On April 7, 2009, 48-year-old Karen Lynn Garner Beaty was found among four people shot to death inside a rural home in Green Hill, Alabama. A neighbor who checked on the family noticed a body through the doorway and called authorities. The victims included Karen, her 11-year-old son Robert Edward Bobby Beaty, and Tammy Garner, 40, with Tammy’s 16-year-old daughter Chelsie also killed at the scene.

Investigators determined the killings were carried out with a handgun and concluded they were part of a domestic dispute that escalated into a quadruple murder-suicide. Kevin Garner, identified as Karen’s brother, was accused of shooting the four victims; he then drove to his former home in Priceville, set that house on fire, and was later found dead in nearby woods of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the chest. Court files mentioned allegations of physical and emotional abuse by Tammy Garner against Kevin Garner, and Karen and her son had been in Alabama from Illinois, possibly to be witnesses in divorce proceedings.

What details can anyone who knew the family share about what led up to that April day?