The Hindu : Fresno slayings: suspect could face death

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Mar 18, 2004

International

International

Fresno slayings: suspect could face death

FRESNO (CALIFORNIA), MARCH 17. With nine family members shot to death and stacked in a pile behind him, Marcus Wesson walked out of his house covered in blood and did something others rarely saw: He gave up control.

Up until then, Wesson appeared to wield absolute authority over his household and his large clan.

The women would walk dutifully behind him in dark robes. They did not speak in his presence. They apparently worked to support him.

The children were home-schooled because he did not trust public education. And the little girls — immaculate and wearing dresses — obediently carried the very coffins that may have been intended for them.

Wesson (57) left them all for dead on Friday, shooting everyone in his house — a 25-year-old woman and eight children. Then he surrendered to police.

Coroners were still working to identify the dead, all of whom were believed to be his children. Late in the afternoon, Wesson was formally charged with nine counts of murder. He remained jailed on $9-million bail pending an arraignment on Wednesday.

If convicted, Wesson could face the death penalty.

Police have not disclosed a motive but said that Wesson may have engaged in incest and polygamy and that the slayings could have been part of a cult ritual.

All nine victims were shot in the same way, the coroner said, and Wesson often talked about God.

Wesson's sons denied their father was a cult leader, saying that he was a good father and that the family had been raised as Seventh-day Adventists.

A man who was interviewed by police about Wesson raised the possibility of another motive. Frank Muna, a lawyer who once sold Wesson a house, said police told him Wesson killed his children because he did not want them taken away, as the mothers of two of them had threatened to do.

``He really thinks what he did was right,'' Muna said.

Neighbours and acquaintances had their suspicions about the man with the burgeoning family and the wild, gray-streaked dreadlocks and beard.

Over the years he led his nomadic clan of women and offspring from a squatter's camp in the mountains to a dilapidated sailboat, and finally to inland California, where he hauled them around in an old school bus.

He was convicted in 1990 of welfare fraud — he had failed to list the boat as an asset — and neighbours often wondered how he fed his family because he never seemed to have a job.

According to Muna, the women wore dark robes and scarves, walked behind Wesson and did not speak when he was present.

Diana Wohnoutka, who lived near Wesson and his children in the early 1980s, said Wesson often spoke about God and his belief that he did not need to work for a living.

At one point, the children were made to sleep on doors that were set on top of sawhorses, she said.

Wesson's wife at the time, Elizabeth, who began having children in her mid-teens, told Wohnoutka she wanted to stop bearing children but it was against their religion and her husband forbade it. It is unclear where the woman lives now.

As for Wesson's sons, he enrolled them in martial arts and demanded they earn black belts before leaving his watch. The boys said ``they had to go through his programme,'' according to martial arts instructor Florian Tan.

Wesson is believed to have fathered children with six women, including two of his own daughters, police said.

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