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A long-lost relative of the reclusive heiress Huguette Clark, who could have inherited $19 million of her $300 million fortune, has been found dead under a Union Pacific Railroad overpass in Wyoming.

Children sledding found the body of Timothy Henry Gray, 60, Thursday afternoon in Evanston, a small mining town in southwestern Wyoming near the Utah border. The coroner said it appeared he died of hypothermia. The low temperature that day was 10 degrees, and had hit zero in the previous week. Lt. Bill Jeffers of the Evanston Police Department said there was no evidence of foul play, and Gray was wearing a light jacket. Gray's siblings said they hadn't heard from him since their mother's funeral in 1990, when he disappeared without a word.  It wasn't clear whether Gray was living under the overpass, where transients have been known to camp.

Tim Gray was an adopted great-grandson of former U.S. Sen. William Andrews Clark, known as one of the copper kings of Montana, a banker, a builder of railroads and the founder of Las Vegas. The senator's youngest daughter, Huguette Clark, was a recluse who died in 2011 in New York City at age 104, after living in hospitals for 20 years while her palatial homes sat unused. Gray was her half great-nephew.

In her will, Huguette Clark left no money at all to her family, leaving it instead to her nurse, goddaughter, attorney, accountant, hospital, doctor, favorite museum and various employees, as well as  to an art foundation to be set up at her oceanfront estate in Santa Barbara, Calif.  None of her relatives had seen Clark in at least 40 years, though some had been in touch with her through holiday cards and occasional phone calls.

Nineteen of Clark's relatives have stepped forward to challenge her will in a New York court. A public administrator joined the challenge on behalf of Gray. When lawyers tried to find him to let him know about the Clark estate battle, they found his belongings had been abandoned in a storage locker, according to court records, and private investigators were not able to find him.

If the relatives win their court challenge, Gray's estate would be entitled to about $19 million before taxes, or 6.25 percent of Clark's copper mining fortune, which has been conservatively estimated at $307 million by the administrator of Huguette Clark's estate. If Gray, who apparently had no spouse or children, died without a will, his siblings would receive his share in addition to their own.

Gray was not using the money he already had. The coroner said Gray's wallet contained a cashier's check, from 2003, for "a significant amount."

Gray's older brother, Jerry, said Tim had worked as a cowboy and lived in the Rocky Mountain states. "He was homeless essentially. If we had proper mental health services in this country, we could have been notified and known to do something."

Huguette Clark attracted the attention of NBC News in 2009 because of her vacant but well-manicured mansions and questions about the management of her money. The battle over her estate could go before a jury in 2013, though settlement talks have begun.

The archive of Clark stories, photos and videos is at http://nbcnews.com/clark/.

Do you have information on the Clark family?
Reporter Bill Dedman is co-authoring "Empty Mansions," a nonfiction book about Huguette Clark and her family. If you have documents or information, you can reach him at bill.dedman@msnbc.com.

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Jeremiah Patterson / Investigative Reporting Workshop

The Momentive Performance Materials plant near Albany, N.Y.

Editors' note: This story has been updated to clarify Apollo CEO Leon Black's stock holdings. The company had declined to comment for this story before publication.

When Apollo Global Management bought Momentive Performance Materials, a chemical factory in upstate New York, in 2006, it administered a lesson in modern-day economics at what had long been one of the biggest and most stable employers in the Albany area.

Private equity companies like Apollo make money through debt. In a leveraged buyout, a firm hones in on a company, often one that is publicly traded, and struggling, and takes it private. The acquisition is financed by borrowing against the company itself. The goal is to take the company public again, ideally in three to five years, and net a profit for the investors and the firm. The debt remains with the company.

The debt load can translate to major belt-tightening at the acquired company. The buyer is looking to increase productivity, reduce inefficiencies and, as jargon would have it, create synergies. That often means a private equity firm will buy up a few companies in a particular industry, mash them together and eliminate the overlap. That often means eliminating jobs.

Whether private equity firms, on average, create or destroy jobs is a matter of debate. Buyouts by private equity firms have a generally positive effect on the financial performance of the acquired companies but are “associated with lower employment growth,” according to a 2008 report by the Government Accountability Office. A more-recent academic paper found that post-buyout, companies see increases in both layoffs and jobs created. On balance, the authors write, there is a 1 percent net loss of jobs when a company is taken over by a private equity firm.

But the loss of jobs is often not the only toll for workers caught in the middle of a leveraged buyout, as Momentive workers learned soon after Apollo purchased their company from General Electric. (GE is a part owner of NBCUniversal.) 

Apollo cut the wages for most of the production and maintenance workers at its Waterford plant. The National Labor Relations Board investigated and tentatively concluded that the company had violated the contract. But with other locals rallying behind a new contract offer, hundreds of the production workers were forced to accept drastically reduced pay.

In the months after the contract vote, the stress level at the plant was through the roof, said one worker, who, like his colleagues, spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared retaliation from company officials. His doctor treats lots of Momentive workers, he said, “and she says Xanax should be in our drinking water.”

The anxiety “was affecting my stomach,” another worker said. “I can’t eat. I’m drinking more than I’ve ever drank in my whole life.”

Since the wage cuts, workers said, attracting qualified hires has been difficult. The new contract, they said, has brought more responsibility for less pay. They alleged that new hires are asked to perform dangerous tasks with inadequate training. And longtime workers are taking second jobs to make up for lost pay, several men said.

“There’s a guy near me who has a part-time job at Wal-Mart,” one man said, adding that in his unit people work seven afternoons in a row, with one day off, then seven straight days of midnight shifts.

“He often says he’s only got three hours of sleep” before returning to work, he said.

“This is suicidal,” another man said.

Momentive, in a written statement, says it “seeks to attract a world-class workforce through competitive compensation and benefits, while providing a safe work environment.” The company also notes that since 2006, when Apollo took over, the Waterford site has shown improvement on two of OSHA's key measures of worker safety. 

Still, the union has raised safety concerns. For years, the Waterford plant was part of a special program at the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that honors workplaces with exemplary safety and health records and procedures. Waterford was a VPP Star site, the highest rank within the Voluntary Protection Program. The benefits of the VPP star aren’t just a nice flag to fly in front of the factory. Once in the program, the site is exempt from random checks by OSHA inspectors.

In late 2010, the union withdrew its support for the VPP program in Waterford, which is required for the certification. Such a loss of union support is rare, according to OSHA. In January 2011, the plant lost its VPP status.

That withdrawal from the program was a long time coming. In November 2008, the membership of Local 81359 had sent a letter to Momentive’s management, saying the company’s “actions and tactics have created this hostile work environment and we fear for the health and safety” of the plant workers.

After that warning, OSHA inspectors found eight serious violations at the plant over several months in 2010, each resulting in a $4,500 fine.

One of the violations involved “an uncontrolled release of sulfuric acid,” exposing employees to “inhalation and burn hazards.” Momentive did not furnish employment “free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm,” according to the violation notice. (Four of the violations were later “deleted” by the agency during discussions with the company of fines and penalties.)

“The night of the sulfuric acid release there were some young new guys there, and a guy who had been there for a long time,” said Dominick Patrignani, a union official. “He kept people from getting burned. We would have been reading about it in the obit section, possibly.”

“The knowledge base of the people they’re bringing in is nothing like we’ve ever seen before, because you can’t get highly skilled workers at $14 and $15 an hour.”

On May 25, 2011, two workers on the night shift were severely burned in a flash fire at the plant. In the early morning, the men were preparing to clean some equipment, according to one worker with knowledge of the incident. But when they started to take apart a piece of pipe, gas somehow ignited. The men were severely burned and were airlifted to the Burn Center at nearby Westchester Medical Center. Both survived, but now face a long recovery.

“This whole event could have been prevented,” Patrignani said, adding that he had raised safety concerns about that area of the plant to the operations manager the week before the accident.

In November 2011, an OSHA investigation of the May accident resulted in $81,000 in additional fines for Momentive, for 10 serious violations and one repeat violation. The company is appealing the fines and OSHA has yet to issue a final determination.

----

For Momentive’s Waterford workers, the wage changes are a done deal. A group of workers filed additional complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, but those went nowhere. Some organized a vote to decertify the union — essentially, to fire the union as their representatives — but that failed.

They have received their settlement checks, and most are resigned to the drastically lower pay, new responsibilities and the tension. But resignation doesn’t mean the living is easy.

I met with one Momentive worker, his fiancée and their young daughter at a Dunkin’ Donuts off Route 9. When I mentioned that someone told me I should talk to the wives if I want to get the real picture of the pay cuts and their impact, she nodded. “We almost lost him, you know,” she said. “He had a heart attack from the stress.” He was now seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist, and was taking multiple anti-anxiety drugs, she said.

Over coffee and a box of doughnut holes, the couple laid out what they’ve been through since the pay cuts took $400 a week out of his paycheck.

First they got jammed up on bills and they cut down to one car, a hardship in an area where you can’t hail a cab or catch a bus, and you can’t get a gallon of milk without driving to a store.

The man had to ask a friend for a ride to work. “It was hard to do that,” he said quietly. “I’m not used to asking for help.”

Since then, they’ve scaled back a lot.

“We’re OK with that,” his fiancée was quick to say. She doesn’t get her hair done any more, or her nails, things they took for granted before. They don’t go on vacation, or to the movies. But the furnace is on its last legs, she said, and they don’t know how they would pay for repairs if it conks out.

And it’s not just the little things. When his wages were cut, they fell behind on their mortgage, and the bank wasn’t willing to lower their rate, now at 8.5 percent. They couldn’t refinance with another lender, because their credit was bad. “Of course it was bad,” she said. “We lost a huge chunk of our income.”

When they couldn’t refinance, and couldn’t get a loan modification, they said they got tangled up with a foreclosure rescue scam, which took cash up front and advised them to fall further behind on their loan. Efforts to work with government programs didn’t pan out. Now they’ve declared bankruptcy and the house is in foreclosure.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted, to work. To provide for my family. I didn’t want El Dorados and Rolexes,” the Momentive worker said, worrying the sleeves of his brown work jacket.

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As the workers and their families settle in to their new reality, more changes may lie ahead. Momentive continues to “pursue various cost reduction initiatives” across its sites, including “sourcing through low-cost countries, overtime reduction and other labor efficiency,” according to its 2010 annual report. Whether that means moving more production to China, where the company expects to “generate future growth,” remains to be seen.  Momentive said in its written statement that “Waterford continues to be an important facility” in the company's “North American network.”

The company has also been making moves in the United States, merging Momentive with competitor Hexion in late 2010.

Then, in April 2011, Momentive filed the paperwork for an $862 million initial public offering that  would have brought the company out of Apollo’s hands and return it to public trading. But the company is, as its 2011 annual report notes, still a “highly leveraged company,” owing $2.9 billion at the end of the year. By June 2012, that figure had grown to nearly $4 billion. In August, Standard & Poor’s downgraded Momentive’s debt from B- to CCC. A month later, Momentive withdrew the IPO filing.

Read part 1: A buyout, a reorganization and the new face of job security

 While Momentive may not go public, its owner, Apollo Global Management, did. Following in the footsteps of industry giant Blackstone, Apollo launched an IPO in March 2011. At the time of the IPO, Apollo CEO Leon Black held more than 90 million shares, according to the company's prospectus, worth almost $1.8 billion when the IPO launched. A company spokeswoman, Melissa Mandel Kvitko, said none of Apollo’s management, employees, affiliates, or strategic investors sold shares in this offering.

As for Momentive workers, they still take home a nice paycheck. They know that. They work hard at their union jobs, and they get paid enough to support themselves and their families, maybe save enough to survive into old age. But something besides the pay has changed.

“I don’t like what’s happening. I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair. But at the same time, I still have mixed feelings. I’m probably paid better than 90 percent of people,” one man said. It’s the principle, he said: It’s as if he had $10 in his pocket, and Apollo came along and took $2. He still has eight bucks, but that doesn’t make it right. And while he makes more than most people, he said, being able to retire comfortably after decades of work is what’s supposed to happen. It’s not an outrageous luxury, nor should it be.

Now, though, the canceled IPO and the debt load have him wondering about the plant’s future, and the future for young workers at Momentive. “I realize they’re a good employer, and they provide a lot of good jobs,” he said. “I don’t want to see them fail.”

He goes to work every day, he said, and does the best he can. But the contract fight has changed his relationship with a job he once loved. “It’s like being betrayed by a spouse,” he said. “It’s awful hard to go back. It’s never going to be the same for me.”

The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, is a nonprofit, professional newsroom that pairs experienced professional reporters and editors with graduate students, and co-publishes with mainstream media partners and nonprofit newsrooms.

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             Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

The Momentive Performance Materials plant near Albany, N.Y.,

WATERFORD, N.Y. -- Momentive Performance Materials sprawls near the banks of the Hudson River, just outside Albany, N.Y., its silver silos and windowless sheds nestled in the low, rolling hills. Men who work there see deer on the road as they drive their pickups to work.

Inside the plant, the tranquility vanishes. It’s not just that the workers are handling toxic, explosive chemicals. That’s par for the course in silicone manufacturing. Many Momentive employees have been at the company for decades, back when it was part of General Electric. They accept the risks in exchange for a steady, sizable paycheck.

The problem is that the paycheck is neither as steady nor sizable as it used to be.

Apollo Global Management, a private equity firm, bought the former GE Advanced Material (Silicones & Quartz) in 2006 and renamed it Momentive. Two years later, in the middle of a three-year contract, Apollo slashed the wages of some 450 union workers by up to 40 percent. Suddenly, workers found themselves being paid what they had made 10 or 20 years earlier.(GE is a part owner of NBCUniversal, the parent company of NBC News.)

The Momentive workers were standing still, but the world was changing around them. A contract isn’t what it used to be. The men — and they are mostly men — at Momentive have what millions of unemployed Americans covet: a job. And not just any job, but a union job in manufacturing, the kind of job likely to get increasingly rare as right to work laws spread. But that job pays less than it did a decade ago, and many Momentive employees say they’re slipping backward. Some are losing their homes. This is job security in 2012, the new face of stability in the American workplace.

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Momentive produces silicones for dozens of familiar brand names. Its customers include Goodyear, Motorola, L’Oreal and The Home Depot. Its silicones are in caulks, gaskets, carpets and bedding. They’re the conditioning ingredient in “2-in-1” shampoo. When Neil Armstrong took his one giant leap, the sole of his moon boot was made of silicone rubber produced at the Waterford plant.

Workers used to make 700,000 pounds of silicone gum every week at the factory, according to one longtime Momentive worker, who like many others interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity, fearing retribution from the company. Now, he says they make less than 200,000 pounds.

It’s not clear if the overall production has declined or been shifted elsewhere. In addition to its factory in New York, Momentive has factories in Ohio and West Virginia, Japan, Germany and Italy. A finishing plant started up in Chennai, India, in 2010, as did a joint venture in Jiande, China. Another Chinese plant is slated for completion in 2013.

Momentive declined to share production information, but in a statement it said, “Waterford continues to be an important facility in our North American network and we have recently consolidated our Silicones and Quartz divisional headquarters at this site. It is also critical that we continue to strengthen our global footprint, which will allow us to meet the needs of our geographically diverse customer base.”

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When GE spun off its silicones plant six years ago, the Waterford workers were apprehensive. They had a pretty good thing going, and most weren’t excited about a change. Back then, it wasn’t uncommon for a Momentive worker to take home $100,000 a year – serious money for seriously skilled labor. “I make more than some husbands and wives combined,” one man told me. But, he said, “It’s not a perfume factory down there.” The plant operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The men say they regularly worked 60- to 70-hour weeks, including overtime. Schedules of seven days on, one day off, seven days on again were common, they say.

As the union negotiated its first contract with Apollo, it was bracing for major cuts, said Dominick Patrignani, president of IUE-CWA Local 81359, part of the Communications Workers of America, which represents workers at the Waterford plant. Apollo’s $3.8 billion acquisition of the company, completed in December 2006, was financed with more than $3 billion in debt, and workers figured the company would be tightening the belt.

To their surprise, the agreement reached was nearly identical to the previous contract under GE. The three-year contract, which covered two locals at the Waterford plant and workers at a Momentive facility in Ohio, was signed in October 2007. A company newsletter praised it, saying it “locks in gains in pay and pensions” and “retains key job security provisions.”

That didn’t last.

In December 2008, days before Christmas, more than 400 hourly workers at Momentive’s Waterford plant were called in to speak with their supervisors. One by one, workers were told that their pay would be cut, workers say. They would be assigned to new jobs, with new duties and wages.

In its written statement, Momentive said it has had to make “difficult decisions regarding our operations in a challenging economic environment to remain competitive on a local and global basis.”

Workers were told that the pay cuts sought to bring their wages in line with the prevailing wage in the region, they said. But as several noted, others in Saratoga County don’t work with toxic and dangerous materials. Their wages should be compared to those of workers in the chemical sector, they said.

Those new wages also varied wildly, according to documents obtained through a Freedom of Information request to the National Labor Relations Board. One man, a 35-year veteran of the plant, dropped from $29.11 an hour to $17. Another, closing in on 20 years at the company, dropped from $29.11 to $19.50. A man with two years on the job kept his $29.11 wage rate. The longest-tenured worker, with more than 39 years of experience, went from $29.11 to $24. A plant services operator, hired in 1978, found himself earning $14 an hour — a cut of almost $12 from his previous wage.

“Guys with a year or two of service ended up with a higher rate than I did,” said one longtime worker who has two children in college. Before the cuts, he earned $27.31 an hour His new hourly wage was $19.50.

The wage cuts were like “an attack on my family,” another Momentive employee said. He has two children, too, and he regularly worked 70-hour weeks to “give them a good opportunity to go to a good school, get a good education, without going into debt.”

If the company had proposed a 5 to 10 percent pay cut for all workers, including management and technicians, that would have been easier to swallow, several men told me. “It was the arbitrariness that really pissed everyone off,” one said.

In fact, Momentive executives did take a 10 percent pay cut, in April 2009. But in January 2010, just as the workers’ pay cuts took effect, the executives’ “temporary pay reduction” was reversed, “as a result of the recovery in our business,” according to the company’s 2010 annual report.

As the Momentive workers saw it, the abrupt wage changes violated the contract signed in 2007, less than 18 months before the pay cuts were imposed. The local representing the affected workers filed 477 separate complaints with the National Labor Relations Board in January 2009, one for each affected worker. They asserted that Momentive “has been engaging in unfair labor practices,” by changing wages, promotion, how people got overtime — all things spelled out in the original contract.

The company argued asserted that negotiating wage and rate changes at the local plant level was allowed, under the terms of the national agreement. The company said the changes were needed to stay competitive and bring wages in line with the skills required. 

More than a year later, following months of investigation, the NLRB responded. The board’s regional director found that Momentive had indeed “failed to continue in effect all the terms and conditions of the National Agreement.”  In other words, it had broken the contract. The order also found that Momentive had failed to bargain collectively with the union in violation of the law. 

The board sought an order requiring the company to restore the wage scale, rate, progression, job descriptions, and several other points. The board also wanted the company to pay interest on any back pay or other monetary awards.

The NLRB scheduled a hearing for April 5, 2010. That hearing got pushed to June, in hopes that the union and the company would reach a settlement, a common move in such cases.

But June 2010 was also when the original three-year contract — the one Momentive had broken with the wage cuts — was slated to expire. When Momentive executives proposed a deal, the union found itself negotiating a settlement and a new contract at the same time.

The proposed settlement was simple: the 400-plus workers whose wages were cut would get back pay covering their lost earnings. Going forward, though, they’d all be getting the new, lower wage, in their newly defined positions. The company agreed to a $2 an hour bump — on the reduced pay. The NLRB case would be closed, ending any negotiation over job descriptions or the other issues in dispute.

Workers said the company dangled the settlement payments at the vote on the contract, held in the company firehouse at the Waterford plant. “They had a box of envelopes, and the envelopes had statements in them with a number, how much money each worker would get in back pay, under the settlement,” one recalled.

They also warned that “if you keep going with the NLRB action, it could take years,” several employees said.

By the time of the settlement proposal, which called for payments of more than $10,000 for many of the workers and more than $30,000 for some, many whose wages had been cut were struggling. “They were just so desperate,” one said. “They were just in a hole,” another added.

Still, workers in Local 81359 say they voted down the contract, preferring to move forward with the NLRB action.

But they weren’t the only local voting. The contract covers three bargaining units, including another local in the plant, representing salaried and technical workers, and workers at an Ohio branch. Although those workers didn't have their pay cut, and weren’t covered by the settlement, they had a say in whether it would be approved or rejected, because it was tied to the contract. Those locals voted to approve the proposal, and the contract was ratified. The Local 81359 workers got back pay with interest, but the wage cuts would stand.

Not everyone at Momentive took a pay cut.

Steven Delarge, a Momentive executive, received a bonus of more than $400,000 in 2010, in part for his role in “the successful completion of collective bargaining agreements” with union workers, according to the company’s annual report. He also got a raise, bumping his salary from just under $400,000 to $450,000 in 2011. He has since left the company.

Momentive CEO Jonathan Rich received a bonus of $1.3 million for the year, The bonus was based on “the achievement of applicable performance targets,” according to the company’s annual report, which stated, “The Company achieved its primary environmental objective and, although it did not achieve its safety objective, the results were improved over the prior year.” Rich, who left the company in October 2010, also received severance payments of $975,000, and an additional $350,000, the reasons for which are not spelled out in company filings. His total compensation for the year was more than $6.5 million, according to company documents.

Andrew H. Walker / Getty Images file

Leon Black, shown here at the Museum of Modern Art's annual party in New York City in 2007.

The current executives, Craig Morrison and William Carter, are well-compensated, too. Morrison’s total compensation was nearly $3.5 million in 2011, Carter’s more than $2.6 million.

Apollo Chairman and CEO Leon Black is also doing well. Last year, he celebrated his 60th birthday with a blowout at his Hamptons home, featuring “a seared foie gras station” and a $1 million performance by Elton John, according to the New York Times. Apollo Global Management declined to comment for this article.

Read Part 2: After buyout, workers get a lesson in modern economics.

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• Critical EPA report highlighting chemical dangers to kids is sidetracked
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• Kitchen calamity: Reports of shattering cookware are on the rise
• Authorities establish timeline of gun purchases in Conn. school shooting
• Paula Broadwell won't face cyberstalking charges in Petraeus scandal
• New details emerge on private lives of school gunman and his mother
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             Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook 

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

A playground at the Carson-Gore Academy of Environmental Sciences in Los Angeles. The $75.5-million elementary school, which was named after former Vice President Al Gore and pioneering environmentalist Rachel Carson, was built atop an environmentally contaminated piece of real estate. Construction crews replaced the toxic soil, which was poisoned by more than a dozen underground storage tanks, with clean fill.

A landmark Environmental Protection Agency report concluding that children exposed to toxic substances can develop learning disabilities, asthma and other health problems has been sidetracked indefinitely amid fierce opposition from the chemical industry.

America’s Children and the Environment, Third Edition, is a sobering analysis of the way in which pollutants build up in children’s developing bodies and the damage they can inflict.  

The report is unpublished, but was posted on EPA’s website in draft form in March 2011, marked “Do not Quote or Cite.”  The report, which is fiercely contested by the chemical industry, was referred to the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), where it still languishes.

For the first time since the ACE series began in 2000, the draft cites extensive research linking common chemical pollutants to brain damage and nervous system disorders in fetuses and children.

It also raises troubling questions about the degree to which children are exposed to hazardous chemicals in air, drinking water and food, as well exposures in their indoor environments – including schools and day-care centers – and through contaminated lands.  

In the making since 2008, the ACE report is based on peer-reviewed research and databases from federal agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration, Housing and Urban Development and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Public health officials view it as a source of one-stop shopping for the best information on what children and women of childbearing age are exposed to, how much of it remains in their bodies and what the health effects might be. Among the “health outcomes” listed as related to environmental exposures are childhood cancer, obesity, neurological disorders, respiratory problems and low birth weight.  

The report cites hundreds of studies -- both human, epidemiological studies that show a correlation between exposure to certain chemical pollutants and negative health outcomes, and animal studies that demonstrate cause and effect.  In some cases, the authors note, certain chemicals have been detected in children, but not enough is known about their effects to draw conclusions about safety.

In a section on perfluorochemicals (PFCs), for example, which are used to make nonstick coatings, and protect textiles and carpets from water, grease and soil, among other things, the draft notes that they are found in human breast milk. 

The report said that “a growing number of human health studies” have found an association between prenatal exposure to PFCs and low birth weight, decreased head circumference and low birth length. It also stated that based on “emerging evidence suggests that exposure to some PFCs can have negative impacts on human thyroid function.”

Furthermore, it noted that animal studies produced similar results, although exposures were typically at higher levels than people are exposed to. 

The EPA’s website still notes that the report will be published by the end of 2011.  But after a public comment period that was marked by unusually harsh criticism from industry, additional peer review and input from other agencies, the report landed at OMB last March, where it has remained. No federal rule requires the OMB to review such a report before publication, but EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said the agency referred it to the OMB because its impact cuts across several federal agencies.

The spokeswoman said EPA had no idea when OMB would release it, allowing publication. 

A spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget said she would not discuss the review process or give an estimated release date.   

Some present and former EPA staffers, who asked not to be named for fear of losing their jobs, blamed the sidetracking of the report on heightened political pressure during the campaign season.  The OMB has been slow to approve environmental regulations and other EPA reports throughout the Obama Administration — as it was under George W. Bush according to reports by the Center for Progressive Reform, a nonprofit consortium of scholars, doing research on health, safety and environmental issues, which generally advocate for stronger regulation and better enforcement of existing law.

“Why is it taking so long? One must ask the question,” said a former EPA researcher who works on children’s health issues. “It is an important document and it strikes me that it’s falling victim to politics.”  

The EPA states that the report is intended, in part, to help policymakers identify and evaluate ways to minimize environmental impacts on children.

That’s an unwelcome prospect to the $674 billion chemical industry, which stands to lose business and face greater legal liability if the EPA or Congress bans certain substances mentioned in the report or sets standards reducing the levels of exposure that is considered safe.

Among other findings, the report links numerous substances to ADHD, including certain widely available pesticides; polychlorinated biphenyls  (PCBS), which were banned in 1979 but are still present in products made before then and in the environment; certain polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), used as flame retardants; and methyl mercury, a toxic metal that accumulates in larger fish, such as tuna.  The draft also cites children’s exposure to lead, particularly from aging lead water pipes, as a continuing problem (See previous coverage, Toxic Taps.) 

Among the other widespread contaminants linked to learning disabilities is perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel , fireworks and other industrial products, which has polluted water around the country.  The Department of Defense, which wants to avoid paying to clean it up, is alarmed by research showing that the chemical interferes with thyroid function and otherwise damages the nervous system, according to R. Thomas Zoeller, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and an expert on perchlorate.

Zoeller, who has served on EPA advisory panels studying the issue, said the Pentagon’s concern was evidenced by the Air Force’s hiring of two consultants – Richard Mavis and John DeSesso --  to help shape its response to the research.  He noted that in 2009, after their consulting contract had ended, Mavis and DeSesso wrote a letter to the editor of Environmental Health Perspectives, a publication of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, attacking an EPA scientist’s study showing that perchlorate may damage the brain.  “I don’t like my tax dollars going for one federal agency to refute the work done by scientists at EPA,”  he said. The Defense Department and the Air Force declined to comment on the publication, but spokeswoman  Melinda Morgan wrote that, “The DoD is aware that there are many differing opinions on the science related to perchlorate health effects,” and believes the current level permitted by EPA is safe.

One of the new sections of the report notes that children may be widely exposed to pollutants in schools and day-care centers. Among them are pesticides; lead; PCBs; asbestos, a mineral fiber long used as insulation and fire-proofing;  phthalates, chemicals that are used to soften vinyl and as solvents and fixers, and are found in numerous consumer goods, among them: toys, perfumes, medical devices, shower curtains and detergents; and perfluorinated chemicals, which are used in non-stick and stain-proof products.  The study notes that these substances are (variously) associated with asthma, cancer, reproductive toxicity and hormone disruption. 

The American Chemistry Council (ACC) , the chief industry trade group, has accused EPA of lacking objectivity and vilifying its products. It has filed dozens of pages of comments accusing the EPA of ignoring certain studies – including some funded by ACC itself — that would help businesses make the case that their products are safe. The ACC also contends that EPA has not included enough positive comments about the role of chemicals in society.   

“ACC members apply the science of chemistry to make innovative products and services that make people’s lives better, healthier and safer,” wrote ACC senior toxicologist Richard A. Becker. … “The exclusive focus on exposure is particularly problematic as it may lead to the incorrect conclusion that exposure to chemicals (e.g. phthalates) at any level is not only cause for concern, but also a direct source of negative health effects.”

Becker also expressed the ACC’s contention that EPA was painting too bleak a picture of children’s health in America.  

“It is troubling that the draft ACE report seems to make such little effort to provide a complete overall picture of child health in the United States,” Becker wrote. “For example, the draft report does not refer to The Health and Well-Being of Children: A Portrait of States and the Nation … which concludes the health and well-being of children in the U.S. is improving overall with 84.4% of children in the United States listed as being in excellent or very good health, an increase from 83% in 2003.” Other ACC members, representing manufacturers of BPA, phthalates and other substances, also weighed in against the report.

Nsedu Witherspoon, executive director of the Children’s Environmental Health Network and a member of the EPA Children’s Health Protection Advisory Committee, which oversaw the report, called it a major accomplishment, reflecting the explosion of science since the first ACE was published. She also praised EPA chief Lisa Jackson for standing behind it.

Industry critics, Witherspoon said, “in many cases are the same ones out there trying to debunk the original research,” that the study cites.  

Rena Steinzor, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law, and president of the Center for Progressive Reform, said the ACE report need not have gone to OMB for review in the first place. Steinzor notes that Executive Order 12866 states that proposed significant regulations — generally defined as those that could cost more than $100 million — need be reviewed by OMB, but studies do not.  

The Executive Order gives OMB up to 60 days to review such proposals — although it allows for extensions. In practice, OMB has missed numerous such deadlines.  But the ACE report, which is not a proposed regulation, falls into a gray area.

“If it’s not a rule, I don’t know what it’s doing there,” Steinzor said. “And even if it were a rule, there would be a deadline and they’d be violating it.”

In an email statement to the Investigative Reporting Workshop, EPA spokeswoman Julia Valentine said, “The report was provided to OMB so that they could conduct an interagency review process to ensure accuracy and consistency.”

She noted that because the report addresses children's health, it includes issues that are the focus of many departments and agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services -- including the Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute.   

Steinzor, whose organization has studied OMB under numerous presidents, doesn’t buy it. 

The report should be released now, she said, “ because to protect children adequately we need all the information we can get… I guess I understand why there was great anxiety and paranoia before the election … (but) why would you not do it now? It’s sad that things have gotten so polarized that we’re afraid to release scientific information.”

The Investigative Reporting Workshop at American University, is a nonprofit, professional newsroom that pairs experienced professional reporters and editors with graduate students, and co-publishes with mainstream media partners and nonprofit newsrooms. Sheila Kaplan is a fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics.

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On the afternoon of June 3, an aging Lockheed Martin P2V air tanker crashed near the border of Nevada and Utah, killing the pilot and co-pilot.

The same day, one landing gear on a P2V failed to deploy, forcing the plane to circle a landing strip in Minden, Nev., burning off excess fuel before making an emergency landing and skidding to a halt.

Both planes were more than 50 years old.

The day highlighted the dangers that come with piloting one of the U.S. Forest Service’s aging air tankers, which average more than a half-century old.

Six people died in air tanker crashes during firefighting missions this year, and at least 22 have perished in the past decade, according to a review of accident reports from the National Transportation Safety Board.

Critics say it’s no surprise the air tankers are not fit for the rigors of 21st-century firefighting. Many were designed for other missions, then scavenged from the fields of the Pentagon's massive aircraft "Boneyard" in Arizona, and retrofitted to battle wildfires across the country.

“This is the third generation of old military aircraft that have ended up causing multiple deaths,” said Jim Hall, former head of the National Transportation Safety Board. He also was co-chair of a federal commission that issued a critical report on the state of the U.S. Forest Service’s aerial firefighting capability in 2002 recommending the agency modernize its aging fleet.

But a decade later, many of those planes continue to fly -- and crash – often in some of the most difficult flying environments in aviation: remote, mountainous forests and valleys where planes can be jolted by swirling winds and turbulence and forced to fly through heavy smoke and ash.

Pilots say they have seen giant rocks and tree stumps thrown into the air – sometimes hitting planes – due to the powerful convection forces created by intense forest fires. And the weight of planes rapidly shifts as they dump thousands of pounds of water or retardant in mere seconds. The extreme conditions also can prey on the weaknesses of the tankers: Wings have fractured and separated from aircraft bodies. Engines have caught fire. Hydraulic system lines have ruptured.

Steve Kohls / AP file

A Lockeed P2V air tanker operated by Neptune Aviation makes drops fire retardant over a wooded area north of Brainerd, Minn., on April 2, 1998.

“I have serious concerns about both the size and age of the aging air tanker fleet, and fear that it isn’t up to the job of stopping wildfires that grow larger every year,” said Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., chairman of the Forestry Subcommittee. “That’s what I have repeatedly told the Forest Service, as I have pushed them to address this crisis.”

Both congressional and Forest Service leaders recognize the need to update the fleet, but Congress has never allocated funding to pay for new aircraft. President Barack Obama’s 2013 budget proposes $1.97 billion for wildland fire management, down from about $2.2 billion in 2011. It includes $24 million to modernize the air tanker fleet, but that’s a fraction of the cost needed, critics say. Congressional  budget proposals, meanwhile, do not include any money for the fleet’s modernization.

Since 2007, one-third of the 79 forest firefighter deaths have occurred in aviation accidents,  more than any other cause, according to the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, a coalition of federal and state fire agencies.

“I’ve been on fires in California where people have had their houses burned underneath them twice before- - they rebuilt the third time in the same spot,” said Dick Mangan, a former program leader at the Forest Service’s Missoula Technology and Development Center with more than 30 years experience in wildland firefighting. “The only thing that doesn’t come back are dead firefighters. Grass grows back, the trees come back, houses come back. Dead firefighters don’t come back.”

And as wildfires have grown in size in the last decade – 2012 has seen more than 9 million acres burn, the third-highest amount this century – the number of available air tankers has been halved. Some have been retired from services; others have been destroyed in crashes. The Forest Service estimates its needs 18 to 28 “next-generation” large air tankers, but did not seek a congressional appropriation last summer because of budgetary constraints. 

“It is a monetary issue, absolutely,” said Ron Hanks, head of aviation safety with the Forest Service. “The cost, the engineering and the development – they’re costly.”

Industry leaders defend the safety records of the planes. They note that age itself does not disqualify a plane from meeting the Forest Service’s requirements, and properly maintained planes can continue to be airworthy even as they pass 50 years in age.

Dan Snyder, the president of Neptune Aviation Services in Missoula, Mont., said his company has begun buying and retrofitting former British passenger planes to replace the older aircraft. But Snyder, whose company has the biggest air tanker contract, defended the safety records of planes like the P2V.

“It’s an airframe that has really worked well for us,” Snyder said. “It’s taken the stress and strain quite well.”

Still, Snyder acknowledged that many airframes are fast-approaching their life limits. “They can only fly so many takeoffs and landings, which we call ‘cycles,’ and those cycle limits are starting to approach,” he said.

For old sub chasers, the mission has changed
Captain Todd Neal Tompkins understood the risks.

The Boise pilot had flown over wildfires for years, and firefighting often took him away from his family for extended periods during the wildfire season, said his friend, Brian Walp.

“He was in touch with the fact that when he left in the spring to go to work, it may be the last time he’d see his kids,” Walp said. “I think he lived with that idea.”

At 1:47 p.m. on June 3, Tompkins was in a Lockheed P2V that crashed into mountainous terrain while dropping retardant in a shallow valley north of Modena, Utah. Tompkins and co-pilot Ronnie Edwin Chambless died in the crash. The NTSB has not released its final report on the cause.

Scott G Winterton / AP file

The scene near Hamblin Valley, Utah, on June 4 after a P2V air tanker crashed as it dropped retardant on a 5,000-acre wildfire, killing pilots Todd Neal Tompkins and Ronnie Edwin Chambless, both of Boise, Idaho.

The P2V has long been the workhorse of the Forest Service’s aerial firefighting fleet. Designed to track submarines in the 1940s, the P2Vs remained in military use until the Vietnam War.

In the years after Vietnam, the tankers were given a new job: dropping fire retardant on wildfires. Retrofitted to carry retardant but with relatively few other changes, the planes – and similar planes like the Lockheed P3 Orion -- were deployed across the American West.

“Many of these aircraft – P2 and P3s, old submarine search planes – come from the Korean War and Vietnam era,” Mangan said. “They do not have the greatest track record.”

In the past decade, P2V crashes alone have resulted in at least 10 deaths. On Sept. 1, 2008, a P2V crashed and killed the pilot and two passengers after the left engine caught fire during takeoff near Reno, Nev. The following spring, a P2V crashed while attempting to navigate foggy, windy weather in Utah’s Oquirrh Mountains, killing all three people onboard.

“Clearly, those aircraft were not designed for the missions they are flying,” said Hall, the former NTSB chairman. “We recommended a purpose-built aircraft for the types of missions being flown 10 years ago. It could have easily been accomplished during that time.”

The P2V isn't the only plane that has critics worried.

In July, the U.S. Air Force grounded all firefighting-equipped C-130s on loan to the Forest Service from the Department of Defense after one of the turboprop planes crashed in South Dakota, killing four people. While many of the C-130s are significantly younger than the P2Vs, Hall said they simply were not designed to handle the dangerous conditions above wildfires.

But newer, better-designed planes are out of the Forest Service’s reach due to cost.

The Forest Service’s modernization strategy, published in February, includes contracts for next-generation civilian aircraft like the BAe-146, which cost about $7 million apiece and carry 3,000 gallons of fire suppressant  -- much less than larger, more expensive tankers. Retrofitting adds $1 million to $4 million to the price tag.

Other retrofitted planes can be even costlier: A new C-130J, for example, which can deliver 4,000 gallons of fire suppressant, costs about $80 million, according to the Forest Service report. Or the agency can lease a C-130 flown by military pilots from the Air Force for $13,740 a day, plus $6,600 for every hour it’s in the air.

All of these options would put a significant strain on the Forest Service’s budget. But inaction also carries a price too: About $55 million was spent each year from 2009-2011 to maintain the current fleet, said Jennifer Jones, a spokeswoman for the Forest Service.

Dug up from the Boneyard
After World War II, the U.S. Air Force established a storage facility near Tucson, Ariz., where dry conditions kept aircraft from corroding. Today, it is officially known as the 309th Aerospace Maintenance Regeneration Group.

But many refer to it by its more colloquial name: the Boneyard.

Since its inception, the Boneyard’s fleet has grown to include planes like the P2Vs and C-130s. Now, with more than 4,400 aircraft and 13 aerospace vehicles from all branches of the military and NASA, the Boneyard operates as a stockpile for military units and government agencies to take parts or entire planes for their own use or to sell to U.S. allies.

For years, these mothballed planes have been called into action to battle wildfires. In 2002, the federal firefighting commission took a closer look at the Boneyard, condemning the Forest Service's practice of using retired military planes salvaged from the facility.

One of those planes was a Lockheed C-130A, registration number N130HP. Built in 1957, the plane was retired from military service in 1978, spent a decade in the boneyard and then was retrofitted with retardant tanks to battle wildfires.

On June 17, 2002, as the plane swept low over a fire in California, its wings separated from the body of the plane, sending it plummeting to the ground. The accident, which was filmed by a witness, killed all three people on board. An examination of the wreckage found fatigue cracks in the right wing, a problem that had been found in other C-130s, according to the NTSB.

The dramatic footage sparked concern about the aging fleet. And in December of that year, the federal commission called its safety record “unacceptable.”

The C-130 crash is not the only example of structural failure. On July 18, 2002, a Vultee P4Y-2 air tanker’s left wing ripped off, sending the plane spiraling into a Colorado mountain and killing two crew members. Cracks in the frame of the aircraft, which was manufactured in 1945, went undetected because they were hidden behind the retardant tank, according to the NTSB report on the crash.

Hall, the chair of the federal commission, said the Forest Service is gradually phasing out these older planes, but not quickly enough, and without funding for newer planes.

“In the same period of time since this report was published, we have fought two wars,” but made virtually no progress in updating the federal firefighting fleet, he said in a recent interview.

At the same time, he said, the fleet has shrunk steadily. In 2002, the agency contracted for more than 40 air tankers.

“Right now, we have 17 aircraft, and that includes the Canadian aircraft that we have borrowed,” Hanks said.

Building for the future but relying on the past
In a hangar in Missoula, Mont., the past, present and future of the air tanker industry can be found side by side.

All nine of Neptune’s planes -- seven P2Vs, and two BAe-146 passenger jets that are being refitted to fight fires -- are under government contract., but the fleet of P2Vs has dwindled in recent years. Neptune will retire two of its P2V Neptunes this year and replace them with BAe-146s.

“The P2Vs that Neptune operates were built in the late 40s, early 50s – so they’re 60, 70-year-old aircraft,” said Ron Hooper, a former government contracting officer who now works for Neptune. “The BAe-146’s were in passenger service over in England, and they’re 15, 16-year-old aircraft.”

Neptune is one of only two remaining air-tanker contractors in the U.S. Last year, the Forest Service ended its contract with Aero Union, a California company that operated P3 Orions. The Federal Aviation Administration said the company failed to follow the scheduled inspections of its air tankers. (Aero Union CEO Britt Gourley said in a letter published in January by Wildfiretoday.com that the company’s “aircraft have always been meticulously maintained and continuously airworthy. He also stated that Aero Union had appealed the contract termination through the judicial process, but in the meantime had been forced to sell the aircraft and lay off its 60 employees.)

In June, the Forest Service announced it would contract with four U.S. companies to lease seven new air tankers, some of which could have been in the air this year. But two bidding companies that lost out protested, saying the contract requirements were vague, delaying the process. The Forest Service requested updated bids, which were due Nov. 1, from potential contractors. The agency has not announced new contracts.

Both Neptune and Minden Air Corp. -- the two current federal contractors --  have begun phasing in retired civilian airliners to replace the military planes. Neptune’s BAe-146s, built by British Aerospace in the mid- to late-1980s, are more nimble than the P2Vs, Snyder said. The planes foster a safer flying experience for pilots and flight crews, he said.

But they aren’t cheap. The BAe-146 cost $20,000 per day to have available plus $10,000 for every hour of flight, according to the USFS. But greater speed and greater suppressant capacity – about 1,000 gallons more than the older tankers – will help offset that.

“It flies twice as fast,” Hooper said. “Our maintenance cost will go down relative to the P2V.  So there are a number of advantages for the Forest Service from an operational standpoint, as well as for Neptune, from an operational maintenance standpoint to be upgrading our fleet.”

Minden is building a new BAe-146 service that should be ready in about a year, said Matt Graham, the company’s maintenance director.

In Missoula, Neptune hopes to have four BAE’s available next spring. The remaining P2Vs are scheduled to be phased out within the next five years, Hooper said.

The Murrow News Service provides local, regional and statewide stories reported and written by journalism students at the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University.

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Joe Raedle / Getty Images file

A Bushmaster XM-15 .223-caliber rifle, the type of weapon that authorities say Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman Adam Lanza used to inflict most of the fatalities.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- The three guns carried by the gunman in the bloody Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were all purchased by his mother since 2010, law enforcement sources told NBC News on Tuesday.

The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that Nancy Lanza, who friends described as a gun enthusiast, purchased the weapons legally over a three-year period, beginning in 2010 with a Bushmaster XM-15  .223-caliber semi-automatic assault-style rifle -- the weapon that authorities say 20-year-old Adam Lanza used to mow down the victims in Friday’s rampage. She then bought a 9 mm Sig Sauer pistol in 2011, followed by a 10 mm Glock pistol in January 2012. Both weapons also were in Adam Lanza’s possession during his attack on the school, and he used the latter to kill himself when police arrived on the scene, authorities say.

Adam Lanza killed his 52-year-old mother at the home they shared before driving to the school and forcing his way in. Once inside, he killed 20 children and six adults before committing suicide, authorities say.

In addition to the weapons recovered at the crime scene, including a shotgun recovered from the trunk of the car the gunman drove to the school, the Associated Press reported that authorities investigating the shooting recovered three other weapons -- a Henry repeating rifle, an Enfield rifle and a shotgun. It was not clear where those weapons were found.

Meantime, the sources said investigators have found no evidence that Adam Lanza visited area shooting ranges in the last six months.

Federal agents have been examining records at the ranges to see if Adam Lanza had been practicing his marksmanship in the months leading up to the attack, which could indicate that he had planned the massacre well in advance of carrying it out.   

Michael Isikoff is NBC News national investigative correspondent; NBC News’ Justice Correspondent Pete Williams also contributed to this report.

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ISAF via Reuters file

Gen. David Petraeus shakes hands with author Paula Broadwell in this International Security Assistance Force handout photo originally posted on July 13, 2011.

The federal government has formally notified Paula Broadwell's lawyers that she will not be charged with cyberstalking in connection with the sex scandal that led to the resignation of David Petraeus as CIA director.

"The United States Attorney's Office for the Middle District of Florida has decided not to pursue a federal case regarding the alleged acts of 'cyber-stalking' involving Paula Broadwell," a spokesman for the office said Tuesday in a written statement.

Petraeus, a highly decorated four-star general, resigned his CIA post on Nov. 9 after acknowledging an extramarital affair. Government and law enforcement officials have told NBC News that the 60-year-old former commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan and coalition forces in Iraq was involved with Broadwell, 37, his biographer.

Petraeus’ extramarital affair was exposed after Tampa socialite Jill Kelley went to an FBI agent to complain about anonymous harassing emails she was receiving warning her to stay away from Petraeus.

Investigators determined the emails came from Broadwell and also uncovered evidence that she had an affair with Petraeus, government and law enforcement officials have told NBC News.

The decision not to prosecute was made "after applying relevant case law to the particular facts of this case," the U.S. Attorney's Office statement said.

"The decision on whether to bring a prosecution is always a serious matter, and one that should never be undertaken without the most thoughtful deliberation. As federal prosecutors, we are guided in the discharge of our responsibilities by considerations of fairness and justice. The prosecution of a case is undertaken only after the most careful review and analysis of the evidence and applicable law," the statement said.

The public statement was issued Tuesday after Broadwell’s lawyers disclosed that they had received a letter from the U.S. Attorney's office in Tampa indicating that she would not be prosecuted for cyberstalking.

“We are pleased with the decision, and are pleased with the professionalism of the Tampa United States Attorney’s Office, particularly Assistant United States Attorney W. Stephen Muldrow,” said one of Broadwell’s lawyers, Robert Muse of Washington.

The letter to Muse, dated Dec. 14, read in part, “We believe it is appropriate to advise your client that our office has determined that no federal charges will be broad in the Middle District of Florida relating to alleged acts of cyber-stalking.” 

The FBI also investigated whether Broadwell improperly possessed classified information.  While the letter to her lawyer mentioned only cyberstalking, it would be unusual for prosecutors to send a letter indicating that a person was off the hook for one potential charge if it was also considering another. Justice Department officials declined to comment about the documents issue. 

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NEWTOWN, Conn. -- New details about the private lives of Sandy Hook gunman Adam Lanza and his mother, Nancy, emerged Monday, including details of a 2009 divorce settlement that resulted in annual payments to her of nearly $300,000 and gave her ultimate authority to make all decisions on behalf of her troubled son.

Handout / NBC News

Adam Lanza in an undated photo.

While the divorce was granted on the grounds that "the marriage has broken down irretrievably," the parting of the ways between Nancy Lanza and her ex-husband Peter was relatively amicable, according to records obtained by NBC News.

There was no custody dispute over Adam, then a teenager, when the couple split. Peter Lanza, a vice president for taxes at GE Energy and Financial Services, agreed to solely finance the cost of his two sons' college and graduate school education and to provide a car for Adam if he should want one. He also maintained joint legal custody with visitation rights and vacations with Adam. (GE is a minority owner in NBCUniversal.)

There was a check mark in a "limited contest" box on one form -- meaning there appeared to be some financial or property disputes -– but the final settlement reflected no obvious friction.

Nancy Lanza got the Newtown, Conn., house, which she was required to sell or refinance by February 2011 so he would no longer be liable, and the couple kept their own jewelry, and divided photos, personal property -- even season tickets to Boston Red Sox games.

Friends say that Nancy Lanza, a former financial trader, had not been working in recent years. The terms of the settlement could explain why: She received $289,800 in alimony in 2012,which was to increase each year to reach $298,000 in 2015.

But sources close to the family tell NBC News that beneath the apparently cordial separation, which dated to 2001, animosity was growing between the father and his youngest son.

By 2010, Peter Lanza was dating a new woman, whom he later married, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, and Adam Lanza cut off all communication with his father. Peter tried to see Adam, but his son refused, they said.

Authorities say Nancy Lanza was the first victim in Friday’s murderous rampage, slain by multiple gunshots in her Newtown home shortly before Adam Lanza, 20, drove to Sandy Hook Elementary School and blasted his way in. By the time police responded, 20 young children, six adults and Adam Lanza were all dead from gunshot wounds, his being self-inflicted.

Friends of Nancy Lanza in Newtown on Monday shed new light on Adam Lanza’s at-times strange behavior in the years before the shooting, but said she did not indicate that it had changed in recent months.

Obtained by NBC News

Nancy Lanza in a Facebook photo provided by a friend.

Ellen Adriani and Russell Hanoman, both of whom said they were close friends of Nancy Lanza’s, said the 52-year-old single mother was devoted to her youngest son, whom they described as intelligent, mild-mannered and socially awkward. He also had an aversion to human contact, they said.

Hanoman, who said he had met Adam on several occasions, recalled him as a “very mild-mannered” young man who was interested in technology and engineering and liked to maintain his distance from other people.

“I remember when I first met him, he deliberately stood maybe 6 feet away from me and took three exaggerated steps toward me … stuck out his hand, shook (mine) … put it back and (took) three exaggerated steps back.”

Adriani, who never met Adam, said Nancy Lanza told her of a time when Adam was ill while he was in high school and didn’t want her to enter his bedroom.

“But yet he still wanted Nancy there for him, so she camped out all night outside his bedroom door,” she said. “Periodically through the evening, he would ask her, ‘Are you there? Are you still there?’ and she’d be, ‘I’m here. I’m here.’ So he needed to have that security that she was there but not in his space.”

Hanoman also remembered Nancy Lanza as a devoted mother.

“Everything that she did in life … was devoted to making sure that he was taken care of,” he said.

Adam Lanza also was “an organic vegan” with a conservative worldview, he said.

“He was actually politically aware for a teenager,” he said. “… He was always very free-market economics and capitalism, as I think most people are in this country.”

He also was interested in target shooting, sometimes accompanying his mother to local shooting ranges to practice. (Federal agents investigating the school massacre said Monday that they have found evidence that Adam Lanza visited more than one range and "engaged in shooting activities."  And they say they know that he visited some ranges with his mother.)

In addition to his technological and weapons prowess, Adam Lanza was an excellent dancer – at least within the confines of the Dance Dance Revolution video game.

“It’s an arcade game as well as on the home systems where you basically dance around to a pattern on the screen,” Hanoman said. “And he was extremely good at it. He would often accumulate an audience of people around watching him…. (But) because it’s a two-player game … if anyone tried to come on the platform with him, no matter what he was doing, he would just turn around and walk out of the arcade.”

Despite such anti-social behavior, Hanoman said that mother and son had over the past several years looked at a number of colleges where Adam Lanza might be able to make a fresh beginning.

“He wanted to go back to school, so they were looking at colleges all over the country, looking for an ideal environment for him,” he said. “… He wanted to become more socialized. He didn’t want to stay trapped in his home the rest of his life.”

NBC News Justice Correspondent Pete Williams, Today Investigative Correspondent Jeff Rossen and Today Producer Robert Powell contributed to this report.

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Nancy Lanza, in a 2012 photo that a relative saved from Facebook.

NEWTOWN, Conn. -- The mother of the suspected Sandy Hook Elementary School gunman, herself slain at the outset of the murderous rampage, was an avid gun enthusiast who liked to take her sons to the shooting range to practice their marksmanship, a friend tells NBC News.

Dan Holmes, a local landscaper and a friend of Nancy Lanza, mother of 20-year-old suspected gunman Adam Lanza, said she also was a collector.

 “She had a pretty extensive gun collection,” Holmes said. “She was a collector, she was pretty proud of that. She always mentioned that she really loved the act of shooting.”

Holmes recalled that she said she was able to “focus in” while shooting.

Federal officials tell NBC News that Adam Lanza took three weapons with him to the school – two pistols, a Glock and a Sig Sauer, and a Bushmaster .223-caliber semi-automatic assault-style rifle – all of which were registered to Nancy Lanza.

It is unclear whether all the guns were used in the attack. At a news briefing on Saturday, Chief Medical Examiner Dr. H. Wayne Carver II, who led the team that autopsied the victims, said, “All the (injuries) … I know of were caused by the rifle.”

The Associated Press reported that authorities investigating the school shooting later recovered additional weapons -- a Henry repeating rifle, an Enfield rifle and a shotgun. It was not clear where those weapons were found.

Holmes, Nancy Lanza’s friend, said the 52-year-old single mother also frequently talked about how she was worried about Adam.

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She talked about “how he was an unstable kid,” he said. “She would talk about that. “She was very protective of him. I don’t … think she ever got major help for him. She just tried to handle it on her own. It was something she was definitely disturbed about.”

Meantime, federal agents visited a gun shooting range near Newtown, Conn., in an effort determine if Adam Lanza visited in the months before the attack, which could indicate he was planning or practicing for the bloodbath he carried out early Friday.

Dean Price, director of the Wooster Mountain Shooting Range near Newtown, told NBC News that he was visited by agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol ,Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives on Friday night and that they searched through his records for any evidence that the younger Lanza had signed in there in 2012. They also checked to see if he had used the name of his older brother, Ryan, Price said.

There was no indication that Adam Lanza had used the shooting range, which requires customers to sign in and show identification prior to using the facility, Price said.

Agents also have been checking local firearms dealers to see if Adam Lanza purchased or attempted to purchase weapons or ammunition prior to the shooting.

Law enforcement officials said members of the public reported they thought they saw Adam Lanza trying to buy a rifle at a Dick’s Sporting Good store in Danbury, but investigators have yet to confirm that.   

NBC News' Senior Investigative Correspondent Lisa Myers and Justice Correspondent Pete Williams contributed to this report.

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