(A 70-page True Crime Short with photographs) One cold February night, two people on the way home from a satisfying dinner with friends were ambushed by a rain of gunfire from the balcony of their own home. When the killer was finished, both victims lay dying. He stood over the man and then his mother, and fired one last round in each to “end their pain.” The murderer was a family man, a former police officer, and a former Mormon missionary. He then took his terrified wife and screaming daughter, and they ran, shoeless, into the night, initiating a nationwide search for the “armed and extremely dangerous” couple. Their cross-country trail of lies culminated in an episode of the television show America’s Most Wanted and ended in a SWAT-team assault on the other side of the country.
What pressure cooker exploded in that man’s mind that February night? Was it an impulse, the product of an emotional breakdown? Or had he harbored such deep-seated feelings of hate for so long that he carefully plotted this event over decades, working out his alibi far in advance of the court trial he knew would eventually take place?
