Chilling Suicide Letter
Details Atlanta Rampage
ATLANTA - A Georgia man killed his wife and then brutally bludgeoned his two children to death to save them from a "lifetime of pain'' before embarking on a murder rampage that left nine people dead and ended with his own suicide, police said.In a neatly typed letter left in his suburban Atlanta home, mass murderer Mark Barton, 44, urged police to kill him if they could and indicated his rampage at two day-trading firms Thursday was sparked by a grudge.
"I don't plan to live very much longer, just long enough to kill as many of the people that greedily sought my destruction. You should kill me if you can,'' said the letter, read to reporters by Henry County police chief Jimmy Mercer.
In the letter Barton gave the names of three people, including the father of his first wife, who he was suspected of killing in 1993. Mercer said the three were apparently named as next of kin, not as further targets for retribution.
Barton carried out the shootings in two day-trading offices where he may have racked up tens of thousands of dollars in losses playing the stock market, authorities said.
It was the latest in a series of mass killings in the United States that have brought renewed calls for federal gun control legislation.
They include a massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, in April, when two teen-age gunmen shot and killed 12 students and a teacher before killing themselves, the deaths of 25 people at a Texas cafeteria in 1991 and an Oklahoma post office shooting spree that left 16 dead in 1986.
"This could happen in any city. There is nothing in particular about the city of Atlanta that would make this happen. It doesn't matter where you live. It doesn't really matter where you work,'' Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard said.
In the rampage, Barton first killed five people at Momentum Securities, then crossed busy Piedmont Road and killed four people at All-Tech Investment Group, another day-trading firm.
"I hope this doesn't ruin your trading day,'' he said as he blasted away with 9-mm and .45 caliber handguns.
The 9-mm handgun was registered to Barton, who bought it in 1993, and the other was registered to a someone else from Texas, Harvard said.
Barton fired 40 rounds in the two buildings, and 13 people were hospitalized with gunshot wounds or injuries from the resulting melee, Harvard told a news conference. One person was released from the hospital overnight and the others remained in good to serious condition at four area hospitals.
In the cryptic letter, and handwritten notes left on each body, Barton said he bludgeoned his children Matthew, 11, and Michelle, 8, and his 26-year-old wife Leigh Ann with a hammer in their apartment in Stockbridge, Georgia, a suburb about 35 miles (56 km) southeast of Atlanta.
Police found his wife's body in a closet and the children wrapped in blankets, lying in their beds with toys placed around them, Mercer said, tears welling as he read the letter.
"There was little pain. All of them were dead in less than five minutes. I hit them with a hammer in their sleep and then put them face down in the bathtub to make sure they did not wake up in pain,'' Barton wrote.
"I killed the children to exchange them for five minutes of pain for a lifetime of pain. I forced myself to do it to keep them from suffering so much later,'' he wrote.
He also said: "I killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for my demise ... I really wish I hadn't killed her now.''
Barton in the letter he dated early Thursday morning denied killing his first wife and her mother, who were found in 1993 beaten and slashed to death at a camp site in Cherokee County, Alabama, about 100 miles (160 km) from Atlanta.
Barton, who had taken out a $600,000 life insurance policy on his first wife before she was killed, was the chief suspect but never charged in that crime, authorities said. His two children were from that previous marriage.
Michael O'Dell, an Alabama prosecutor, told ABC News that only a circumstantial case could be made against Barton.
"It has continued to be an open and active case over the last six years,'' he said. "It did not come to the conclusion I would have liked. But I feel in my own heart and mind that the case is closed.''
Barton had recently settled his claim with the insurance company for an undisclosed sum, and as recently as April was working as a day trader, investing in stocks and trying to generate profits from brief fluctuations in company shares.
President Clinton avoided calling for increased gun control measures in the wake of the shooting, citing the ongoing investigation.
"In terms of what could or should have been done or what this means for other issues, I think let's wait until all the facts are in,'' he told reporters in Sarajevo, where he is attending a conference on Balkan reconstruction.
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