Even though the identity of the killer was known minutes after he committed the most horrible crime in recent Connecticut history, the 2012 massacre of 20 school children and six adults in Newtown, the State Police — and the state — continue to oppose letting the public see documents seized at the home of Adam Lanza and the mother he murdered first on that December day.

Fortunately, and despite the best efforts of the Malloy administration to weaken it, the people's right to know still enjoys the protection of the Freedom of Information Commission and that body has now ruled that the state must release all the personal documents taken from the Lanza home by State Police. The ruling was in response to a request under the FOI law by The Hartford Courant but can be appealed.

While the state police was engaged in its nearly three-year effort to suppress information about the killings, some of its high-ranking officers were selectively leaking information in the documents in self-promoting speeches at police conventions. This included information not made available to public officials or to the families of the victims.

Just three months after the killings, Col. Danny Stebbins, who has since resigned, told a meeting of police chiefs in New Orleans about a seven-foot spread sheet the killer had created to record past mass murders and attempted murders. This and other information that could be of use in understanding the mindset of the killer and similar individuals remain in police custody as Lanza family property. Had, of course, the killer lived, this "private" property would have been evidence at his public trial.

The Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, which oversees the State Police, had argued that the documents remain the personal property of the Lanza family and it is the police's responsibility to hold them until the owner asks for them or the court tells them what to do.

"It's the obligation of the police to sort of hold this for the owner," Steven Barry, the attorney representing the state, explained. But the murderer's surviving family, his father and brother, have understandably distanced themselves from the killings and have not asked for the documents.

At the May 13 hearing in which the commission voted to release them, FOI Commissioner Jonathan Einhorn noted the department's dual practice of selectively leaking, then fiercely fighting to suppress the documents.

Kathleen Ross, the hearing officer who recommended the documents' release to the public, revealed the department's supervisor of legal affairs had not even looked at the documents she believed to be exempt from disclosure.

This puzzling conduct has been an embarrassment to the state and even though it has 30 days to decide on an appeal, it should obey the ruling and end the matter.