A message on a bouquet of flowers at the entrance to one of the Buckhead office buildings reads, "I'm so very sorry, God bless"  THE NOTES: Excerpts from the letter found in the Barton family living room Notes left with bodies Police read the notes left behind by Barton (July 30) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K RELATED VIDEO Barton, described by friends and neighbors as normal, left notes on the bodies of his family. CNN's Mike Boettcher reports. (July 30) Real 28K 80K Windows Media 28K 80K To view the latest video streams, use the arrow buttons below to scroll through the video gallery.        Windows Media Real        28 K 80 K RELATED AUDIO The 911 call made from the Atlanta office complex where nine people were shot AIFF or WAV (285 K/24 sec. audio) Use the arrow buttons below to scroll through the audio gallery AIFF   WAV MESSAGE BOARDS Message Board INTERACTIVE Images of the Atlanta Shootings  ALSO: Day trading: risk, reward or ruin Motive unclear in Atlanta massacre Emergency response to trauma makes life or death difference Atlanta gunman remained suspect in '93 Alabama killings Victims in the Atlanta shootings Employees return to buildings one day after shooting rampage

July 30, 1999
Web posted at: 7:13 p.m. EDT (2313 GMT)

In this story: 'I hit them with a hammer' 'Words cannot tell the agony' 'I have come to hate this life' Final moments before suspect's suicide Motive? 'An eerie feeling' RELATED STORIES, SITES

ATLANTA (CNN) -- Hours before stock market day trader Mark Barton shot nine people to death at a pair of Atlanta brokerage firms, he had vowed in writing to kill those "who greedily sought my destruction," and had already killed his wife and two children with blows from a hammer as they slept.

The disclosures came Friday as authorities released the contents of a one-page, computer written note in which Barton expresses love for his family and remorse for the three killings.

Written on Barton's stationery and dated 6:38 a.m. Thursday, the note also urges police to kill him if they can.

Except for the vague reference to greedy people, it makes no direct reference to Thursday's shootings, a rampage that ended hours later when Barton took his own life, taking the death toll to 13.

In addition to the nine deaths at two Atlanta office buildings, another 13 people were wounded, police said. Ten of them, including seven people in critical condition, were still under hospital care on Friday.

"There was little pain," Barton wrote, describing how earlier this week he bludgeoned his second wife, Leigh Ann, 27, and his two children from his first marriage -- 11-year-old Matthew and 7-year-old Elizabeth Mychelle.

"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 the bathtub to make sure they did not wake up in pain," Barton wrote.

"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," he wrote. " No mother, no father, no relatives."

Barton's note, read aloud to reporters by Henry County Police Chief Jimmy Mercer, was found in the living room of his family's apartment in suburban Stockbridge, south of Atlanta.

Barton's words reveal how tortured he felt at the time of the killings, but do not fully explain his motive.

Authorities are investigating his alleged financial and marital difficulties, but the note does not specifically link those problems to his actions.

"Words can not tell the agony," the note reads.

"I have been dying since October," Barton wrote. He said he was "so terrified that I couldn't be that afraid while awake. It has taken its toll. I have come to hate this life in this system of things. I have come to have no hope."

He expressed his love for his wife and two children as well as in shorter, handwritten messages found near their bodies that appear to ask God to take care of them.

But in the longer note, Barton also calls his wife "one of the main reasons for my demise," with no specific explanation of what he was blaming her for.

"I don't plan to live very much longer, just long enough to kill ... the people that greedily sought my destruction," he wrote.

Barton's note listed the names of three people, but Mercer said the three were apparently named as next of kin, not as further targets for retribution.

One of the names is Bill Spivey, the father of his first wife.

Barton is suspected of killing Debra Spivey Barton, 36, and her mother, Eloise Spivey, 59, in Alabama six years ago.

No charges were ever brought against him, and in the note found by Georgia authorities, Barton denied responsibility for the Alabama deaths.

The other names in the note were Gladys Barton who is Mark's widowed mother, and Joe Fowler whose connection to Mark Barton was not immediately clear.

Mark Barton is shown here with his wife Leigh Ann, 27, and his two children from his first marriage, Matthew, 11, and Elizabeth Mychelle, 7

Barton killed himself in his van Thursday night in the northern suburb of Acworth as two police officers closed in on him about five hours after the Atlanta shootings.

Cobb County Police Officer Huel Clements had followed Barton from a mall. The officer said he kept his distance but still managed to get a visual ID of the suspect before he turned into a BP gas station.

"He circled around slowly, through the parking lot, around the back, and when he came around adjacent to the car wash, he stopped," said Clements.

By that time, Cpl. Curtis Endicott of the Acworth Police Department arrived to provide assistance. He pulled closer to block the suspect's car, fearing Barton would make a run for it.

As he got out of his vehicle, Endicott said he saw Barton move, saw a flash and heard a muffled shot.

The two handguns recovered from the van -- a .45-caliber Colt and a 9 mm Glock -- are believed to be the guns Barton used at the two office buildings.

A duffel bag with ammunition also was found in the van, Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard said Friday.

"We believe that Mr. Barton actually shot himself with the .45," she said, adding that the gun was registered to a person in Texas. No additional information was immediately available.

Barton was the legally registered owner of the 9 mm gun, which he purchased in 1993, Harvard said.

Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who had earlier said the chemist-turned-day trader 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.

Linda Lerner, an attorney for All-Tech Investment Group, a day-trading firm Barton once used, said there was nothing unusual about his trading activities and that he was "going through a difficult divorce."

"He was a customer until a couple of months ago and then he went to another firm to trade," she said in Montvale, New Jersey, where All-Tech is headquartered. "We're going through his account now to determine what his trading gains and losses were."

"Day trading does take place in a high pressure environment, but I understand from the firm where he had been trading until two days ago that there was nothing remarkable about his trading," she said.

"I don't know that you can necessarily tie his trading to these killings," she added.

"Mark Barton met our financial requirements as a customer," said James Lee, president of Momentum Securities, the other company that Barton targeted.

"The documents he signed indicated that he understood the potential risks and rewards of day trading," said Lee. "He was an experienced trader."

"We're devastated by this. We don't know why it happened, we'll probably never know," Lee said at a news conference Friday.

"We're grieving for our employees, our customers, their families and their loved ones," Lee said.

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.

Barton then walked across a busy road and into the All-Tech branch in the Piedmont Center building. Five died there.

Barton, who was carrying a pistol in each hand, at one point in the rampage, managed to escape from the Buckhead area and elude a police search for five hours until his suicide.

On Friday morning, workers returned to the two buildings, but the offices where the nine deaths occurred remained closed as police investigated the crime scene.

Someone left a bouquet of spring flowers -- red carnations, yellow chrysanthemums and white daisies -- outside each building with a card that said, "I'm so sorry. God bless you."

"Everyone is still shaken," said Millicent Pilate as she returned to work in the complex.

Going back to the building was an "eerie feeling," said Sheldon Casey.

Correspondents Brian Cabell, Mike Boettcher, Martin Savidge and Holly Firfer contributed to this report, written by Jim Morris