Murder Suicides

Watching his family's new, two-story home being built in 2001, Ervin Antonio Lupoe appeared to be riding a wave of hope and excitement. He dropped by each week to check the progress, one construction worker recalled. But in what authorities believe was a gruesome burst of anger after he and his wife lost their jobs, the burly 40-year-old X-ray technician turned that same Wilmington home into a family tomb, officials said Tuesday.

A 4-year-old boy killed last month by his mother at their Highland Park home had been the subject of a botched child-abuse investigation, Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina said Tuesday. The mother committed suicide after decapitating her young son with a kitchen knife, according to police.

Hours before he walked into his workplace at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center with two handguns to fatally shoot his bosses and then himself, Mario Ramirez went about his morning routine with his usual kindness and good cheer, his sister-in-law said. He gave his children breakfast, took them to school (he had moved his family to Alhambra because its classrooms seemed safer than those in Boyle Heights) and returned home to get ready for his job as a technician at the hospital's pharmacy.

Distraught over his divorce and the loss of his job, James Mulvaney did the unthinkable, Ventura County authorities say. Sometime after his ex-wife dropped their two children off at his Thousand Oaks apartment Tuesday, Mulvaney stabbed 12-year-old Jason and 7-year-old Jennifer to death in their bedrooms. The 52-year-old father then took his own life by overdosing on prescription pills, a preliminary review Thursday by the county medical examiner's office indicates. Pending toxicology tests are needed to confirm the finding, but Mulvaney's body had no visible trauma and prescription medicines were found in the residence, Deputy Medical Examiner Michael Tellez said.

The man believed to be responsible for killing his wife, five children and himself in Wilmington had been fired from his hospital job along with his wife for allegedly forging a supervisor's signature on a child-care application, according to Kaiser Permanente officials.

It was a lunch hour in October when Monica Thomas-Harris called a friend at work with a chilling request. She was sitting in a car in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant. Her estranged husband, Curtis Bernard Harris, was meeting her. "Tami," she told her supervisor, Tamara Cerven, "if you don't hear from me, you need to find me." For Cerven, who said she had witnessed her friend's attempts to keep Harris' anger in check for years, this marked a new low.

A Yorba Linda man killed his wife and three of his children late Saturday night before turning the shotgun on himself in a small condominium across the street from the Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace, police said Sunday. A 14-year-old stepson of the man was also shot but was expected to survive. Police said they did not know the motive for the attacks. Before he underwent surgery, the stepson was not able to explain what started the rampage.

Trying to figure out what set off a 41-year-old father, homicide investigators Monday interviewed the lone survivor of a weekend murder-suicide and searched the Yorba Linda home where five family members were killed. Brea Police Lt. Jack Conklin said the new search was prompted by the detectives' hospital interview with Ian Mercado, 14, but the officer declined to say what police were seeking.

A man killed his ex-girlfriend's current boyfriend, her mother and two other people, then killed himself after police caught up with him in a rural area, authorities said. Rusty L. Rumley came to the family's apartment in a public housing complex Wednesday morning under the ruse of needing help moving furniture, Bristol Police Chief Blaine Wade said.

A student killed 10 people Tuesday at his trade school, burned some of the bodies with firebombs and then fatally shot himself in the head, one day after police questioned him about a violent video he had posted on YouTube. Witnesses said panic broke out at the Kauhajoki School of Hospitality, 180 miles northwest of Helsinki, as the masked gunman opened fire in a classroom during an exam. About 150 students were present, and at least two who were shot survived.