On the morning of December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza, 20, entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut and, before committing suicide, killed 27 people: 20 of them children between the ages of 6 and 7. The youngest was Noah Pozner; his two sisters, who were studying in an adjacent classroom, survived. Noah died immediately.

Sandy Hook is one of the deadliest school shootings in American history. Yet there are thousands of people convinced that the massacre never happened, that Noah Pozner never existed, that his parents, like those of other children, were actors paid by the US government and the CIA to push for legislation regulating the use of guns. A simple Google search is enough to see that the Newtown massacre has become a favorite target of conspiracy theorists over the years. “It was an extreme, inexplicable event, therefore it lends itself to manipulation,” Lenny Pozner, Noah’s father, tells Corriere della Sera with the clarity of a scholar. Before losing his son twice—the first, at Sandy Hook school, the second in the memory of those who believe he never lived—he was a fan of conspiracy theories: “I watched YouTube videos with the same spirit with which people read The Da Vinci Code: using their imagination. I understand the attraction of wanting to be a citizen detective, but everything remained in my head, confined to the imagination. I could never have attacked others.” This is what happened to him and his (ex) wife Veronique, who just a few weeks after Noah’s death began receiving threats from truthers —this is the technical term for those who believe they know the truth about tragic historical events—who accused them of being “traitors, disgusting people, sellouts” (a term Lenny detests, preferring hoaxers: creators of hoaxes). There are so many of them, often above suspicion. A professor at Florida Atlantic University, James Tracy, was disbarred after asking Lenny Pozner for proof that his son had really existed. Last week, a 57-year-old Florida woman was convicted for writing him four messages, all with the same content: “You will die. Death will come to you, for real this time.”

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