After a decade of steady hate mail and harassment since her 6-year-old son’s murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nicole Hockley says she’ll be ecstatic to see the source of that hate be left penniless.
That source, Alex Jones, was ordered on Wednesday to pay a whopping $965 million for spewing lies that the shooting was a hoax and that grieving parents, like Hockley, were paid actors hired to shill for stricter gun laws. And now, after receiving countless death threats and even claims that her son never existed, Hockley is ready to see Jones and his media company, Infowars, suffer.
“This was never about the money for us,” Nicole Hockley told The Daily Beast on Thursday. “But taking money is the only way we can hurt Alex Jones. And I think every family is happy to see him hurt, even if only financially.”
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Hockley said she knows it’s unlikely she’ll ever receive the full $73.6 million that was awarded to her individually. But, getting rich was never the point of taking Jones to court. It was to bring him and his empire down—something she’s confident her legal team and fellow victims have successfully done—and to send a message to others who consider spreading lies for profit.
Nicole Hockley lost her son in the Sandy Hook massacre.
Bryan Bedder/GettyHockley joked that every dollar Jones now earns—mostly from soliciting donations and selling strange wellness items—will no longer make his wallet fatter. Instead, those profits will soon be on their way to his victims.
“I wish I could tell all of his supporters who continue to donate and buy his junk, keep it up,” Hockley said. “Or better yet, just cut out the middleman and donate it straight to us. All of that money is heading here either way. He’s screwed.”
Jones, who owns Infowars and its parent company, Free Speech Systems, has continued to mock victims even after Wednesday’s decision. While a judge was listing the massive dollar amounts for each plaintiff, he was laughing on his own livestream, giving an Oprah impression.
“You get a million, you get $100 million, you get $50 million... Do these people actually think they’re getting any of this money?” he said.
Jones’ legal team said they plan to file an appeal to Wednesday’s decision, and Jones has taken steps to make it increasingly difficult for plaintiffs to receive money. He filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors for his businesses, and has been accused of using shell companies to transfer and hide money from plaintiffs in a separate Sandy Hook case. Jones also transferred his $3 million Austin, Texas, estate to his wife in February, according to property records obtained by the New York Post.
Despite Jones lashing out in court last month to say he was “done saying sorry,” Hockley said she doesn’t believe the 48-year-old feels any remorse.
On the day Jones took the stand in Waterbury, Connecticut, Hockley said she planned to “give him a chance” and that she’d consider forgiving him. But his nasty showing quickly ended that, she said.
“He’s a husband and father himself, so I figured if he listened to our testimony, he’d at least feel a shred of decency or empathy there,” Hockley said. “There wasn’t. He’s a sociopath. There is no heart there, no compassion.”
Erica Lafferty, another one of the 15 plaintiffs who sued Jones in Connecticut, told The Daily Beast on Thursday that she’s had to move five times since losing her mother, Sandy Hook principal Dawn Lafferty Hochsprung. But each time she moves, the hateful letters continue, she said, all because of a lie peddled by Jones.
Lafferty said someone once posted a 15-minute video to YouTube that singled her out, calling her a crisis actor. She said a man in the video then implored his viewers to hunt her down to bound, gag and rape her.
Elsewhere online, Lafferty said people mocked and picked apart her wedding photos, calling them fake. At one point, she’d receive daily letters with the return address listed simply as AR-15—the rifle type used to kill her mom and 24 others.
As the total damages amount creeped toward $1 billion on Wednesday, Lafferty said she was in “complete shock” and “filled with gratitude.” The amount of money awarded to her wasn’t important, she said. It was about reclaiming the legacy of her mother and herself, but she was glad the astonishing number flung the trial into the national spotlight.
“We all know this is going to be tied up in appeals for years to come,” Lafferty said. “It wasn’t about money. It was about reclaiming our lives and our personal stories. Reclaiming the legacy of our family members that have been stolen by Jones.”
Jones appeared unfazed in the decision’s aftermath. In his livestream concurrent with the decision, he cheered for the damages amount to grow higher, exclaiming he wanted to be “the billion-dollar man.”
“His comments yesterday show that he’s never changing,” Lafferty said. “It’s his personality—he wants to be the best at being the world’s worst person.”
