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The Children. The shattering blast crunched through the yard with a roar. In that instant came the smell of powder and burning flesh. The explosion tore to bits the bodies of Dusty and two other children, a teacher, Custodian Montgomery and Paul Orgeron himself—six dead in all. Body fragments flew across the street to the roof of a two-story apartment house. Orgeron's left hand—all that could be identified of the man—landed in a hedge 50 ft. away. Principal Doty lay injured on the ground, and 17 children, strewn near by, screamed in pain. A little boy writhed naked, his foot nearly blown off. "That mean old man!" he sobbed. "That mean old man! Will somebody get him? Will I need a crutch for my foot? Why did he have to do it?"
Policemen asked the same question, soon discovered that Paul Harold Orgeron was an ex-convict and sometime tile layer, syphilitic, illiterate, and obsessed by dark fantasies of power and gods. He had been married, divorced, had remarried the same woman and been divorced again. He had cowed his daughter Zelda with abuse and with ugly accusations of promiscuity. He had fathered a son by his stepdaughter Betty Jean, who had run away in fear and shame. And in all the world—in some tormented way—he loved only the memory of Betty Jean and their son Dusty.