Peter Lanza: 'Adam would have killed me'

HARTFORD, Conn. - Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook Elementary School killer Adam Lanza, said in an interview in the New Yorker that he wished his second-born son who shot 20 elementary school children and six educators "had never been born."

In an article written following a series of six interviews with noted author Andrew Solomon, Lanza speaks publicly for the first time about his son Adam, and discusses aspects of his life since the shooting. Solomon said Lanza contacted him in September to say that he "was ready to tell his story." The interviews are expected to culminate with a book.

Lanza told Solomon that he believed Adam had no affection for him. Lanza moved out of the family home Adam shared with his mother, Nancy, and older brother, Ryan, when Adam was a boy and he had not seen his son in the two years before the Sandy Hook shootings. "With hindsight, I know Adam would have killed me in a heartbeat, if he'd had the chance," Lanza said. "I don't question that for a minute."

Before the massacre at the school, Adam fatally shot his mother four times in the head.

"The reason he shot Nancy four times was one for each of us: one for Nancy; one for him; one for Ryan; one for me," Lanza told Solomon.

Lanza, a vice president at a GE subsidiary, said he now thinks constantly about what he could have done differently and "wishes he had pushed harder to see Adam."

Solomon said on NBC's Today Show that Peter Lanza decided to speak after being contacted by several victims' families.

"He said he finally thought his story was an important part of the puzzle and that he had a moral obligation to tell it, that it might help the families or it might help prevent another Newtown," said Solomon.

Solomon, who spent hours interviewing Lanza, described the gunman's father as a "kind, decent man" who was "horrified his child could have caused this destruction."