Will we ever know why?

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Jul 31, 1999 by J.R. MOEHRINGER

The suicide note was dated 6:38 a.m., July 29, eight hours before Barton began randomly firing his Colt .45 handgun and Glock 9 mm around the offices of Momentum Securities Inc., the brokerage firm where he had been a day trader, and where he had recently suffered deep reverses.

According to one Momentum source, Barton lost as much as $105,000 this summer, though the company also released a statement Friday saying he was still worth $750,000, including$250,000 in liquid assets.

After killing four people at Momentum, Barton went across the street and killed five people at All-Tech Investment Group, another firm where he'd done day trading. Friday, All-Tech officials were still not ready to share the full details of Barton's financial records.

Barton closed his suicide note with an ominous warning, seemingly aimed at the brokerage houses where he'd traded.

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

"You should kill me if you can."

Though he acknowledged that the murder of his family made him an even more likely suspect in the 1993 murders of his first wife and mother-in-law (found hacked to death in their camper on Lake Weiss, in northeast Alabama), Barton used his suicide note to assert his innocence one last time.

"There may be similarities," he wrote, "between these deaths and the death of my first wife, Debra Spivey. However, I deny killing her and her mother (Eloise Powell Spivey.) There's no reason for me to lie now."

Neighbors of the Barton family in Morrow, where the Bartons had lived until recently, said the tone of the suicide note and the terror of the killings just didn't fit with the man they knew.

"He was a nice guy, a gentleman," said Helene Peluso, who lived a few doors down from Barton for several years. "He'd say hello, goodbye. Always friendly."

"It was a real shocker, I tell you," said Jimmie Northcutt, another neighbor, who often saw Barton and Leigh Ann strolling around the block for exercise. "As far as I was concerned, he was a pretty good fella."

Another member of Northcutt's family told a different story, though. His daughter told reporters that Barton was aloof and reluctant to talk. Many said he was addicted to his computer, and rarely emerged from his house.

The Barton children often complained to a neighbor that they could never use the phone, because their father was always connected to the Internet.