Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a Passover gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Newtown Massacre ‘Hoaxer’ Charged With Threats Against Noah Pozner’s Father

(JTA) — A Florida woman has been arrested for threatening the parents of a Jewish boy killed in the in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.

Lucy Richards, 57, was indicted Monday in federal court in southern Florida on four counts of threats in interstate commerce against Len Pozner.

Richards made the death threats because she believed that the school shooting was a hoax and never happened, according to a statement issued on Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida.

Richards if convicted could be sentenced to a maximum of 20 years in prison.

.Noah Pozner, 6, was the youngest victim of the December 2012 massacre. Twenty children and six school employees were killed when Adam Lanza, 20, forced his way into the school building and opened fire. Lanza killed himself at the school. Prior to the school shootings Lanza, who had attended the Sandy Hook school, killed his mother, Nancy, in the Newtown, Conn. home they shared.

Richards called Pozner on the phone and said: “you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon,” according to the federal indictment, CBS Miami reported. She also said: “death is coming to you real soon and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Former Florida Atlantic University Professor James Tracy was fired in 2013 after writing on his personal blog that Sandy Hook was a hoax and sending the Pozners a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived and that they were his parents, and that they owned the rights to family photographs of Noah published after his death.

 

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:

  • Credit the Forward
  • Retain our pixel
  • Preserve our canonical link in Google search
  • Add a noindex tag in Google search

See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.