Brandon Sandy Hook Truther Sentenced

BRANDON, FL — A 57-year-old Brandon woman who pleaded guilty to threatening the father of a boy killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut, has been sentenced to five months in prison.

A federal judge in Fort Lauderdale handed down Lucy Richards’ sentence on June 7. In addition to five months in prison, Judge James I. Cohn also ordered her to serve five months of home detention followed by three years of supervised release. She ultimately pleaded guilty to interstate transmission of a threat.

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Richards has made headlines since she was indicted for threatening Lenny Pozner. Most recently, she failed to show up for a guilty plea hearing. She was brought into custody in April by the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office.

The case against Richards centered around death threats sent to Lenny Pozner. His son, Noah, was one of the 20 children killed by Adam Lanza, 20, during the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre that also left six educators dead. The shooting at the Newtown, Connecticut, school rocked the nation, prompting many to call for stricter gun laws.

Others, however, have declared the shooting a hoax.

Richards sent the threats to Lenny, who now lives in Florida, because she thought the shooting was a hoax.

Richards is a former waitress currently receiving Social Security disability payments, and told investigators she was motivated by anger after browsing websites that promote the conspiracy theories.

The case against Richards is just one of several involving "Sandy Hook Truthers" that have cropped up since the tragedy. A New York man, for example, was arrested in November 2015 after he allegedly harassed the sister of victim Vicki Soto at a benefit race held in her honor. The man, Matthew Mills, was accused of shoving a picture of Soto in her sister’s face and claiming she never existed.

Richards' arrest came just days after a Florida Atlantic University professor was terminated by the school because of his alleged conspiracy theories about the events at Sandy Hook.

Lenny and Veronique Pozner, Noah's mother, wrote an open letter urging the school to part ways with James Tracy.

They wrote:

"Tracy even sent us a certified letter demanding proof that Noah once lived, that we were his parents, and that we were the rightful owner of his photographic image. We found this so outrageous and unsettling that we filed a police report for harassment. Once Tracy realized we would not respond, he subjected us to ridicule and contempt on his blog, boasting to his readers that the “unfulfilled request” was “noteworthy” because we had used copyright claims to “thwart continued research of the Sandy Hook massacre event.”

Booking photo courtesy of the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office