Delivered from Evil: True Stories of Ordinary People Who Faced Monstrous Mass Killers and Survived (8 page)

Just before dawn the next morning, Barton sat at his computer and wrote a chilling confession that hinted at his rage, which, incredibly, was not yet spent:

July 29, 1999, 6.38 a.m
.

To Whom It May Concern
,

Leigh Ann is in the master bedroom closet under a blanket. I killed her on Tuesday night. I killed Matthew and Mychelle Wednesday night. There may be similarities between these deaths and the death of my first wife, Debra Spivey. However, I deny killing her and her mother. There’s no reason for me to lie now. It just seemed like a quiet way to kill and a relatively painless way to die
.

There was little pain. All of them were dead in less than five minutes. I hit them with a hammer in their sleep and then put them face down in a bathtub to make sure they did not wake up in pain. To make sure they were dead. I am so sorry. I wish I didn’t. Words cannot tell the agony. Why did I?

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
.

I killed the children to exchange them for five minutes of pain for a lifetime of pain. I forced myself to do it to keep them from suffering so much later. No mother, no father, no relatives. The fears of the father are transferred to the son. It was from my father to me and from me to my son. He already had it and now, to be left alone, I had to take him with me
.

I killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for my demise as I planned to kill the others. I really wish I hadn’t killed her now. She really couldn’t help it and I love her so much anyway. I know that Jehovah will take care of all of them in the next life. I’m sure the details don’t matter. There is no excuse, no good reason. I am sure no one would understand. If they could, I wouldn’t want them to. I just write these things to say why
.

Please know that I love Leigh Ann, Matthew, and Mychelle with all of my heart. If Jehovah is willing, I would like to see all of them again in the resurrection, to have a second chance. I don’t plan to live very much longer, just long enough to kill as many of the people that greedily sought my destruction
.

You should kill me if you can
.

Mark O. Barton

He printed the letter out on a crisp sheet of his personal stationery, signed it in bold script, and left it on the living room coffee table where somebody would find it. He then packed a duffel bag with four loaded handguns—a black 9 mm Glock, a nickel-plated .45-caliber Colt, an H&R .22, and a cheap .25-caliber Saturday night special—and more than two hundred loose rounds of ammunition. After a quick stop at his lawyer’s office to change his will, Mark Barton would be well armed as he finally took aim at his demons.

The sun was just rising, and this day was going to be visual.

“OH GOD, PLEASE DON’T LET ME DIE”

Around 2:30 p.m., Barton strolled into Momentum Securities’ third-floor offices at 3500 Piedmont Road, carrying his small duffel bag. The trading floor was packed with traders as he stopped to chat with a secretary. He told her he wanted to wire $200,000 into his account but first wanted to talk to Momentum’s branch manager, Justin Hoehn, who was running errands but was expected to return soon.

Barton paced, antsy. For a while, he made small talk with other traders but when Hoehn didn’t return after a half hour, he’d waited long enough. He wandered into the office break room, where Momentum’s office manager owner, Kevin Dial, was hanging out. For a few awkward moments, they bemoaned the flagging markets, then Barton suddenly wheeled around on Dial.

“It’s a bad trading day,” he growled, “and it’s about to get worse.”

He drew the Glock and the Colt from under his shirt, sticking one in Dial’s back and the other in his chest. He pulled the triggers simultaneously and blew two gaping holes in both sides of his shocked victim. Dial died instantaneously.

The roar of gunshots froze everyone on the trading floor. His face flecked with blood, Barton was back in control. He alone could decide who lived and who died. As he began shooting at the traders, they scrambled to hide behind desks. For more than ten minutes, he prowled the trading floor, shooting both pistols at anyone who moved. Some tried to run, and he fired with uncanny precision. Some broke windows and threw out papers to get someone’s—anyone’s—attention. Some barricaded themselves in a small room and dodged bullets when Barton fired through the door. Some tried in vain to dial 911 on their cell phones. Some played dead, even as Barton walked around and fired point-blank into still bodies. Four people lay dead or mortally wounded while seven others slowly bled from their wounds. Not a cop or paramedic was within blocks of the killing floor.

Gun smoke filled the room as Barton calmly reloaded and quietly left the building. He drove his green 1992 Ford Aerostar minivan just a block up busy,
six-lane Piedmont Road, where nobody yet knew the horror that was still unfolding.

His next stop: All-Tech.

Brent Doonan was confused. What did Barton mean by “today’s gonna be visual”? Barton wasn’t going to give a translation. He crossed his arms in front over his chest and drew two pistols from his waistband like some B-movie bandito. He fired point-blank at Brent.

The first slug, a hollow-point .45, entered Brent’s gut just beneath his sternum, ripping through his liver, spleen, and diaphragm, and narrowly missing his heart before bursting out his back just two inches from his spine. The second, a smaller 9 mm hollow point, lodged in the meaty party of his right arm.

But Brent only saw a couple bright flashes and heard two muffled pops. No pain as the bullets blasted through him …no sense of falling …no sound …no real grasp of time itself …as if he might have missed the moment of his own death, had it come.

But he wasn’t dead. Yet. He lay dazed, facedown on the floor, wondering what had just happened.

Pain and awareness seeped through him slowly, as if his body were just waking from a deep sleep. He felt his own warm blood puddling in a slowly widening circle around him and he watched it soaking into the synthetic carpet.
My God, this is real!
He felt like he’d taken a cannonball in the chest, and his gut clenched.
That son of a bitch just shot me!
He saw two spent shell casings on the floor nearby and his head spun as he wondered if this was how he would die, right here, alone on the floor.
Where is Scott? Where is Kathy?

Three more shots rang out.

The first hit administrative assistant Kathy Van Camp in one temple and exited the other, slicing her facial artery and destroying her eyes. The other two hit Brent’s partner Scott Manspeaker in the belly and the wrist, and he slumped to the floor beside his desk, motionless.

Brent played dead, his eyes closed. He couldn’t see his friends.
How can I get out of here?
He couldn’t reach a phone. He knew he would die if he lay there much longer.
Should I try to help the others?
His mind raced as Barton began shooting other traders on the floor.
Can I try to stop him?
The sound of gunfire was making him sick to his stomach, but it hurt too much to puke.

Meanwhile, Barton was methodically killing Brent’s customers and friends with dreadful precision. Despite walls of glass throughout the office, he never broke a single one with an errant shot. He moved purposefully through the room, shooting one gun and then the other before coolly reloading. One trader tried to run, and Barton shot him once in the back and a second time in the buttocks before he fell; he was dead before he hit the floor. Another just stood frozen in fear until Barton fatally shot him twice.

FRIGHTENED PEOPLE RUN FROM AN OFFICE IN ATLANTA’S UPSCALE BUCKHEAD DISTRICT WHILE POLICE CROUCH BEHIND A VAN AFTER MARK BARTON OPENED FIRE IN TWO STOCK-TRADING FIRMS.
Associated Press

ONLOOKERS AND MEDIA RUSHED TO THE SCENE OF MARK BARTON’S RAMPAGE IN THE BUCKHEAD DISTRICT, BUT THE ANGRY DAY-TRADER WAS ALREADY LONG GONE WHEN THE NEWS BROKE.
Getty Images

Blood sprayed on the walls, the windows, the floor. Barton stood so close to many of his victims that he, too, was covered in their blood, but he was calm, even ghoulishly jovial.

“I certainly hope this doesn’t ruin your trading day!” Barton hollered as he fired.

The gravely wounded Doonan knew he could never overpower the massive Barton, who outweighed him by eighty pounds and was on a fanatical mission. Instead, he plotted his escape through a conference room door and away from the building to get help. He gathered his waning strength and rose to his feet,
holding his stomach wound, blood spilling out of his gut shot through his fingers. Suddenly, Barton was standing in the office doorway, his back to Brent, still spraying the bloodied trading floor with bullets.

What do I do now? Lie back down and play dead? Make a run for it?

“I certainly hope this doesn’t ruin your trading
day!” Barton hollered as he fired.

The choice was made for him.

At that moment, Brent watched Barton shoot a runner in the back, then raise his gun for an easier shot at a woman who had no place to run. Without thinking, Brent lunged through the door and shoulder-blocked Barton in the back. His shot barely missed the woman, but Barton regained his balance and fired twice at Brent, who was now running toward a new escape. One bullet hit his left arm and the other struck under his left shoulder blade, exploding out through the left side of his chest, but Brent was still on his feet and, inexplicably, Barton didn’t pursue him, perhaps thinking Brent—now shot four times—would slink off and die like a wounded animal.

Brent reached the exterior hallway, where gun smoke hung in a fluorescent haze. He pinned one injured arm against the trickling hole in his belly as the other hung slack at his side, useless. He looked back.
Where is Mark?
Rapidly losing strength, he felt his way along the white walls, smearing a bloody trail as he struggled toward the door at the end of the fifty-foot hall, which was suddenly longer than he remembered. The stairwell door might as well have been a mile, a horrifying funhouse illusion in the distance.

He couldn’t feel his legs, but Brent fled as fast as his wounds and flagging adrenaline would let him—so briskly that one of his shoes flew off—but time and space were out of sync. A monster lurked somewhere behind him, but he felt trapped in a phantasmic half-speed warp, unable to move quickly enough to save himself. Seconds elongated into hours …every inch felt like a thousand miles …sanctuary grew more distant as the color drained from the walls, the floor, the blood.

Out of the gray light, another door miraculously appeared. The service elevator. Brent used every ounce of his strength to push through a heavy door into the elevator’s small vestibule and began to prod the button in an urgent frenzy. He heard the distant drone of the plodding car somewhere, and he glanced back at the door expecting to see Barton coming to finish him off.

The sluggish elevator continued to hum, unhurried. Brent sunk to his knees and tried in vain to pry the elevator doors open.

“Come on!” he seethed under his breath. “Come on!”

In that moment, death touched him. He felt cold and doomed.
This is it. I’m going to die in this little box and nobody will ever know until it’s too late
.

He dragged himself to the big vestibule door again to peek down the hall to see whether he had any time left. A panicked woman was running down the narrow hallway, and Brent began to motion her toward the modest safety of the elevator’s tiny, enclosed vestibule.