Walter Ferri Guns Down Family in Apparent Murder-Suicide

On Monday, nineteen-year-old James Glass of Long Beach, Mississippi, was engaged to the love of his life, 19-year-old Stacy Lee, of Gulfport. Not only were the two set to be married, they were also expecting the birth of their first child. Today, James and Stacy are dead. No wedding, no child, and no life to look forward to. All of that was stolen from them on Tuesday, when Stacy's stepfather shot them dead, along with Stacy's sister, 17-year-old Sherry Lee, in an apparent murder-suicide.

The Harrison County Sheriff's Department received an emergency 911 call at approximately 3:22 a.m., Tuesday, from a female caller who said that her stepfather, 50-year-old Walter Ferri, was holding a gun on her mother inside their Andre Drive home. As officers were dispatched to the scene, a second 911 call was received from the female caller at 3:37 a.m., notifying the dispatcher that someone had been shot. Further details from that conversation have not yet been released.

Details remain sketchy. However, at some point during the incident, the girls' mother, Sonja Ferri, managed to crawl out of a window in the back of the home and ran for help. Shortly thereafter, roughly 12 minutes after the first 911 call was received, five sheriff's deputies arrived on the scene. Aware there was an armed suspect inside, but unaware of the current situation, the deputies maintained their distance while attempting to negotiate with Walter Ferri.

When deputies failed to make any progress with Ferri, they ordered him to come out of the house with his hands up. The time was 4:40 a.m. In response to their demands, Ferri yelled out, "No, I'm going to kill myself." Moments later, a single gunshot rang out.

When deputies entered the home, they discovered Ferri's body slumped on the floor, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. A revolver and handgun lay close by. In the living room, deputies found the lifeless body of James Glass. As they made their way to the back of the home, the smell of gunpowder still lingering in the air, deputies found the bodies of Stacy and Sherry inside a bathroom.

"One sister was laying up against the bathtub, and the other sister was laying on top of her," Harrison County Coroner Gary Hargrove told WLOX.com.

When recounting the scene to the media, deputies later said it appeared as though the sisters were attempting to hide when they were shot and that they had been huddling together in an apparent attempt to protect and comfort each other...

Read the rest here: http://investigation.discovery.com/blogs/criminal-report/murder-suicide/walter_ferri.html

About The Author David Lohr has been writing about crime and criminals for over 15 years. A former senior investigative crime writer for CourtTVs Crime Library, Mr. Lohr received national media attention in 2003, when Dennis Rader modified parts of a story Mr. Lohr had written about the BTK serial killer case and then sent it off to the media, along with proof that he was BTK. In 2005, Rader confessed to killing 10 people between 1974 and 1991.