Barton's disturbing letter read, "I don't plan to live much longer ... You should kill me if you can"  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: Memories of those who died: They loved travel, fly-fishing Barton killed 'himself many times over,' psychiatrist says Day trading: risk, reward or ruin Emergency response to trauma makes life or death difference Atlanta gunman remained suspect in '93 Alabama killings Fatalities in the Atlanta shootings Employees return to buildings one day after shooting rampage 11 wounded in Atlanta shooting spree still hospitalized

July 30, 1999
Web posted at: 10:43 p.m. EDT (0243 GMT)

In this story: 'You should kill me if you can' 'I hit them with a hammer' 'Words cannot tell the agony' 'I have come to hate this life' Shooter tried to push into barricaded office Final moments before suspect's suicide Four guns found in car Motive? 'An eerie feeling' RELATED STORIES, SITES

ATLANTA (CNN) -- The man who allegedly shot to death nine people at two brokerage houses in Atlanta lost about $105,000 in his last month of day trading -- and on his last trading day he ended on a down note.

A source familiar with Mark Barton's trading activities said Barton lost money that day. Asked if it was a considerable sum, the source said, "To you and me maybe. ... But it wasn't an unusual day in regard to his profits or losses."

When Barton, 44, first opened an account with Momentum Securities Inc.'s branch office in Atlanta on June 9, he indicated his net worth was $750,000 at the time, notarized records indicate, including $250,000 in available cash.

Barton's annual income earned as a chemist was listed as $85,000.

After losing money Tuesday, Barton went home and killed his wife. On Wednesday, he killed his two children.

Then, on Thursday, Barton carried out Atlanta's worst mass murder when he opened fire at two brokerage firms. Before he drove to the Buckhead financial area, he used his computer to write a note vowing to "kill as many of the people that greedily sought my destruction."

Authorities on Friday released the contents of the one-page note in which Barton also expresses love for his family and remorse for the three killings.

Authorities also released the 911 tapes of people reporting the shooting to police.

"There is a man bleeding in my office," Melinda Batch told the emergency operator at 2:56 p.m. EDT. She also described the shooter as a white man wearing a pink shirt.

While police investigated the carnage in the first building, Barton walked calmly past a guard and killed five more people in another office complex.

Then, as nearly every police officer in Atlanta was looking for him, Barton walked to his minivan and drove out of town.

'You should kill me if you can'

The note Henry County police found in Barton's home was written on his stationery and dated 6:38 a.m. Thursday. The note also urges police to kill him if they can.

Except possibly 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, increasing the death toll to 13.

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

'I hit them with a hammer'

"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."

'Words cannot tell the agony'

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.

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

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 cannot tell the agony," the note reads.

'I have come to hate this life'

"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 Barton's 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 Barton's widowed mother, and Joe Fowler, whose connection to Mark Barton was not immediately clear.

Shooter tried to push into barricaded office

An aerial view of the office building at 3500 Piedmont Road

Within minutes after the shooting spree, a woman in an office complex called 911 and rapidly, yet calmly, told a dispatcher that a man had been shot and was "covered in blood."

Melinda Batch gave the location of the building -- 3500 Piedmont Road, Suite 310 -- and said the man stumbled into the office suite after being shot in his left upper arm. The dispatcher asked her to repeat the address two times.

"Quick! We've got an emergency!" another woman implored a 911 operator. "There's a lady that's down!"

When the woman screams for an ambulance, the operator told her calmly, "Ma'am, we've got everybody en route."

Glenn Miller, who was in Momentum Securities when the shooting broke out, said he also called 911, but was put on hold the first time and had to call again.

It took at least 45 minutes for medical emergency crews to arrive at the office, he said.

Miller and a friend, Joe Skipper, had tipped over a desk and barricaded themselves in a back office when shots rang out.

The gunman tried to force the door open and then fired two shots through the door, one of which missed Skipper by 3 inches, Miller said.

After calling police, Miller and Skipper threw a computer terminal through the third-floor office window to create a potential escape route that police later used as a way to get into the building.

Skipper said about five minutes before the shooting he ran into Barton in the break room. "He had a smile on his face, looked me in the eyes and asked me how I was doing," Skipper said.

"I told him, 'Great.'"

Final moments before suspect's suicide

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 Barton 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.

Four guns found in car

Police found four handguns and more than 200 rounds of ammunition in Barton's vehicle.

Senior law enforcement officials tell CNN that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) has now traced the weapons.

According to sources, in addition to the Glock 9 mm and Colt .45 handguns police previously described, authorities also found a .22-caliber H & R revolver and a .25-caliber Raven pistol.

Sources say Barton purchased the revolver from a South Carolina pawnshop in 1976. Another individual bought the Raven pistol from a pawnshop in Georgia in 1992.

The Colt and Glock are believed to be the guns Barton used at the two office buildings.

"We believe that Mr. Barton actually shot himself with the .45," Atlanta Police Chief Beverly Harvard said.

Motive?

Atlanta Mayor Bill Campbell, who had earlier said the chemical salesman-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, 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.

The president of the other brokerage house -- where the shooting spree began -- said Friday "the last 24 hours have been hell" and he expressed his condolences to "those who are hurting."

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

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

"Mark Barton met our financial requirements as a customer," said Lee. "The documents he signed indicated that he understood the potential risks and rewards of day trading," said Lee. "He was an experienced trader."

'An eerie feeling'

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 Pierre Thomas, Brian Cabell, Mike Boettcher, Martin Savidge and Holly Firfer contributed to this report.