Bradley William Stone butchered his ex-wife and her family, leaving a trail of blood and gore across Montgomery County, Pa., as he moved from house to house, town to town, ambushing them in the middle of the night like a demon from hell, says the Philadelphia Daily News. The question is why. Hope of making sense of the Monday morning massacre that claimed the lives of Nicole Stone and five relatives was snuffed out yesterday, when the body of Stone, 35, was found in the woods a half-mile from his house. Stone committed suicide, apparently hacking away at himself with a knife, District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said. The discovery of his body brought an end to a manhunt that had left the area on edge.
Friends of Stone and his ex-wife were left with the impossible task of trying to reconcile the guy they thought they knew – a father who adored his two daughters – with the cold-blooded killer whose fury made national headlines. Military veterans who served with Stone in the Marines recoiled at media reports that seemed to link the bloodshed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that Stone was supposedly saddled with from a tour in Iraq. “A lot of us come home with it, but you can’t blame what happened there on PTSD,” said a veteran who once worked alongside Stone. “It really is the person you are underneath that will decide if you do something like this.”