Woman Who Claimed Sandy Hook Was Fake Gets Five Months In Jail

After admitting that she sent death threats to a Palm Beach County man whose 6-year-old son was murdered in the Sandy Hook school mass shooting, Lucy Richards apologized to the victims.

She also acknowledged that the tragic incident was not a hoax.

“I don’t know where my head and my heart were that day when I made the calls but they were not in the right place,” Richards said, speaking in a meek voice, before she was sentenced in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

The judge sentenced her to five months in federal prison, followed by five months of house arrest with electronic monitoring and three years of supervised release.

Though Richards has a history of mental health problems, Senior U.S. District Judge James Cohn told her he did not believe they were a major factor in her decision to commit the crime.

He gave her a stern lecture and said that “hatred and bigotry appeared to have at least some bearing” when she targeted the grieving parent of a murdered child.

“Your words were cruel and insensitive,” the judge told Richards. “Your words … do have consequences. Words do matter. This is reality. There is no fiction [here] and there are no alternative facts.”

The judge ordered Richards to continue to receive mental health treatment and banned her from visiting several websites that promote conspiracy theories that falsely claim the Sandy Hook and other mass shootings never happened. He also banned her from possessing guns or weapons.

Richards, 57, of Brandon, was part of a group of people who insist that some mass shootings are part of a government hoax or conspiracy to take away gun rights, the judge said.

Using a wheelchair in court and dressed in brown jail scrubs, Richards apologized for sending four threatening voicemail and email messages to Lenny Pozner, who now lives in Palm Beach County. Pozner's son, Noah, was killed in the 2012 mass shooting in Connecticut.

In her apology, Richards said she was “truly sorry” and mentioned Noah and both of his parents by name: “I will never make any inappropriate calls ever again.”

Judge Cohn told her he didn’t understand why she had sent the threats.