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AUSTIN, Texas — It took Alex Jones less than two years to go from theorizing about government involvement in the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre to denying that the shooting had taken place at all.
For Laura Prado, the idea that the murder of 20 children and six adults was faked would stick with her for another five years.
“It took me a while to believe that it was true,” Prado said, explaining that she first began questioning Jones’ Sandy Hook theories in 2019, after he backed off his claims in the face of several lawsuits. “I did believe him, I did believe that it was crisis actors and that nobody really died.”
One of a small cadre of Jones’ loyal fans who came to support the Infowars host during his trial last week in Austin, Prado’s story of falling for Jones’ false claims about a Sandy Hook “hoax” cuts against the central theory of his own defense — in which Jones describes himself as a Socratic figure raising questions, allowing his listeners to find their own answers.
For followers such as Prado, those answers came directly from Jones’ own words.
“I should have known that it wasn’t true,” Prado told a reporter during a break in the proceedings last week. “I guess I got brainwashed by Alex Jones.”
Prado, a 60-year-old event planner from the Austin suburbs, said she first became a fan of Jones in 2014, around the same time that he began peddling new conspiracy theories — based on an erroneous reading...
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