On August 21, 1981, a domestic shooting in Indianapolis took the life of 54-year-old Mary Alice Kirby while she was visiting her daughter’s home. The attack unfolded during a marital separation; the daughter’s husband, King Edward Bell, arrived at the residence armed and carried out a spree of killings. Bell shot the couple’s four young children, aged one to six, in the basement.

When his estranged wife, Bertha Mae Bell, confronted him she was fatally shot, and Kirby was gunned down as she tried to escape the house. After the killings, Bell wrote a religious message on an interior wall and was found outside by police, yelling that officers should kill him. He was taken into custody and charged with six counts of murder.

Bell later entered a guilty but mentally ill plea and received a prison term of about 160 years.