Nancy Lanza's Family Holds Funeral

A private funeral was held Thursday for the mother of the gunman who killed 20 first-graders and six adults at a Newtown, Conn. elementary school, a New Hampshire police source told NBC News.

About two dozen family members attended the New Hampshire service for Nancy Lanza, who was shot and killed by her son before he went on the school rampage.

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Friends of Nancy Lanza have told NBC 4 New York that she described her son as a very bright, intelligent person, and had mentioned that he had Asperger's, a mild form of autism.

"I just know she spoke very lovingly of him," John Bergquist, who had known Nancy Lanza for about two years, told NBC 4 New York earlier this week.

When Nancy Lanza and then-husband Peter Lanza moved to the central Connecticut community in 1998 from southern New Hampshire, they bought a new 3,100-square-foot colonial set on more than two acres in the Bennett's Farm neighborhood.

Nancy Lanza had previously worked as a stock broker at John Hancock in Boston and her husband was a successful executive.

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When the couple divorced in 2009, he left their home to Nancy Lanza and told her she would never have to work another day in her life, said Marsha Lanza of Crystal Lake, Ill., Lanza's aunt. The split-up was not acrimonious and Adam spent time with both his mother and father, she said.

Those who knew Nancy Lanza recall her as very generous, often giving money to those she met and doing volunteer work.

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