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He started shooting in the playground, then down a corridor as he made his way to the gymnasium. Firing from a corner of the room, Hamilton hit teacher Gwenne Mayor as she tried to shield the 29 children she had taken there for phys ed. She died on the spot. Then he moved around the room, methodically shooting the screaming children, chasing some as they ran and pumping at least one and sometimes three or more bullets into the little bodies. Then he retreated to a corner away from the carnage and fired the final bullet into his own brain.
Rescuers were greeted by a hellish silence: no cries, no screams, very little movement at all amid a chaos of scattered shoes, clothing, blood and painfully small bodies. "I just cannot get the images out of my head," said headmaster Taylor.
By all accounts Hamilton was odd. The woman he always believed was his sister was, in reality, his mother. His father, Thomas Watt, 65, abandoned the family when Hamilton was 18 months old. He never took interest in him again until he learned, with shock, of the killings. "I can't live with this," Watt said. "I brought this monster into the world." It was a world that proved difficult for a man whose compelling life interest appeared to be youth leadership--but who was regarded in town as a pedophile. His attempts to organize boys' clubs ended when parents withdrew their sons after hearing of Hamilton's abnormal interest in the boys' bodies. Said Gerry Fitzpatrick, 27, owner of a bar in Dunblane who attended one of the clubs in his teens: "He would make us take off our shirts all the time. He liked looking at us. There was something creepy about him."
If some thought him a "sicko" and "a loner," no one could have foreseen the depth of evil in their midst. At the local morgue, hospital chaplain Jim Benson comforted parents as they identified their children. But no words, no memorials or visits by the Queen will make it easier for a parent to comprehend that a son, a daughter is never going to wake again. After one mother looked at her dead child, she turned to Benson and said, "My baby always sleeps like that."
--Reported by Michael Brunton/London and Barry Hillenbrand/ Dunblane