Man kills 7, himself in Missouri

Bad feelings in family said to lead up to shooting rampage

Two people were killed Thursday night at this Tyrone, Mo., home in a multiple-location shooting rampage that officials said Friday had left seven people and the gunman dead.
Two people were killed Thursday night at this Tyrone, Mo., home in a multiple-location shooting rampage that officials said Friday had left seven people and the gunman dead.

TYRONE, Mo. -- A gunman who shot and killed seven people Thursday night had been feuding with one of them -- a cousin -- for more than a year, the shooter's uncle said Friday.

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Courtesy of Texas County Sheriff's Department

Joseph Jesse Aldridge, 36, of Tyrone

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Doyle Lay of Tyrone, Mo., said Friday that his nephew, Joseph Jesse Aldridge, had been feuding for more than a year with a cousin, one of seven people found shot to death.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A map showing the location of Tyrone, Missouri.

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Joseph Jesse Aldridge, 36, of Tyrone was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after the shooting rampage about 60 miles from the Arkansas line, which killed two of his cousins, their wives and three other people.

The victims included Garold Dee Aldridge, 52; his wife, Julie Ann Aldridge, 47; Harold Wayne Aldridge, 50; and his wife, Janell Arlisa Aldridge, 48, according to the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Names of the other three slaying victims, as well as a woman who survived the shooting, were withheld late Friday pending notification of the next of kin, according to a news release from the Highway Patrol.

The shootings began after Joseph Aldridge's mother died. The death of Alice L. Aldridge, 74, appeared to be "of natural causes," according to the news release.

Doyle Lay, 70, of Tyrone said his sister Alice had recently recovered from breast cancer. According to the news release, a postmortem examination will be performed on the body of Alice Aldridge today.

Lay said he didn't know whether Joseph Aldridge went on a shooting rampage because he found his mother dead.

"I think he smothered her," Lay said. "That's what I'm afraid of."

Lay said there had been animosity between the different factions of the Aldridge family in Tyrone. Garold Dee Aldridge had physical altercations about a year ago with the brother of Joseph Aldridge, and it left bad feelings, Lay said.

"This had been brewing like this for a year, year and a half," he said.

The shooting was reported at 10:15 p.m. Thursday. The Texas County sheriff's office requested assistance from the Highway Patrol after a girl called saying she was in a house and heard gunshots.

She fled to a neighbor's house and called police, according to a news release.

The neighbor, who refused to give his name Friday, said the teenager was barefoot and clad only in a nightgown when she came running across a snow-covered field full of thickets that left her legs cut up.

"She was crying so hard, but I finally got out of her, 'My mom and dad have been shot,'" the neighbor said.

When officers arrived at the girl's home, they found two people dead. Authorities later found five more people dead and one wounded in three other homes. All of the victims' residences are within a 3-mile radius in Tyrone, the Highway Patrol said.

The wounded person was hospitalized in undisclosed condition.

Sheriff's officers did a house-by-house sweep to make sure there were no more bodies.

Joseph Aldridge was found dead before dawn Friday in a running pickup in the middle of the highway in adjoining Shannon County, the victim of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Police said Aldridge used a .45-caliber handgun.

About 50 people live in the unincorporated community of Tyrone, which lies about 71 miles from the Arkansas town of Mammoth Spring.

The killings traumatized Tyrone, a town where residents know each other and many are related, Sheriff James Sigman said. He said the last homicide in the county was 1½ years ago.

John W. Shriver, 72, of Tyrone told the AP that he discovered the bodies of two of the victims after getting a call Thursday night from a screaming relative who had been wounded in a shooting that killed her husband. Shriver said he found a man and his wife unresponsive on their bedroom floor and alerted law enforcement.

Shriver said the couple's 13-year-old son slept through the killings and that he took the teen to his home after the bodies were found.

"Everybody is kind of just dazed, I'd guess you'd say," Shriver said, adding that the killer "didn't have much to do with people" and "kind of stayed to himself."

Before Thursday's shooting, Tyrone was probably best known as the childhood home of Kenneth Lay, who was CEO and chairman of Enron Corp. He died in 2006, a few months before he was to be sentenced after being found guilty of conspiracy and fraud.

Doyle Lay said Kenneth Lay was his third cousin.

Tyrone is in largely rural Texas County, where the scenic rivers and woods draw canoeists, trout fishermen and deer hunters. The area has seen an exodus of shoe and garment factories over the decades, along with a drop in dairy and poultry farms, County Clerk Don Troutman said.

Set along a narrow, two-lane highway in a remote, hilly stretch, Tyrone consists of small houses and mobile homes but little else, with no restaurants or shops.

A couple of general stores are long gone, and the one-room schoolhouse has been converted into a community building, Troutman said.

"There's not even a stop sign there," said Troutman, who has been clerk for 36 years. "We've never had anything of this magnitude before. It's a shock."

Information for this article was contributed by The Associated Press.

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