HARTFORD, Conn. — The parents of one of the first graders murdered in the Sandy Hook school shootings described Tuesday how nearly a decade of harassment by followers of right wing broadcaster Alex Jones has shattered their sense of security and left them looking warily over their shoulders at strangers.
The parents testified Tuesday during the ninth day of Jones’ defamation suit in Superior Court in Waterbury. Fourteen relatives of shooting victims and an FBI agent who was part of the law enforcement response are suing Jones, claiming they have experienced years of threats and abuse directly attributable to his broadcasts that said the mass shooting was a hoax, that it was staged by so-called crisis actors and it was part of a conspiracy to broaden support for gun control laws.
Ian and Nicole Hockley, who divorced when their marriage of two decades fell apart after their son Dylan’s murder, testified that the stalking and harassment began with Jones’ first hoax broadcasts immediately after the Dec. 14, 2012, shootings and continued through the eve of the trial earlier this month.
“It was targeted,” Nicole Hockley said. “There were direct messages, phone calls to my friends looking for me. I received mail sent to the house that I would try to get to before Ian came home from work. I was sent pictures of dead kids because I was told that since I was a crisis actor I didn’t know what dead kids looked like.”
She said she has fortified her house with security equipment, sometimes sleeps with a bat and, for nine years, has paid a $120 monthly premium on a life insurance policy to protect her surviving son, who also attended Sandy Hook Elementary School the day of the shooting, should someone carry out one of the threats against her.
“They could be anywhere,” she said, “And I had no way to, no real means to protect myself. And I was very scared that one of them would go from sending mail or comments to actually acting out on what they said they were going to do.”
Ian Hockley said he was targeted by shooting deniers following a memorial service for his son just days after the murders. The church service was recorded and he and his then wife posted potions to a social media account.
“There was some question about my behavior, because I was smiling,” Ian Hockley said “I was called out for smiling. It started people saying. ‘He must be an actor because he was smiling.’ ”
One of the messages targeting Ian Hockley on social media said, “Be warned, Sandy Hook traitor, Ian “Party Boy” Hockley comes here ... He’s the (expletive deleted) that laughed and smiled through his ‘son’s funeral’ which was scripted and for some reason broadcasted on TV.”
Ian Hockley said someone spotted him in a parking lot of a Danbury-area shopping center a year ago and tucked a flier attacking relatives of two other murdered children under a windshield wiper on his car.
“Happy laughing Robbie Parker, one day after his little girl was shot to death,” the flier read on one side. On the other, it said, “The McDonnells. Daughter shot to death three days ago, can’t you tell?”
Both of the Hockleys left careers in business following the shooting and work full time for charitable foundations dedicated to preventing future tragedies.
Their accounts of harassment are similar to those of other victims. As in Ian Hockley’s case, Jones, his broadcast guests and his followers among the Sandy Hook deniers have seized on photos of smiling parents or irregularities in photographs or videos posted on social media and used them to spin up so-called evidence of a hoax.
FBI agent William Aldenberg testified earlier in the trial about one such irregularity in a photo distributed around the world of him running toward Sandy Hook Elementary School. In the race to get into the building, Aldenberg said he reached the trunk of his automobile and grabbed an old ballistic vest from which he had removed his official FBI insignia and equipment.
From the moment the photo appeared — of him without an official insignia — Aldenberg testified he was labeled a faux FBI agent and a crisis actor.
The families suing Jones — 15 relatives of nine of the murdered children and educators — are trying to make a case to the jury that Jones knew the hoax claims were without merit, but pushed them in a cynical effort to increase audience and sales of his line of nutritional supplements and survivalist’s gear.
The jury was presented with deposition testimony Tuesday by a former Jones broadcast employee that Jones erupted in anger when so called reporters working for his broadcast turned up evidence that contradicted his conspiracy theories.
“He would throw things in the office,” former cameraman Joshua Owens said. “He would scream. He would wave his arms around. He would break stuff. I felt intimated when I saw him get angry.”
Jones would also imply that employees who produced reports backing up his theories would be rewarded, Owens said in the deposition.
“He would say things like, ‘If you knock this out of the park, you will get a bonus check,’ ” Owens said.
Lawyers for the victim families presented evidence earlier in the trial that Jones was aware that the audience of tens of millions for his broadcast and internet platforms spiked with Sandy Hook programming. There also has been evidence the platforms were designed to drive buyers to his retail sales sites.
Twenty first graders and six educators died when Adam Lanza, a mentally unstable 20-year-old who lived across the street from the Hockleys, blasted his way into the school with an assault rifle.
Jones acknowledges he spent years using his broadcast to — in his words — raise questions about mass shootings such as the one at Sandy Hook. He said he has since realized he was wrong and has apologized in court and on the air to the families.
He did so in Waterbury when he testified last week and is likely to do so again when he testifies a second time, probably next week.
The Connecticut families are suing for millions of dollars. In his opening statement to the jury, one of their lawyers, Christopher Mattei, asked the jury to return a verdict expensive enough to “stop” Jones. In August, a Texas jury awarded the parents of one of the murdered children nearly $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages in a related suit. Still earlier this year, victims families settled a suit against Remington Arms, which made the rifle Lanza used, for $73 million.
The trial in Waterbury before Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis is solely for the jury to determine what compensation Jones owes. In an extraordinary default ruling last year, Bellis settled the question of Jones’ liability in favor of the victims, saying he forfeited his right to defend himself because he violated her orders and courtroom procedure by failing to participate in the joint disclosure of records and other pretrial proceedings.
The families accused Jones of defamation, responsibility for emotional suffering and, significantly, violation of the state unfair trade practices law. If the families can persuade the jury that Jones spread lies and fears for profit, it could find him liable under the trade practices law, which puts no ceiling on damages.
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