SUNNYVALE, CALIF., FEB. 17 -- The killing was quick and brutal: Richard Wade Farley needed only 30
minutes, in a rampage through the tiled corridors of a prosperous
computer company here. But police needed five hours to talk Farley out
of the building -- with a soft drink and a sandwich -- so they could
count the seven dead and four injured.
Farley, firing shotgun blasts at his former colleagues at ESL Inc. --
and into the screens of computers that symbolize Silicon Valley
prosperity -- apparently was avenging his dismissal and an unrequited
obsession with ESL engineer Laura Black.
Farley, 39, a software engineer dismissed in 1986 for alleged sexual
harassment, was in a Santa Clara jail cell today, charged with murder.
Black, 26, who had rejected his advances, was in stable condition with
chest, shoulder and spinal wounds.
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A court hearing had been scheduled today on her request for a
restraining order against him.
But this city west of San Jose was not the only place where Americans
were killed Tuesday as they went about their workdays. Farley was still
holding police at bay when a woman walked into a hospital emergency room
in Pittsburgh, killed a mental health caseworker and took three hostages
before surrendering Tuesday night at 8:30. In Chicago, a woman walked
into the Midwest Stock Exchange and fatally shot a clerk, her
ex-boyfriend.
A growing number of people are discovering that being where they
belong is no insurance against being in the wrong place at the wrong
time. "There is a tremendous sense of becoming vulnerable," said Cecile
Currier, a clinical social worker who counseled many of ESL massacre's
victims and their relatives.
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Juanito Yapdiangco, whose wife, Emelina, risked a short, guarded
telephone call to him from her hiding spot during the siege, said today
that she was devastated by what had happened to her coworkers and was
trying to put it completely aside. "She wants to forget about it," he
Police said Farley drove his rented mobile home into the ESL parking
lot about 2:55 Tuesday afternoon and hesitated briefly before draping
himself in two bandoleers of ammunition. Then he armed himself with
three handguns, including 9mm Browning semiautomatic pistol and a
.380-cal. semiautomatic pistol, a .30-06 high-powered rifle and a
12-gauge shotgun -- the weapon used in all the killings.
Lt. Ruben Grijalva, the police negotiator who persuaded Farley to
surrender, said Farley indicated that initially he only wanted to damage
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ESL property but began to shoot people he thought were trying to stop
His first victim died just outside the front door, police said. With
the shotgun, he destroyed the card-operated security lock and door,
entered the building and killed his next two victims, a man sitting
behind his desk on the first floor and another on the landing of the
stairwell to the second floor.
Sunnyvale police Capt. Al Scott said Black had shut and locked her
second-floor office when Farley found her and shot at her through the
door. Also injured were Richard Townsley, wounded in the chest, arms and
legs when he tried to help others get out of the building; Gregory
Scott, wounded in the chest, and Patty Marcotte, who broke her right arm
as she escaped.
Police identified the five men and two women killed during the
rampage as: Helen Lamperter, 49; Glenda Moritz, 27; Joe Silva, 43; Wayne
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Williams, 23; Ron Reed, 26; Lawrence Kane, 46; and Ron Doney, 36.
The locations of bodies of the two men and two women killed upstairs
indicated that Farley had chanced upon them in the halls, police said.
About a half hour after he entered the building, Farley sought refuge in
a second-floor computer room and called the company's security office.
They put him in touch with police, who began a long conversation,
interrupted occasionally when Farley suspected that someone was
approaching his refuge.
During the five-hour conversation, he told Grijalva: "I'm not crazy.
I know I will die as a result of this." Police said he expressed
disappointment not only at his failure to win Black's affection but at
mounting debts and the loss of his house and home computer, which he
blamed on his firing.
In the end, Farley agreed to leave his weapons and gave himself up in
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exchange for "a No. 26 {sandwich} from Togo's and a Diet Pepsi," police
Police said Farley's dismissal seemed to be related to his harassment
of Black, but Cartwright said her records -- incomplete because the
personnel office is sealed off -- indicated that he was dismissed simply
for "poor job performance."
In the early evening, Farley told police that they could enter the
building to release workers who had been hiding under their desks behind
locked doors. About 26 people, all uninjured, emerged. The wounded had
been left or been brought out in the first few minutes after the
ESL spokeswoman Edie Cartwright said company security guards are not
armed. Farley appeared so suddenly, with so much weaponry, that the
company's locks and other security procedures were useless, she said.
Police said that they did not know where Farley obtained his guns but
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that he apparently had been familiar with firearms since his youth. He
served 11 years in the Navy, Scott said, and received a "secret"
security clearance from the Defense Department when he was hired at ESL.
ESL, a subsidiary of TRW, reported record revenue of $335 million
last year in mostly defense-related contracts such as surveillance
systems. Today, its two-story Building M5 remained sealed off as police
inspected the wreckage inside.
Currier, the social worker, said families and employees met at her
hospital-based counseling service, Concern EAP, to discuss the tragedy
today. "First they try to deny it, it seemed so unreal," she said. Then
they are obsessed with details, looking for someone to blame, including
themselves.
But often the process ends when they conclude that the hurt could not
have been prevented.
"Which is a paradox," Currier said, "because that means they will
never feel quite as safe again."
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