Mychelle Elizabeth Barton, an 8-year-old girl, was tragically killed in her home in a suburban Atlanta apartment in Stockbridge, Georgia. Her life was cut short on the night of Wednesday, July 28, 1999, a day after her stepmother, Leigh Ann Vandiver Barton, 27, was also killed in the same apartment. Mychelle and her 11-year-old brother, Matthew, were bludgeoned to death with a hammer by their father, Mark O.
Barton, as they slept.
After murdering his children, Mark Barton placed their bodies in their beds, tucking them in as if they were sleeping. He left a video game on his son's body and a stuffed toy on Mychelle's. Barton left several notes at the scene, one of which was a computer-generated letter in the living room. In this note, he confessed to killing his wife and children. He wrote that he killed the children to spare them a 'lifetime of pain' and claimed there was 'little pain' in their deaths. He explained that he held them down in a bathtub after hitting them to ensure they were deceased and did not awaken in pain.
The day after murdering Mychelle and her brother, on July 29, 1999, Mark Barton went on a shooting rampage at two day-trading firms in Atlanta. He killed nine people and injured 13 others before fleeing. This act triggered a massive manhunt. Hours later, as police closed in on him at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, Mark Barton took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot.
Mark Barton was the sole suspect in the murders of his daughter, Mychelle, his son, Matthew, and his wife, Leigh Ann. His suicide prevented any arrest or trial. The investigation also revealed that Barton was the primary suspect in the 1993 bludgeoning deaths of his first wife, Debra Spivey, and her mother, Eloise Spivey. Although he denied involvement in those earlier deaths in one of his notes, authorities still considered him a suspect.
