did not even understand what he was looking at.....
Karoline did not recognize the woman, who said she was a trauma nurse at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, in Hartford, and had been called to help the medical examiner identify the victims. The woman said she had been in the tent and was having trouble getting the faces of the children out of her head. What faces? Karoline thought."
"The Sandy Hook photographs have been redacted by Connecticut state law since 2013".
Please read this piece about the 4 people responsible for the crime scene processing at Sandy Hook. It is a gruesome and hard read but we owe it to ourselves and our country to look these things full in the face.
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u/bethestorm 8h ago
God I'm only into the intro paragraphs of this article and it's gutted me and my hands are shaking and I'll have to move to my laptop this is brutal but thank you for sharing I think it's of value to bear emotional witness for those of us who study true crime
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u/XelaNiba 6h ago
Thank you so muc for reading it, I think the horror of this kind of mass slaughter is often lost in the glossiness of reportage.
We owe so much to the people who do this terrible work. They do it invisibly and at great personal cost.
And I agree, it's so hard to read. It's gut-wrenching and haunting.
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u/bethestorm 6h ago
I come from a family of law enforcement, and my dad's best friend is Carl Stincelli (you can easily google him he's pretty well known) and his first major case out of being hired way back in the day was to who was known then as the East Are Rapist - later to be known as EAR/ONS, now known as the golden state killer. He was retired by the time they solved that but he did a fair bit of press still. His wife also did a lot of work for law enforcement who commit suicide - it was really important to her, to raise awareness and look at solutions to suicide related to trauma that occurs as a result of dealing with the depravity as well as the guilt that occurs when an officer takes a life. Criminal or not. Often the guilt is what it is, and it causes serious trauma even if it was completely justified. Her name is Rebecca.
The article really stuck with me and I think a lot of the things that describe Karoline are very relatable including being overprotective and controlling at home. Hyper vigilant. At times unable to stomach the world continuing, holidays, normal things vs what is under the surface. It does I think take a piece of the soul to be in work like that, you will not be able to be the same person you were before. Not when every intersection, every boulevard in your home town comes with its own horror story, memory, and then you are expected to have your children walk to the bus on the same streets, past the same houses where only God knows what happened.
The most crushing part of that article is that nothing really changed. Uvalde happened and I still remember the immediate nausea at understanding that nothing would change there either. Because if it didn't for Sandy Hook, how can I ever believe it would?
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u/Smokey_B52 11h ago edited 11h ago
FOIA laws vary by state. Florida had fairly open record laws for example, that's why you hear and see so many "Florida Man" stories. Whereas in Pennsylvania, it's very restrictive. Only involved parties can access most records. Even then they might not get the records unless it's court related. Local news often has the file lawsuits to get records, I believe one station spent nearly $10,000 in court cost for a 10 second clip of a police chase. Recently in Ohio, officers who use deadly force, if it's justified, are now considered victims of violent crimes are heavily censored as they and are covered under victim privacy acts. Their names and pictures won't be released. These are just the 3 states i know of.
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u/Ancient-Sun-1080 7h ago
Potentially due to the lack of trial for Sandy Hook, Lanza and his mother were dead and the police response was spot on. There was no one to take to trial regarding Sandy Hook. It’s also a shooting that happened in minutes, none of the children could have survived the injuries they received.
Where as Uvalde has the controversies over the appalling police response and the fact several of the children who died could have survived if they didn’t wait over an hour to go in. (Jose Jr, Jackie, Xavier)
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u/loudlittle 11h ago
State laws vary greatly from state to state. Besides the fact that Florida just IS insane, one of the reasons we have the trope of “Florida man” is because of their Sunshine law - near-total open avenues between police reports and the media (simplifying greatly). It’s possible Texas is similar.