All mass murderers are listed according to the number of hits tallied in their fifteen minutes of homicidal fame. Check the morgue for the latest rampages. Because of its ever-increasing size, the Mass Murderer Hit List has been broken into three sections according to number of hits.

Mike Stagner (4) On July 5, 2001, a local drunk, manic-depressive and schizophrenic seemingly reaching a boiling point over the growing Hispanic population in the area, went on a shooting rampage through a trailer park in Rifle, Colorado, killing four people and leaving three others wounded. All victims were Hispanic.

Police said the shooting spree began when Mike Stagner, 42, shot and killed Juan Hernandez-Carillo as he talked on a pay phone outside a grocery. Then Stagner walked across the parking lot toward the trailer park, shooting 19-year-old Anjelica Toscano. She was left in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the head. Three days later she died at St. Mary's Hospital in Grand Junction. Once inside the trailer park, Stagner fatally shot two men sitting outside a small mobile home. Stagner then walked all the way through the trailer park before shooting and wounding three more men, investigators said. He walked back through the park, reloaded and was arrested in the supermarket parking lot.

Hours before the shooting, Stagner spoke about going on a murder suicide spree at The Sports Corner bar, bartender Ted Diaz Jr. said. He said he didn't pay attention to the threats because Stagner had nonchalantly talked about killing and suicide many times before. Earlier in the day, Stagner had been ranting about "hellfire and damnation" at a liquor store near the scene of the shootings, said owner Linda Trujillo. She said Stagner bought a mini-bottle of whiskey and a Gatorade but she ran him off when he started yelling at passers-by. The Denver Post, citing an unidentified source, reported that Stagner had recently been treated for schizophrenia and may have stopped taking his medication. His family tried for about 20 years to have him committed to a long-term-care mental health institution. "We were told that until he did something like kill someone, he couldn't be committed," said Karen Kimberlin, one of Stagner's relatives. Stagner's criminal record includes arrests on charges of burglary, assault, drug possession and driving under the influence.

Rifle is a bedroom community 60 miles from Aspen. The Mexican consulate in Denver released a statement saying the three people who died were Mexican nationals. It said it had demanded an "expeditious clarification" of the crime. Prosecutor Mac Myers said they were investigating whether the shootings were racially motivated and are considering treating them in court as hate crimes. Stagner's public defender declined to comment following his first court appearance.

William Lembcke (4) According to court documents, family annihilator William Lembcke killed his family after a confrontation with his father over secretly videotaping his 18-year- old sister, Jolene, while she undressed and showered. On December 23, 2000, Lembcke, 16, shot to death his parents, Robert and Diana Lembcke, his sister and his 11-year-old brother Wesley in their home in Colville, Washington. The suspect also admitted having sex with his sister after killing her. Her half-nude body was found by sheriff deputies in a roadside ditch with the rest of the family.

In court, Lembcke's lawyer attempted to have the confession and most of the other evidence against him thrown out on grounds that he suffered "diminished mental capacity" when he gave statements to officers and authorized them to search the family home. Lembcke's trial on four counts of aggravated first-degree murder is to start August 20. If convicted, he could spend the rest of his life in prison without possibility of parole. Although he is being tried as an adult, state law wouldn't allow him to be executed because he is younger than 18.

Detective Loren Erdman said in a search warrant affidavit that Lembcke is believed to have made a second videotape of himself masturbating while watching the video of his nude sister in the shower. Erdman says Lembcke had no reason to believe anyone outside his family knew about "his sexually deviant recordings" when he committed the murders. Apparently Jolene Lembcke told her boyfriend, Dylan Simpkins, as well as her parents about finding the video in the family's new video camera December 21. Simpkins approached detectives January 2, after they had already searched the Lembcke's rural home a dozen miles southwest of Colville. Simpkins reportedly told officers that Jolene Lembcke showed her parents a video that showed her showering and then showed William Lembcke masturbating while watching a duplicate copy of the shower video. Simpkins said she showed the video to her parents and then erased it, but he didn't know whether the duplicate video was found or erased.

According to detectives Wesley Lembcke was the only family member William Lembcke "had no reason to be angry with," and Wesley was the only victim to be killed by a single shot in the head. All the other victims were shot several times. Police were alerted by Diana Lembcke's brother, Andy Davenport, that everyone in the family except William were missing. When deputies found William at the house he claimed at first that the rest of his family had gone to California to visit a sick relative. Then he broke down in tears when they found what appeared to be a blood stain showing through fresh paint on the kitchen ceiling.

On August 27, 2001, Lembcke was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of his parents and his two siblings. The troubled teen showed little emotion during most of the trial but sobbed openly during the sentencing phase. Deputy Stevens County Prosecutor David Bruneau applauded the verdict and sentence.

Jihad Hassan Moukalled (4) A Michigan man suffocated his three children and shoot his pregnant wife before killing himself over gambling debts surpasing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jihad Hassan Moukalled, 42, scribbled a suicide note found on the kitchen counter of their two-story suburban saying: "I never ever had a bad intent toward anyone. I think that I was gripped by the hope of 'one more shot.' I did not know how else to escape what I got myself into. It is over." The victims were identified as his wife, Fatima, 31; daughter Aya, 7; son Adam, 5; and daughter Lila, who would have turned 3 within five days. Police Chief William Dwyer said Moukalled's Oak Park printing business had amassed $500,000 in debts because Moukalled withdrew the money to cover his gambling. Three credit cards found inside the house carried $60,000 in debt, Dwyer said. "Over the past two years, he's been making weekly trips to Las Vegas and Atlantic City, gambling large sums of money," Dwyer said. "According to a statement by one of the relatives, he was gambling all over the place." On November 22 Moukalled returned home at 4 a.m. from Las Vegas. During the three-day trip, police said Moukalled had asked his business to deposit $85,000 into a bank account with hopes the money could be transferred to a Las Vegas casino. The bank wouldn't honor the check. Police said he killed his family after returning home, suffocating the children as they slept in their beds. There were signs in the master bedroom of a struggle with his wife, police said.

Alarmed that his wife was starting a relationship with their neighbor, Richard Labatt, a Sacramento suberbanite, freaked out, shot his wife, both his sons the neighbor,and then himself. The tragedy unfolded on August 19, 1999 in a upscale suburb outside Sacramento. Three of the victims died at the scene. Stephen La Franco, the neighbor, survived until early the next morning. Cody Labatt the 5-year-old son of the murderous father, remained alive until mid afternoon, when he stopped breathing. The rage that drove Labatt to familicide stemmed from the fact that his wife and their neighbor had begun a relationship after both marriages fell appart.

The La Francos and the Labatts both had separated in recent months, although the splits differed greatly, according to authorities and neighbors. For La Franco, 35, a state correctional officer and bodybuilder, it was his second marriage. He stayed in the house on Laguna Pointe Way, while his wife moved out. At about the same time, the Labatt marriage next door was disintegrating, although with more bitterness. Richard Labatt, 27, had been charged with domestic violence for slapping his 26-year-old wife during an argument at their home. The quintuple murder-suicide was the largest single slaying case in Sacramento since the April 1991 siege of an area good guys! store that left six people dead.

Lawrence Michael Hensley (4) Rampager Michael Hensley, 30, surrendered to police on July 13, 1999, after a two-hour standoff at a gas station. Hensley gave up around 5 a.m. ending the standoff in which a clerk and two customers were held hostage at the station. Five days before police believe Hensley killed three teenage girls at his home in Sidney, a western Ohio town with a population of 19,000. He then injured another person and killed his Bible study teacher at the teacher's home outside Sidney.

The first to die was 14-year-old Amy Mikesell. Hensley stabbed and beat her to death and then stuffed her body in a crawl space under an addition to his home. Next Hensley shotgunned to death his neighbour Sheri Kimbler and her cousin Tosha Barrett. Both girls were 16. A third woman was able to escape and ran to the basement and hid in a closet. Hensley shot through the closet door but did not check to see if she was dead or not. She then climbed out a basement window where Hensley's neighbors saw her and summoned an off duty police officer that lives in the area. Police found the 22-year-old woman slumped outside the house. She miraculously survived after being shot in the leg and shoulder. She identified Hensley as the gunman.

Officers immediately sealed off the street but 30 minutes later Brett Wildermouth, 37, a Bible study teacher at Hensley's church, was shot and killed at his home five miles away. Hensley then drove off, leaving his terrified wife Julie at Wildermouth's house. Neighbours described him as a private, church-going man who had lived quietly for years at the same small house with his wife. But Lisa Perin, a former colleague at the car parts factory where he worked, called him weird. Officers found 24 Molotov cocktails on a workbench at Hensley's home.

According to Reverend Ben Davis of the First Church of God, Hensley, before joining the church, had delved into devil worship. Cheryl L. Cai, Ms. Kimbler's mother, said she believes Hensley killed the girls because he feared his sex secrets were close to being revealed. One girl told authorities Hensley tried to lure some youths to his house for sexual reasons.

The Dayton Daily News reported that Hensley was convicted twice in four years for public indecency, but told investigators in one case that he had exposed himself more than 30 times and wanted to stop. Police Captain Dean Kimpel said investigators were examining suggestions that Hensley (known as Mike) and Wildermouth were rival leaders of a religious cult who had fallen out over sharing sexual favours from the teenage girls. Authorities say Hensley had been involved in devil worship but was receiving counseling at the church which, for apparent reasons, was not effective enough.

In 2000 Hensley took a plea agreement to serve I believe 4 life sentences without the possiblity of parole to avoid the death penalty.

Terry Todd Wedding (4) Accused of killing his parents, a popular police officer and his pregnant wife, Terry Todd Wedding, 27, pleaded innocent to four counts of murder. According to police Wedding shot and killed his mother, bludgeon his father to death with a baseball bat, then shot and killed police officer Joey Vincent, a pastor and Wedding's first cousin, and Vincent's wife.

Police believe Wedding first killed his parents, Manville Todd Wedding, 59, and Beverly W. Wedding, 56, in an open field about a mile from the family home in Depoy, Kentucky. Then he killed Vincent, 29, and his 22-year-old wife, Amy, in the driveway of their home, which is adjacent to the home of Wedding and his parents. The Vincents' 3-year-old daughter was found inside unharmed.

Zane Michael Floyd (4) Dressed in camouflage and a sporting a shaved head, 23-year-old Zane Michael Floyd opened fire in a supermarket in Las Vegas, killing four people. Three of the dead were employees of the Albertsons supermarket, the fourth was a shopper. A fifth victim was critically injured. The rampage ocurred early morning June 3, 1999. Floyd surrendered to police following a short standoff outside the supermarket.

"He took the path of least resistance, shooting at everybody he saw," Las Vegas Sheriff Jerry Keller said. "He roamed throughout the store." Floyd, a former Marine in Camp Pendleton, was fired from a local bar where he worked as a bouncer. In an obvious downward spiral, he was also forced to move to his parents' guest house.

The night before the rampage Floyd allegedly raped and threatened an escort service employee who he called to his home. Floyd told the escort he had been trained to kill, and had 19 bullets which he planned to use to kill the next 19 people he saw. An employee at Love Bound, an escort service, told The Associated Press that a man named Zane had called for the services of a young woman, age 18 to 21, at his home on West Oakey. The service dispatched a 20-year-old woman to the address about 3:30 a.m. The employee said the young woman arrived at the residence and "as soon as she walked in the door he grabbed her, handcuffed and taped her, then raped and sodomized her." The employee said the man threatened to kill the young woman, fired five shots from a pump-action shotgun, then released her and toward the supermarket.

Joseph Corcoran (4) On July 28, 1997, Fort Wayne resident Joseph Corcoran was charged with four counts of murder after killing his brother, his sister's fiancee and two other men. Apparently Joe, 22, believed the victims were talking about him and he became angry. So he went downstairs with his semiautomatic and shot the victims as they sat in a living room, eating pizza and watching television. Three of the men were found dead on couches in the living room. The fourth man was shot in the kitchen as he attempted to escape. Officers later found 20 to 30 weapons in the upstairs and attic areas of the home.

Not the family type, Joe was acquitted of killing his parents five years ago. Now his sister -- who lost her future husband in this latest rampage -- thinks her brother did kill their parents. "I knew right then and there that he killed my parents... Everything's gone. He's ruined my life. I hope he fries... I just think he's sick. I don't know what made him do it... I don't know what it was ... maybe it was the heat."

During his first trial in 1992 police said Corcoran -- described by neighbors as a quiet loner with "movie-star looks" -- killed his parents because they were too strict, then got on a bus and went to school. Tom Wilson, Steuben County Prosecutor, said there were too many discrepancies in the Joe's story, and police turned up nothing that indicated anyone else was involved. Jurors ultimately acquitted Corcoran after a five-day trial, saying there wasn't enough evidence to convict.

On May 14, 1999 -- four days before going to trial for murdering his brother and three other men -- defense lawyer John Nimmo announced that his client was guilty. "What we're here for, what it all boils down to, is the sentencing phase," Nimmo said. "It's going to be like an Al Pacino movie. I don't let them convict my client. I'm going to convict my client."

Corcoran, now 24, is accused of shooting his brother, James Corcoran, 30; Robert Scott Turner, 32; Douglas A. Stillwell, 30; and Timothy G. Bricker, 30, because he couldn't stand to hear them talking about him. Brother James had been one of his brother's fiercest defenders when Joseph was accused of shooting his parents to death in 1992.

Joseph Ture (4) Convicted murderer Joseph Ture was indicted by a Stearns County grand jury on four counts of first-degree murder in the 1978 shotgun killings of Alice Huling and three of her four children in their home near Clearwater. The children, Susan, Patti and Wayne, were shot to death in their beds in the middle of the night. A fourth son, Billy, survived by lying still in his bed after shots were fired at him.

"I'm kind of relieved that it's kind of happening. I can't really say I'm happy, but just relieved," Billy Huling told WCCO-TV today in a telephone interview. "As far as timing goes, I think it all should have gone back 21 years ago, four days after the murder when he was first picked up. Why wasn't anything done then? After that came out, after I got information about that, during this last trial, it kind of upset me, just knowing of the other people he hurt."

According to WCCO, investigators believe Ture broke into the home to rape Susan Huling. Ture has denied any involvement in the murders, reports WCCO. Ture was convicted last year of the 1979 murder of Afton teenager Marlys Wohlenhaus. He already was serving time for the murder of West St. Paul waitress Diane Edwards.

Masumi & Kenji Hayashi (4) In her first day of trial, Japanese mass poisoning suspect Masumi Hayashi admitted to commiting insurance fraud. Yet she added she had nothing to do with the poisonings, which killed four and sickened 60 others at a town festival last July. Hayashi, 37, is being tried on eight charges, including multiple counts of murder, attempted murder and insurance fraud. Her husband Kenji, whom Masumi Hayashi is suspected of trying to poison as well for insurance gains, also admitted to defrauding insurance companies.

Prosecutors allege that Hayashi mixed arsenic into curry served at a summer festival after being criticized by her neighbors for not arriving on time to prepare the curry. Her alleged curry killings inspired a wave of dozens of poisonings around Japan last year, including the case of a man who died after drinking canned tea laced with cyanide.

On July 25, 1998, at a neighbourhood festival in the western Japan city of Wakayama four people who died that night and the following morning after ingesting a poisoned curry dish. The dead were the council president and vice president of Wakayama, along with a boy aged 10 and a 16-year-old girl. Over 100 people attended the festival, about 280 miles west of Tokyo, and scores of participants became sick minutes after the curry was served.

Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashi-moto expressed regret over the incident and urged stricter control of toxic materials. Laboratory tests initially did not find any poison, but later tests detected a cyanide compound in the curry, which was served on polystyrene plates.

Pierre Lebrun (4) A disgruntled former transit worker compiled a list of co-workers he didn't like before setting out on a deadly rampage, killing four employees and then himself at Ottawa's main bus garage. The man, identified as Pierre Lebrun, opened fire at transit workers with a high-powered rifle in what police described as a premeditated attack. In addition to the dead, two workers were injured.

The president of the transit workers union, Paul Macdonnell, described Lebrun as a "very sick" man with chronic mental problems. Lebrun, 40, was hired in 1986 by OC Transpo and briefly worked as a bus driver. By choice he took a job in the garage. His problems began about two years ago when it was noticed he had difficulty working with others. He had some altercations with co-workers and was fired in August 1997. His union, the Amalgamated Transit Union, intervened and after mediation, Lebrun was reinstated a month later. The union intervened because it felt the punishment didn't fit the crime. "He appeared to have made a mistake. He apologized and he was put in an easier job."

Recalling the fistfight that got him fired, garage supervisor Robert Manion said: "He had a bit of a speech impediment and he was teased a little bit. It got to him because he had sensitive feelings about it. But maybe they just got him at a bad time when maybe there was other stuff going on in his life at the same time."

But the problem didn't end there. Mr. Lebrun complained about co-workers and once said some people were making fun of his stutter. Mr. Macdonell says Lebrun's apparent sense of victimization probably stemmed from his emotional problems. "We investigated the complaint about stuttering," Mr. Macdonell said. "We had a talk with his colleagues. We believe his illness contributed to his sense of what was happening to him,"

Taking his severance pay Lebrun set out to Las Vegas in one last chance at success. When his luck ran out at the gaming tables, Lebrun drove back to Ottawa virtually non-stop through the northern U.S. His last known whereabouts before the bus depot rampage was a gas station in Idaho.

On April 7, 1999, Lebrun arrived at OC Transpo at 2:30 p.m.in his black, 1997 Pontiac Sunfire. He pulled out a high-powered Remington 760, pump-action rifle and headed into the garage. Once inside he started firing at his ex-work colleagues. Someone grabbed the public-address microphone and screamed for employees to run and call police.

As people scrambled for their lives -- hiding in closets, under tables, in buses, and running for the exits -- a highly agitated Lebrun proceeded into a small office not far from the supervisor's office, where he cornered two victims and killed them instantly with two blasts from his gun. From there, the gunman moved down a hallway and made an inept attempt at setting a fire with oil cans. The fire barely ignited before petering out.

He then headed up the nearby stairs for the mezzanine level and walked all the way back to near the midpoint of the garage, affording him a wide-open view of the garage area and an excellent vantage point to continue shooting. He had 36 rounds of ammunition left. The killing could have gone on. But, instead, he turned the rifle on himself and ended his life.

According to police, Lebrun left a suicide note at his home listing seven colleagues, four of whom he had problems with. But as fate would have it, the four people he killed were not on his list. "His intentions were very clear. From that letter, one could surmise that he was intending to cause very serious harm or death. It is our view that he had intentions to shoot far more people than he had the opportunity to do," said Inspector Ian Davidson.

"Clearly he was a troubled individual that had some difficulties in the workplace," said Inspector Davidson, lead investigator. "His motivation was based on some disagreement he perceived that he had with individuals that he worked with. As a result of that perception, his action was to exact revenge."

Arthur Goodman (4) On March 28, 1999, 19-year-old Arthur Goodman from Abilene, Texas, was charged with killing his girlfriend and three of her friends -- possibly because she refused to help him conceal a crime. Authorities are also looking for his 16-year-old brother, who may have been with him when the shootings occurred.

Goodman's girlfriend, Sandy Witt, 20, lived in a duplex in a high-crime area of Abelene. Detective Jay Hatcher said family and friends gave police two versions of a possible motive. In one, Ms. Witt wouldn't supply an alibi to police for an undisclosed crime in which Goodman is a suspect. In the other, Ms. Witt was planning to give police incriminating information about Goodman. Sandy's friends -- Naomi Martinez, 23; Erica Arispe, 21; and Penny Estrada, 21 -- "just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," Hatcher said. An apartment handyman, Larry Hammond, was also shot and critically wounded when he tried to help the women.

Officers also suspect Goodman in a previous shooting of a 16-year-old boy who survived. Police wouldn't say if that was the crime to which a possible motive might be linked. Hatcher said the motive in that shooting was revenge for an attack on Goodman's 16-year-old brother.

On April 1 Goodman was shot to death by police after aiming a handgun at officers. Arthur was in the back seat of a white Mercury Cougar that had been pulled over on Interstate 35 when police shot him. Three other people, including Goodman's 16-year-old brother -- were in the car at the time of the shooting. They were questioned by police and it is unclear whether they were taken into custody.

Shon Miller (4) On March 10, 1999, family annihilator Shon Miller kicked open the doors of a church in Louisiana, fired twice into the ceiling and ordered everybody to hit the floor. Miller then marched down the aisle, shooting between the benches as screaming parishioners scattered in horror. When the smoke settled, three were dead including his wife, Carla, 25, and their 2-year-old son, Shon Jr. Four others were wounded at the one-story stucco church 20 miles southeast of Baton Rouge. Miller, a homeless former welder, also shot his mother-in-law, Mildred Vessel, 53, to death at her home a the few blocks from the church.

"His little boy turned and said, 'Daddy.' That's when he shot. He hit his wife first and then the baby," congregation member Lolitsa Enkadi said. "And then he just started emptying his gun." In fact, once he emptied one clip of his semiautomatic pistol, he reloaded and continued shooting into the pews. As Miller left the New St. John Felllowship Babtist Church, the Reverend Wilbert Holmes heard him mumble, "That will show you."

Officers said it took three hours of searching around the single-family homes and winter cabbage gardens near the church in this small town of 7,000 before they found Miller. When they discovered him in a shed about 100 yards away, he tried to kill himself, Landry said. An officer blasted the pistol out of his hand with a shotgun at close range, wounding him. Miller was taken to Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans, where he was listed in guarded condition. He was paralyzed from the waist down with buckshot wounds to the back, right hand and face, said hospital spokesman Jerry Romig.

Nathan Dunlap (4) On March 9, 1999, the death sentence of Chuck E Cheese mass murderer Nathan Dunlap was upheld by a unanimous Colorado Supreme Court, which called the evidence against him staggering. "In the final analysis, it is the horror of the crime itself that looms large in our (decision)," Justice Rebecca Kourlis wrote. "Dunlap killed four people and seriously wounded a fifth. He did it without provocation or cause, but rather with a brutal contempt for human life."

A jury convicted Dunlap in 1996 for the Dec. 14, 1993, shootings - the worst multiple homicide in Aurora at the time. He received four verdicts of death. Dunlap killed restaurant employees Colleen O'Connor, 17; Sylvia Crowell, 19; Benjamin Grant, 17; and night manager Marge Kohlberg, 50. Another employee Bobby Stevens, 22, shot point-blank in the face, survived and testified against him.

The then 19-year-old Dunlap began working as a cook at the Chuck E Cheese in May 1993 but was fired over whether he would work extra hours. Dunlap was angry and felt his supervisor had made a fool of him. Later that summer, Dunlap told a former co-worker he planned to "get even." He talked about robbing Chuck E Cheese's and killing his former supervisor. And on the day of the shootings, while playing basketball with friends, Dunlap said he had decided to "go to Chuck E Cheese, kill them all and take the money." The night of the killings Dunlap entered the restaurant, ordered a sandwich, played a video game and then hid in the restroom until closing.

Armando & Valree Nunez (4) - Authorities suspect that a suicide pack between a married couple led to the death of Armando Nunez, his wife Valree, their two sons Curtis, 7, and Robert, 4, and the family dog. The whole group was found on January 27, 1999, inside the family Chevy that was parked behind the new duplex where they lived, on a hill in a blue-collar Fort Worth neighborhood.

Police found freshly used hamburger wrappers, a bottle of whiskey and cigarettes inside the car. There were pillows in the back for the children. Police say when they arrived, the family car was covered with a tarp. Under the tarp, police found a hose attached to the cars muffler and it ran into the window of the car. Richard Carlberg of the Fort Worth Police Department says, "Momma wasnt forced in there. They were drinking and smoking cigarettes and there was no sign of trauma or she was forced or held in there." Police suspect Valree was with Armando Monday when he bought a tarp and the hose that would carry carbon monoxide into the car and kill the family of four.

Neighbors said they didn't realize there was trouble in the family until Nunez's Jan. 11 arrest on an outstanding traffic warrant. That same day, state workers began investigating his sons' complaints that he had physically and sexually abused them. Marleigh Meissner, a spokeswoman for Child Protective Services, said Ms. Nunez kicked her unemployed husband out, sent the children to live with relatives and changed the locks on the house. Ms. Meissner said the investigation into the abuse charges had not been completed.

Problems surrounded the Nunez family. Child Protective Services was investigating them. CPS says it was investigating allegations the boys father sexually and physically abused them. Caseworkers say the boys mother was cooperating. CPS spokesperson Marleigh Meisner says, "When she learned of sexual abuse allegations, she was horrified. She changed the locks on the doors. She ordered the husband to move out of the home."

Reginald Sublet (4) On July 16, 1998, Reginald Sublet, a twice-fired Texas police officer living in Montana herded his ex-girlfriend, their son and two others into a closed garage and started a car, killing everyone, including himself.

Police said they found the body of Reginald Sublet, 34, leaning inside the open door of a car on his knees, a gun in his hand. His ex-girlfriend, Rosalind Tramble, 33, was bound on the floor and had severe head wounds. Her husband, Michael Tramble Jr., 32, was found bound and gagged inside the trunk of a car.

Police found two boys, 12-year-old Reginald Sublet Jr. and Michael Tramble III, inside another vehicle. Michael was strapped in; Reginald was slumped in the back. Sublet, the husband and the two boys apparently all died of carbon-monoxide poisoning, while Mrs. Tramble probably died of a combination of poisoning and head wounds.

The killings came just a month after Sublet was released from a Texas jail, where he spent five months for failing to pay child support. Sublet joined the Dallas police force in 1989 and was fired in 1995 for being absent without leave and making false statements to internal investigators, Dallas Sgt. Jim Chandler said. The firing was overturned on appeal. Sublet was fired again in March after failing to submit medical documentation to back up claims that job-related stress was making him sick.

Arturo Juarez Suarez (4) On July 14, 1998, Arturo Juarez Suarez, a ranch worker in Auburn, California, lured the family of his estranged wife to a cattle ranch, killed her niece, nephew and two brothers and buried the bodies under a blackberry thicket. Arturo Juarez Suarez was being sought for questioning in the slayings on the remote 160-acre horse and cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Authorities said he also raped his estranged wife's sister-in-law.

Authorities were called when the 30-year-old alleged rape victim regained consciousness, untied herself and escaped from a trailer on the ranch. She told investigators that Suarez called his in-laws and asked for help retrieving a deer he claimed to have killed near his trailer on the ranch. After the family arrived, Suarez and his two brothers-in-law went into the woods. Suarez returned alone.

He then tied up, raped and beat his sister-in law while her children played in a screen porch outside the trailer, authorities said. When she regained consciousness, both Suarez and her children were gone. The bodies of her husband, Jose Luis Martinez, 37; their children, Jack, 5, and Arele, 3; and Martinez's younger brother, Juan Manuel Martinez, 28, were discovered in a shallow grave the following day.

Sandi Nieves (4) A Santa Clarita, California, mother undergoing a bitter custody dispute was arrested on July 13, 1998, for asphyxiating her four daughters and setting her house on fire to cover the murders. The four girls -- ages 5, 7, 11 and 12 -- were found next to the stove in the kitchen where Momie Dearest conviced them to have a slumber party. During the night she asphyxiated them with gas from the oven. The next morning she drenched the house with gasoline and torched the place. Authorities believe the fire could have been a suicide attempt.

When firefighters arrived to put out the mid-morning blaze, they were baffled when they found the four dead girls in an area of the house hardly affected by the fire. Nieves -- a devout Mormon -- and her 14-year-old son David were taken to the hospital for smoke inhalation. Later she was arrested. Authorities speculate that Nieves killed the children because of a custody dispute with David Folden, her ex-husband and the father of the two younger girls. Both Nieves and Folden -- who previously was married to Sandi's Mom -- were due the next morning at a Riverside County court in advance of a hearing to reconsider their custody agreement as well as the division of shared property.

Deputy Public Defender Howard Waco, in his opening statement, rejected the allegations that Nieves set out to kill her children. "Her children were her world," Waco said. "Sandi's love for her children was far greater to her than any disappointments or dislikes that she had with any of the men in her life." Somehow deflecting the blame onto her dysfunctional upbringing Waco remarked that Nieves' mother was married six times, used men "like a pawn," and sent photos of Nieves' dead brother to her and other relatives. "Sandi is a victim as much as her children," Waco said. Nieves was arrested the day after the fire. Prosecutors say samples taken from carpeting in the home tested positive for gasoline, and that the fuel was found on the clothes Nieves had been wearing ­ along with her fingerprints on the bottom of the gasoline can.

In court the infancidal mom testified about having a "flashback" of the moment when she lit the fire that killed her daughters. "I was hoping it would be a dream," she testified. "It scared the hell out of me. I had a flashback of a flash... a lighter... a fire... I don't know what it was!" Nieves shouted at one point, "I sit here and wonder every day what happened. I have no idea!" Days before the fire, Nieves testified, she bought sundresses and sandals, shopped for an expensive dress she was to wear to a friend's wedding in August, and stocked her refrigerator. She filled her van with gas, and she mailed a check for $1,075 to her landlord for her July rent. But she testified that she had no memory of a letter she wrote to an ex-husband, which appeared to have been mailed hours before the fire. "Now you don't have to support us anymore... you scum," Nieves wrote.

The morning after the fire Nieves said she got up from the kitchen floor to go outside. "So you stepped over the bodies of your children?" asked Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman. "I thought they were asleep," Nieves answered. "I don't remember stepping over my kids. I don't remember any of it." Silverman asked Nieves to look at photos of her dead daughters and to explain how she could step over them without seeing them. Nieves refused to look at the pictures. "I'm not looking at my children if they're dead. I'm not looking at them!"

A witness for the defence said Nieves was in an unconscious, sleepwalking-like state at the time she set the lethal fire. "Mothers who kill their children are often in a disassociative state," said Dr. Philip G. Ney, a neuropsychiatrist. Nieves, who had an early childhood history of epilepsy, was also taking a combination of phentermine, a prescription diet drug, and Zoloft, an antidepressant. "The two drugs don't go together," Dr. Ney said. He likened the possible effect on the brain to a car's motor that is being accelerated to top speed just as it's running out of gas. Adding to the mix, Nieves was also hormonally unbalanced because of a recent abortion. All those factors made her more vulnerable to a "disassociative state."

On October 6, 2000, Sandi Nieves was formally sentenced to death for the arson murder of her four daughters. The 36-year-old mom will be transferred to the state's death row for female inmates at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla. "We believe this woman should have received the death penalty and she did. She killed four of her children," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office.

John Orr (4) Whoever said that reality was not stranger than fiction did not live in Los Angeles. John Leonard Orr, a former fire department Captain and admitted serial arsonist, is now on trial for four arson murders in a 1984 hardware store fire. Even stranger is the fact that Orr had written a manuscript -- "Points of Origin" -- about an arsonist who torches businesses across California. The book was discovered when he was arrested in 1991. Not unlike the character in his book Orr -- who is already serving a 30-year sentence in federal prison for arson -- was in the habit of setting fires to develop material for a novel he was writing about an fireman-turned-arsonist who got sexual pleasure from his crimes.

The busy arsonist type, the former top arson investigator was convicted on several other arson charges for a series of brush and house fires in the Los Angeles area in 1990 and 1991, one of which destroyed 67 hillside homes, In 1992 he was convicted of setting three fires in the San Joaquin Valley. Curiously he tended to set fires while returning home from arson investigator conferences. On June 27, 1998, the former captain with the Glendale Fire Department was convicted for the arson-murders of four people who died in the 1984 fire at Ole's Home Center in South Pasadena.

Dennis Wayne Eaton Dennis Wayne Eaton - On June 18, 1998, rampage killer Dennis Wayne Eaton, 41, was executed in Virginia by lethal injection for the 1989 murders of Judy McDonald, 24, Jerry Hines, 48, Walter Custer Jr., 26, and Ripley Marston Sr., 68.

Apparently Eaton shot Custer and Marston, stole their car and fled south with his girlfriend, Judy McDonald. Hines, a state trooper, tried to pull the couple over on Interstate 81. He was shot twice and left to die. After a police chase through Salem, Eaton crashed into a telephone pole and shot his girlfriend.

Eaton pleaded guilty to killing Custer, Marston and McDonald, and received three life terms. Though he claimed Judy shot the trooper as he tried to arrest her, he still recieved another death penalty for Hines' muder. Maria Hines, sister of the slain trooper, said she forgave Eaton after watching the movie "Dead Man Walking" and did not want him executed.

Kipland P. Kinkel (4) On May 21, 1998 -- a day after being expelled from school for bringing a gun to class -- 15-year-old Kipland Kinkel returned to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon, and opened fire in the cafeteria, killing two students and wounding 22 others. The attack was brought to a halt by 17-year-old wrestling student, Jake Ryker, who despite being shot in the chest, tackled Kipland as he was reloading. Several others quickly piled on to pin the freckled-face rampager to the ground until police arrived.

The heroic Ryker was shot in the hand while trying to subdue the killer and is presently listed in guarded condition in a local hospital with another gunshot wound to the chest. When it was all over, 17-year-old Mikael Nickolauson was dead on the scene, and 16-year-old Ben Walker died in the hospital early the next day from wounds to the head.

The day before the rampage, Kip -- who was jokingly voted "Most Likely to Start World War III" in middle-school -- had been arrested, expelled from school and released to his parents' custody on a charge of possession of a stolen firearm. Following the rampage, investigators found the parents dead in separate rooms of their suburban home. The parents, William P. Kinkel, 59, and Faith M. Kinkel, 57, were both teachers. The father was retired from teaching Spanish at Thurston High. The mother taught Spanish at a nearby high school. Investigators think Kip might have killed them separately the day before the rampage.

Bomb squad officials were called in after police searching the Kinkel home found five "sophisticated" bombs, 15 other inactive explosive devices, detailed bomb-making instructions, and various chemicals that could be used to make explosives. When the demolition experts where removing some of the explosives, one of the homemade devices was accidentally detonated. A fifth bomb was found by investigators when they tried to remove his mother's body. Authorities also found two Howitzer shell casings and a hand grenade.

The school shooting occurred just before 8 a.m. when up to 400 people were gathered in the cafeteria for a farewell ceremony for graduating seniors. Witnesses said they saw Kipland, dressed in a cream-colored trench coat, running through the cafeteria firing from the hip 51 rounds from his .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic rifle. He was also packing a .22-caliber Ruger semiautomatic handgun and a 9mm Glock semiautomatic pistol. In his backpack police found several fully loaded ammunition clips and an assortment of loose ammunition.

In retrospect Kip was nothing other than a budding psychopath. "He always said that it would be fun to kill someone and do stuff like that," said student Robbie Johnson. "Yesterday, he told a couple of people he was probably going to do something stupid today and get back at the people who had expelled him."

Kinkel allegedly gave a talk in speech class about how to build a bomb and bragged about torturing animals. According to Nissa Lund, 14, Kip told her he once stuffed lit firecrackers in a cat's mouth. Rachel Dawson, Kip's former girlfriend in middle school, said he boasted about shooting little cats. Clearly a serial-killer-in-the-making, Kip also talked about blowing up a cow. In a recent literature class Kip stood in the front of the room and read from his journal his plans of to "kill everybody." On the other hand, friends said when he was not busy with revenge fantasies, bombmaking and killing animals, Kip was a normal, boisterous, high school freshman who was into alternative rock bands like Nirvana and enjoyed playing guitar and football.

About a year ago, the Kinkels discovered Kip was downloading bomb-making instructions from the Internet and building bombs, said Kim Scott, a best friend of Kip's sister, Kristin. "They tried to discipline him and they tried to keep him from making more bombs, but at some point, Kristin said, they just pretty much had given up on being able to control him." Friends of the family said the parents knew of the son's penchant for making bombs. Bill -- his father -- bought the guns used in the killings as a way to divert his son's obsession with weapons into a supervised hobby. They even hired an anger-management counselor who clearly had no success with the junior Charlie Manson.

Two days after the rampage, police disclosed that Kip had lunged at an officer in the police station with a hunting knife he had taped to his leg. When he arrived at the station the handcuffed freckle-faced killer was briefly placed in an interviewing room while his accompanying officer left to secure his weapon. When he returned, Kinkel attacked the officer with the knife and the officer pepper sprayed him.

With six instances of rampaging students in schools logged into the Archives, experts and psychologist are trying to explain this emerging phenomenon. In fact, they have coined a new term to classify this kind of schoolyard behavior: Intermittent Explosive Disorder. All occurences of IED seem to have taken place in predominantly white, semi-rural, middle-class school districts with no prior history of violent crime coupled with easy access to high-powered weapons.

On November 2000 national elections Kinkel emerged as a central figure in the debate over an Oregon ballot measure that could reduce the sentences of thousands of inmates. "If Kip Kinkel is resentenced, I will be living in fear every day, along with my family and fellow victims, that if he is released he will hunt us all down," Jennifer Alldredge, a student wounded by Kinkel, wrote in the state's official voter guide. The Republican candidate for attorney general is also featuring Kinkel in TV ads that accuse the incumbent of supporting the earlier guidelines, which theoretically could reduce Kinkel's 112-year prison sentence to one that frees him at 21.

State Representative Jo Ann Bowman, a leading repeal supporter, argued that opponents are using Kinkel as a scare tactic. Even if the ballot measure passes, she said, no judge would resentence Kinkel as a juvenile. "There's no way that anyone could kill four people and wound 25 without spending an extremely long time in prison," the Portland Democrat said.

Hank Earl Carr (4) With three officers, a young boy and a repeat offender dead the carnage in the town of Brooksville, near Tampa, May 19, 1998, will be remebered as one of the deadliest days in the Florida's law enforcement history. The bloodshed started shortly after 10 a.m.,when Carr - then identifying himself as Joseph Lee Bennett - and his wife carried his 4-year-old stepson Joseph into a neighborhood fire station with his face blown off. They said the boy had been dragging the rifle behind him when they yelled at him to put it down and it went off. After the boy died he changed his story when questioned and the two detectives in charge cuffed him and decided to take him to headquarters.

Once he was in the back of the cruiser, he slipped out of the cuffs, grabbed the weapon of one of the two police officers and shot them both dead. Then he carjacked a truck and killed a rookie state trooper who tried to stop him. Next he crashed into another Florida Highway Patrol car and shot at a truck driver who suffered minor injuries. He then pulled off the highway when officers blew out the tires of the truck, and he fled into the gas station as shots rang out around him.

With more than 170 officers ready to pump him full of lead Hank took a 22-year-old female gas station clerk hostage and demanded to speak with his wife. Thing got even weirder when WFLA, a local radio station, decided to give him a call and and interview him live.

After repeated pleads from the radio host, Carr released the hostage unharmed after a nearly four-hour standoff, then put a bullet in his head as police shot tear gas into the station and the SWAT team closed in.

Not the nicest of men, Carr, 30, had a criminal record dating back to 1986 that included burglary, domestic violence, assault, grand larceny, possession of cocaine and resisting an officer with violence. "He would beat me constantly," said Evelyn Sacks, his ex-girlfriend in Ohio and mother of two children to Carr. "I'm glad he's dead. Live like that, die like that." Police confiscated three rifles from his home, including a Chinese version of the AK-47 assault rifle.

Matthew Beck (4) On March 6, 1998, Matthew Beck, a disgruntled accountant at Connecticut's lottery headquarters, opened fire at his supervisors killing four people before putting a bullet through his own head. Beck, 35, had just returned from a four-month stress related medical leave. He succesfully filed a grievance report involving his demotion from accountant to data processor and was awaiting back pay. A day before the carnage he met with his union representative to complain about the change of his job classification.

Beck, an eight-year lottery employee, came to work armed with a Glock semi-automatic handgun, a butcher knife and three clips containing at least 19 rounds each. Half an hour after reporting to work he left his office and headed for the executive suites where he pulled out his weapons and started wasting supervisors. Witnesses said he was a man on a mission: "He didn't come in and just start blasting. He planned it. He was definitely after the managers."

Beck killed with a calculated coldness. First he walked into the office of Michael Logan, an information services manager who first denied his grievance, who he shot and stabbed with the butcher knife. He then walked into an adjacent area where chief financial officer and a former one-term mayor of New Britain Linda Mlynarczyk, 38, sat waiting to meet with him. Beck pointed his gun at Mlynarczyk -- with whom he had recently discussed his new duties -- said, "Bye, bye," and pumped three bullets into her.

The third to go was Rick Rubelmann, 40, vice president of operations who he had once appealed to for help. Then he chased Otho Brown, the state's lottery president, out to the parking lot. Brown, 54, stumbled, fell on his back, held up his arms, and started begging "Don't kill me, don't kill me," to which Beck answered, "Aw, shut up," and shot him. As police closed in on him, Beck shot himself in the right temple and fell just feet from his last victim. He died a short time later at Hartford Hospital.

Beck, a Florida Institute of Technology graduate who had worked for state government for eight years, contended he got a bad deal in July 1996 when supervisors shifted him from number-crunching at the lottery agency to testing computer software. He thought he should have been paid more for the computer job than his accountant's salary. Now in retrospect, they should forked over the back pay he demanded. Especially after reading the sticker on the front door of the house where he lived with his father: "Warning: Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."

Months before the rampage Beck -- who had taken to shaving his head and wearing a goatee -- complained to at least two newspapers that lottery players were being cheated. He claimed the Connecticut Lottery Corp. exaggerated potential winnings to spur ticket sales, and that store clerks were taking winning scratch tickets for themselves by cracking the computer system. He also complained to The Day of New London and The Hartford Courant about unfair treatment at work. The Courant described him as frothing at the mouth and said his eyes were "wild," while the Day described him as "scruffy" in appearance.

Beck's father, choking back tears, read a written statement from him and his wife apologizing to the victims' families. "His murderous act was monstrous, but he was not a monster, as his friends and family can attest." Not surprisingly, Beck was described by friends and co-workers as a quiet and diligent. "He was the all-American guy. He was Mr. Clean-cut," a childhood friend told the press. And, like many other all-American guys in the Mass Murderer Hit List, Beck had a powerful cache of weapons -- including three assault rifles and two large-caliber handguns -- stashed in his house.

His father said Matthew did not hint at what he was planning to do as he left to work the morning of the rampage. After waking up he fed his cat, greeted his father and headed out the door saying, "Well, I'm off." The soon-to-be-rampagerplanned to see the blockbuster "Titanic" with a friend that night. "He looked perfectly normal. I had seen him when he was depressed, and he certainly wasn't depressed."

The father acknowledged that his son suffered from bouts with depression and attempted suicide several times. The most recent was last year, when he found him nearly comatose from an overdose of medication. Donald sobbed as he recalled saving his son's life. "That might have been a mistake," he said, "That might have been a mistake."

Arturo Reyes Torres (4) On December 19, 1997, a disgruntled state transportation worker shot and killed four men at a maintenance yard before he was shot to death by police in a gun battle. More than 60 people were at the maintenance yard run by the state Transportation Department when Arturo Reyes Torres arrived armed with an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun, and circled the trailers in the pelting rain, firing through the windows and methodically picking off employees. When police arrived, Reyes started to drive away, but a motorist blocked his brown Mercedes and the gunfight broke out.

Reyes, 41, who had worked at the yard for about 15 years, was fired after he was videotaped selling about 100 dollars worth of scrap aluminum from the yard. A common practice for Caltrans employees, Reyes complained to friends that he had been singled out by his supervisor.

Three of the men shot by Reyes died at the yard. They were identified as Hal Bierlein, 51; Wayne Bowers, 43; and Paul White, 40. The fourth, Michael Kelley, 49, died later at a hospital. The officer, John Warde, was taken to St. Joseph Hospital, where he was in stable condition. Another worker, Reginald Tennyson, 54, was reported in fair condition.

Patrick J. Biller (4) On December 5, 1997, short tempered Patrick J. Biller, 53, killed his wife and three children early in the morning before putting a bullet through his head. Biller, a phone company technician, was described by co-worker Brian Abdallah as a scary individual. "He was unpredictable. He had some temper. He explodes at people. He cursed at the boss and walked out of the office."

Biller was driven to commit family annihilation by mounting health and money problems. He developed a heart condition and had as many as six bypass operations. He also underwent a kidney operation that didn't go too well, and a gallbladder operation. Meanwhile his wife developed breast cancer. "His health was deteriorating. He had financial pressures of school tuition, a mortgage and lack of overtime due to light duty. He just couldn't see an alternative," said a co-worker.

Jerry Scott Heidler (4) On December 4, 1997, three weeks before Christmas, a Georgia couple who cared for foster children, along with two of their own children, were shot to death while they slept by an intruder who then took three other children from the home. Later, the children were found alive by a farmer along a country road about 30 miles away. The children said Heidler had kidnapped them as he fled the murder scene. Heidler was also charged with molesting one of the surviving girls.miles away.

Toombs County Sheriff Charles Durst said Jerry Scott Heidler -- a man who is not related to any of the children -- was arrested and charged with the killings. The dead, identified as Danny and Kim Daniels, their 16-year-old daughter and their 12-year-old son, were all shot in their beds as they slept.

The kidnapped children were the couple's 10 and 8-year-old daughters, and a 9-year-old foster child, also a girl. The girls were dropped off on the side of a road in Bacon County, two counties to the south. A farmer found them and called authorities, who alerted police in Toombs County. Left alive at the blood-splattered home were a 10-month-old boy and a 5-year-old boy, who was the brother of the 9-year-old foster girl.

Information obtained from the surviving children of the Dasher Lane Massacre led investigators to Jerry Scott Heidler -- who the children knew as Scott Taylor -- for the murder of their foster parents and their two childen. Heidler, 20, was charged with murder, kidnapping and burglary. The Daniels were residents of the curiously named town of Santa Claus, a community 70 miles west of Savannah where the streets are named for reindeer.

Before the killings, Heidler had briefly lived with the family while trying to overcome drug and alcohol problems. According to his mother Heidler, who had dated Jessica Daniels, was distraught because his girlfriend had given birth to a stillborn baby two days earlier. GBI agents found Heidler hiding under his mother's house in Alma. According to testimony in hearings, Heidler said he remembered the killings as a dream.

Heidler, who had open-heart surgery when he was 4 years old, was placed in two foster homes because of poor supervision by his mother. He had imaginary friends, a mouse that he carried around in his hand, said Sylvia Boatright, Heidler's foster mother when he was 11. "Scotty was also afraid of the dark. He was afraid a knife would come through the ceiling and cut him."

Later, when he returned to his mother, he attended a school in Baxley for children with learning disabilities. He mutilated himself by picking at his skin until he bled, testified Marilyn Dryden, his teacher at the time.

James Maish, a forensic psychologist from Augusta, testified Friday that Heidler suffered from a severe case of borderline personality disorder. He said Heidler had eight of the nine symptoms, including suicide attempts, outbursts of uncontrolled anger and "frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment."

On July 6, 1999, Heidler, along with nine other prisoners, escaped from a Toombs County, Georgia, jail cell. He was quickly found and returned to captivity. On August 27 jury selection began for his four counts of murder and three counts of kidnapping. On September 4 Heidler was sentenced to death for the murders of four members of the Daniels family. The execution date was set for between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8, although the sentence will be automatically appealed to the Supreme Court of Georgia within 30 days.

Daryl Keith Holton (4) In a twisted attempt to resolve a child custody fight, on November 30, 1997, Daryl Keith Holton shot his three children and his ex-wife's 4-year-old daughter and surrendered to police. After the killing Holton -- who lived in Shelbyville, Tennessee -- went to the police station and confessed. He said he killed the kids because he was afraid he would never gain custody of his three sons. He also told police he had made some bombs that were in his apartment. Investigators don't know why he made the bombs.

"It all just built up and he snapped," his cousin Keisha Leverette said. "He's always been a very quiet man, moody. But there was never any indication of this. He was very concerned about his children." The children -- Stephen, 13, Brent, 10, and Eric, 7, and Kayla, 4 -- were shot to death with a Russian SKS semiautomatic assault rifle, police said. Kayla was not Holton's daughter, but he considered her his child, Leverette said.

The children thought they were going Christmas shopping when Holton picked them up on Nov. 30, 1997. Instead, they stopped by the auto body repair shop where he worked. There, 4-year-old Kayla, ex-wife Crystle Holton's daughter by another man, wrote a letter asking Santa Claus to bring her a "Tickle Me Elmo" doll for Christmas. Then, police said, Holton line the kids up and shot them from the back. Not satisfied with the carnage, Holton went looking for his former wife and her boyfriend but could not find them, police said, then turned himself in.

Holton, 35, was born in Shelbyville but moved often during his childhood because his stepfather was in the military, relatives said. He worked in the repair shop the last three years but lived in public housing until moving into the shop earlier this year.

An Army veteran who served in the Gulf War, Daryl and his former wife divorced about four years ago. Crystle, the ex-wife, allowed the children to visit Daryl so they could go Christmas shopping. Although he visited the kids regulary, she had kept the children away from him for 2 1/2 months, after filing a protective order because "he beat the crap out of me." She said he loved the children, especially Kayla, even though he wasn't the girl's biological father. "All I could be thinking about is what could possibly be going through their minds, the expressions on their face, when they realized what he was going to do," she said tearfully.

On June 16, 1999 the infanticidal dad was sentenced to death for killing the four children. Holton refused to let anyone defend him.

Courtney Mathews & David Housler (4) A former soldier was convicted of murder for the deaths of four Taco Bell workers during a robbery in 1994, David Housler -- who confessed to being the getaway driver and lookout man-- was handed a mandatory sentence of life in prison. "You've just convicted an innocent 23-year-old man," defense attorney Michael Terry told the jury.

Housler, of Radcliff, Ky., was found guilty of helping gunman and fellow Fort Campbell soldier Courtney Mathews, 23. Mathews, who had worked at the Taco Bell for 10 days as a part-time dishwasher and food handler, forced his co-workers to lie on the floor after the restaurant closed, then shot them. The safe and the cash register were cleaned out, but the amount taken was not disclosed.

Coy Wayne Wesbrook (4) Annoyed that his ex-wife had sex with another man at a party, on November 13, 1997, Coy Wayne Wesbrook went on a murderous rampage killing her and three others. A fifth person, the woman's 28-year-old boyfriend, was critically wounded. Wesbrook, 39, was arrested at his ex-wife's house in the Houston suburb of Channelview and was charged with capital murder.

The lethal ex-husband allegedly became enraged when he found out that his ex-wife had just had a sexual encounter. Apparently he tried to leave but one of the guest took his keys and began taunting him. He then went for his high-powered deer rifle and opened fire. A neighbor who heard gunshots at about 2 a.m., grabbed a cellular phone, went next door, saw the bodies, and called 911.

Susan Eubanks (4) One for the white-trash-with-a-gun-file. On October 28, 1997, hard drinking 33-year-old Susan Eubanks shot her four children to death and then turned the gun on herself. Drunk and distraught over debts, a failed marriage, and her latest lover leaving her, Sue shot her 6-year-old, 7-year-old and 14-year-old sons in the head killing them instantly. Her 4-year-old son was found by sheriff deputies in critical condition and later died in the hospital.

Sheriff's deputies were called to her home in San Marcos by her estranged husband who said he had recieved suicidal telephone message from her. When they arrived deputies said they found another boy -- a visiting cousin -- unharmed inside the house. Among the dead bodies littering the room deputies found Susan bleeding and crying for help. She had unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide by shooting herself in the abdomen. Court documents show Sue was afraid of her abusive, drunken, ex-husband who had threatened previously to kill her.

The child killing Mom staged a miraculous recovery from her self-inflicted gunshot wound to the abdomen at the Palomar Medical Center where she once worked as a medical technician. On October 30, she was arraignment held in her hospital room. Susan -- with tubes in her arms and down her throat -- pleaded not guilty to charges that she murdered her four sons. San Diego County Municipal Judge William Draper refused to set bail and scheduled a court hearing for November 21.

Infanticidal mom Susan Eubanks, who blamed her shooting of her four sons on drugs, alcohol and bad relationships with men, was convicted of murder by a California court. Ms. Eubanks shot her sons, ages 4 to 14, after an argument with her boyfriend in October 1997. She stopped once to reload the .38-caliber revolver and then shot herself in the stomach.

Defense attorney Bill Rafael claimed his client - an unemployed, debt-burdened nursing assistant - was a good mother until work-related injuries led to her addiction to pain killers. She also began drinking to kill the emotional pain caused by bad relationships with men. Prosecutors argued that Ms. Eubanks deliberately plotted to kill the children to torment her boyfriend and the boys' fathers - her two ex-husbands.

The day of the killings, Ms. Eubanks' boyfriend, Rene Dobson, called police and asked deputies to accompany him to her home. The two had been drinking all day and argued, and she took away his car keys and slashed his tires.      Eubanks had been watching a football game on television and drinking heavily at a bar in Escondido on Oct. 26, 1997, when she returned to the family's ramshackle home in nearby San Marcos and shot each boy in the head with a .38-caliber pistol. During the shootings, she reloaded the pistol and also shot herself once in the stomach.

     Eubanks had a blood-alcohol level of 0.19%, far above the legal limit for intoxication, and had ingested more than her daily dose of the tranquilizer Valium, authorities said.

     While at the bar, Eubanks and her boyfriend, a construction worker, had an argument, which led him to say he wanted to end the relationship. As he tried to remove some clothes and construction tools from the home, Eubanks smashed his truck and the two nearly got into a fistfight.

     After sheriff's deputies arrived, the construction worker left. The fatal shootings took place only moments after the deputies left. Evidence at the trial indicated that Eubanks had long suffered from alcohol-related problems and was a victim of spousal abuse during a volatile marriage. At the time of the murders, Eubanks had a restraining order against her husband of nine years, Eric Eubanks, a cabinetmaker who had been convicted four months earlier of spousal battery and sentenced to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

Carl Drega (4) A local troublemaker and former soldier, Carl Drega blasted his way to infamy on August 19, 1997 when he killed a New Hampshire judge, two state troopers, a newspaper editor and wounded four officers in a three-hour rampage. The carnage began at about 2:45 p.m. outside a grocery store in Colebrook, a tiny town just south of the Canadian border, when Drega killed two New Hampshire state troopers.

He shot the first trooper, Scott Phillips, with an assault rifle after he was pulled over for having excessive rust on the back of his red pickup truck. Unaware of shots being fired, the second trooper arrived and was immediately shot dead. Then Drega finished off the wounded Phillips with four pistol shots at point-blank range. Drega then took a bullet-proof vest and fled the crime scene in one of the officer's patrol car.

Drega, 62, drove to a building housing both the offices of part-time Judge Vickie Bunnell -- a former Columbia selectwoman who he had tangled with repeatedly over property disputes -- and the weekly News and Sentinel newspapers. Before being shot in the back in the building's parking lot, Judge Bunnell ran through the offices of the newspaper shouting: "It's Drega. He's got a gun!" Next Drega shot Dennis Joos, paper's editor, eight times as they struggled for the gun. Everyone else in the building fled out the back door.

The slain judge had once obtained a restraining order against Drega, whom she called a "time bomb." Her troubles with him dated back to 1991, when she had him removed in handcuffs from the town hall over a zoning dispute. Not satisfied with the carnage, Drega jumped back into the stolen cruiser and raced across the Connecticut River and went looking for another town official, Kenenth Parkhurst, who was also involved in his zoning dispute. Fortunately Mr. Parkhurst was not home. He was at a dentist appointment and his wife was visiting a relative. In a tailspin Drega decided return to his own clapboard house in Columbia -- the property involved in the alleged planning violations -- and burn it to the ground.

Next he drove to Bloomfield, Vermont, where he shot at a fish and game officer. The injured deputy apparently slumped against the accelerator, and his patrol car swerved into some trees. Drega then abandoned the stolen police cruiser and waited for more officers to show up. The rampager positioned himself to ambush anyone who approached the cruiser. Fortunately a police dog sensed the danger and snapped to a position signaling, "alert." In all, three officers were wounded in the 45-minute ensuing firefight that ended with Drega's death.

Officers searching through the burnt hulk of his house discovered a cache of explosives and a series of booby-traps in an "elaborate system of tunnels" surrounding the property. It included 600lb of ammonium nitrate and 60 gallons of diesel fuel, the lethal cocktail used by McVeigh & Co. in the Oklahoma City bombing. State police also found bomb-making books and a weapons manual in the smoldering ruins of his home.

As a precaution ATF agents decided to torch Drega's barn -- called by one official a booby-trapped "bomb-making factory" -- to avoid any further injuries to investigating law officers at the site. Witnesses to the fire counted up to 40 small explosions inside the structure as it burned. The New Hamshire Attorney General Philip McLaughlin said it was not clear whether Drega had planned his deadly rampage or was improvising as he went along.

Neighbors said Drega was a rampage waiting to happen. For the last three days they kept hearing him shooting his gun. One neighbor thought he was: "Weirder than a three-dollar bill." Another described him as: "Somebody that you should be goddammned afraid of. He had bad blood for everybody. He was a psycho, a terror." Kenneth Parkhurst -- the man saved by his dentist appointment -- said: "He was extremely clever, but as nutty a man as you'd ever meet. He was one you were afraid to be around because you never knew what he was going to do next."

Kenneth Ray Ransom, Richard Wilkerson & James Randle (4) On October 28, 1997, Kenneth Ray Ransom became the 32nd Inmate in 1997 to be executed in Texas. Ken was executed by lethal injection for having killed at least one person in a 1983 botched robbery of an amusement center in Houston that left four men dead. Insisting on his innocence to the very end, Ken said his death would be "an instrument to abolishing the death penalty." He apologized to the victims' families not because he felt guilty, but "because of the pain all of them are going through each holiday, each birthday that they're without their loved ones."

As Ken began chanting a Muslim prayer, his mother, who witnessed the execution from a chamber behind a glass partition, pleaded with him to contact her if he returned in another life. "If you can come back, come back and tell me how you are doing," she said. As her son began to lose consciousness after being lethally injected Pearlie Ransom collapsed, pleading, "Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus."

On the night of the rampage Ken and two accomplices -- the already executed Richard Wilkerson and James Randle, who was 16 at the time of the killings and is now serving a life sentence -- went to the Malibu Grand Prix video arcade and go-cart track ostensibly to collect Wilkerson's final paycheck and avenge his firing.

The men arrived at the arcade at closing time packing butcher knives and herded three workers -- 22-year-old Roddy Harris and brothers Arnold, 19, and Joerene Pequeno, 18 -- into a bathroom and locked them in the stalls. They then pulled the victims out one by one and stabbed them repeatedly. A fourth victim, 18-year-old night manager Anil Varughese, was forced to open a safe containing the approximately $1,300 taken in the robbery. Varughese was found dead in the arcade's office, where Wilkerson slashed his throat so violently he broke the 6-inch blade on his knife.

Charles Smith (4) On July 28, 1997, Charles Smith, 53, fatally shot his ex-girlfriend, 34-year-old Cindy Benson in her hometown of Joliet. Then he drove with her body 36 miles to her sister and brother-in-law's home and killed three of her relatives and raped another. Charlie hanged himself after the raping a 13-year-old girl and unsuccessfully trying to strangle two other children. A neighbor said the quick-tempered Charlie was upset that his ex-girlfriend's family disapproved of their relationship because he was black and she was white.

Alex Baranyi Jr. & David Anderson (4) Alex and David, a pair of high-school dropouts from hell, 17, have been charged as adults with four counts of murder for the senseless slayings of a Bellevue, Washington family of four. The two boys are accused of killing Rose and William Wilson and their daughters, Kimberly, 20, and Julia, 17.

Court papers show that Baranyi confessed to the killings after his arrest. The first to die was Kimberly who was strangled in a Bellevue park early January 4, 1997. Then her parents and younger sister were bludgeoned and stabbed to death in their nearby home the same day. In November, both teens dropped out of the Off Campus School, an alternative high school program in Bellevue. Before that, they attended Bellevue High.

Mark Anthony Duke (4) On March 4, 1999, a Shelby County Circuit Court jury in Alabama needed less than 35 minutes to find 17-year-old Mark Duke guilty of four counts of capital murder. Duke was convicted in the March 23, 1997 murders of his father, Randy Duke, 39; the elder Duke's fiancee, Dedra Mims Hunt, 29; and Ms. Hunt's daughters, 7-year-old Chelsea Hunt and 6-year-old Chelisa Hunt. Defense attorneys did not disputed he killed his father, but painted Randy Duke as a heavy drinker who abused his son.

Witnesses testified Duke was angry that his father had denied him use of a truck, and that he and Samra entered the house intending to kill the four. According to testimony, Duke shot his father after telling him "I'll see you in hell." The woman was shot and the girls stabbed and their throats were slit.

Samra, 21, was convicted of four counts of capital murder last year and sentenced to death. He testified against Duke, saying Duke shot his father and Ms. Hunt and slashed Chelisa's throat. Samra admitted cutting Chelsea's throat, but said Duke was holding the little girl down.

Michael LaFayette Ellison, 18, and David Layne Collums, 19, pleaded guilty to murder and were sentenced to 16 years in prison in exchange for testifying against Duke. Prosecutors claimed Collums and Ellison provided Duke and Samra with transportation to and from the house the day of the killings.

Private Oleg Lokhmatov (4) For reasons unknown Oleg Lokhmatov, a Russian draftee at a military facility in the Ural mountains, killed three fellow soldiers on guard duty with him and a civilian in a one night rampage.

At about 2 a.m. on January 11, 1997, Oleg killed his fellow guards, stole their ammunition and went to the nearby village of Oboryno, about 1,200 Km. east of Moscow. In Oboryno he entered a shop, killed a customer and wounded an employee. A special operations team apprehended the rampaging private about two hours after the bloodshed.

Norman Dean Yazzie (4) On September 1, 1996, Norman Dean Yazzie, a man driven insane by his cheating wife, shot at his five children, killing his four daughters and wounding his son. The vengeful familicide fired 35 times at his children inside the family's trailer home on a Navajo reservation in Dinnehotso, a small community just south of the Arizona-Utah border.

Yazzie shot his four daughters repeatedly in the head with a .22-caliber rifle. His 11-year-old son survived the rampage by playing dead as he was shot in the shoulder and the chest. Before the killings Yazzie wrote a rambling note to his wife, Cecilia, describing his outrage over her ongoing affair with another man.

Johnny Satterwhite (4) On November 18, 1996, having been separated from his wife for a week, millworker Johnny Satterwhite, in a desperate act of revenge, killed his son and three stepchildren before committing suicide.

After the collapse of his 12-year marriage with his wife Bertha, Johnny, a resident of Laurens, South Carolina, criptically wished his estranged wife a merry Christmas. He also told her that she would be alone in 97. On the side he asked his employee to remove her from his life insurance policy.

Sometime during the weekend of November 18 Johnny shot the four children in their beds. He then asked a friend to tell Bertha that he had left four packages in the house waiting for her and then drove to a nearby reservoir to commit suicide.

Dale Pierre & William Andrews (4) Known as the "Drano killer". Dale was born on the Island of Tobago on Jan. 21, 1953. His family moved to the US in 1970. He entered the Air Force in 1973, and was stationed at Hill AFB in Utah at the time he committed the infamous "Hi-Fi Murders.". On April 22, 1974, Dale and his partner, William Andrews rounded up a six innocent employees in a stereo shop in Odgen, Utah, tied them up in the basement, and made them all drink Drano.

While they were wrenching and vomiting, he went around and forced them to drink another round. He then took the time to rape one of the girls after she was done vomiting, while the others lay there and suffered. After the girl was raped, she pleaded for her life. He then took his .38 and shot her in the head, along with all the others-one at a time. One of his victims, a middle aged man, was still alive. John proceeded to take a ball point pen and kick it all the way into his ear until the man could feel the end of it in his throat.

This man, and another young boy, Cory Naisbitt. survived the ordeal. The young boy suffered horrible brain damage from the bullet, along with numerous operations to repair his esophagus which was destroyed by the Drano.

Fred Heyworth (4) In 1997 Fred, 59, was convicted of murdering his four nieces and nephews in an act of revenge against their mother. The iracible type, Fred poured gasoline through the mail slot of the family's Southampton home at night and set it ablaze, creating a fireball which turned the house into an inferno. Ms. Justice Steel said during his sentencing: "What evil brainstorm prompted you to act as you did we will never know."

The Winchester Crown Court heard about Heyworth's feelings of anger, jealousy, unhappiness and revenge after his wife, Janette, left him and sought refuge at the home of her sister, Beverley Good. Four of Mrs Good's children died in the fire caused by Heyworth; Terry, 12, Alison, 10, Nicola, eight, and Patrick, six.

The judge told Heyworth: "You perpetrated an act of the very greatest wickedness. Your actions were premeditated and carefully planned. You intended to burn the house. You intended, by the jury's verdict, to cause really serious harm to the occupants or kill them." She sentenced him to life for the death of each child.

Afterwards, Mr and Mrs Good said in a statement that they were pleased justice had been done. "However, no punishment will be sufficient for the crime that has been committed. No sentence would compensate or end the loss and suffering felt by us. We love our children and will miss them every day of our lives."

Virgil Martinez (4) A security guard in the Houston area, Virgil was first hailed as a hero on the local news for thwarting a robbery at an EZ-Pawn pawn shop before he became another jealous-ex-boyfriend-rampage killer.

After repeated rejections to his marriage proposals by his ex-girlfriend Veronica Fuentes, Virgil cracked and shot her to death. He also killed her two children, Joshua and Cassandra, and a friend John Gomez. On the run, Virgil was captured when it was discovered that he had checked himself into a Kerrville, Texas, mental hospital, claiming to be hearing voices.

David Alvarez (4) Jilted by his girlfriend, Dave went on a shooting and stabbing rampage in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Baldwin Park killing two men and two girls--sisters age 9 and 12--and wounding three others. Three of the dead--the girls and a gardener working at the house--were gagged, forced to lie face-down on the floor and shot in the head. The girls' uncle was the fourth victim. Their father was left in critical condition. Two boys, ages 2 and 3, cousins of the dead girls, were later found cowering in the house unharmed.

Jesús Andrés Iglesias (4) Before being riddled with bullets, Jesús -- a 40-year-old, mentally disturbed man -- fired more than 30 shots with his double-barrelled hunting rifle at a religious procession passing below his window. The "Corpus Christi Massacre" as it was immediately dubbed by the Spanish media, ocurred in Herreros de Rueda, a tiny village of 35 inhabitants near León in northwest Spain.

Three people in the procession - Victorico Martínez, 73, Herminio Martínez, 72, and Eva González, 22 - were shot in the back and died on the spot. A young sergeant of the Civil Guard died during the ensuing gun battle. "Everyone knew the killer was disturbed, loco. But why did the police let him keep his guns? Why was he allowed a licence?" one of the villagers said. "This is what happens when you allow just anyone to have a gun."

The killer had a history of confrontation with the villagers. He was often abusive and threatening. He was known to fire several rounds from his rifle every night into the trees in his yard. "We complained several times to the Civil Guard," one villager said, "but they never did anything. They said that he hadn't hurt anyone."

Jacqueline Williams, Fedell Caffey & Levern Ward (4) On March 20, 1998, a jury convicted and sentenced to death Jacqueline Williams, 31, for the 1995 killings of Debra Evans; her 10-year-old daughter, Samantha; and her 7-year-old son, Joshua.

In what could be a bad episode of the Twilight Zone, Williams -- described by prosecutors as "the enormously evil" -- pretended to be pregnant, held a baby shower and made a fake birth certificate before the savage murder of the very pregnant Debra Evans who's baby was cut out of her womb. The baby, fathered by Jackie's cousin and co-defendant, Laverne Ward, survived and now lives with his grandparents. Evans, 28, and her daughter Samantha, 10, were murdered in their apartment in the Chicago suburb of Addison on November 16, 1995. Evans' 7-year-old son, Joshua, was abducted and later stabbed to death. His body was dumped in an alley.

The defense portrayed Williams as an abused and frightened woman who would do anything to please her boyfriend, Fedell Caffey, who has also been charged with the murders. During some of the most compelling testimony, Joshua implicated Williams, Caffey, and her cousin Levern Ward before dying from multiple stab wounds. On August 17 Ward, 26, was sentenced to life in prison. On November 11, 1998 Fedell Caffey was convicted of three counts of murder and one of kidnapping for the gruesome killings.

Anthony & Damian Clemente (4) On May 12, 1997, Anthony and Damian, a murderous father and son team, were given mandatory life sentences for a lunchtime shooting spree that left four neighborhood rivals dead in a crowded Boston eatery. Vincent Perez, a family friend, was acquitted of murder charges and will be sentenced later on weapons charges.

The 1995 shootings at the 99 Restaurant climaxed a longtime feud between the Clementes and the Luisi family. Prosecutors said the dispute involved attempts to carve out a niche in the neighborhood's drug trade; Clemente family members said only that it was about respect.

The younger Clemente and Perez were captured outside the restaurant by two plainclothes officers who were eating at the restaurant. The elder Clemente was arrested at his son's arraignment hearing. Anthony Clemente testified that he shot the men to protect his son and Perez. However, one unidentified juror told The Boston Globe that the elder Clemente was convicted of all four murders because he "hunted them down and killed them."

Mark A. Clark(4) On September 18, 1995, Mark decided go out with a bang, and take his family with him. Mark, a laborer, packed his estranged wife and three kids in the family station wagon and took them to the a Maryland shopping center to buy back-to-school clothing. As they arrived to the Middlesex Shopping Center he detonated a bomb made out of commercially available explosives hidden in the glove compartment spewing car and body parts all over the parking lot of the mall.

David Whitson (4) On the same day as the Clark familicide, David Whitson shot-gunned to death his estranged wife and three daughters and wounded his mother-in-law in Scotts Mills, Oregon.

Willie Woods(4) Willie, a Los Angeles city electrician, felt he was being singled out by his supervisors at work. Taking matters into his own hands, on Wednesday July 19, 1995, Willie went to work at the Piper Technical Center in Downtown Los Angeles with payback in his mind and a gun in his hand. At 10 a.m., after a brief argument about a negative performance evaluation he received, the vengeaful radio repairman left the room and returned moments later with a 19-shot Glock semiautomatic pistol in his hand.

Willie shot and killed two supervisors in their work cubicles in the offices of the Piper Tech technical center. Then walked downstairs to the basement and hunted down his other two victims. He found and killed one in the hallway, and the other in another office. Two officers of the police gang unit who happened to be inside Piper Tech on an unrelated matter arrested Willie as he tried to leave the building. Co-workers said that Woods, "seemed like a mellow guy." His problems with his supervisors started 6 months before the killings. Once he threw a chair across the room when he was being counseled by one of the victims.

On November 5, 1996, Willie was found guilty by a Los Angeles court of three charges of first-degree murder and one of second-degree murder. On February, 7, 1997 Willie was sentenced to life without possibility of parole.

Tommy Zethraeus (4) On December, 1994, Swedish mass murderer Tommy Zethraeus opened fire on a crowd waiting in line to get inside a nightclub in Stockholm. Apparently the bouncer had pissed him off earlier that night. Short tempered Tommy went home to get a standard Norwegian army issue AG-7 (equivalent to AK-47) and returned shooting his gun. Four died -- the bouncer and three innocent girls -- and seven others were wounded.

After a three-day manhunt police caught up with him and his buddies that accompanied him to the club. In September 1995 Tommy was sentenced to life and is currently serving time in Sweden's premiere maximum security prison.

Ever the humanist, Tommy, in a 40 minute interview on Swedish television, expressed that he regretted killing three innocent bystanders while shooting at the bouncer. Too bad the bouncer didn't let him into the club in the first place.

Dean Mellberg (4) On June 21, 1994, Dean Mellberg killed four people and wounded at least 21 as he opened fire for less than 10 minutes at Fairchild Air Force Base Hospital. The rampage ended when a military police officer shot and killed Mellberg , who had been ousted from the Air Force one month before for mental problems stemming from chronic masturbation. The psychologist who recommended his discharge was the first to die. The supposedly secure area turned into a war zone as Mellberg turned his AK-47 on men, women and children in the hospital waiting room. As he left the building, he fired on anyone moving in the parking lot. He was shot dead in the parking lot. Mellberg, a Michigan native, had been stationed at Fairchild since 1993.

Clay Shrout (4)On May 25, 1994, 16-year-old Clay Shrout got ready for school differently than any other day. Instead of getting his school work in order, he loaded a .22-caliber rifle, and killed his mother, father, and his two sisters. Then he got in his parents car and started driving. Along the way he kidnapped a girl he knew at gun point. Eventually he drove to school where he held his class hostage. After several hours Clay gave up to police.

Alan Winterborne (4) All Alan wanted was a job and no one would give it to him. So on December 2, 1993, this computer analyst became the avenging angel of the unemployed. First he went to the Star-Free Press in Ventura, California, and presented his case against the Unemployment Agency to an editor. Then at 11:41 he entered an unemployment office in Oxnard and started shooting at state employees, killing three. Afterwards he headed to another unemployment office killing a cop on his way. He was shot down by the police in the parking lot of the second unemployment office before he could wreak more havoc.

Christopher Green(4) On March, 1995, Christopher Green, a former postal worker, returned to rob the tiny neighborhood post office where he worked and executed four-- two workers who knew him and two customers. A third customer was left in critical condition with a bullet in his head. Green said he held up the post office because he owed back rent and was buried under "a mountain of debt."

Eric Houston (4)On May 1, 1992, Eric Houston, 20, killed four people and wounded 10 in an armed siege at his former high school in Olivehust, California. Prosecutors said the attack was in retribution for a failing grade. Houston was convicted and was given a death sentence.

Joseph M. Harris (4) After mail clerk Joe Harris was fired from his job at the Ridgewood , New Jersey, post office he threatened with retaliation. Many feared that he would. While at work in the night shift, the chronically angry Harris made a habit of practicing his kung-fu kicks on the mail bags instead of doing his job. One former co-worker remarked after his killing spree: "He was always walking around like some karate guy, chopping his hands in the air."

18 months after his dismissal, Joe made good on his promise to return. On October 9, 1991, Joe first went to the home of his former supervisor armed for war. He packed an Uzi, a .22-caliber machine gun with silencer, several knives and hand grenades, a homemade pipe bomb, and a samurai sword. His first victim was his supervisor's fiancee who he shot in the head execution style while watching TV. Then he headed upstairs and sliced his supervisors on her bed with his samurai sword. Around 2 a.m. Joe arrived at his former post office and killed the two mail handlers on duty. After a 4-hour standoff, he surrendered to the police SWAT team. At the time Joe was wearing a Ninja-styled hood over a gas mask, a bulletproof vest and black fatigues.

Thomas McIlvane (4) In 1991 -- a month after lethal postal worker Joseph Harris rampaged through his Ridgewood post office -- another fired postal worker express mailed himself into obvlivion. When Thomas McIlvane's appeal to be reinstated as a letter carrier in suburban Detroit was denied all his former coworkers knew there would be hell to pay. McIlvaine, a champion kick boxer with a black belt in karate, was fired a year before for cursing at his supervisor as well as threatening other clerks and fighting with customers.

Thoroughly pissed-off about losing his job, the 31-year-old ex-Marine repeatedly warned that he would make Pat Sherrill's massacre at Edmond look like "Disneyland." After Harris' rampage in Ridgewood, one of the supervisors most hated by McIlvaine got very nervous and called the post-office security division in Detroit to ask for protection. The request was denied. Jokingly, some of the other workers drew up escape plans in the event of Tommy's return. On November 14, 1991, the day after his reinstatement was denied, the inevitable happened. Tommy Boy returned to his former post office in Royal Oak with a sawed-off Ruger .22-caliber semiautomatic hidden under his raincoat and wasted four supervisors -- among them the poor man who requested protection -- and wounded five others. After his ten minutes of inflicting terror on his former coworkers, McIlvane ended his rampage by stamping a bullet through his head. He lingered in a coma for a day before dying. Hopefully someone at the postal security division in Detroit lost their job over this senseless tragedy.

Douglas M. Buchanan Jr. (4) Unhappy about his father remarrying shortly after his mother died of cancer, Douglas M. Buchanan Jr. shot and stabbed to death his father, stepmother and two stepbrothers (ages 10 and 13). According to testimony at his trial in 1989, Buchanan felt left out when his father remarried six months after his mother died of cancer when he was 10.

On September 15, 1987 -- nine years later -- Buchanan showed up at the family home with a rifle and an argument erupted over a remark his father made about Buchanan's mother. Doud proceeded to shoot his father. Then he waited and fatally shot stepbrothers Donnie, 10, and Joel, 13, when they arrived home from school. Later he killed stepmother Geraldine Buchanan with a gun and knife.

Buchanan then fled with his wife, but they were captured 17 days later in New Mexico. His wife, Christianne, is serving four life terms for helping to plan the carnage. Asked why he killed the four, Buchanan told investigators: "They never treated me like a son, they treated me like an outsider all the time. I mean, I don't think they cared... They never talked to me when I was living there." On March 18, 1998, the jealous stepbrother was executed by lethal injection in a Virgina death chamber. When asked if he had a final statement, Doug, 29, smiled at witnesses and said, "Get the ride started. I'm ready to go."

Kevin Weaver (4) Another one from the file of unrequited lovers with a grudge. In 1987, 24-year-old Kevin Weaver clubbed his mother and sister to death in Bristol. Then, armed with three shotguns, he went hunting for his former fiancee killing two of her colleagues when she escaped. He was arrested and sent to Broadmoor for his lethally jealous tirade.

Wyley Gates (4) As a teen in the 1980's, Wiley Gates calculately murdered his father, brother, 3-year-old cousin and father's girlfriend. Thirteen years later, he failed to show up for two consecutive parole hearings, and was denied denied early release. He's serving an eight-and-a-third to 25-year sentence for conspiracy in the Columbia County murders. His accomplice, Damian Rossney, is up for a parole hearing next month.

Tom Grant, spokesman for the Division of Parole, said Gates, a prisoner at Collins Correctional Facility in Erie County, will remain behind bars until at least Feb. 2001, when he is eligible to again petition for parole. "Your indifference to human life demonstrates that you present a serious threat to community safety and welfare," the board said in a notice to Gates. "Release would also deprecate the seriousness of your offense."

Gates was a 17-year-old honors student in 1986 when he confessed to killing his father, brother, 3-year-old cousin and the father's girlfriend. At trial, Gates was convicted of conspiracy to murder his father and sentenced by Columbia County Judge John G. Leaman to the maximum sentence. Gates first became eligible for parole in 1995.

Gates, now 29, will have another opportunity to seek parole in two years. If the Parole Board continues to deny release, Gates will remain in prison until Aug. 7, 2003. A co-defendant, Damian Rossney, was convicted of conspiracy and criminal facilitation after evidence showed he helped plot the murders and hid the murder weapon. Rossney, who is serving a term of 8 1/3 to 25 years in Woodbourne Correctional Facility in Sullivan County, is slated for a parole hearing next month. Without parole, Rossney is slated for release July 10, 2005.

Barry Wayne McNamara (4) For some reason Barry thought he was the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth II and that his TV told him to kill his family because they were Soviet spies. So on a fateful January night in 1985, Barry did as he was told. He shot his father, sister and niece, and crushed his mother's skull with a rock. All, of course, in the name of democracy.

Lawrence Moore (4) On May 7, 1981, Lawrence Moore, a 20-year-old man with a brain defect, burst into the Oregon Museum Tavern and began shooting. Within seconds four people lay dead and 19 others were wounded. During the trial of another lethal Oregonian, serial killer Randy Woodfiend, defense attornies tried to lay the blame of Randy's killings on the mentally defective Moore. Fortunately good sense prevailed Moore did not become Woodfield's escape.

Robert Excell White (4)At age 36 Robert Excell White was sentenced to death for killing a small-town grocer Preston Broyle with a machine-gun. Not the nicest guy in the world, he also beat his pregnant Nicknamed "Excell the Executioner," Robert turned 61 in Huntsville Death Row on March 14.

When White arrived on Texas' death row August 26, 1974, four other men had already been sentenced to die under a new capital punishment law passed after the U.S. Supreme Court threw out all existing death penalty statutes in the nation. One of White's predecessors committed suicide. The three others had their sentences commuted to life terms, leaving White the dean of the Texas death row.

Some inmates suggest his status has allowed White to delude himself about the chances of being put to death. "They just can't get around to killing me because I've been here longer than anyone else," he's told fellow inmates. After he wrote to the Supreme Court asking that appeals of his 1974 capital murder conviction be ignored, his case languished in the courts.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the conviction in 1987 because White was not advised that what he told court-appointed psychiatrists could be used against him. Such warnings weren't required in 1974, but a 1981 Supreme Court ruling required them and allowed the mandate to be applied retroactively. In June 1987, he again was convicted of killing Broyle and sentenced to death. He was never tried for the other killings. Two 18-year-old customers, Gary Coker and Billy St. John, also died in the machine gun burst.

With the second conviction, the mandatory appeals process, which has averaged 10 years before Texas inmates are executed, began over. It's taken a dozen more years for White's appeals to run their course. In the total time he's been on death row, he's been joined by more than 600 condemned prisoners, 172 of whom have been taken to the death chamber.

In a confession, White said his crime spree began May 10, 1974, in Waco, where he fatally stabbed gun collector Robert Perryman, 53, and stole more than two dozen weapons, including a .30-caliber machine gun.

White and two companions, brothers James and Gary Livingston, drank until about midnight, then hopped into White's car and drove north to Dallas and beyond, toward McKinney. At daybreak, May 11, they pulled into the Hilltop Grocery Store in Princeton for gas. They had $2.

According to court documents, White grabbed the machine gun and ordered the three men inside the store. "All of them were shot repeatedly in the back of the head," Mrs. Lawson, 73, says. "We were never able to see my father after his death and I had a terrible time for years accepting it, because I didn't see him."

White and the Livingston brothers got $6 from the register and $60 from the victims' wallets and returned to Waco. White then fled to Cleveland, Miss., where he told a cousin about the shooting and turned himself in to police.

James Livingston, who accompanied White inside Hilltop Grocery but didn't shoot, was also convicted and condemned. His sentence was commuted to life in 1983. No parole is imminent for Livingston, whose record shows at least eight stints in solitary confinement. He remains in administrative segregation, meaning he has violated rules. On March 30, 1999, 61-year-old Robert Excell White was executed by lethal injection. Nicknamed "Excell the Executioner" by police, White's final words were, "Send me to my maker, warden."

Gary Livingston, who remained outside the store as a lookout, received a 20-year term and was freed in 1984. He committed suicide two years later.

Reynaldo Herrera Rodriguez (3) On September 7, 2001, a man in Simi Valley, California, allegedly shot and killed three relatives of an ex-girlfriend because he wrongly believed the woman had given him a viral disease. Reynaldo Herrera Rodriguez, 35, allegedly entered his ex-girlfriend's home through a garage door and shot five family members, killing three. The ex, Maria Rios, 24, was not home at the time. Police have launched a statewide manhunt for the murderous civil engineer who worked for the state Transportation Department. Rios said she casually dated Rodriguez after meeting him at a 2000 New Year's Eve party but told him about five months ago that she didn't want a romantic relationship with him. At one point, she said, he accused her of giving him a virus.

The dead were identified as Rios' grandmother, Espiranza Martinez, 80; her younger brother, Ricardo Calderon, 12; and her daughter, Shantal Rios, 4. Rios' sister, Lucia Vargas, 19, was shot in the abdomen and hand and was in stable condition. Her brother Rigoberto Calderon, 16, was shot in the leg. Another brother, Rafael Calderon Jr., 18, broke a wrist after jumping out a second-story bathroom window.

The manhunt for the gunman accused of killing three members of his ex-girlfriend's family ended in the Los Padres National Forest a day after the killings at a campsite when the suspect killed himself as officers closed in. "I would've much rather for him to stay alive and suffer like we are suffering, but he took his own life and he's not suffering anymore," said Rios, his 24-year-old ex-girlfriend. Rodriguez, apparently drove his SUV into the forest and set up camp there despite the intense manhunt. Campers told rangers he had been in the area begging for water and food. U.S. Forest Service rangers alerted sheriff's deputies after spotting a vehicle that fit the description of his Ford Explorer. The vehicle was parked at the trailhead of a campground near Reyes Peak, about 30 miles north of Ojai.

Ronald Taylor (3) On March 1, 2000, Ronald Taylor, who is black, went on a racially motivated rampage through Pittsburg killing three people. Taylor, 39, set his apartment on fire and fatally shot a maintenance man in anger over a broken door. He then allegedly went to two nearby fast-food restaurants, where he shot four more people. Two of those victims died.

In court, on November 6, 2001, prosecutors handed jurors copies of rants against whites, Jews and homosexuals, recovered from Taylor's apartment in the suburb Wilkinsburg. "Jesus Christ made a very big, costly mistake by putting white trash people on the face of this earth," he wrote on what prosecutors called a "hit list". His attorney, John Elash, said the documents proved that Taylor is innocent by reason of insanity, arguing that Taylor suffers from paranoia and delusions.

In earlier testimony Patrice Papenmeier said that Taylor came into her office at the West Penn Center, grabbed her and a co-worker, and positioned them against a wall. Then he said he had only one bullet left and asked them if they knew how many people he had just shot. "Which one am I going to kill?" Papenmeier recalled him saying, as he waved his revolver back and forth between their foreheads. When police arrived at the scene he went into a room where he said he was going to shoot himself. Hours later, he surrended to police.

Alan Eugene Miller (3) Defense attorneys for Alan Eugene Miller -- accused of fatally shooting three people at two offices he worked -- say that Alan is, "at best, very slow" and should be in a mental health facility rather than in prison. Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens disagrees and said he would "absolutely" seek the death penalty for the lethal driver killer.

Miller, 34, pleaded innocent by reason of mental disease or defect in the shooting deaths of co-workers Lee Holdbrooks, 32, and Scott Yancy, 28, at Ferguson Enterprises, and the shooting death of Terry Jarvis, 39, at Post Airgas. Miller was a truck driver for Ferguson and worked at Post Airgas until January.

Holdbrooks and Yancy were Ferguson employees, and Jarvis was a supervisor at Post Airgas. Miller was a Ferguson truck driver at the time of the incident, and was laid off from Post Airgas in January. A friend of Holdbrooks has said Miller was angry because he felt Holdbrooks, another driver, was receiving longer and better routes than he was.

Miller reportedly had a history of fighting with fellow employees and once was fired for fighting on the job. The Birmingham News, citing interviews with Miller's former co-workers and employers, also reported that he had repeated shouting matches with one of the three men he is charged with killing on Aug. 5. But the newspaper said Miller's former colleagues also described him as a hard worker who kept to himself.

David Copeland (3) On May 2, 1999, London police charged white supremacist David Copeland with murder in a nail-bombing campaign against gays and ethnic minorities that killed three people and wounded at least 116. Officials said 22-year-old David Copeland operated alone and was not linked to neo-Nazi groups that claimed responsibility.

The disgrintled engineer was captured on closed-circuit TV in the neighborhood where the first blast occurred. He was arrested at his home in Cove, southwest of London, where police seized explosive material.

Copeland has been charged with the deaths of three people in the worst explosion -- a nail-bombing at a gay pub in central London -- and with similar attacks April 17 and April 24 in London districts with large ethnic minorities.

Chevie Kehoe & Daniel Lewis Lee (3) Two from the skinheads from hell file. Two white supremacists were convicted of engaging in a murderous scheme to set up a whites-only republic in the Pacific Northwest. Chevie Kehoe and Daniel Lee, both 26, could get the death penalty for the 1996 killing of an Arkansas gun dealer, his wife and her daughter. Federal prosecutors said the men pursued their dream of an all-white republic by stockpiling military-style weapons, robbing several people and suffocating gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell, before throwing their bodies into a river.

Prosecutors said that as part of their conspiracy, Kehoe and Lee also carried out crimes in other states, including two killings in Idaho and the 1996 bombing of City Hall in Spokane, Wash. Chevie and brother Cheyne Kehoe first entered the public eye in 1997, following a videotaped shootout with police in Ohio. Cheyne Kehoe later helped authorities find his brother. Cheyne Kehoe and their mother, Gloria Kehoe, also testified against Chevie, saying he described how he and Lee committed the Arkansas murders.

According to prosecutors, Daniel Lewis Lee is a psychopath who would pose a danger even to fellow prisoners and prison guards and thus should be sentenced to death. But Lee's attorney, Cathleen Compton, said Lee is a victim of neurological problems, or bad wiring, and suffered a horribly abusive childhood. The murderous skinhead was convicted, along with the strangely named, Chevie Kehoe, of three counts of murder and conspiracy to overthrow the state and create a white's-only nation.

Liroff presented evidence of Lee's participation at age 17 in the murder of another Oklahoma youth. On July 24, 1990, Wavra was beaten, stripped, stabbed and finally had his throat slit because he incited Lee's anger by urinating on another man's recliner at a party.

A federal jury decided to give white supremacist Chevie Kehoes a life sentence, sparing him from the death penalty. Prosecutors had asked that Kehoe be put to death for the 1996 killings of gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell. The three were suffocated with plastic bags, weighed down with rocks and tossed into a western Arkansas bayou during a robbery. In deciding Kehoe's sentence, jurors apparently were persuaded by the defense argument that Kehoe came from a dysfunctional family. They argued that he was influenced by his parents, particularly his father, Kirby Kehoe, and other adults who held extremist political and social views.

Marilyn Lemak (3) Suburban Chicago nurse Marilyn Lemak, accused of drugging her three young children and suffocating them in their sleep, was found fit for trial allowing prosecutors to proceed with first-degree murder charges. DuPage County Judge George J. Bakalis issued his ruling after defense mental health experts agreed that Marilyn Lemak is capable of understanding the charges and assisting in her own defense.

Lemak's attorney, Jack Donahue, raised questions about her fitness almost as soon as she was charged in the March 4 deaths, leading to a battery of mental and physical tests and months of hearings. Lemak, 42, had appeared disheveled and unfocused in early court appearances, and defense and court experts had originally considered her unfit.

On May 6, 1999, a court-appointed psychiatrist said Marilyn Lemak -- accused of drugging, then suffocating her three children -- was found unfit to stand trial on first degree murder charges. Prosecutors said they want to study the report before deciding whether to have their own experts examine her. Police said Lemak admitted giving her children a combination of prescription drugs before putting them to bed, then suffocating them.

Keith Scavo (3) Convicted triple killer Keith Scavo told the judge in a prepared speech that it was the jurist who would be shaking hands with the devil. Scavo, who represented himself during the trial, claimed Common Pleas Judge David N. Savitt "gagged" him by barring evidence that would have helped his case.

The Palm Sunday murders happened after Scavo showed up at his former mother-in-law's Brill Street home to return his 3-year-old daughter after a custody visit. He shot his ex-wife, Kimberly, 29, her mother, Tamar Carsello, 50, and Kimberly's boyfriend, Bill Sauer, 46. Scavo was sentenced to life in prison for Sauer's slaying, but the jury imposed death sentences for the other killings because he murdered his ex-wife and mother-in-law after breaking into Carsello's home, and after already having killed Sauer.

Michael Carneal (3) In what's becoming frighteningly commonplace, on December 1, 1997, a high school freshman went on a deadly rampage killing three fellow student and wounding five others. Michael Carneal, a self-professed atheist, shot 11 rounds at a morning prayer circle in the lobby of his Paducah, Kentucky, high school. The boy, who had three spare clips of ammunition and four other guns, surrendered when Ben Strong -- a pastor's son and leader of the prayer circle -- talked him into putting the gun down. Afterward, in what could be the understament of the year, Mike told Heath High School Principal Bill Bond that he was sorry. "He acted just like he had been caught with some minor offense." The principal said he locked the freshman inside his office with a teacher to guard him until police arrived. The teen-ager told English teacher Tobe Dulworth after the shootings, "It was like I was a in dream, and I woke up." (cont.)

Luke Woodham (3) On October 1, 1997, Luke opened fire on a bunch of schoolmates in Pearl High School, killing two and wounding seven. Luke, a sophomore, started the day by slitting his mother's throat before heading to school in her car with a rifle tucked under his trench coat. Witnesses said he walked into a crowded atrium with hundreds of students milling about and started blasting "anybody he could find." Woodham talked to at least one of the wounded. "He apologized, said he was sorry and was not shooting anybody in particular." (cont.)

Jeffrey MacDonald (3) Former Army doctor Jeffrey MacDonald, whose murder conviction inspired the "Fatal Vision" book and movie, has insisted for years that a band of drug-addled hippies killed his pregnant wife and two daughters. Now federal court set ground rules for DNA testing that will (or not) back up his claim, 29 years after the three were bludgeoned and stabbed to death in their Fort Bragg home.

The DNA testing, which was not available during MacDonald's 1979 trial, is the latest attempt by the former Green Beret to win a new trial. U.S. District Court Judge James Fox ruled that an independent lab would perform the tests and told lawyers on both sides they had two weeks to pick one. The lab also will determine which samples of blood, hair and fibers from the crime scene will be tested.

MacDonald, 55, is serving three life sentences for killing his wife, Colette, and daughters Kimberly and Kristen on Feb. 17, 1970. He claims hippies attacked his family, chanting "Acid is groovy. Kill the pigs."

The MacDonald prosecution drew widespread notice and was chronicled by Joe McGinniss in his best-selling book ``Fatal Vision,'' which was made into a television miniseries.

MacDonald thought he had found a sympathetic author. But McGinniss painted him as a cool liar and womanizer who murdered his family, then created a cover-up.

Twenty-five years after the slayings, Jerry Allen Potter and Fred Bost wrote "Fatal Justice: Reinvestigating the MacDonald Murders" in which they criticized the government's case and argued the Army bungled the crime scene.

Lawyers for Jeffrey MacDonald are again seeking a new trial, contending the FBI lied about evidence that could have cleared him of charges that he murdered his pregnant wife and two daughters 27 years ago. MacDonald's case has dragged on since his conviction in 1979, with numerous appeals rejected by every level of the judicial system, including the U.S. Supreme Court.

But MacDonald's lawyers said Thursday that recent discoveries about shaded testimony and flawed testing by FBI laboratory workers bolster their arguments that he deserves a new trial. "Pure and simple, testimony offered by the FBI was false, and that false testimony prevented us from proving that Dr. MacDonald did not commit these murders," said Harvey Silverglate of Boston, his attorney.

The case also was notable for the tortuous path by which it finally came to trial. Murder charges first were considered in the military justice system soon after the slayings, but a military grand jury failed to indict MacDonald. He then left the Army and was free for years before he was indicted in federal court in 1975 and finally brought to trial four years later. Both the original indictment and his conviction were overturned and reinstated by higher courts.

MacDonald has steadfastly maintained that he awoke the night of the murders to find a group of hippies, high on drugs, in his home. They killed his wife and children, he said, and stabbed him as well. He has argued that one of the intruders, a woman, was wearing a long blond wig, and that contention is at the heart of the request for a new trial.

The reason is this: Found in a hairbrush in the MacDonald home was a 22-inch strand of fake blond hair. Prosecutors knew the strand was found shortly after the murders but never informed defense attorneys for fear of bolstering MacDonald's version of events, the attorneys contend. MacDonald's defense attorneys, however, learned of the strand of hair after MacDonald was convicted, and they sought a new trial based largely on that evidence.

As part of the appeals process, an FBI agent, Michael Malone, was asked to run laboratory tests on the strand. He concluded that it was made of a fiber called saran, and offered an opinion that it came from dolls belonging to MacDonald's daughters. Saran, he said, was not normally used to make wigs. The conclusion was important. The judge, Franklin Dupree Jr., cited Malone's findings when, in July 1991, he denied MacDonald's appeal. "According to Malone," the judge wrote, there was nothing in the FBI's reference collection to indicate that the strand could have come from a wig.

After the appeal was rejected, Silverglate and a team of attorneys used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the books that Malone may have used to draw his conclusions. Two books belonging to Malone's laboratory said that saran was, in fact, used to make wigs. "We have developed an airtight case showing that his statements were false," Silverglate said. "What the FBI scandal has done is confirmed to us that this is a pattern-a pattern for the whole FBI lab, which in this case tainted our trial."

Vuthy Seng (3) On December 10, 1997, a jury rejected a insanity defense and sentenced Vuthy Seng, 34, to three life terms for fatally shooting his girlfriend's three sons in the head. A fourth child, now 16, escaped and recovered from a gunshot wound in the head. Relatives said Seng was angry after girlfriend Chhong Yim told him to move out of her apartment because her children didn't like him. When she left the house after an argument, he killed the youngsters, ages 9, 12 and 15, in the living room. The defense conceded Seng shot the children but said that he suffered a head injury when a stack of crates fell on him in 1993 at a bottling factory where he worked, and was hearing voices.

Daniel Vitaver (3) On December 6, 1997, a man depressed about financial problems shot and killed his wife and two teen-age children as they sat at the breakfast table in their rented home in an affluent gated community in Weston, Florida. Then, daddy dearest turned the gun on himself. Vitaver, a medical technology salesman, brought his family from Argentina about six months ago in search of a better life. Perhaps he meant a better afterlife!

Richard Lyle Timmons (3) One for the abusive family annihilator file. Although he was jailed for threatening his wife Anita with a knife and throwing her out a window, Richard Lyle Timmons returned home when he was released from prison. On June 8, 1997 -- 10 days after his release -- he killed his wife Anita, computer clerk at New York University Medical Center, and her two sons with a hatchet and knife.

"It was the worst thing I've ever seen," Deputy Inspector Robert Cividanes said. When police arrived at the family's apartment they found the decapitated bodies of Anita and the couple's 7-year-old son, Aaron, who's final screams for help were captured on a 911 call. Sharron, Anita's 13-year-old son from a previous relationship, was also killed but not decapitated.

Timmons, 33, a subway station cleaner, had been in jail since September while awaiting trial for previous assaults against his wife. He pleaded guilty May 29 and was sentenced to time already served and released. Despite the beatings Anita refused to testify against him and even hired a lawyer to defend him against charges he threw her through a plate glass window, slammed her head against a wall and refused to let her get medical help when he cut her legs.

Sam Lau (3) On June 16, 1997 a family of four was found dead inside their home in the well-to-do Seattle neighborhood of Bellevue. What at first seemed to be a mob hit, unfolded instead into another case of familial murder-suicide. Sam Lau, a successful businessman from Hong Kong, citing "personal and financial problems," fatally shot his wife, two sons and himself in their home in Seattle.

Strangely, this was the second family killing in Bellevue, a leafy neighborhood of $400,000 homes on curving streets and cul de sacs, in the past six months. The previous killing occurred in a house two miles from the Lau home. A Bellevue couple and their two daughters were killed in January by Alex Baranyi Jr. & David Anderson, two thrill-killing 17-year-old boys. In 1994, a family of three -- parents and a 20-year-old daughter -- were bludgeoned to death in their Bellevue home.

Richard D. Herr (3) On April 10, 1997, Rich, an Amtrak machinist known as the "pigeon man" because he talked to birds, killed three fellow employees in an early morning rampage. For reasons unknown Richard D. Herr fired at least 15 shots from a 9 mm handgun as he rampaged through the Wilmington, Delaware, 450-employee Amtrak repair shop before police shot him to death.

"This guy, he'd talk to the walls. He'd apparently talk to the sky. He wasn't stable," said union official James Riley. "He must have snapped." Two police officers found Herr climbing to an elevated catwalk above them. One officer shot and killed him when Herr pointed a gun at them. Herr fell 25 feet to the shop floor. Compassionately, Amtrak announced that their train schedules would not be affected by the deaths. Mussolini would have been proud of them!

Jimmy Ray Price (3) On March 12, 1997, Jimmy Ray, a Fairbanks, Alaska resident was charged with murdering three fellow boarding house residents because their TV was too loud. Jimmy Ray, 53, shot and killed his three adult neighbors after asking them to turn down their TV. After killing them he walked across the street to a fried chicken restaurant and called 911.

Allen Lane Griffin Jr. (3) Depressed over a "domestic situation," Allen, 21, went to a Comerica bank branch in suburban Detroit and killed three people before being shot dead by the police. At first authorities thought the March 11, 1997 incident was a failed bank robbery. Later they reclassified it as a random act of violence.

Allen, dressed in customary mass-murdering fatigues, entered the bank and shouted,"Where's the money?" Then he forced everyone to lie on the floor and asked them to recite the Lord's Prayer. As he recited it with them he started shooting. Inside the bank he killed Stanley R. Pijanowski III, 52, assistant vice president and branch manager, and James L. Isom, 25, retail services representative.

Once outside, the gunman took hostage a man on his way to the ready teller. Police said they tried to talk him into releasing his hostage, but instead he shot him to death. Then police killed the Allen with a barrage of 200 bullets.

More than 24 hours after the rampage, a bank janitor found an unarmed security guard cowering in the bank's boiler room. Police said Virene Brown was found frightened and dehydrated. Apparently the gunman had put his shotgun to her head and said he was going to kill her. Somehow, when he was distracted, she fled to the basement and stayed there for more than a day.

Marcelo Kenji Yoshino (3) On December 18, 1996, Marcelo Kenji Yoshino, 22, an employee of the Sao Paulo State Sanitation Company, entered the offices where he formally worked with a Glock 9 mm pistol hidden in a gift package. Once inside, he looked for the object of his obsessive and unrequited passion -- co-worker Valeria Lellis -- and opened fire, killing three women and wounding two men.

Six months previously Yoshino had been transferred to another unit of the company because of his stalking and harassment of Valeria. He was also sent to a psychologist, but continued frequenting his former office to visit her.

On the fateful payback day, Marcelo hunted down Valeria and fired at ten coworkers killing her, their supervisor, and another woman, and wounding two men. After the rampage, the obsessive coworkers shot himself in the head.

Laxma Reddy (3) On March 18, 1997, Laxma, a medical professional, killed his wife, her 13-year-old daughter and his father-in-law in Brookline, Massachusetts. The three victims were shot in the head execution-style in their beds. Three days later, after an All-Points-Bulletin was put out for him, he was shot and killed when he pulled a gun on a sheriff's deputy during an unrelated traffic stop in Elko, Nevada.

After the familicide was discovered, investigators turned to Reddy as a suspect when they determined that the killer used a key to enter the apartment. Brookline police and Massachusetts State Police flew to Cleveland, Reddy's last known address, after discovering the bodies. They learned that Reddy had left in the middle of his second year of residency in internal medicine at St. Luke's Hospital in Cleveland.

Reddy recently visited his family in Brookline, but had not been seen in weeks, friends said. The family is originally from Andhrapradesh in southern India, but moved to the United States so he could study medicine. He received his medical degree in August 1979 from Gandhi Medical College in India and interned at Cabrini Medical Center in New York City from July 1993 to June 1994.

Alexei Petrichev (3) On February 21, 1997, Alexei, a 22-year-old unemployed Russian ex-convict, went on a killing spree stabbing three neighbors to death and wounding two others.

He first killed a male neighbor stabbing him 20 times with a dagger at an apartment building in southern Moscow. Then he broke into another apartment, killed a 20-year-old woman and injured her 1-year-old son. Not wanting to call it a day, the slasher stabbed to death the woman's father and wounded her brother-in-law. When police arrived at the scene they shot the killer in the stomach and the leg. According to police, his wounds were not life threatening.

Paul Ely Jr.(3) On October 27, 1996, in a typical fit of love gone sour, Paul Ely Jr. of Anchorage, Alaska, went hunting for his estranged wife leaving three dead and one wounded before killing himself. The suspect first attacked a police officer who was responding to a domestic violence call. After wasting the cop in the hallway of the apartment building where his estranged wife and children lived, Ely shot his wife in the gut, ran to a neighbor's house with his two small children and killed them. Then, committed suicide.

Seely, 40, died about an hour after the shooting. Christina Ely, 27, was hospitalized and is in stable condition. "I had heard that they had just gotten divorced and I know they had been having problems for more than a year because the kids would come to the bus stop and talk about the parents fighting," said one of the neighbors. At the time of the rampage Paul was not living with Christina and the kids.

Steven Renfro (3) On Aug. 25, 1996, after taking what he told authorities were 70 doses of Valium and tanking up on booze, Renfro put on camouflage clothing, blackened his face, armed himself with four guns and 500 rounds of ammunition, and went hunting humans. First he killed his live-in girlfriend, Rhena Fultner, 36, then an aunt, Rose Rutledge, 66, who lived with them. After he went to the nearby trailer of an acquaintance, George Counts, 40 -- against whom he had a grudge -- and fired more than 150 rounds into the mobile home killing him instantly. When police arrived, he wounded Officer Dominic Pondant in the shoulder and turned his patrol car "into Swiss cheese."

Steven was executed by lethal injection in Huntville's death row on February 9, 1998. Renfro voluntarily headed to the death chamber on a conviction less than 10 months old. He asked that no appeals be pursued and his execution be carried out as soon as possible. Rick Berry, a high school classmate and the prosecutor in the case, said the decision not to fight was Renfro's way of trying to get into heaven. "By voluntarily going ahead and being punished, it's like an atonement."

Martin Mendoza-Garcia (3) Martin, a short-tempered Nevada construction worker, killed two stepdaughters and a niece when he went searching for his estranged wife. Rocio Cervantes had fled Carson City, Nevada for her brother's house after her husband Martin was arrested on a domestic battery charge for beating his stepdaughter. Three weeks later, on January 26, 1996, Martin showed up at his brother-in-law's home in Landers, California, with blood on his mind.

As the family was getting the children ready for school, Martin knocked on the door and pulled out his gun. Angelica Cervantes, Rocio's sister managed to call 911 before Martin fired shots into the house and threatened to kill everyone. He then grabbed Sandra, his 13-year-old stepdaughter whom he admitted having beaten previously in Carson City, and held the gun to her head. By the time police arrived, he had three children in his car and Sandra in a headlock. When he saw the cops he shot Sandra at point-blank range killing her instantly, then turned and fired into the car full of children killing another stepdaughter, a niece and wounding his biological son before police fired back wounding him. He then ran to the back of the house where he was tackled and disarmed by his brother-in-law.

On August 28, 1997, the 34-year-old construction worker was convicted of three counts of murder. As of September 29 a Sacramento jury recommended the death penalty which could be formally accepted by the judge on November 21.

Dora Buenrostro(3) A San Jacinto, California resident, Dora was charged with the murders of her three children. On October 27, 1994, she led police officers to her apartment were they discovered the bodies of her children Susana, 9, and Vicente, 8. The body of her youngest was found 10 miles away inside her abandoned car still strapped to the car seat. She tried to pin the bloody knife attacks on her estranged husband living in Los Angeles. A San Jacinto police officer remarked that before her arrest Dora, "was like a roller coaster. She went from laughing and joking to being tired to being nonchalant, but never showed remorse or sadness, even after we told her we found the body of her third child." Obviously they never believed her and on November, 1995 a jury decided she was competent to stand trial despite the defense's contention that she is psychotic.

Barry Loukaitis (3) On September 2, 1996, Barry, a 14-year-old honor student in Moses Lake, Washington, broke into algebra class with a high-powered rifle and shot three students and their teacher. Two of the students and the teacher died. The third student was left hospitalized in serious condition shot in the abdomen and right arm. Hearing the shots, physical education teacher and champion wrestler Jon Lane burst into the classroom, disarmed the boy and held him until police arrived. It seems that Barry and Manuel Vela, one of the students shot, were always exchanging words. "I guess he finally got sick of it," said fellow-student Walter Darden. (cont.)

Errol S. Dehaney (3) On November 25, 1995, Errol, a Hartford, Connecticut resident with a history of domestic violence, shot and killed his wife and two kids. The couple argued in the car after leaving a friend's Thanksgiving party. Shennavia, his unfortunate wife, went back to the friends' house where Errol followed her and shot her in the head. He then returned to the car and killed his two children.

Ernesto Cruz Jimenez(3) A Mexico City police officer, said to be suffering from depression opened fire with his 9-mm. pistol in a crowded subway car on Thursday, September 21, 1995. He fired 10 rounds on the rush hour passengers before being seized by an unarmed subway police officer. Three passengers died and five others were wounded. The sister of the 22 year-old gunman said that Ernie had been very depressed and twice had tried to commit suicide.

James Floyd Davis (3) James, a classic loner from Ashville, N.C., was fired from a machine-tool company for fighting with co-workers and returned later to kill three people and injure four others. Later he walked out the back door, threw his two guns down and emptied his pockets of shells. He then lit a cigarette and surrendered. His co-workers knew he was dangerous. They said he kept talking about his guns and knives. At work he talked to himself and never associated with anyone.

The families of two men killed when a fired worker went on a shooting rampage in North Carolina have won $7.9 million from a jury that found the company was negligent in protecting them. The jury awarded $3.9 million to the family of Gerald Allman, 52, and $4 million to the family of Frank Knox, 62. Both men were shot and killed on May 17, 1995, by James Floyd Davis at the Union Butterfield tool distribution plant in south Asheville.

The key issue at the civil trial was whether company officials properly protected employees from Davis, who was fired two days earlier because of a string of violent incidents. "This verdict shows that companies cannot ignore a real, credible threat of workplace violence," said David Kirby, who represented the Allman family. "This man was a ticking time bomb and the management knew it, yet they did nothing to protect their employees."

Employees testified that plant managers were told that Davis had threatened that if he were fired he would come back and "take management with me." Others cried from worry, and some planned escape routes, witnesses testified. Three people were killed and two wounded in the shooting. Davis was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder and is on death row in Central Prison in Raleigh.

Albert L. Petrosky (3) Distraught over marital woes, Al Petrosky opened fire in a crowded supermarket in Littleton, Colorado, killing his wife and two others. The wife, Terry, worked in the store and had recently obtained a restraining order against him. Albert, didn't take it too well. He decided to strap on a bullet-proof vest, grab his pistol, assault rifle and hunting rifle, and head to Albertson's. There he shot his wife, the store manager and a sheriff's sergeant who was getting out of his patrol car. As he tried to flee, the rampager was tackled by a construction worker who held him down until police arrived.

Ivan du Plessis (3) On October 17, 1996, Ivan du Plessis, 45, shot to death his children and then himself with a weapon police had earlier given back to the killer. Curiously on a previous occassion he handed his firearm to police because he was afraid he would do something stupid with it. Sometime later authorities returned his 7.65mm pistol. The morning of high drama ended in tragedy when police returned to him his and Du Plessis opened fire inside the family's home killing his son and two daughters seconds before police and Boksburg Traffic Department officials stormed the front entrance.

Larry Buttz (3) On November 5, 1996, Larry Buttz, 41, shot his wife and two children to death in their beds and then killed himself. A resident of Iowa, a month before the murder-suicide, Larry was charged with simple assault after his wife filed a complaint. The dead were identified as Larry's wife, Delane, 38, and their two children, Ryan, 15, and Lindsey, 12 as well as Larry. The house where the shootings took place had worn wicker furniture and shriveled jack-o'-lanterns on the front porch left from Halloween.

Sylvia Seegrist(3) On October 30, 1985, Sylvia Seegrist, 26, put on camouflage pants, combat boots, a wool cap, and a shirt with the word "Jihad" printed on the back. She then headed to the Springfield Mall near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle killing three and wounding seven. Several months before the mall shooting, Sylvia took to wearing army fatigues in combination with a shirt that had printed on the front, "Kill 'em all".

Ruth Seegrist, Sylvia's mother, recalled the events that occurred during the last month before the rampage. "By the third week in October she was completely out of touch with reality, continuously agitated, vitriolic, restless, unable to concentrate, or even comprehend questions directed at her. 'You!' she would screech, pointing an accusing finger at me, eyes ablaze with scorching anger, 'you gave me birth, you will be lucky if some day you don't die by my hand.' I was terrified. I did not doubt that she was capable of killing me".

John Markle (3) John was the son of the Academy-award winning actress Mercedes McCambridge (who won the Oscar for "All the King's Men," but was best known as the voice of the demon in "The Exorcist"). In the late 80's John murdered his family and killed himself after he was suspended by his employer for embezzling money into his mother's account. His employer was Stephens Inc., a bond brokerage firm in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Unable to withstand the shame, John put on a "Freddy Kruger" mask, killed his wife and two daughters in his prestigious home in Little Rock's historical section. Then he called his lawyer and shot himself in both temples simultaneously.

The family tried to suppress a lot of documentation in the case, but the two newspapers in Little Rock sued and eventually got everything released. It included some venomous letters to his mom about how he had never been able to please her and felt unloved.

Tina Jackson (3) A Desperate-Mom-From-Hell, Tina Jackson decided to shoot her three children and herself rather than get evicted. The bodies of Tina Jackson, 31, her twin 1-year-old daughters, Monique and Dominique Howard, and 2-year-old son, Javon Jackson, were found after a fire broke out in the family's home. Another son, Laurence Bates, 5, was found critically burned, but alive.

Coroner Paul Matus said Jackson's wound suggests that she committed suicide, as does the fact that all the bodies were in one place. "It's common in a case like this for a mother to put all her children together," he said. "She doesn't want them to be alone."

Jamie Rouse (3) On November 19, 1997, Jaime Rouse, a Tennessee high school senior, was found guilty of two counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the 1995 rampage at Richland High School. Angry over poor grades Jamie Rouse, 19, walked into school with a rifle and shot teachers Carolyn Foster and Carol Yancey and 14-year-old student Diane Collins who accidentally got in the way. Ms. Foster and Miss Collins died. Ms. Yancey was wounded. Rouse's lawyers claimed he was a paranoid schizophrenic and was not in control of his actions. But prosecution witnesses disputed that. In closing arguments, defense attorney Dan Runde said Rouse was hearing voices and thought he was on a mission from God when he opened fire.

Steven Abbott -- Rouse's friend -- was convicted August 1 of criminal responsibility in the slayings and got 40 years in prison. Abbott drove Rouse to school on the day of the rampage and knew Rouse was carrying a rifle and 400 rounds of ammunition. Abbott testified that he didn't believe Rouse when he said he planned to shoot people. Rouse's 16-year-old brother, Jeremy, was convicted in 1996 of solicitation to commit murder after trying to persuade classmates to "finish the job" his brother started.

Robert Bloom (3) On December 22, 2000, a Van Nuys, California, jury recommended the execution -- for the second time -- of Robert Bloom Jr., for the murders of his father, stepmother and 8-year-old stepsister. Bloom, who looked dazed as he heard the verdict that concluded his three-month retrial, represented himself after firing his court-appointed attorneys and dropping his insanity plea. Prosecutors called Bloom, 37, a sociopath who deserves to die for the 1982 Sun Valley murders he committed at age 18. "He's evil," said Deputy Dist. Atty. Dmitry Gorin, recounting how Bloom once stabbed another inmate in the neck and had threatened prosecutors during the retrial. "He's a complete danger to society." Melanie Bostic, Bloom's mother, said he deserved sympathy. "My son's mentally ill and should be in a mental hospital, not a gas chamber," she said. "He has double personalities."

Jurors found Bloom guilty of the first-degree murder of his father, Robert Bloom Sr., and the second-degree murders of his stepmother, Josephine Lou Bloom, and stepsister, Sandra Hughes. Bloom's lawyers, before being fired, argued that he had been severely abused by his father and was insane at the time of the killings.      After firing his attorneys, Bloom told jurors he had been an award-winning high school mock trial attorney and that his insanity plea was hogwash. He zealously cross-examined witnesses, subpoenaed a judge, used legal terminology and made frequent objections.

Bloom told jurors he felt no remorse for killing his father and called the deaths of his stepmother and stepsister a "necessary evil." The next time around, he said, he would be "a better killer."

Brendan Spencer (3) On January 29, 1979, 16-year-old Brendan Spencer killed two people and wounded nine when she fired on San Diego's Grover Cleveland Elementary School with a .22-caliber rifle from her family's house across the street. The two victims were Principal Burton Wragg and custodian Mike Suchar. Eight students and a police officer were wounded. Spencer, the original high-school ramapger, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. When asked why she did it, she said the often quoted: "I just don't like Mondays." At the time she also told negociators, "It was a lot of fun seeing children shot." (cont.)