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Inside a Sandy Hook Father's Fight to Help Bring Down Alex Jones and Reclaim His Daughter's Memory

It all started with an uncertain smile and a nervous laugh at a press conference a grieving young father didn’t even know he was going to be holding.

On Friday, Dec. 14, 2012, Robbie Parker’s world imploded when his 6-year-old daughter, Emilie, was among 20 first graders and 6 educators who were killed in one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

Inundated with calls from reporters, Parker, a neonatal intensive care unit physician’s assistant from Utah, “naively” agreed to make a statement to a Utah news station at a Newtown church for family and friends there to see and hear, he tells PEOPLE.

Providing continuing coverage from Newtown, CT, Walt Disney Television via Getty Images News reports on the tragic shooting at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Emergency services and vehicles near the firehouse which is being used as a rescue center, in Newtown, CT, 12/15/12 Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. 

Disney General Entertainment Content via Getty

Shocked when he was met with a throng of reporters and news crews who gathered to hear him honor his beloved daughter’s memory the day after the shooting, he smiled nervously and gave an awkward half-laugh when his father made a well-meaning “dad joke” to calm him, he says.

What happened next devolved into an unthinkable nightmare that included years of harassment, hateful name-calling and death threats. Parker and his wife Alissa were still in the firehouse near the school waiting to hear whether Emilie was one of the tragedy's victims when InfoWars host and far-right conspiracy theorist  that the shooting was a government hoax carried out to restrict gun rights. After seeing Parker smile before the press conference, he declared that Parker was a “crisis actor” who never lost a daughter.

A SEARCH FOR ANSWERS Robbie and Alissa Parker and their daughters in March 2013. Nigel Parry. Inset: Emilie Parker Memorial Fund/Reuters/Landov

which comes out Nov. 19 from Diversion Books.

“What's evil about what Alex Jones did is that he came in and made the very complicated process of grieving, dangerous,” says Parker. “He inflicted these lies and conspiracies about who I am and who Emilie was in a way that harmed me and my family. He was doing that because he made millions of dollars. That's what's evil about it.”

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