LEFT OF SINISTER

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

There was no need for him to read further to have conformation of what he suspected about his brother. The article featured in the Bakersfield Bee newspaper dated August 17, 1976 was about a house fire in the suburb of Bergen, California some six miles from the greater Bakersfield area that turned into a murder investigation for Kern County when the firemen who had arrived and battled valiantly albeit unsuccessfully to save the house discovered in the smoldering ruins five corpses which turned out to be one Linda Dupray Corman age 30, Phillip Charles Dupray 27, her brother and Linda's three children Dorothy age 11, Sheila age 10, and her son Michael age 6.

A neighbor who had earlier in the evening visited the residence to return a power drill he had borrowed from Phillip Dupray a week or two before said he was surprised that there wasn't a sixth victim in that when Phillip Dupray answered the door, the neighbor said he made the remark that they had a house guest whose name he did not mention. The neighbor said although he hadn't seen the house guest he did hear him when at the door.

This person stuttered he said and sounded angry, angry that Phillip was laughing at something he had said. The visitor was upset because he felt Phillip was mocking him. Phillip told the neighbor that he had gotten amused by the person there because he was stuttering and he'd never known this man was a stutterer.

The neighbor said he returned home and never during his brief time at the residence of the deceased thought it was a situation that might would turn violent. Apparently, he conceded later, he was wrong.

All five victims were shot in the head with a .22 caliber weapon and the house subsequently set on fire. By the time anyone noticed the conflagration in the early hours of the morning it was beyond saving.

No other body was found and since Phillip's was known to possess a .22 caliber Ruger handgun and due to the fact it was missing it was presumed to be the murder weapon. The police had by now determined that the missing house guest was in all likelihood the murderer. But at that point of the investigation no person or persons known to have the handicap of stuttering could be pinpointed as friends or associates of the victims.

The culprit had evidently killed the victims in the early morning hours and after setting the house alight fled the scene in the victim's vehicle which was found abandoned in Bakersfield the next day. No prints could be found on anything to pinpoint who this person was they having thoroughly wiped down the car and no one saw anything or had the slightest idea anything was amiss until they saw the home engulfed in flames.

When he read the part about the murderer possibly being a stutterer that was enough for Earl to conclude that just as he suspected his brother Candy was a cold blooded killer and perhaps a serial killer from the few other articles he soon read relating to murders in California and Iowa and throughout the southeastern United States and even in this part of southeastern North Carolina.

It seemed clear for some reason that the grandson Ryan had suspected as much and was connecting the dots. And there was also the matter of the gun that Candy had stated he had bought from Phillip Dupray a year before his death, which now apparently according to the Bakersfield Bee he hadn't. That was because according the article detailing the five homicides it was common knowledge that Phillip Dupray still owned the Ruger at the time and there was nothing the least bit illegal about it.

It further mentioned that Dupray was at one time suspected of being a drug dealer and the murder might well be related to that considering no contraband or controlled substances were discovered in the ruins. The thought was that the murders may well have been the result of a robbery of his drug stash.

There was also mention of the notorious hit and run incident relating to Dupray's at one time having been charged with hit the run death of the young Chicano girl. But the police never discovered any credible information which related the five murders to that unfortunate event.