"The mother of the loner who massacred 26 pupils and staff at a US primary school may have played a major part in his catastrophic mental breakdown..."

"Friends and family portrayed Adam Lanza’s mother Nancy as a paranoid ‘survivalist’ who believed the world was on the verge of violent, economic collapse."

She is reported to have been struggling to hold herself together and had been stockpiling food, water and guns in the large home she shared with her 20-year-old son in Connecticut.

Mrs Lanza, 52, was a ‘prepper’ – so called because they are preparing for a breakdown in civilised society – who apparently became obsessed with guns and taught Adam and his older brother, Ryan, how to shoot....

Lanza’s aunt Marsha said Nancy was ‘self reliant’ and that they talked a lot about how she was preparing for the economic meltdown....

As for her son, he was described yesterday as a ‘ghost’ – an autistic genius, according to former school fellows, but also a ‘deeply disturbed’ young man who was so withdrawn that even many of his closest relatives hadn’t set eyes on him for years.