A year before the Sandy Hook school massacre, Adam Lanza, the shooter, apparently called into an Oregon college radio station to talk about a chimpanzee that had gone on a rampage in Connecticut, comparing the animal to "a teenage mall shooter."
The (New York) Daily News obtained the audio and said in an exclusive report that the voice of the caller, who identified himself as Greg, had been identified by two old friends as that of Lanza.
The newspaper said evidence found by state police at Lanza's home after the school shooting also strongly indicates Lanza had called the radio station the year before.
The purported call by Lanza lasted more than 7 minutes, his voice very soft-spoken and almost robotic.
He appeared to be obsessed with the 2009 case of a chimpanzee in Connecticut named Travis that had gone berserk and ripped the face off a friend of the chimp's owner.
The caller spoke with John Zerzan, host of the Anarchy Radio program on the campus radio station at the University of Oregon, KWVA 88.1 FM.
"His attack can be seen entirely parallel to the attacks and random acts of violence that you bring up on your show every week, committed by humans, which the mainstream also has no explanation," Lanza says of Travis.
"I just ... don't think it would be such a stretch to say that he very well could have been a teenage mall shooter or something like that."
The call was made on Dec. 11, 2011, almost exactly one year before the 20-year-old Lanza went on a shooting spree at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 26 people, including 20 children.
Lanza, who had shot and killed his mother that morning, committed suicide in the school as police closed in.
Zerzan told The News that he remembers the call to his program, noting that the speaker "seemed kind of robotic ... but what he was saying made sense."
The News said Kyle Kromberg, who attended classes with Lanza at Newtown High School, recognized his taped voice instantly.
The Daily News also reported that Lanza, apparently using the name Smiggles, posted a link to his appearance on the radio show and wrote that "it didn't go as horribly as anticipated."
"And despite my failed attempt at having a normal voice, I at least sounded less incoherent than usual," Smiggles wrote. "I normally speak much softer and swifter, with less articulation, less inflection, and more mumbling."
