Leigh Ann Vandiver Barton, 27, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in her suburban Atlanta apartment on July 27, 1999, while she slept. Her husband, Mark Orrin Barton, concealed her body in a closet. The next night he killed his two children from a previous marriage, 11-year-old Matthew and 7-year-old Mychelle, in the same manner, then tucked their bodies into their beds with their favorite toys placed beside them.

Mark Barton left notes in which he confessed to the killings, saying he killed Leigh Ann because she was one of the main reasons for his demise and claiming he killed the children to spare them a lifetime of pain. He referenced the unsolved 1993 bludgeoning deaths of his first wife, Debra Spivey, and her mother, Eloise Spivey, in Alabama, and was a primary suspect in that case but denied involvement in his notes.

On July 29, 1999, Barton carried out two workplace shootings at day-trading firms in Atlanta, killing nine and wounding thirteen. A manhunt ended that day at a gas station in Acworth, Georgia, where Barton died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound as police closed in. No arrests were ever made. Friends and family recalled Leigh Ann as a loving woman who had grown fearful of her husband’s increasingly erratic behavior and financial instability.

Does anyone have memories of Leigh Ann or information about her life in Atlanta that could shed light on those last weeks?