> Updated: Thursday, Sep. 16, 1999 at 22:08 CDT

> ## Gunman's life yields no key to carnage

> By Kathy Sanders
> Star-Telegram Staff Writer

> FORT WORTH -- Conspiracy consumed Larry Gene Ashbrook. His brother described him as a paranoid schizophrenic this summer and took up a loaded 12-gauge shotgun to keep him away from the brother's Wise County home.

> Ashbrook would explode in violent rages in his Forest Hill neighborhood, railing against children, life and his now- deceased father, neighbors said.
> His writings blame a vague, vast conspiracy, which included military special forces and the Central Intelligence Agency, for his inability to keep a job. The conspirators, he wrote, tried to implicate him as a serial killer of women in western Tarrant County.
> The cigarette-smoking loner caused devastating carnage at Wedgwood Baptist Church. He opened fire there Wednesday evening, killing seven people and wounding seven others. Then he killed himself.
> "The big question in my mind is why such a vicious attack on such innocent people?" homicide Detective Curt Brannan said. "I don't know if we will ever know for sure."
> The answers to such questions have so far eluded investigators, grieving families and a city unaccustomed to such unbridled hate. Witnesses said the man, wearing sunglasses, dark green jacket, jeans and white hat spewed blasphemous words at the people inside the sanctuary, belittling their hymns, their Christianity and their belief in God.
> Ashbrook's deeply religious father contributed up to 10 percent of his income to his church in Arlington. But hours before the mass slaying, Ashbrook ripped the family Bible apart page by page, sliced family members out of photographs and used a shovel to stab large family portraits, investigators said.
> Ashbrook, 47, the youngest of Jack and Ethel Muriel Ashbrook's four children was born in Fort Worth and attended Forest Oak Middle School, Polytechnic High School, O.D. Wyatt High School and Tarrant County College.
> Some high school acquaintances recalled that Ashbrook, an art club member, hung out with a group of other teen- agers at Trinity Park.
> Adults who knew the young Ashbrook while he was growing up in Forest Hill considered him a troubled child. He even forced one small girl in the neighborhood to eat bugs.
> "We lived next door to the Ashbrooks. I remember his mom, and he had a sister in a wheelchair," said Jane Lane, 38, of Burleson. "He used to make my sister eat roly-polies. He was always kind of a strange kid."
> In 1971, Ashbrook was arrested on suspicion of marijuana possession but charges were never filed, according to police.
> Military officials confirmed that in the late 1970s Ashbrook lived in Jacksonville, Fla., where he worked for the Navy. He never married or had children.
> Ashbrook moved back to Texas about 1994, some four years after his mother died. In July, his 85-year-old father died.
> Ashbrook seemed to plunge into bizarre and violent behavior after his father died, acquaintances and police said.
> Ashbrook's older brother, Aaron Ashbrook, called the Wise County Sheriff's Department Jon uly 24, according to police reports, saying his younger brother was ]"a paranoid schizophrenic."
> Homicide Detective Mike Carroll, the lead detective in the church slayings, said Aaron Ashbrook told Fort Worth police yesterday that he did not know why his brother opened fire on churchgoers.
> "He knew nothing about any psychological disorder, nothing about his hatred for religion," Carroll said. "He talked about the fact that his brother thought there was a conspiracy."
> Tarrant County Mental Health-Mental Retardation Services has no history of Ashbrook receiving treatment at any Tarrant County or state facility, said Shelley Buttgen, a spokeswoman for the agency.
> A former employer said he vaguely remembers Ashbrook.
> "He was all mixed up," said W.I. Spitler, former owner of Photo Etch in Fort Worth. "As far as we were concerned we couldn't get rid of him quick enough."
> Some neighbors said Ashbrook rarely spoke with anyone.
> "Larry would give me these looks that I can't explain," said Venita Hord, who lives across the street. She recalled Ashbrook becoming upset several years ago because he thought people in the neighborhood were talking about him. She said he exposed himself to her and shouted obscenities at her and other neighbors.
> He was meticulous with the yard around his home, and he pruned pear trees in his back yard three hours before his rampage at Wedgwood Baptist Church, neighbors said.
> Investigators searching his Forest Hill home -- where his family lived for more than 40 years -- said it seemed ironic that he took the time to tend his yard after destroying the inside of the house.
> "It appeared as if someone in that house was in a violent rage," Brannan said. "This person destroyed and shredded what many people would cherish -- family photos, possessions of deceased loved ones, the Holy Scriptures."
> Staff writers Deanna Boyd, Yvette Craig, Jaime Jordan, Bob Mahlburg, Bryon Okada, Ginger D. Richardson, Karen Rouse, Anthony Spangler and Bill Teeter contributed to this report]
> Kathy Sanders, (817) 390-7705
> Send your comments to ksanders@star-telegram.com

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