'How To' DVDs On Violence Found At Ala. Killing Site
EnlargeThe charred Kinston, Ala. living room where suspected gunman Michael McLendon allegedly killed his mother Lisa McLendon. AP
NPR.org, March 12, 2009 · Investigators found dozens of soot-covered DVDs on how to commit acts of violence in the charred Alabama home where a man killed his mother at the start of the worst massacre in state history, a county official said Thursday.
Authorities say Michael McLendon, 28, set his mother's body on fire Tuesday afternoon at the home they shared in the isolated community of Kinston, Ala. He later killed nine more people, four of them family members, before fatally shooting himself.
Coffee County District Attorney Gary McAliley said investigators found 30 or 40 violent CDs and DVDs in the home and are trying to find out who manufactured them. He said they appeared to be serious, not a joke.
"There was one DVD on how to shoot into a moving car," McAliley said. One of the victims was driving when he was shot and killed.
McAliley also said McLendon had a permit for two pistols he took with him during the rampage, but no license for two assault rifles he used as he squeezed off some 200 rounds.
Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives said agents were tracing the weapons to find their source.
McAliley had said earlier that McLendon, whose parents had divorced, appeared to have had a dispute with family members over a family Bible. But he said he now believes "there's no merit" to that idea.
McLendon began his killing spree a dozen miles from Samson, Ala., at his mother's house in Kinston. It ended about an hour later with him taking his own life after a shootout with police in nearby Geneva at Reliable Products, the metals plant where he worked until 2003.
In between, he gunned down three relatives and the wife and 18-month-old daughter of a local sheriff's deputy on a wide front porch in Samson. He then turned his gun next door and killed his 74-year-old grandmother and sent panicked bystanders fleeing and ducking behind cars.
McLendon then drove off, spraying bullets through the town lined with old brick buildings, killing three more bystanders.
State investigators have interviewed McLendon's father, but say they did not find out a lot that would aid their search for the motive behind the massacre.
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