Adam Lanza was the 20-year-old alleged mass murderer of Sandy Hook who, on December 14, 2012, first killed his mother, Nancy, with four shots to her face in their family home, then drove a short distance to Sandy Hook Elementary School. There, in the space of 11 minutes, he shot to death 20 first-graders and 6 adults, before killing himself with a shot to the lower back of his head.
Among the many curiosities about Lanza, such as not leaving any online footprints despite being a computer wiz, is the fact that genealogy websites, e.g., Ancestry.com, initially had Lanza’s date of death, according to the Social Security Death Index, as a day before the massacre, on December 13, 2012. It was only after the curious date had been discovered by bloggers, did the websites revise it to the day of the massacre. (See “SSDI changed Adam Lanza’s date-of-death from Dec. 13 to Dec. 14, 2012 !!!” and “Sandy Hook: Adam Lanza’s strange Dec. 13 date-of-death just won’t go away”)
This post is about another Adam Lanza oddity: The funeral home and director who cremated his body.
Adam Lanza’s Death Certificate
On Dec. 23, 2012, the UK’s Mirror reported that Lanza was to be cremated in secret “to stop hater mobs targeting his remains”. On Dec. 31, 2012, ABCNews reported that Lanza’s “body” (presumably his ashes) had been claimed by his father, Peter, whose divorce from Nancy was finalized in 2010, and that the funeral home wanted to remain anonymous.
It turns out there is good reason for the funeral home to “remain anonymous”.
The alleged death certificate for Adam Lanza, published by the Sandy Hook skeptics-bashing SandyHookFacts.com, identifies two businesses that were involved in Lanza’s funeral arrangements:
- Linwood Crematory as the business in charge of “Disposition” of Lanza’s body (see Box #29 of death certificate).
- Hartford Trade Service as the “Funeral Facility” (Box #33), next to which is an illegible scribble as the “Signature of Funeral Director” (Box #34), whose license number is 2698 (Box #35).
⇓ Click image to enlarge ⇓
Linwood Cemetery and Crematory is at 41 John Ward Ave., Haverhill, MA 01830. Why Linwood was chosen is a mystery because it is located in Massachusetts — not Newtown, Connecticut, where Lanza killed himself; nor Stamford, Connecticut, where Peter Lanza resides; nor Kingston, New Hampshire, where Nancy Lanza was buried. (See Daily Mail)
To add to the confusion, a blogger has “A Statement of Death” for Adam Lanza by a funeral director at an entirely different funeral home — Brookside Chapel and Funeral Home in Plaistow, New Hampshire. (See my post, “Sandy Hook: Adam Lanza’s strange Dec. 13 date-of-death just won’t go away”.) Stranger still, that “Statement of Death” initially also had Lanza’s date of death as 12/13/2012 – a day before the alleged massacre. Nine days later, on 1/24/2013, Brookside made an amended “Statement of Death” with Lanza’s date of death changed to 12/14/2012.
Hartford Trade Service & the ex-con funeral director kevin riley
That leaves Hartford Trade Service as the “Funeral Facility” for Adam Lanza’s body, and its funeral director who had signed Lanza’s death certificate with an illegible scribble, and whose license number is 2698.
We did an Internet search for Hartford Trade Service and found several news reports on HTS’s crooked funeral director Kevin Riley.
Kevin Riley, director of Hartford Trade Service
According to Hartford Courant, on January 25, 2011, Kevin Riley, 54, funeral director and owner of Hartford Trade Service, was sentenced to eight months in prison for using “a body-removal contract with the state medical examiner’s office to gain access to the estates of people who had died and stole assets from some of them,” and for double-billing state agencies for body removal.
Prosecutors said Riley had himself appointed administrator of the estates of people with no relatives, giving him access to money and property with little or no scrutiny. Riley and his co-conspirator, Yolande Faulkner, who also was charged with larceny, would then steal money, jewelry and paintings and sell some of them through an auction house where Faulkner also was the bookkeeper. All told, Riley, through Hartford Trade Service, billed the Department of Social Services and the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner more than $25,000. In many of those cases, Riley also charged the state $1,800 in burial fees — while also charging the person’s estate that same amount.
Riley surrendered his funeral director and embalming licenses to the state Department of Public Health and agreed to repay the estates he stole from as well as two state agencies that he had double-billed. Additionally, he must perform 50 hours of community service during each of 3 years of probation once he is released from prison.
Below are the State of Connecticut Department of Public Health‘s notification of Riley’s voluntary surrender of his license, and the discipline citations against him and Hartford Trade Service:
The Phonecall
We looked up Hartford Trade Service (HTS) on Legacy.com and found its address and phone number:
Hartford Trade Service: 623 Main St., East Hartford, CT 06108, (860) 282-4500
We called that number, and had an interesting and cordial conversation with HTS’s owner, Kevin.
After 4-5 rings, a man answered. We asked if Hartford Trade Service is a funeral home. He paused, then answered hesitantly, “Yes,” and explained that HTS is a “non-traditional” funeral service because it:
- Only does cremation; and
- Does not deal with the public but works “behind the scenes” as a subcontractor to (regular) funeral homes.
He said HTS does not have a website and that his name is “Kevin.” He said HTS is still in business, despite some accounts that it had closed in 2011. Kevin also confirmed that some employee at HTS was in legal trouble a few years ago. He said he’s been HTS’s owner since 2010.
From the phone conversation, in all likelihood “Kevin” is Kevin Riley, funeral director of Hartford Trade Service, who in 2011 was convicted and sentenced to 8-months in prison for overbilling the State of Connecticut (for which HTS must have served as a subcontractor); and for stealing from the homes of deceased, then selling the stolen goods to antiques dealers.
Hartford Trade Service on Google Map
Zillow says Hartford Trade Service’s address, 623 Main St., East Hartford, CT 06108, is a single-family home (lot 5.6 acres), last sold in Jan. 2011 for $280,000. YellowPages.com has HTS as “Open Now”, M-F 8am-5pm.
But when we searched for 623 Main St., East Hartford, CT on Google Map, the building is identified as River Bend Funeral Home Crematorium! Below is a screenshot from Google Map:
Indeed, Funeral Home Resource and AgingCare.com both say River Bend Funeral Home & Crematory is at 623 Main St., (860) 282-4500 — the same address and phone number as Hartford Trade Service’s.
The Visit: Who’s Kevin Davidson?
An in-person visit to 623 Main St. confirms that the building carries only a sign that says “River Bend Funeral Home”. No where is there any indication that the building also houses Hartford Trade Service.
Kevin wasn’t there, but a male assistant was, who insisted that River Bend Funeral Home’s owner is Kevin Davidson, not Kevin Riley. Here’s Kevin Davidson’s business card, identifying him as the owner of Hartford Trade Service:
The only problem is this: The website ConnecticutCorps: Company Profiles of Connecticut, has Kevin Riley as the owner of River Bend Funeral Home, 623 Main St., East Hartford, CT 06108 — which means the assistant lied. More disturbing still is what ConnecticutCorps says about River Bend’s “Company Overview”:
RIVER BEND FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATORIUM, LLC is a Domestic Limited Liability Company in Connecticut and its company number is 0901394. RIVER BEND FUNERAL HOME AND CREMATORIUM, LLC was registered on May 29, 2007. The company’s status is listed as Dissolved.
As proof, here’s a screenshot of ConnecticutCorps page on River Bend, with the time and date (4/27/2016) when the screenshot was taken:
⇓ Click image to enlarge ⇓
The Search for Licenses
We then went on the State of Connecticut’s eLicensing website to search for the licenses of Hartford Trade Service, funeral director Kevin Riley, River Bend Funeral Home & Crematory, and funeral director Kevin Davidson. Alas, we came up empty-handed on all four:
- We searched for Hartford Trade Service and got this: license expired 1/5/2011.
- We searched for River Bend Funeral Home and got this: license expired 1/4/2011.
- We searched for Kevin Riley, funeral director of HTS, and got this: No records found for the criteria entered.
- We searched for Kevin Riley, funeral director of River Bend Funeral Home, and got this: No records found.
- We searched for Kevin Davidson of River Bend Funeral Home, and got this: No records found.
Below are screenshots of the search results:
That the State of Connecticut’s eLicensing has no records for funeral home Hartford Trade Service is also confirmed by an anonymous tipster to Professor James Fetzer. In an email, the tipster wrote:
Hartford Trade Service’s business expired 1.5.2011! This is very big as Hartford Trade Service not in business when Sandy Hook occurred! Closed for almost 2 years!
Hartford Trade Service
License type: funeral home
Licence no: 467
Expiration date: 1/05/2011
Granted date: 6/1/1989
License status: Inactive
Conclusion
To summarize, our investigations — online, by phone, in person — found that:
- The funeral home for Adam Lanza was Hartford Trade Service, which has an expired license, but its owner said on the phone it is in business.
- Though in business, the building that houses Hartford Trade Service does not identify itself as HTS, but as River Bend Funeral Home & Crematorium instead.
- The funeral director of Hartford Trade Service, Kevin Riley, is a convicted felon, whom an employee claims to be Kevin Davidson.
- But a website on company profiles in Connecticut identifies Kevin Riley, not Kevin Davidson, as the owner of River Bend Funeral Home.
- The State of Connecticut eLicensing website has no records for funeral homes Hartford Trade Service or River Bend Funeral Home, or for funeral directors Kevin Riley or Kevin Davidson.
However, if the Sandy Hook massacre never took place, and Adam Lanza never died (or, as some say, never even existed), then an unlicensed funeral home with an unlicensed funeral director who’s an ex-convict would be the perfect candidate to pose as the “funeral facility” for a non-existent corpse.
~Eowyn and Cinderella’s Broom
For the links to all the posts Fellowship of the Minds has published on the Sandy Hook hoax, see our “Sandy Hook Massacre” page.
For a free copy of the Amazon.com-banned book, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook, click here. To buy a hard copy of the book, sure to be a collector’s item, click here.
