Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
Hey, welcome back, bingers. I want to start today's episode by saying one category of crime we generally don't like to cover on our podcast is mass shootings. In fact, you may have noticed true crime podcasts in general tend to avoid covering mass shootings.
You'd think the reasons are obvious, but they're actually rather murky and uncomfortable to explore. Because make no mistake, true crime content, whether it's Dateline or Forensic Files or Binged, the very podcast you're listening to, at the end of the day, it's entertainment. This is storytelling. This is content. And
And there are a lot of ethical considerations, questions, and quandaries embedded in both consuming and creating true crime content. Though this isn't to say you should feel dirty about consuming it. Our interest in the dark, the scary, the gruesome, in humans killing other humans dates back
Well, it dates back millennia from the Bible to the murder ballads of a few centuries ago. True crime has been around for a long, long time. But there are some stories that cross lines and flirt with taboo in a way that makes it difficult to incorporate them into entertainment. Crimes involving children sometimes fall into this category and so does mass shootings. The problem with mass shootings is we're living through an unprecedented mass shooting epidemic.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in America, the symptom of a deeply sick and wounded society. It's a fact of life in America, one that's painful politically and morally divisive and oversaturated in the news media.
So as true crime stories, they're often not especially interesting. But when you look further back in time to the 20th century, before mass shootings in America were a weekly occurrence, you see the seeds of the epidemic starting to sprout. Like, remember when people would go postal? The phrase going postal arose from a 1986 incident that remains to date the deadliest workplace mass shooting in United States history. When
When 44 year old postal worker Patrick Sherrill upset by among other things a recent reprimand entered the Edmond Oklahoma post office branch where he worked and opened fire killing 14 of his co-workers before turning the gun on himself.
Several incidents over the next 10 years involving so-called disgruntled postal workers made it seem like postal workers were ticking time bombs and the post office was a hellish place to work. If you go to newspapers.com and type the phrase disgruntled postal worker in the search bar, you'll see that postal workers have been disgruntled for a while.
As early as 1920, there are references to disgruntled postal workers. But they didn't start taking up arms, this disgruntled variety of postal employee, until the second half of the 20th century. In fact, if you look at the results by decade, there's an enormous uptick of disgruntled postal workers in the 1990s. The results increase 17-fold in this decade.
And it's really the 1990s when the mass shooting epidemic began. It was the Columbine High School shooting in 1999 that ushered in the age of the school shooting, making it clear that going postal wasn't the exclusive domain of the United States Postal Service.
And it was just a few months later that another, almost equally deadly mass shooting made headlines. In that case, there was a lot more to the story than just the shooting, which wasn't the only crime that the perpetrator committed. And that's the story I'm going to tell you today.
In 1999, journalists were writing about the day trading craze much in the same way that cryptocurrency has been written about in recent years. It was speculative, risky. Inexperienced traders were turning to day trading to make a fast fortune, many of them unaware of the level of risk they were undertaking. Day traders aren't in the business of buying and holding stocks, which is how trading traditionally works.
Day traders are not in it for the long gains. They're in it for quick gains. Day traders buy and sell stocks rapidly, usually buying and selling their shares in the same day, trading on a second by second basis in real time. Hence the term day trading. It's a highly speculative form of trading where the trader is relying on fluctuations that occur in the market.
But of course, with volatile markets, day trading can go either way. It's a lot like gambling. And much like gambling, the gains are often small, but the losses, especially cumulatively, can be substantial. In the 1990s, when not everyone had a computer with access to the internet,
And much like there were internet cafes, there were day trading firms where day traders could go pay a rental fee for accessing the trading terminal and of course pay the firm commission on each trade because the firm is acting as a broker. Momentum Securities in Atlanta was one such firm.
July 29th, 1999, the third floor of Momentum Securities was bustling with traders, and it wasn't a good trading day. The markets were down. The morale on the trading floor at Momentum on this particular Thursday was low. And then at around 2.30 in the afternoon, a familiar face appeared.
It was Mark Barton, a regular at Momentum, as well as the trading firm across the street, All Tech Investment Group. He had spent hours at a time at each firm, sitting at their terminals and trading stocks.
Barton was known to the regulars and employees at both firms. He was outgoing and friendly, and when he was on a hot streak, he liked to spread the good cheer around. But Mark Barton had not been on a hot streak in recent months, and this was his first appearance at Momentum in several weeks.
Upon entering, Barton stopped to chat with the security, informing her that he wished to wire $200,000 into his account. But before he did, he needed to speak with the branch manager, Justin Hoen.
The security let Mr. Barton know that Justin was out and expected to return shortly. So Barton then paced around the trading floor, appearing anxious. He made small talk with some of the traders he knew from the many hours he'd spent on the trading floor.
Most of them were singing the same tune. The markets were stagnant, nothing looking very bullish, which if you don't know trading terminology, bullish means the markets are looking healthy with share prices expected to rise.
Bearish, on the other hand, means that a pullback seems imminent. So the markets on this day were looking bearish. Mark paced for about half an hour and made his way into the break room where he chatted for a few minutes with Kevin Dial, the office manager. Suddenly, Mark stood up and made an announcement. "It's a bad trading day," he said, "and it's about to get worse."
He crossed his arms in front of himself and drew two handguns from under his shirt, placing one against Dial's back and the other against his chest. He then fired both guns simultaneously. Dial had only a brief moment to register the shock of what had just happened to him before he slumped on the floor and died.
Everyone on the trading floor froze. Mark waltzed out of the break room with his guns blazing, firing at the traders and firm employees like a Western gunfighter in a saloon. Mark was shooting at anyone who moved, striking down his targets with terrifying accuracy. Some of the traders barricaded themselves in a small room. Others played dead, but Barton shot them anyway.
Barton went out shooting for more than 10 minutes. Can you imagine how long that felt to the survivors? Time goes so slowly when you're terrified, when you're under attack. Once he was finished, 11 people had been shot. Five were already dead.
Barton was then seen calmly reloading his gun and walking away from the carnage, unceremoniously exiting the building, getting into his green minivan and driving it just up the block, parking near his next destination. Alltech Investment Group. Alltech's co-manager Brent Doonan was in a conference when a security popped in to tell him that Mark Barton was there to see him. "'I think he's back with my money,' he joked."
Barton's account at Alltech had recently been closed, a difficult decision for Brent as he'd grown close with Barton, who'd racked up a substantial debt with the company, close to $100,000. So Brent motioned for Barton to come in, not knowing he'd just killed nearly half a dozen people at the trading firm down the street. Hey, Brent, Mark Barton said, wearing a warm smile on his face. You got a minute? Come here. You're going to love this.
Brent excused himself from the meeting and followed Barton out, leading him into a small room nearby. Once they were inside, Barton closed the door and then he closed the blinds, which struck Duden as unusual. And then that's when Barton delivered another line straight out of a bad action movie.
Today's going to be visual, he declared, before crossing his arms in front of his chest like Rambo and drawing his two pistols from his waistband. He then shot Doonan twice in the chest. Doonan collapsed to the floor face down. Barton rampaged on, hitting administrative assistant Kathy Van Camp in the head and then co-owner Scott Manspeaker in the stomach.
Brent lay on the floor with a hole in his chest leaking blood. He could hear the gunshots and the screams. The pain grew in intensity with each passing moment, but Brent tried his damnedest to play dead. Barton moved methodically through the office and shot at anything that moved. I certainly hope this doesn't ruin your trading day, he belted out, firing one shot after another. Meanwhile, Brent remained conscious and decided to try and make a run for it.
but then he saw someone else running and Barton reflexively turned to them and shot them in the back. He then aimed his gun at a woman who was cornered. Brent instead lunged at Barton, causing him to miss the shot. But then Barton turned around and aimed his gun at Brent, who turned and began to run. Barton fired a shot and then another shot. Both hit Brent. One hit his left arm and the other one hit his shoulder blade and passed through his chest.
Barton then turned and resumed, firing on the trading floor. Brent stumbled to an exterior hallway, sparing blood along the walls as he tried to steady himself. He finally made his way to the service elevator. He pressed the call button and he could hear the elevator hum, taking what seemed like an eternity to arrive. He saw a woman enter the hallway, running toward what she hoped was safety. Brent motioned for her to join him in the elevator whenever it finally came.
But then, suddenly, Mark Barton too entered the hallway and shot the woman in the back of the head before continuing toward Brent. Just then, the doors opened, and Brent pushed himself inside and pressed every button on the panel. Barton then raised his gun and pointed it at Brent's face, and the elevator doors then closed, just in time. He was able to make his way to a nearby office where he begged the workers there to call 911.
Of course, calls had already begun flooding emergency call centers because of the first shooting at Momentum Securities. And Brent had five gunshot wounds and he was beginning to lose consciousness. Concerned workers tried to stop the blood loss with rolls of paper towels while they waited for help. 15 minutes passed. 20. There were still no medics at the scene.
Brent had the workers dial his brother, who talked to him on speakerphone as Brent grew weaker and weaker. They told each other, I love you. Brent was slipping away. One of the workers asked him what religion he was, and he said he was Catholic.
She and everyone around him began reciting the Lord's Prayer. Meanwhile, Mark Barton quietly exited the building unseen and drove away in his minivan once again, blending into traffic as police converged on the scenes of the two mass shootings. Forty minutes later, the paramedics finally arrived and began tending to Brent, who was cold from all of the blood loss and beginning to convulse.
Every news station and media outlet was at both scenes, which were crawling with law enforcement personnel and medics. As Brent was rushed to the hospital, police began their hunt for Mark Barton. Multiple survivors in both firms recognized the shooter, so his identity was no mystery.
But where was he? One of the largest manhunts in the state of Georgia was then launched, with the city of Atlanta as well as the state line sealed off. 22 people had been shot and nine were dead. Seven were fighting for their lives. Everyone who still had their wits about them were trying to make sense of what had happened. And while no sense can truly be made of a senseless act like what Mark Barton had committed,
The context of the life leading up to it can help bring it into sharper focus.
Mark Oren Barton was born in Stockbridge, Georgia on April 2nd, 1955 to Truman and Gladys Barton. His father was in the Air Force and was stationed in Germany when Mark was young and later reassigned to Shaw Air Force Base in Sumter, South Carolina. That's where Mark grew up an only child. Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Pro
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As a child, he had difficulty connecting with his peers who ostracized him. He was described as intelligent but emotionally distant. To cope with the emotional difficulties of being a loner, he turned to psychedelics and other drugs, which turned into a habit, resulting in several overdoses that required emergency care.
After high school, he worked doing manual labor before enrolling in Clemson University and then the University of South Carolina, where he earned a degree in chemistry. While in school, he had a job working as a hotel night auditor, and that's where he began a relationship with his coworker, Deborah Spivey, who was also a student and also from Georgia.
Once she graduated, she returned to Georgia, and then Mark got his degree and followed her there, marrying her in 1981.
Living in Atlanta, Mark got a job testing cleaning compounds before relocating with his wife to Texarkana, Texas. And 1988 was a big year for Mark Barton. He and his wife welcomed their first child, a son who they named Matthew. And Mark became the president of a company called TLC Manufacturing, which he co-founded with some friends. In his new position, he was earning a salary of $80,000 a year.
Three years later, in 1991, the couple had a daughter, Michelle. To everyone in their orbit, the Bartons seemed like your typical American family. Debra was a loving mother and Mark a highly paid corporate executive on his way to becoming a successful chemist. And the family was about to relocate yet again at the behest of Mark's company, this time to Alabama.
This move seemed to trigger a change in Mark's behavior. Suddenly, he seemed always on edge, anxious, even paranoid, often for no apparent reason at all.
What was he paranoid about? The surroundings in Alabama were new to him. He was working with strangers now, and he didn't know anyone in the area. His friends and family lived elsewhere, so he was isolated. And he began growing suspicious of his wife, Debra, accusing her of cheating on him.
He would manipulate her and threatened to take the kids from her and was even physically abusive on occasion. Eventually, Debra began looking for a divorce lawyer. So really, what appeared to be an ideal happy family was anything but. And the problems didn't end at Mark's driveway. At work, his performance had taken a nosedive and his workplace conduct was not sitting well with the board. So they fired him from the company that he himself had co-founded.
One evening shortly after, after office hours, Mark Barton showed up at TLC Manufacturing's office and broke into the building for the apparent purpose of sabotaging computer data, erasing files, and stealing company formulas. It didn't take long for this crime to be detected and for Barton to be arrested for burglary.
A detective that was investigating reached the conclusion that the real reason Barton had broken into the building and accessed the computer system was to hide nefarious activity he'd engaged in while at the company. Illegal kickbacks, inventory discrepancies, and outside sales of chemicals for recreational use. Basically drug dealing.
Barton spent a short period of time in jail for this, and then TLC reached an agreement with Barton and decided not to pursue charges so he was released. But this incident created even more problems in the Bartons' marriage. For Debra, a good day with Mark was when Mark wasn't speaking to her, and it reached a point where they wouldn't even sleep in the same bed. But it was Mark who ended up on the couch.
Soon, the Bartons returned to Georgia and Mark got a job as a salesman for a chemical company. That's where he met a young secretary named Leanne Lang. Leanne was 17 years younger than him, and she, like Mark, was married. But also, like Mark, she was unhappily married. And she and Mark began an affair with each other.
It wasn't long before Mark's wife, Deborah, got wise. She noticed his wardrobe changing, the new tan he'd gotten from the tanning salon. Now she was the one accusing him of being unfaithful, but he wouldn't admit to it. Meanwhile, he kept telling Leanne that a divorce was imminent, telling her this for months. He absolutely was going to file for divorce, he promised. He just had to wait for the timing to be right.
It was around this time that Mark Barton took out a life insurance policy on his wife, Deborah. He wanted to take out a $1 million policy, but the premiums were beyond what he could afford. So he took out a $600,000 policy. This was in spring of 1993. That June, the still married Mark Barton took a trip with the still married Leanne Lang to Charlotte, North Carolina.
During dinner one night, Mark told Leanne that she was the love of his life and he'd be free to marry her by October of that year. A couple of months later, Leanne separated from her husband and filed for divorce, assuming that Mark, her lover, would do the same.
But Mark had other plans. In early September for Labor Day weekend, Deborah and her mother, Eloise Spivey, rented a caravan and headed out to the Riverside Campground in Cedar Bluff, Alabama, leaving Mark behind with the couple's children. Eloise was an avid fisher, and she and her husband, Deborah's father, Bill, had bought a plot of land here on Lake Wise several years earlier.
On Sunday, September 5th, 1993, Bill Spivey was concerned about his wife and daughter after he didn't receive an expected phone call from them. Late Sunday morning on September 5th, 1993, Eloise's neighbors at the campground noticed her car was still parked behind their rented camper.
Since Eloise and Deborah had planned to depart early that morning, this seemed odd. They knocked on the camper door and received no response. And when they entered, they were confronted by a horrible scene. Blood splatter was everywhere. Deborah and Eloise had been hacked to death, apparently with an axe or something similar.
Eloise's purse had been dumped outside and two rings were missing, yet other more valuable jewelry was ignored. So were the victim's credit cards and $600 in $100 bills.
And Eloise's .32 caliber handgun lay undisturbed on the kitchen counter. Now, to investigators, this crime scene appeared to have been staged to look like a robbery. Canvassing the campground, investigators learned that a man who was out fishing on Saturday night had heard what sounded like a loud fight between a man and a woman. Other witnesses observed a man running from the camper, a man who appeared to be over six feet tall and over 200 pounds.
He was running away like he'd, quote, done something bad, according to one witness. After Bill Spivey got the news, he called his son-in-law Mark to break the bad news. But to his surprise, Mark seemed relatively unemotional. They got together later that day and traveled to the campground. The car ride was mostly silent, and when they arrived at the Riverside campground, the first words out of Mark's mouth were, "'Huh, I've never been here before.'"
For Bill Spivey, this was suspicious. And while talking to a cop at the scene, Bill happened to mention this. But the cops already had their eyes on Mark Barton. Everything about his demeanor and behavior was suspicious for a man whose wife had just been hacked to death. He didn't ask the right questions. He didn't seem to be sad. He was emotionless and casual about the entire thing.
When asked where he was on the night of September 5th, he told police he was at his house all day, which was two hours away, spending time with his kids. But later on, a neighbor of Mark's would contradict this. That neighbor saw Mark leaving his residence at around 4.30 p.m., and he wasn't seen returning until after midnight.
When confronted about this discrepancy, Mark then admitted, okay, he did leave the house, leaving the kids with Leanne so he could go shopping and then see a movie. So he left the kids with his lover. But when asked to provide retail receipts from that shopping trip and the movie ticket stub, Mark was unable to and later changed his story again. Now claiming he'd gone out to look for a new job at 4.30 p.m. on a Saturday.
Eventually, Mark retracted everything he'd said and lawyered up. Authorities continued to keep their eye on Mark Barton, observing him closely at Debra's funeral, watching as he hurried out right after the service ended, hopping into a car with Leanne, his mistress, leaving his two children behind with their newly widowed grandpa.
Mark Barton was now the prime suspect in Deborah and Eloise's murders. And it didn't help that he was spending his evenings together with his kids at Leanne's place. And although investigators were convinced that Mark was responsible for the murders, evidence eluded them.
They executed a search warrant immediately after the funeral and even sprayed the house with luminol, which Barton, despite being a chemist, claimed he'd never heard of before. They found no blood inside the home, but they did find blood in his car, on the ignition switch, and on the seatbelt. Barton taunted them. If there's a ton of blood in my car, he said, why am I not in handcuffs?
This forced the police to admit that the quantity of blood they found was too small to prove anything. Later, he showed up at the police department and had an explanation for why that blood was in his car. He'd gashed his finger deeply a year earlier, and that was likely the reason there was blood in his car. It was his own blood.
Detectives asked if he would provide DNA, but he refused. He also refused to submit to a polygraph test. And when they went to retest the blood, they could no longer find it. When asked if he'd cleaned the blood from his car, Barton claimed he had accidentally spilled a can of cola and cleaned it up.
And then investigators learned about the $600,000 life insurance. And they knew that Mark was guilty of killing his wife and his mother-in-law. But they couldn't prove it. No DNA was found on either victim or inside the camper. And neither of the witnesses who saw a man running from the camper could positively identify Mark Barton as that man. The case eventually stalled and then went cold.
Leanne's divorce was finalized in October of 1993, and Mark had kept his promise. He was ready to marry her by October of that year, $600,000 richer. They moved in together and became engaged. In February of 1994, Mark's two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Michelle, had told a worker at her daycare that her father had been sexually molesting her.
An investigation was launched and Mark Barton was interviewed by a psychiatrist who walked away with the conclusion that Barton was absolutely capable of committing murder. But unfortunately, none of this was sufficient grounds to either prosecute Mark Barton or remove his children from his custody. I don't know how a child admitting to it isn't enough proof.
In 1995, Mark and Leanne married. Bill Spivey, the father of Mark's murdered first wife, feared for the safety of his two grandchildren and tried to get custody of them, but was denied because Mark was their biological father. And Mark Barton all but cut off his first wife's family and wouldn't permit them to see Matthew and Michelle.
Meanwhile, because he remained the prime suspect in Debra's murder, the life insurance company didn't want to pay him. They subjected him to a six-hour deposition, and it took them four years from the point Debra was murdered to finally decide to settle and pay out $450,000 with $150,000 of it to go into a trust for the two children.
Mark accepted, and this left him with $300,000 in cash, burning a hole into his pocket. And that was when Mark Barton turned to day trading, hoping to turn that $300,000 into millions. And three years into their marriage, Leanne, then 26, decided
was realizing that Mark wasn't the partner she thought she'd committed to, the man she had left her husband for. And when she was questioned by detectives who were still trying to build a case against her husband,
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One of the detectives told her that if she didn't feel safe with him, it was important that she say so, but she wouldn't. And she abruptly left the interview. At this time, Mark was busy spending much of each day at Momentum Securities, making the 20-mile drive there and back nearly five days a week. They say that one of the most reliable predictors of gambling addiction is an early big win.
And as a day trader, Mark Barton was certainly experiencing that. His first month of trading, he was on a hot streak, making big money. Those around the trading floor dubbed him the Rocket Man because he was always full of enthusiasm and a cheerful attitude. But then just as quickly, his fortunes began to turn. His bold swings were no longer hitting the ball.
Barton would often trade thousands of shares at a time, and the losses were adding up. By May 1999, most of that $300,000 from the life insurance he payed out was gone. You know, the money he'd made by getting away with murder? And he was in debt with Momentum Securities to the tune of nearly $100,000. The company was left with no choice but to revoke Barton's trading privileges like we talked about at the beginning of the case.
They closed his account with their firm. He then tried to have the account reopened by writing Momentum a check for $50,000, but that check bounced and Momentum advised him he could no longer trade with their firm. He seemed reasonable in his response. He told him he understood why and calmly left the building.
But Barton was still infected with the trading bug. Within days, he was at the trading terminals at the Alltech Investment Group, just up the street from Momentum. Much like at Momentum, Mark quickly became popular on the trading floor of Alltech.
He'd frequently give others trading advice and what stocks to keep an eye on. This sounds so much like cryptocurrency trading, by the way. It's totally the same, except traders use smartphones instead of rented terminals. In fact, cryptocurrency's so-called bull run has been likened to the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s. And that's the kind of stock Mark Barton was day trading. Volatile dot-com stocks.
Brent Doonan was the 25-year-old co-founder of Alltech, and he took a liking to Mark and his magnetic personality right away. But what he didn't know was that he'd been booted from Momentum with an unresolved debt of $100,000. Once Mark Barton began racking up a gigantic debt at Alltech, the firm was finally contacted by Momentum and warned about the $100,000 debt he already owed them.
If Alltech had known about that at the onset, Brent realized the firm never would have approved an account with them. And with this information, Brent and his partner, Scott Manspeaker, had no choice but to close Barton's account. They just couldn't take on any additional risk, given his track record at Momentum and the way things had been going at Alltech.
I understand your position, Mark said in response to the news. He promised he would return sooner or later and repay all of the money he owed them. And then he calmly left in a way that was unsettling for reasons no one could quite pinpoint at the time. But one of Doonan's employees said, I guarantee you that's not the last we'll see of him. At the time, no one within earshot could know just how eerily prophetic these words would turn out to be.
By mid-afternoon on July 29th, 1999, nine people were dead. Five at Momentum and four at Alltech. And half a dozen others were clinging to life. Others like Brent Doonan, whose chest had been ripped apart by multiple gunshots delivered by Mark Barton, a guy he thought was his buddy. But where was Mark Barton? After the shootings, he got into his minivan and disappeared.
Law enforcement all over the state were on high alert. Units were dispatched to Mark Barton's residence at the Bristol Greens Apartments in Stockbridge. They knocked on the front door of the unit where the Barton family lived but got no response, so they broke down the door. And inside, the apartment was quiet. As officers made their way to the back bedrooms, they made a tragic discovery.
Inside one of the bedrooms tucked into their beds were the bodies of 11-year-old Matthew Barton and 8-year-old Michelle. They had been bludgeoned to death with a hammer. It would later be learned. After they were killed, they were tucked into beds with favorite items placed on their bodies. Michelle had a teddy bear placed on hers and Matthew had a video game placed on his. And also on each of their bodies was a handwritten note.
I give you Michelle Elizabeth Barton, my daughter, my sweetheart, my life. Please take care of her, said one. The other one read, I give you Matthew David Barton, my son, my buddy, my life. Please take care of him.
And in the closet of the master bedroom, police found the body of 27-year-old Leanne Barton wrapped in a blanket with a note that read, I give you my wife, Leanne Van Diver Barton, my honey, my precious love. Please take care of her. I will love her forever. There was one more note left in the living room. This one was typed on a computer and printed. It was addressed to whom it may concern.
Leanne is in the master bedroom closet under a blanket. I killed her on Tuesday night. I killed Matthew and Michelle Wednesday night. There may be similarities between these deaths and the death of my first wife, Deborah. However, I deny killing her and her mother. There's no reason for me to lie now. Let me just say this guy was a pure psychopath. He obviously killed his first wife and her mother.
There's no reason for me to lie now, he wrote. Yet he was still lying. He continued in the letter to refer to the murders of his second wife and two children. 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'm so sorry. I wish I didn't. Words cannot tell the agony. He then offered a motive for his killing spree.
I have been dying since October, he wrote. I wake up at night so afraid, so terrified that I couldn't be that afraid while awake. It has taken its toll. I've come to hate this life and this system of things. I have come to have no hope. I killed the children to exchange five minutes of pain for a lifetime of pain. Note the contradiction here, where earlier in the letter he says there was no pain and here he's revealing that there was.
He went on,
And then he concluded the letter by writing, 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. Signed, Mark O'Barton. By the time they discovered the bodies of his slain family members, Mark O'Barton was the most wanted man in America.
An APB had gone out with his description and a description of the van he was driving. It was up in Cobb County, the next county over from Fulton County, that's where Atlanta is, that a police officer named Huell Clements was traveling on I-75 when he spotted a minivan matching the APB.
He fed the plate number to dispatch and they confirmed that it was Mark Barton's minivan. He followed from a safe distance while radioing for backup. It was almost 8 o'clock at night at this point and Barton then turned off I-75 onto Georgia State Road 92 in the city of Ackworth.
Officer Clements continued following, keeping dispatch updated on Barton's location. He watched as Barton turned past a McDonald's and into a gas station. It was at this point that the officer turned on his blue light and let his siren wail for a second.
Barton slowed his minivan as though he was going to stop, but then he pulled into a spot between the gas pumps and the car wash. Right then, an Ackworth police car sped into the gas station parking lot and blocked the minivan from in front. Officer Clements, who was behind the minivan, then exited his cruiser and drew his gun, ordering Barton out of the vehicle. Backup soon arrived and blocked all possible exits from the gas station.
Mark Barton just sat inside the minivan this whole time. And then he was seen raising his 9mm to one temple and his .45 caliber to the other and pulling at least one of those triggers. His head then fell forward onto the steering wheel and Mark Barton was dead. The 13th casualty of a deadly spree that began two days earlier when Barton wiped out his family. And that's where his story ended.
a family annihilator and a mass shooter, and probably a child molester and financial criminal. But what happened to Brent Doonan, the co-founder of Alltech who was shot by Barton five times? Brent, I'm happy to say, pulled through. It was touch and go for a while. Brent required several surgeries and had to have one of his ribs removed and part of his diaphragm
But he recovered, got married, and has children now. And in 2006, he wrote a book about his ordeal and about Barton's shooting spree. It's called Murder at the Office, published by New Horizon Press.
Mark Barton was a psychopath most likely. He was warped and profoundly broken on some deep fundamental level. But he learned how to wear the mask of sanity, the facade of success well enough and long enough to hook two wives, both of whom he killed.
The last thing any of the people at those day trading firms expected was the funny, outgoing, gregarious Mark Barton to commit one of the deadliest mass shootings up to that point.
Now, that's it for this week's episode. Tune in next week for another round of Binged as we dive into another mass shooting from the last century when America had yet to adapt the idea of mass shootings being a feature of American life rather than purely an anomaly. I'll see you then.