Who Is Lucy Richards? Facts About Sandy Hook Conspiracy Theorist Who Threatened Families

A Florida woman was arrested Monday for threatening a parent of one of the victims killed in the Sandy Hook elementary school mass shooting that took the lives of 20 children. She was motivated to carry out the threat because she believed the massacre was a hoax, the Department of Justice said in a statement Wednesday.

Lucy Richards, 57, faces four counts of transmitting threats in interstate commerce, or roughly 20 years in prison. She is scheduled to appear in court on Dec. 19. The Tampa resident allegedly made death threats in January to one of the victim's parents, according to the DOJ statement. Richards sent the unnamed parent a message that read: "you gonna die, death is coming to you real soon" and "LOOK BEHIND YOU IT IS DEATH."

A Justice Department spokeswoman did not explain how the threats were delivered or why Richards thought the attack was a hoax, the Associated Press reported. But a friend of one of the Sandy Hook parents, Lenny Pozner, said the messages matched threats left on voicemails delivered in January to Pozner over the mass shooting. His 6-year-old son Noah died in the Sandy Hook attack. The Sandy Hook gunman also killed himself and his mother.

"The heartache of burying a child is a sorrow we would not wish upon anyone. Yet to our horror, we have found that there are some in this society who lack empathy for the suffering of others. Among them are the conspiracy theorists that deny our tragedy was real. They seek us out and accuse us of being government agents who are faking our grief and lying about our loss," the Pozner family wrote in an opinion piece published last year by the Sun Sentinel.

Conspiracy theorists falsely claim the shooting on Dec. 14, 2012 in Newtown, Connecticut, never happened. They claim the government created the shooting to influence gun control debate. Radio show host Alex Jones, who runs the website Infowars, has said the shooting is a hoax.

The incident marks the latest example of fake news inciting violence. A similar conspiracy theory saw a North Carolina man attack a Washington, D.C., pizzeria over the weekend because he believed the restaurant was involved in a child sex trafficking linked to Hillary Clinton.