Adam lived in Newtown, Connecticut. He was 20 years old, and had no criminal record. One December morning, before 9:30 am, Adam shot and killed his own mother, Nancy, while she was still in her bed. Her body was later found with four gunshot wounds to the head.
Nancy was a gun enthusiast, and had quite a few rifles and handguns. After he killed her, Adam took some of those guns and drove his mother’s car to the Sandy Hook Elementary School. The front entrance doors were locked, but he shot his way through the glass panel. He then carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
26 people were murdered at the school that day. Six of those were adult staff and faculty. The other twenty fatalities were children. All of them were age 6 or 7.
One of those children was Emilie Parker, an amazing 6 year old girl.
Today you’re going to hear from Robbie Parker, Emilie’s dad, about what happened to their family that day and afterward. And the famous radio personality that made their grief so much worse.
Content warning: this episode includes discussion of child death as a result of a mass shooting
If you’d like to contact Robbie, you can do that through his website:
Robbie’s Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/robwrites14/
Robbie’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/Fathers-Fight-Taking-Jones-Reclaiming/dp/1635769833
Alissa’s book:
https://www.amazon.com/Unseen-Angel-Mothers-Story-Healing/dp/1629722790
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/198
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
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Episode Transcript (download transcript PDF):
Please consult the episode notes for content warnings about today’s episode.
Adam lived in Newtown, Connecticut. He was 20 years old, and had no criminal record. One December morning, before 9:30 am, Adam shot and killed his own mother, Nancy, while she was still in her bed. Her body was later found with four gunshot wounds to the head.
Nancy was a gun enthusiast, and had quite a few rifles and handguns. After he killed her, Adam took some of those guns and drove his mother’s car to the Sandy Hook Elementary School. The front entrance doors were locked, but he shot his way through the glass panel. He then carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in US history.
26 people were murdered at the school that day. Six of those were adult staff and faculty. The other twenty fatalities were children. All of them were age 6 or 7.
One of those children was Emilie Parker, an amazing 6 year old girl.
Today you’re going to hear from Robbie Parker, Emilie’s dad, about what happened to their family that day and afterward. And the famous radio personality that made their grief so much worse.
Scott
Can you tell us about Emilie?
Robbie
Emilie was the most gregarious 6-year-old girl. She always just had a light about her and happy and fun and thoughtful. One of the characteristics I loved about Emilie the most was she was always a thinker and she was always a talker. There was just this intimate link between her brain and her mouth. When we were someplace, she also wasn’t afraid to, like, challenge adults in a very interesting way. If we were at a store or whatever and she was like, “Hey, can you get me this?” And if I said no, I would always try and provide an explanation and she would think about it for a second. Then, she would say, “Well, what about this?” And she would bring up some point that I’d never thought of as a 5-year-old and I couldn’t argue with it. I’d have to be like, “Oh, that’s a really good point.” And so her talkative nature and the way that she used her voice to connect with people was amazing. That’s one of the things I loved about her the most.
Scott
That’s interesting. She looked for a loophole or something.
Robbie
Yeah. And it was never like an argumentative thing or whatever. She was just always thinking and seeing things from a different light and angle than I went about my life.
Scott
I love how, when you describe her, you are smiling the whole time. In just six years, you created a lot of really good memories.
Robbie
Yeah, I mean, we joked around. She got a lifetime of talking in that time frame.
Scott
Who else was in your family at the time when this happened?
Robbie
So my wife, Alissa and I, we had been married at the time of Emilie’s death. We had been married for 9 years. Then, Emilie had two younger sisters, Madeline and Samantha. So Emilie was six at the time that she died. Madeline was four and Samantha was three
Scott
And you lived in Newtown, Connecticut, right?
Robbie
And then Sandy Hook is like this weird kind of village inside of Newtown. When I moved back East, it was kind of a weird concept for me to get used to. So you have an incorporated city of Newtown and then Sandy Hook is like this village that’s part of it.
Scott
And that’s obviously where the elementary school got its name, Sandy Hook Elementary. December 14, 2012 – talking about that day – where were you that morning?
Robbie
That morning, I had the ability to have a really nice, sweet interaction with Emilie before I went to work. There was an energy and a buzz in our house that morning. Emilie had taken upon herself that she wanted to do this toy drive, so she incorporated her sisters. They had rummaged up a lot of toys and things. Emilie even threw in some of her artwork. That was the last day of school before the Christmas break. That afternoon, Alissa and the girls were going to take that to a donation center and donate this box of toys. So, that morning, there was just a lot of positive, fun energy in the house. I was sad that I was going to have to be at work and I was going to miss the donation dropoff. I was able to sneak into Emilie’s room before I left and had a sweet conversation. I was teaching her Portuguese. I lived in Brazil for a few years. So we had this conversation interaction in Portuguese back and forth. Then, I ended up going to work. I work at the Danbury hospital at the time and I work in the newborn intensive care unit.
Scott
When this happened, you got a voicemail.
Robbie
Yeah, I was routing on my patients and got this call that I sent on voicemail. When I checked it, it was from the mayor of Newtown saying – it was a recording – that all the schools in Newtown had been placed on lockdown because of a reported shooting at one of the schools and that they would get back to us with more information. That was it. Biggest cliffhanger of a message you could ever receive.
Scott
So what did you interpret from that or what did you think had happened?
Robbie
I didn’t really have time to think about it because Alissa called me right away after she got the message. So my first instinct was, “That’s kind of weird that they put all the schools in lockdown.” This is when something at the high school happened. I just assumed this was at the high school because that’s where I had heard of these things happening before. So I wasn’t initially concerned that this was going to impact me or Emilie at all.
Scott
Did you have any other sources of news?
Robbie
Not for a while. Alissa was out and about running some errands and she had just dropped Madeline off at preschool. So she went back to the preschool and there were parents there that were talking. One of the nurses that I work with, her husband was a fireman, so he was getting some information and relaying. It took a while before I realized that the shooting was at the elementary school. I actually found out because I went into a break room and just turned on a news station and was waiting to see if there was going to be any report, and that’s how I found out that it was at the elementary school. That was a local station at that moment and it was the same thing. We got reports that there was a shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school, but they had no other details.
Scott
So you must’ve thought, “Okay, I got to get out of here. I got to leave.”
Robbie
Yeah. I would’ve loved to but, being at the hospital and being a provider in the NICU, I couldn’t just leave right away. I was working with another neonatologist but, in a community disaster, the hospital got put on lockdown because they didn’t know what to expect. So, in a lockdown situation, you just kind of stay put. So I couldn’t leave the hospital right away but Alissa went to the school and was trying to get information. We had heard that there were some children that were taken to the hospital. Alissa actually asked me to stay there until she found Emilie just in case. In the event that Emilie had been hurt, then I was where Emilie would be. So there was some time for us trying to figure all these kinds of things out.
Scott
Were you eventually able to leave?
Robbie
Eventually, yeah.
Scott
How did you get out if it was on lockdown?
Robbie
Yeah. It was still on lockdown actually when I left. I was growing very anxious and getting really scared because time was ticking and we hadn’t heard anything. Alissa still hadn’t found Emilie, so I took it upon myself to go find out what I could. I had a badge and I’d already changed into my civilian clothes. I’d gotten out of my scrubs because I was planning on leaving, and then I was told I couldn’t, so I ended up using my badge and going through a back entrance into the emergency room and started trying to figure out what was going on. A doctor recognized me and asked me what I was doing there. When I told him what I was up to, he walked me over to an ambulance bay and just said, “I think you should probably go to the firehouse, which is where they were doing some reunification. I think you need to go to the firehouse and be with your wife.” And he escorted me out of the building that way.
Scott
So the firehouse was where all the parents were being directed to gather?
Robbie
Eventually, yeah. It was a really chaotic scene and hours had passed by this time between the shooting and us finding out about the shooting until I was able to leave the hospital. At that point, parents who were not reunified with their kids were taken to the firehouse, which was on the corner of the road that leads up to the elementary school. There was a conference room in there and you put your name on a list. You put your child’s name on the list and then you’re instructed to wait.
Scott
How many other parents were there?
Robbie
It was hard to tell. By the time I made it there, the room was full. There were parents, there were police officers, there were people from the town, there were clergy people there. On the list, there were 25 parents that had put their name on the list, or 24 parents, but we didn’t realize that there were some duplicates. Right before I entered the room, state patrolmen and state policemen had given an update that they could confirm that 20 children were killed. They were still looking for kids, so they couldn’t divulge any other information. That was it. He said, “We’ll be back in an hour.” So that happened right before I entered the room.
Scott
I can’t imagine the feeling in that room getting that news, but not anything further. I mean, obviously, everyone was wondering, “Is my child one of those 20?”
Robbie
Yeah, and it created a little bit of dissonance because there were 24 names, like I said, so there was some hope that my child could be one of those four, but we didn’t realize that some parents had entered at different times and put their name on twice. So there are really still 20 families represented but you had this hope that you don’t know for sure if it’s your kid. So we’re just waiting and waiting for updates.
Scott
How did you find out about Emilie?
Robbie
Every hour, somebody would come back in and say, “We can’t give you an update because they were still looking for kids.” They wanted to make sure everybody was accounted for. So the tension in the room was just getting heavier and heavier. You have, like, this weird emotion with hope. You want to hold on to hope but, every single minute that passes, it’s harder to hold on to it. Eventually, the governor came into the room, which I thought was kind of odd. I didn’t understand why he was there to talk to us. He was flanked by a bunch of people in suits and the police personnel were kind of standing all behind him while he addressed us. He was using phrases that talked as if our children were dead, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t announce that. So, one parent raised her hand and said, “Are you trying to tell us that our kids are dead?” He looked kind of shocked as if he hadn’t been briefed that we hadn’t been briefed.
Scott
Oh, miscommunication…
Robbie
Yep. So he was put in a really impossible situation and he confirmed, “If you’re in here and your child is not with you, then yes, then your child has died.” And that’s how we found out.
Scott
Did that just devolve into chaos in that room?
Robbie
Well, first of all, Alissa actually raised her hand too and asked a question. She was like, “Well, what about the kids that went to the hospital?” Cause again, we hadn’t been told if our kids were at the hospital or not. He said that those children had expired. At that moment, that hope that I was holding onto, you just felt it – it didn’t even slip through your fingers – evaporated. It was just gone. I remember chaos around me. I remember there were people that were very demonstrative and loud, but I tend to go inside. So it was as if I felt all that around me, but I was just kind of just diving into myself when I heard that news.
Scott
Retreating… So what do you do at that point? Do you go home? I mean, there’s no guidebook for this.
Robbie
No, and there’s no guidebook for people trying to figure out stuff on the fly. So there were a lot of things that we learned and, through our own work in the future, try to help in situations to make things like this better. There was a police officer who had come to get a description of Emilie and we had given him our contact information. I just wanted to leave. We knew there wasn’t anything for us there. Somebody had taken Madeline and Samantha back to their place. My brother got the girls and they were waiting at our house, so we just wanted to leave and we just wanted to be with our girls. So I think we were the first parents to– we just immediately stood up and walked out the back room of the firehouse. We wanted to be alone and we left.
Scott
Obviously you and Alissa are still in shock at this, but you had to tell your other two daughters. Were they old enough to really understand what had happened?
Robbie
No. So this puts me in a really precarious situation. I, throughout my career, had to tell numerous families that their child had died. In those experiences, I knew what I was doing, I felt like I knew how to behave and how to think, and I felt like I understood what they were going through. So in this moment, when I’m on the other side of that divide that I didn’t know existed between me and those parents that I used to talk to, now I find myself where they were and experiencing it from their perspective. I had this realization that I was Ignorant and clueless about what this really meant. Then, to be able to have to go home and talk to a three-year-old and a four-year-old and try and help them understand what that was, like, really an impossible thing. They grasped that Emilie wasn’t there. That was one of those things. As time went on, we had to work with them on that in a very age-appropriate way.
Scott
All right. Let’s just back up a bit. While you were there at the fire station and you were just waiting on any bit of news, Alex Jones went live on his show. For people who don’t know, who is he and what was he saying at that time?
Robbie
Yeah. I mean, at that point, I’d never heard of who Alex Jones was. I didn’t know that guy at all. I came to find out fairly soon after the shooting that Alex Jones has a syndicated radio show that goes out to hundreds of radio stations across the country. He pedals in conspiracies. He’d been at it for about 30 years. He loved talking about things like 9/11 was an inside job, the Branch Davidian shootings in Waco, like all those kinds of things, and he sows distrust about the government. He sows distrust about everything. So that’s kind of who he was and that’s kind of his shtick. He’s very bombastic and he has a very strong gift of the gab. He has a presence and people love to listen to him. A lot of people used to listen to him because he was just this crazy guy who was almost kind of entertaining with his theories and stuff like that.
While we were in the firehouse, before we even knew that Emilie had been killed, he was on his air, sowing doubt that this was fake and this was a hoax that the government staged these things to come after our guns and we need to protect the second amendment. So he was already saying these types of things. As soon as the news of the shooting came out before the victims, families even knew that they were families of victims.
Scott
I mean, obviously, his followers aren’t skeptical thinkers. They don’t really necessarily think logically, but how would he know this information when it had literally just happened hours before? I mean, there wasn’t even time to know anything about it yet.
Robbie
Exactly. And that’s kind of an interesting thing about the way information can be used in helpful ways and in hurtful ways. Because he had on his website that day, like, “Sources say this” and he never talked to anybody. He never did that. He acts as if he’s reporting news or he’s questioning the narrative, but he’s really just making it up. He knows what his listeners’ fears are. He knows how to tap into those fears and he knows how to speak to them in a way that creates a bond between him and the people that buy into it and follow him for sure.
Scott
He’s absolutely a master at that. And yeah, and his followers have to be among the most gullible people to just believe everything he says.
Robbie
Yeah, I mean, we’re all capable of that. We have our biases. We have our own experiences in life that make us see the world in certain ways and people that know how to tap into that. I’m not disparaging other things, but I grew up in a very high-demand religion and it took me into my adulthood to a point where I could start to question things that I had been taught as truth my whole life and realize that a lot of those things weren’t as true as I would have been told. And it’s easy, I think, and safe for us to put a distance between me and one of Alex Jones’ followers and say that we’re not alike, that I’m not anything like that, and that helps us feel like we’re safe from being duped, but we’re really not. We have a lot more in common with this kind of people than sometimes we would feel comfortable admitting.
Scott
Yeah, I’ve heard that sometimes the people who think they are so smart that they could never fall for anything are sometimes the most easily tricked because they don’t have their guard up. “That’s not going to happen to me.”
Robbie
And con men sometimes are the easiest people to con.
Scott
You wrote in your book that your marriage depended on your ability to handle grief. Can you elaborate on that? What does that mean or how does that affect you?
Robbie
I had lost people in my life before. I was raking leaves at my grandparent’s house on Thanksgiving when I was a teenager and my grandma died, and I felt I understood what grief meant. I had worked in healthcare long enough to be around people who had passed and were working with their families, but I never experienced something so heavy and just invaded my life right away. We had heard statistics about what happens – the percentage of marriages that crumble and divorce – if they lose a child and stuff like that. Some of those statistics aren’t accurate. That’s the narrative that we had heard. We realized that to give our marriage and our family a chance to survive through this and come out somewhere down the line intact, we were going to have to really understand what grief meant for us individually and how to navigate that together as a family unit while giving grace and support for everybody’s individual journey through it too.
We did start seeing some therapists pretty quickly. A lot of trial and error. If I were to write a book that was statistically accurate, it would be 75% more of the mistakes that I made and the ways that I screwed up through this process and just learning on the fly a lot. Sometimes you put your trust in your emotional currency into things that either don’t work out or can be harmful, and then you have to learn from that. So it’s a steep learning curve for sure.
Scott
At some point, you made a public media statement. Why did you decide to do that? And do you feel like it was successful?
Robbie
That’s an answer that has an evolution to it. A few months before Emilie died, Alissa’s father died. He was a well-known person in the community that we grew up in and there was a newspaper article from our local newspaper there. They had reported some things that were just inaccurate. Because they were inaccurate, people online making comments had a different view of who Alissa’s dad was than who we thought he was. That was really hurtful. That had happened just 2.5 months before Emilie died. So Sandy Hook happened. I’m really insulated. I understand that this is making news, but I’m not comprehending what that really means, but I do know there’s reporters coming to my door, there’s people calling my house, and we were getting bombarded really quickly.
The shooting was Friday morning. By Saturday afternoon, we had people across the country like friends of ours, family members of ours, calling us saying, “The media here contacted us. We had this producer from NBC news contact us wanting us to talk to them about you guys and about Emilie and we feel really uncomfortable.” So really quickly, I felt like this was getting out of hand and out of control. I just wanted to focus on what we needed to do and I was being distracted by the media. I thought I don’t want anybody saying something that could be taken out of context or misconstrued. I don’t want to go through that pain that we went through with Alissa’s father. If anybody’s going to say something about Emilie, it needs to be from one of her parents. So, I thought if I give a statement, I can get the media off our backs. I’ll throw them a bone. They can go chew on that for a while and leave us alone. I can get something out there that’s factual and then we can just move on and focus on grief and focus on planning a funeral and logistics and all that. That’s the purpose of it.
It moved so quickly that, within 24 hours of learning that she died, I felt like this was necessary. So I ended up setting up what I believe was an interview with one reporter that I was going to give a statement that would be recorded and then played back in Utah, where our family was from. That’s what I wanted to happen. What I did was I called a friend of mine back in Utah and said, “You can call that producer back that you talked to. Tell them to send a reporter from their affiliate here in Connecticut to the church. I’ll meet them there.” I think I said 5 o’clock and, “I’ll give the statement to them and they can record it and then send it back to Utah.”
I really thought the only people that would want to hear about what I wanted to say would be our friends and family back where we grew up and where Emilie was born. I got to the church early. I was kind of trying to get my thoughts together and stuff, and I was waiting for some family members to– they were at the airport and my little brother was picking them up. By the time I came out to give the statement, it was dark. There were a bunch of bright lights. I couldn’t see what was going on. There was this lectern that had been placed up there with a bunch of microphones, and I couldn’t see that there was a wall of reporters and cameras. I was waiting for somebody to come up and tell me what to do. “Hey, Mr. Parker. We’ll have you come over here. This is so-an-so,” but nobody did anything. So I stood there for a while trying to figure out what I needed to do.
I was getting really nervous and then just ended up walking up to where the lectern was and trying to relax and did this kind of weird half-smile laugh thing to try and calm me down. My dad was there and he gave me some stupid dad joke by calling me by some nickname, “Go get ‘em!” Then I gave my statement. I didn’t know that it was being broadcasted live. I didn’t know that it was going across the entire nation and in multiple countries at the time. I didn’t know any of that.
Scott
And you had not agreed to any of that either.
Robbie
No, absolutely not. I had no clue. Alissa was very supportive of this idea, but she didn’t want to be part of it at all. So, when she showed up to the church, she showed up just a couple of minutes before the time that I’d given and she was shocked by how many people were there, how many cameras were there, and she knew that I didn’t know that, so she was really concerned for me. Even in the middle of it, she just got a text from her uncle back in Utah and was like, “Wow, Robbie’s doing a pretty good job.” And she was like, “What do you mean?” And he’s like, “I’m watching him live right now.” Yeah, that was something we didn’t know was going on.
Scott
So you’re dealing with just the unimaginable grief of losing your child and, at the same time, Alex Jones is making you famous with his millions of followers by saying it’s a hoax and he called you a crisis actor. What was his motivation for this? Is it just financial?
Robbie
Yeah. Obviously, that’s an easy motivator. He says the things he does and he does what he does because he knows that he can build his followers for millions of dollars, but he needs to create a problem and a solution. I ended up being targeted because, unknowingly, I was the first person that spoke out publicly. He really honed in on that chuckle laugh thing that I gave and started saying no grieving father would act like this. This has to be a hoax. The crisis actor– that sounds like a benign term, but for people that delve in conspiracies, a crisis actor means that you’re in cahoots with the enemy, you’re in cahoots with the government. I am someone that’s trying to take away your rights and it puts a target on your back. So they honed in on that immediately, made me a target, plastered my face all over their website, and anytime they talked about me. So I became the number one target of Alex Jones and therefore also his millions and millions of listeners who perceived me as some existential threat.
Scott
I’m just wondering if you’ve ever felt kind of alone in this. I mean, you obviously have a common bond with other parents who’ve lost children in shootings but, in your case, you had the added trauma of Alex Jones. Did you ever feel like even the other parents don’t quite know what you’re really going through?
Robbie
Yes and no. It’s a really strange fraternity that you get initiated into. You have your Sandy Hook family, right? We had not lived there long. We had lived there for only a year when the shooting happened. I didn’t know anybody really other than colleagues at work, and we had been remodeling our house, so people I recognized at Home Depot. But I didn’t know anybody in town, I didn’t know anybody at the school. So amongst the Sandy Hook families, you bond and you can have somebody that gets what you’re going through but then are on our own individual things. I was the first one that got it but all the Sandy Hook families received the same type of harassment and threats and stuff in some form, depending on how out there they were amongst the Sandy Hook families.
Sometimes, when we would be together, we would talk about the conspiracy stuff, kind of jokingly, like– Nicole Hockley who was another plaintiff in the lawsuit, I remember a conversation with her and we were like, “Oh yeah, well, I’m also part of the Illuminati apparently.” And we’d kind of had this dark humor. But, for me, personally – you asked about feeling lonely – I ended up carrying a lot of shame about that press conference for a long time because I was the first person that spoke out and I somehow had given the conspiracy people fodder to use and to confirm their bias and to create this narrative. I felt like what I brought upon myself and my family was my fault and, by extension, the Sandy Hook community. I felt like I was responsible for the suffering that they were going through as well. So because of that, again, I turned inward. That’s been my coping mechanism since I was a kid and I would isolate myself and I would separate myself from people that I felt like I had hurt.
Scott
Well, obviously you had no experience in dealing with nationwide media and huge stories like this. Looking back on it, you would have done things differently, I’m sure, but your mental state at that point was not– you weren’t able to.
Robbie
And you asked earlier, did I feel like that statement and that press conference was successful? At the time I gave it, I was really actually proud of myself. That wasn’t an easy thing to do. I felt like I shared a very beautiful message about this wonderful girl that the world didn’t get to experience anymore and how big of a loss that wasn’t just for us, but everybody that got to know her and the void in this world now because she wasn’t able to fulfill her potential. I felt like I was able to embody that. So, to have that dedication to her and her life and talking about who she was to get defiled and for that to be stolen from me and the narrative changed around that– I don’t throw the word ‘evil’ around lightly, but when I talk about what Alex Jones did and how evil it was, that’s what I’m talking about. He defiled the very innocent six-year-old girl, stole her memory, and changed the narrative around that and by doing so also impacted our grief because people started to reach out and harass us and send threats. I started to receive death threats. I couldn’t focus on grief. My daughter was just murdered. I felt like I had to protect my family. So I was always in this state of, “Do I focus on grief or do I protect my family?” And he’s stealing that very sacred process of learning how to grieve and going through that process, which you need to do for your own personal survival. And like we talked about, that’s an evil thing to do to somebody.
Scott
It really is, yeah. Some of the Sandy Hook parents started a lawsuit and your initial reaction was you decided not to join. Why was that? And what made you change your mind later on?
Robbie
Yeah. So the shooting was in December, 2012. The spring of 2018 was when I first started hearing about these lawsuits. There were two families that had sued him in Texas, and there was another group that was going to sue him in Connecticut.
Scott
Because he’s based in Texas, right?
Robbie
Yeah. Those families wanted to file their suit in Texas. So, over those six years, whenever I did anything remotely publicly– we started some nonprofit groups. We were trying to do a lot of good. Anytime I put myself out there and even when I wasn’t trying to put myself out there, I would get attacked. Every time I got attacked, I felt like I was putting my family in danger, so the idea of joining the lawsuit was very scary to me. I didn’t want to bring more and more attention to myself. So, initially, I didn’t want to do that. I also had been called and accused of so many things. I didn’t want to confirm anybody’s bias that I was making money or trying to make money off of this tragedy. A lot of people have opinions about sue-happy culture and I didn’t want to involve myself in that either. I felt like, to protect my family, I needed to stay out of it. From the time the lawsuit was filed that spring of 2018 until the end of the summer, I had some pretty significant experiences that helped me realize that joining the lawsuit was imperative for me to do.
Scott
And those experiences, you go into in detail in the book. I mean, you did a great job on that book. It’s amazing.
Robbie
Thank you.
Scott
And we’ll have a link to that so people can get that if they’d like to. Eventually, there was a default judgment against Alex Jones. What does that mean? And why was there still a trial held after that?
Robbie
Great question and I’m glad you asked because that’s not something I could dive into in the book. It just gets too technical and not fun to read. So in lawsuits like this, you have a period of what’s called discovery where we’re making claims and we need evidence to prove those claims and he’s making a defense and he needs evidence to prove his defense. Discovery is this process where we ask him, “You need to send us your emails, your text messages, anything you’ve said about Sandy Hook.” And he’s asking if I’m saying that I’ve been defamed and I’m suffering from emotional distress, then he’s asking for my medical records and notes that I have from my counselors and stuff like that. And you’re supposed to share this stuff because it’s fair and helps you prove your case. So for four years, he just ignored the discovery process. He wouldn’t send things. He would do all these legal shenanigans like firing his lawyers and then rehiring a lawyer, and just to kind of try and run out the clock and try and wear us down.
He never produced any documentation that seemed relevant. We had to force things. We were able to get our hands on some stuff, but he withheld things and just wouldn’t apply by court orders. He was fined. He was sanctioned. He had motions thrown out against him because he wasn’t playing fair and judges don’t want to do default judgment. What the default means is your actions in the discovery process are so abhorable that just your actions alone prove your guilt, and we don’t need to have a trial because the way you’re acting shows that what they’re claiming is true. So a default judgment is basically the judge deciding just based on what you’re doing. You’re guilty of what they’re accusing you of doing. There are pros and cons to that and we can get into that if you want a little bit later. What that means is we essentially win the lawsuit. He’s found guilty of everything that we accused him of, so we don’t have to go through the trial to prove that argument but, because it’s a civil suit, you have to still decide on damages. So you have to bring a jury together and present evidence to demonstrate the extent of those damages so that they can decide on what should be rewarded. So that’s what the trial eventually was about – to prove the damages.
Scott
And you had to testify at that trial for the damages. Was Alex Jones in the courtroom when you testified?
Robbie
No, not when I testified. He had this habit of getting on a private jet in Texas, flying up to Connecticut, and he would do these press conferences in front of the courthouse almost on a daily basis, but he wouldn’t come into the courthouse. He’d give these press conferences and then he’d leave. He showed up at the courthouse on the day that he testified, which was before I testified. That was when I had my face-to-face moments and encounters with him. Then, by the time I was testifying, he wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
Scott
Was that good or bad? Were you hoping he would be there just to hear what you had to say?
Robbie
I mean, for years I had envisioned this John Grisham moment, where I’m on the stand and I’m just nailing it on the stand and then his lawyer gets up to try and cross-examine me and I throw him down and Alex Jones is getting all mad. I had that envisionment in my head. So, at first, I did feel kind of disappointed that he wasn’t going to be there, that I didn’t get to face my accuser. But in the moment, I realized how much better it was that he wasn’t there because he’s such a negative dark force. He’s like a black hole and anything good or anything light gets sucked into this energy that he has about him, and I didn’t want him to distract from the truth.
When he was there and he was forced to face the truth, he really struggled with that and I was going to be up there because I needed to. This process for me was never about getting money. It wasn’t about necessarily even shutting Alex Jones up. It was for me to reconnect with who I was and reclaim things that I felt like I had given up. I talked about Alex Jones taking these things from me and stealing these things but, at the same time, because I was withdrawing inward, I was giving up a lot of my own power. So for me to get on the stand and speak truth to what I had experienced and not try to show people that I was okay or that these things didn’t bother me, that was a big powerful moment for me. So to be able to speak the truth without Alex Jones there doing anything to distract from it was better in the end, even though it went against everything that I had envisioned in my head.
Scott
Okay. So the jury came back. The dollar amount that he was assigned to pay was just staggering. I remember when this came out in the news, it was over $900 million, right? Do you remember what was the actual total?
Robbie
For damages was $965,000,000 and then punitive damages got tacked on top of that. That ended up being another four hundred and something million.
Scott
Initially, you said you knew you’d never see any of that money, but since your book has come out, he has been forced to liquidate his assets. Are you any more optimistic that you might actually get some of that?
Robbie
Some money will head our way. I mean, nothing like what the jury awarded. I never expected anything like that. It’s easy to say and people can believe me or not believe me, but this was never about the money. I’m very serious. When I walked off the stand that day, I knew that I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish and there wasn’t anything that meant more to me than that – what I was able to do for myself and for my girls, and hopefully for others that in the future won’t have to go through this. So I’m glad that my expectations were such that money wasn’t a motivating factor for me, or else I would be very disappointed.
But to answer your question, yes, because of the debt that he’s now in, he can’t use bankruptcy to absolve himself from that because he did file for bankruptcy. There’s been a trustee assigned to his assets. So he has to liquidate his own personal whatever-he-has, and his business will be liquidated because he has a debt that he does need to pay. So eventually, after lawyers get their cut and take out taxes and stuff, there’ll be a trickle-down effect. We know how trickle-down economics works, so I’m not putting a down payment on a vacation home or anything. So some money will come my way, but it’s nothing’s going to be life-changing. It’s not going to change who I am or what I do.
Scott
I remember when he was ordered to liquidate and he went on the air crying, literally. I’m sure you’ve probably seen that talking about how his show is going to be shut down. I mean, I’m sure his followers probably felt sorry for him, but what were you thinking when you saw that?
Robbie
Throughout this process, again, I talk about sometimes realizing in an uncomfortable way that you have more in common with certain people. So Alex Jones goes out and he lies to himself and he lies to his followers because he’s motivated to get money. He’s motivated to be important. He’s motivated for whatever insecurities he’s trying to overcome in my own life. I do the same thing in the way that I’ve coped through trauma and grief in my life from the time I was a kid and going through this. I’ve developed things that have hurt people and I’ve lied to myself and I’ve lied to people too. So at about the same time that he was doing that and I’m going through what I’m going through in my own life, I realized I came across something that I found very poignant, and it was said that every lie that you tell incurs a debt to the truth, and sooner or later that debt gets paid. That was really striking for me because of what I was going through in my own life – experiencing some of the pain that I’ve inflicted on others because of lies that I’ve been telling in ways to try and cope and part of my own healing process and whatever that really rang true.
For Alex Jones, there’s a number associated with that, so that’s a very true statement. When I hear him doing that, and he’s going on his air, and he’s doing this charade again, he’s playing right into his stick and he knows that his followers love him and support him. He’s like a prophet to them. He tells them what they need to think and how they can support him. So he can tell them what they need to think and they’re victims of Alex Jones as well.
Scott
It’s almost cult-like, isn’t it?
Robbie
Yeah, exactly. And I feel bad because they’re victims of him as well. If he says, “You need to donate money because my legal fees are piling up and they’re going to turn the lights off here and we need to fight the good fight,” they’re going to do it. It’s not so much as being angry at him as much anymore, but I feel so bad for his followers by how betrayed they should be feeling and realizing if they were to step back and ask themselves, “What has he ever given me?” He’s taught me how to hate. He’s taught me how to distrust. He hasn’t given them anything to necessitate what they’ve given up to him.
Scott
It seems like what he gives them mostly is the feeling that I’m in a tribe. We know the truth and nobody else does, but I’m part of this special group.
Robbie
Exactly. And again, as human beings, we’re all susceptible to that, but it’s a very powerful motivating factor and you will stand up and you’ll fight for your tribe for sure.
Scott
We continue to have mass shootings here in the US, not just in schools, but in churches, grocery stores, really anywhere people are gathered. What’s your reaction now when you hear about a new one that just happened?
Robbie
I go through my own process because it’s going to impact me. Depending on where it’s at, I get angry and I get extremely sad because I know that other people joining this fraternity that I talk about have the worst initiation process ever, and there’s going to be people that are going to start down the road that I’ve been traveling on for 12 years. And before I started on my road, there were people ahead of me. So I went through what I needed to feel and we did that individually. We do that as a family. If there are ways that we can provide support or help out or anything that we can do, we do that. We tend to focus on just trying to support them in any way that we can. It still feels helpless. There’s not much I can do in a positive light.
It’s funny because Jones and his followers claim that I was out to get your guns and I was totally against the Second Amendment and all this kind of stuff. I’ve never said anything about guns. Over time, my opinion about that topic has definitely matured and changed. I just know that Emilie didn’t care about guns and my job is to depend on Emilie’s honor and her name and stay connected to her. I’m giving you a really wandering answer because I don’t really know. I just want to love people. I want to connect with people and I want to prevent suffering and people that are suffering. I want to provide healing. So that’s how I go about it.
Scott
One of the closing comments in your book is, “As we continue to share our human experiences with one another, may we do so with compassion and empathy.” What does that statement mean to you?
Robbie
The first time I thought about that sentiment was when I was giving the information to a family that their daughter had died and how much I felt like I understood from that experience. Then, when I went through it, how much I realized, I didn’t know. I felt at that moment that there was this huge chasm between the two of us and I was just too ignorant to understand what was between us. As I’ve gone through this process and learned how to get comfortable sharing my story and opening up a little bit, I realized that other people then also feel safe and vulnerable sharing their stories – people that I would have thought we don’t have anything in common. You may be a nice person, but they’re like, “We don’t get each other.” All of a sudden we have something that connects us and nobody’s been through what I’ve been through.
People will say, I can’t imagine that that’s so awful. But at the same time, this isn’t a race and this isn’t a contest. The hardest thing you’ve been through is the hardest thing you’ve been through. If we can share those things, we all have the same bucket of emotions to deal with in these things and how we use those, so we can connect with people and that gap isn’t as wide as we believe it is. When our paths intersect, if we can be there for each other and see each other, we’ll make our lives better and the lives of people around us better, and we can invoke change. That’s what I hope to mean by that comment. Anybody who reads my book is now connected and crossed my path. I never thought that Emilie would cross the paths of somebody with the likes of Alex Jones, but here we are, and we can work through this together.
So much of my life, I suffered in isolation. So much of my life, I suffered silently. That didn’t get me anywhere except being more disconnected from myself. If other people are doing the same thing, encouraging them to find their voice and learn how to connect with other people in a healthy way, it’s going to bring you joy, happiness, and healing.
Scott
I know you went into a lot of detail in the book about how you used to handle things like that and the evolution of how you’ve learned and the things you’ve learned about yourself. Obviously, the book goes into a lot more detail about what happened and all of those things than what we can cover here on the podcast. What’s the name of your book and where can people find it?
Robbie
Yeah. It’s called “A Father’s Fight: Taking on Alex Jones and Reclaiming the Truth About Sandy Hook.” You can find it wherever you get books. I was shocked. Somebody sent me a text months ago, saying, “Oh, I bought your book.” I was like, “What do you mean you bought my book? It’s not–”
Scott
It wasn’t even out yet, right?
Robbie
Yeah. He sent me an Amazon link because you could preorder it. So I was like, “Oh, that’s crazy.” So wherever you get books– I realized that online preorder or whatever. Barnes and Noble, Target, Amazon, your local bookshop do that.
Scott
And your wife, Alissa, also wrote a book. What’s her book about?
Robbie
It’s funny, yeah. Our stories kind of started in what became our books and from the same place. We were both trying to understand where we were at in our grief – are we making progress and stuff? Her story is more about her spiritual journey as a mom and being connected to Emilie as her first daughter and stuff and this envisionment and what she felt this relationship between her and Emilie and God and that story was supposed to look like, and then that story wasn’t going to turn out the way that she had envisioned it, working through her own personal, emotional, and spiritual journey to reconnect with Emilie and understand what that connection can still be.
Her book is a lot more about Emilie. I joked around. I was like, “This isn’t fair. You got to write about Emilie and she’s beautiful, and you talk about these wonderful experiences you had. I had to write about Alex Jones. That just doesn’t seem fair to me.”
Scott
Opposite ends of the spectrum there.
Robbie
Totally. Yeah. and her book’s called An Unseen Angel: A Mother’s Story of Faith, Hope, and Healing After Sandy Hook.
Scott
All right. And we’ll have links to all of this. And you have a website, robbieparker.net. Is that the best way for people to contact you if they want to?
Robbie
That’d probably be the best way. It’s a new thing with the book coming out. If people want to send a message or reach out or connect, that would be a good place to go.
Scott
What’s your actual goal with the book? Just to make sure the truth is out there for people to see.?
Robbie
Yeah. I mean, I went through something that’s really unique and I realized through that how un-unique I am because, again, like I said, we’re all given the same tools to work through the most hurtful and traumatic things in our lives, but the goal of our lives is to find joy and to be happy and to connect with other people. So I felt like if I could share my story and, as awful are the things that I’ve been through, connect with people, that they can start that journey in their own life. So that was really the motivating factor for me to actually go through this process. It was cathartic for me as well and I learned a lot about myself through the process. Yeah, I really hope people can look at my story and find the connection to their own story as well.
Scott
To me, it seems obvious that the work you’re doing now, getting the truth out there and how you’ve handled this, you and Alissa, I think Emilie would be proud.
Robbie
I appreciate that. Yeah. It’s fun to feel her part of our life. And we still call ourselves the Parker 5.
Scott
In the episode notes, you can see pictures of Robbie and his beautiful daughter Emilie. That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/198.
The 12-year anniversary of the Sandy Hook school shooting is coming up in a couple of weeks, on December 14. And recently there were some developments related to the lawsuit against Alex Jones.
One of the fears that the families had is that the assets of Alex Jones and InfoWars would go up for auction, and be bought by someone friendly to him, and then just given back to him so that he could keep spewing his evil. But that didn’t happen. InfoWars was actually bought recently by the satire news organization, The Onion. They plan to make the show, with all the crazy conspiracy theories and other nonsense, into a parody. That’s what the Onion is really good at.
When this happened, I asked Robbie what he thought – and this is what he told me:
“I love what transpired. Our side fought hard and sacrificed a lot in an effort to ensure that Jones’s allies were not able to take control of Infowars and allow Jones to continue his hurtful rhetoric unscathed. So it is a huge win!
And honestly, the fact that the most notorious conspiracy theorist gets taken out by the best satirical outlet is amazing. Two sides that don’t deal in the actual truth yet making a very big deal out of it!”
And personally, I continue to hold out hope that Robbie and the other families end up with at least some of Alex Jones’ money. As I record this, there is more legal maneuvering going on with the sale, so we don’t really know what will happen.
Female 1
Hi Scott, I came across your podcast maybe about a month ago, and I was automatically hooked. I want to talk to you about the one where– I don’t remember the name. But the one that really made me call, actually, or got me to call was the one where this guy is dumpster diving. I did it myself, and it’s a lot more common than people think. I just did it for a strawberry though, but it’s incredible, it’s crazy. I just wanted to give you a shout-out and I will keep talking to everyone I know about this podcast. I absolutely love it. I love the stories. I love how you listen to them. It’s got me hooked. Thank you so much for the podcast. Thank you so much for everything that you do and I will talk to you soon. And keep posting awesome stories on the podcast. Thank you!
Scott
Did you know that you can call the Podcast Voice Mail line, anytime 24/7 and leave a message? It’s true. Just call 727-386-9468 and you get 3 minutes to say whatever you want. And you might just hear your voice on a future episode.
And we have news about the audio clips contest! In the last episode I talked about the contest we were having to see who could identify the audio clips that you now hear in the new opener. And we have our 3 winners! Holly from Ontario was the first one with the correct answers, followed by Mariane from Québec, and then the third winner was Jaime from Arizona. They each get their choice of merch from the selection at WhatWasThatLike.com/merch.
Our current Facebook question is: What was your favorite snack or drink when you were a child? Lots of memories coming back with this one! If you want to join the conversation, come on over to WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook.
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And now we have this week’s Listener Story. By now you probably know, this is how we end every episode. And you’ve probably thought, “You know, I should send Scott MY story” – and I agree, you should! Just find a quiet place and record it on your phone, shooting for around 5-10 minutes. Then just email it to me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com. We’re all waiting to hear it!
This week’s story is about a housefire, and a family secret…
Stay safe, and I’ll see you here next time.
(Listener story)
Have you ever had something you thought was a childhood memory, but it turned out to be a memory of a scene in a movie or of a story someone once told you, but not something that actually happened to you? Or maybe it could have just been a dream you once had and you thought it was a memory? Or maybe, conversely, you found out something you thought was one of those was something that actually happened that you just barely remembered.
Most of us grew up in a town where there was a spooky house in the neighborhood, right? An abandoned overgrown house, a burned down house that was just left like that since time immemorial or at least longer than the 5 years or so of working memory the average 8-year-old kid has. Usually the kids have legends about it. “An axe murderer is in there. If you go on the property you’ll fall into the sealed basement and be lost forever.” “It’s a drug den. The old man killed his entire family and is in a loony bin somewhere, but don’t go in there because some say their ghosts will take their revenge on you.”
In our cookie-cutter suburb on Long Island, New York in the 1980s, that house was three doors down from me. Since I can remember, it was known simply as the burnt-down house. One day, visiting home in my early twenties, I brought up the burnt-down house. I wanted to ask my mother if she knew when it burnt down because of this little nagging memory that I wasn’t really sure was a memory. Was it from a movie? A dream? Or did I really wake up one night as a little kid to see an orange glow dancing on my bedroom wall and peer out the window to see a column of flames just up the street? Did I actually toddle my little feet downstairs to tell a grown-up that I had seen a big fire, only to see my parents walking in the front door, surprised to see me, but assuring me that they had seen it too, and had already called the fire department?
“Well, funny you should ask.” My mother may have said, or something like that anyway. Me being old enough now not to blab, she told me that was a real memory I had, but it turned out that the burnt-down house had already been so years before that. It had been abandoned since my mother was a teenager. Back then, a family of squatters had been living there with no power or water for years, during which time the home had originally burned. It then sat moldering away and occasionally losing pieces until I was a small child.
I remember that local kids were very interested in the scorched structure hidden behind overgrown bushes and its debris-strewn property. Parents were worried about their kids daring each other to go in there, which happened. The town wouldn’t do anything about it. So one night, two parents who were young and wild decided to take matters into their own hands. At such a tender age, I wouldn’t have noticed that when my mother and father walked back into the house late that night, they smelled of kerosene.
They had made sure I was asleep and then headed over there. They made sure no one was inside and then made sure the burnt-down house burnt all the way down this time. Afterward, the property was finally cleaned up. No ghosts, druggies, monsters. No hapless children inadvertently entombed alive. But I am told our end of the street did have a major rat problem for a little while after that. Finally, we heard that someone had bought it but, to this day, it still sits fenced, overgrown because they discovered that the lot was never large enough to have a house on it after all. And that’s the story of how I found out who burnt down the burnt-down house.