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Game-obsessed Sandy Hook gunman was trying to 'out-score' past serial killers, new report suggests

The gunman responsible for the Sandy Hook school shooting was so obsessed with video games, that he created a score sheet filled with the names of past serial killers in an attempt to out-score' them. That's the claim of a new report by the New York Daily Times.

Investigators researching the killer's motives are said to have found a seven foot long, four foot wide spreadsheet filled with the kill tallies of past serial killers, the site suggests.

The details on the alleged sheet suggests the shooter placed extensive research into the study, and the New York Daily Times states quite explicitly that the document was a score sheet, as backed up by an unnamed 'law enforcement veteran'.

The anonymous source supposedly said, "We were told (the shooter) had around 500 people on this sheet. Names and the number of people killed and the weapons that were used, even the precise make and model of the weapons. It had to have taken years. It sounded like a doctoral thesis, that was the quality of the research.”

The source then continued, "They don’t believe this was just a spreadsheet. They believe it was a score sheet. This was the work of a video gamer, and that it was his intent to put his own name at the very top of that list.

"They believe that he picked an elementary school because he felt it was a point of least resistance, where he could rack up the greatest number of kills. That’s what (the Connecticut police) believe.”

If true it really does paint a grim picture of the shooter's mental state at the time, rather than the explicit, direct fact that he was a gamer.

Meanwhile, an ex-FBI profiler recently went on record in response to the killing spree, and said that video games do not directly cause violence. Check out what she said here.

What do you make of the statements above? Should games be distanced from the matter, or could there be some sort of link? Discuss below.

Thanks Gamespot.

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Dave Cook avatar

Dave Cook

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Dave worked on VG247 for an extended period manging much of the site's news output. As well as his experience in games media, he writes for comics, and now specializes in books about gaming history.

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