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Why? Atlanta seeks answers for massacre
Gunman commits suicide after 12 killings
July 30, 1999
ATLANTA (CNN) -- As Atlanta-area authorities tried to find a motive for a massacre, two buildings housing brokerage firms reopened Friday, the morning after day trader Mark Barton, apparently upset about stock market losses, shot 21 people, killing nine of them. Hospitals were caring Friday for 10 of the wounded, seven of them in critical condition. Others wounded were treated and released. Barton, 44, who is also believed to have killed his second wife and two children in the days leading up to Thursday's bloody outburst, later committed suicide in his van when cornered by police at a gas station in suburban Acworth, Georgia, taking the death toll to 13. A .45-caliber and 9 millimeter handgun were found in Barton's van, the same kind of guns he allegedly used in the Atlanta shootings, authorities said. Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who had said Barton was upset about his stock market losses, told CNN Friday it may be impossible to learn the full story behind the carnage. "Quite honestly, I don't know if we'll ever know what the true motives of Mr. Barton were," Campbell said. Police in Stockbridge, Georgia, south of Atlanta, said they had evidence that Barton's 27-year-old wife, Leigh Ann, died Tuesday and the children, 12-year-old Matthew and 7-year-old stepdaughter Elizabeth Mychelle, were killed Wednesday. A handwritten note was left on each body, and a computer-generated note left in the living room explained "why he did what he did," Henry County Police Chief Jimmy Mercer said. Mercer said authorities would not know what killed the three until they received the medical examiner's report. "If the contents of the note were to be believed, it appears the individuals died of blunt force trauma," he said. With the notes was a list indicating Barton had intended to kill at least three more people.
Barton was also a suspect in the murders six years ago of his first wife, Debra Spivey Barton, 36, and her mother, Eloise Spivey, 59. The women were beaten to death with a sharp instrument at a campground in Cherokee County, Alabama, about 100 miles from Atlanta. Barton, who is believed to have taken out a $600,000 insurance policy on his first wife before she was killed, was never charged in that crime. No charges were ever filed in the case, but Barton was the lone suspect, authorities said. Georgia authorities said that, in the notes found with his second wife and children, Barton denied he was the killer in the Alabama case.
Barton, dark-haired and 6-foot-4, was wearing khaki shorts when he walked into the Momentum Securities brokerage at the Two Securities Centre building in the trendy Buckhead section of Atlanta about 3 p.m. Thursday. Four people were dead within minutes. "I saw a lot of blood in the hallway," said Chris Carter, 32, who works on the building's third floor. "There was a trail of blood leading from one end of the hallway to the other." Barton then walked across a busy road and into the All-Tech Investment Group, a day trading firm in the Piedmont Center building where he had been a client. Five died there. Barton, who was carrying a pistol in each hand, at one point in the rampage, managed to escape the Buckhead area and elude a police search for five hours until his suicide in a neighboring county to the north. Correspondents Brian Cabell, Mike Boettcher and Holly Firfer contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: Victims in the Atlanta shootings RELATED: Map of Piedmont, Roswell location RELATED SITES: All-Tech Investment Group Online
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