(4 of 5)
Then, in 1997, the insurance company decided to settle for $450,000, figuring a jury would have sympathized with the plight of Barton's kids if the case went to court. The company stipulated, however, that $150,000 go into a trust for Mychelle and Matthew. With the insurance windfall, Barton soon allowed himself to be swept into the risk-loving fraternity of day traders who try to make a living hunched over a computer terminal, betting on the daily gyrations of individual stocks (see accompanying story). By this year Barton was a full-time day trader. But things turned bad this summer. Barton had lost about $105,000 since June, almost all of it on volatile Internet stocks, according to Momentum Securities, where he traded most recently. Some reports said his account there had been closed on Tuesday after he was unable to meet a margin call--a brokerage firm's demand that a customer put up cash to cover a debt caused by falling stock prices. To reopen the account, he reportedly wrote a check for $50,000; it bounced, and he was denied trading privileges Wednesday and Thursday. Momentum was his first stop when he began his shooting spree on Thursday. All-Tech says Barton was a customer but had not traded with the company for months. The company is not divulging his trading records, but according to some accounts, Barton's total stock-market losses in the past year may have been as much as $300,000.
The words of Barton's suicide notes present some tantalizing enigmas. There is anger at the "people who greedily sought my destruction." Was this the world of the day traders? Then there is blame, regret and denial about his family. "I killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for my demise ... She really couldn't help it, and I love her so much anyway." She was bludgeoned to death, her body hidden from the children in a closet. Mychelle ("my sweetheart") and Matthew ("my buddy"), he insisted, died "with little pain." He bashed their heads with a hammer while they slept, then held them underwater in a bathtub to ensure they were dead. He placed a teddy bear on Mychelle's body, a video game on Matthew's. "There may be similarities between these deaths and the death of my first wife, Debra Spivey," he wrote. "However, I deny killing her and her mother. There is no reason for me to lie now."
He scatters clues but no answers. He wrote: "I have been dying since October. I wake up at night so afraid, so terrified that I couldn't be that afraid while awake it has taken its toll. I have come to hate this life and this system of things. I have come to have no hope ... The fears of the father are transferred to the son. It was from my father to me and from me to my son... I'm sure the details don't matter. There is no excuse, no good reason I am sure no one will understand. If they could I wouldn't want them to... You should kill me if you can." He took care of that himself, but not before arming himself with 200 rounds of ammo and a small collection of guns--a couple of which he had owned for years--and taking nine more people with him.
On Thursday night, eight-year-old Tiffany DeFreese sat alone on the sloping grass, bare feet poking beneath the yellow police tape, eyes on an open door 150 ft. away. "I'm just trying to get a sneak peek in so I can see my best friend," she says of Mychelle. "I just saw them take a bag out. It was a big bag. It must have been the mother."