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A Killer's Confession
It was a stifling hot July evening, but Ron Horton was comfortable inside one of his haunts: Stingers pool hall in suburban Phoenix. A 47-year-old construction superintendent, Horton was raising three young sons on his own and liked to spend the little free time he had with fellow bikers at a few bars in the area.He was a favorite among the crowd—a stand-up guy you could count on. Horton's modest home, close to downtown Phoenix, was a place where friends could find a beer or a bed anytime. "We are all closer than blood," Horton says of his biker buddies. "Any one of them would give me their life's savings if they thought I needed it, and I'd do the same thing for them."
On this night, two summers ago, Horton was chatting by the bar with a few of those friends when one of them said to the others, "You heard about that guy shooting people? Isn't it nuts?"
Horton perked up. "What's going on?" he asked.
"There's some wacko who's killed a bunch of animals, and now he's shooting people—about a dozen shot and six dead. And the police don't have any idea who this guy is."
Another buddy chimed in. "Two people got shot Saturday night, and another guy on Monday night," he said. They discussed the murderer's MO: random gunshots at anyone unlucky enough to find themselves in his crosshairs—men on bicycles, women walking alone, anyone.
"Where are these shootings happening?" Horton asked, dreading that he might already know the answer.
Phoenix Valley, one of the guys said, "mostly on the west side." Horton's stomach knotted as he thought back to a bizarre conversation he'd had four months earlier over beers with an old friend—a conversation he'd dismissed as twisted barroom humor but now realized may have been the confession of a killer.
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