the city of tyrone missouri population 50 on thursday night nine people were found dead after harrowing house to house shooting rampage. our will ripley has the latest. police in southeast missouri are awaiting the results of a postmortem examination of the mother of the gunman. they believe she died of natural causes and they re wondering if her death somehow triggered this shooting rampage. reporter: no stoplight in tyrone missouri, no post office or gas station, but this tiny town is the scene of the deadliest mass shooting in recent missouri history. john schrieber got a fen call to go to his cousin s house down the street. driving by you know it just you can tell that he was dead already. reporter: schrieber thinks his cousin and his wife were killed quickly. their car and washing machine still running. their 13-year-old son alive and terrified in a back bedroom.
tell that he was dead. he thinks his cousin and wife were killed quickly, their car and washing machine still running, their 13-year-old son alive and terrified in a back bedroom. he s in shock. i would say. the house one of six crime scenes and nine deaths, seven people shot and killed, four from the same family, less than three miles apart. the gunman s mother apparently dead of natural causes, police investigating if her death somehow triggered the rampage. you know what, that s in our job we see a lot of stuff and this is bad. this is also hard on the police officers who are working there. it s not natural to see that sort of thing. the missouri state highway patrol says the gunman joseph aldridge, killed himself. authorities say he had only a minor criminal history, nothing to forshadow something like
it s one of the most effective ways to sell your home. it s one of the most effective ways to sell your home. the open house. in fact, they ve become so popular they ve almost become an american pastime. but opening your front door to browsing buyers you could be rolling out the welcome mat to thieves looking to rob you blind. here s abc s brandi hitt. reporter: watch this man strolling through a home during a realtor s open house. on security video released by the lapd, he heads to a back bedroom where the family had taken precautions and locked expensive jewelry in a closet. police say the thief ripped the front off a locked drawer seen here in his hand and got away with a large amount of jewelry. this all happened within ten minutes. reporter: fran solomon s home was also hit during an open house. a victim, police believe, of the same thief. she walked in on the suspect stealing $200,000 worth of jewelry from her closet. he was stuffing jewelry in his socks.
he d been shot to death. he was identified as 24-year-old kenneth maxwell, a truck driver who lived just a mile away. friends said he was going home from a party when he drove by. that s just horrific. no one ever thinks the good samaritan is going to be a victim. inside the house, firefighters found two bodies, a man in the kitchen shot in the head at point blank range. his body is right there and he s covered up with a rug. and a woman in a back bedroom. she s naked and shot several times in the head through a pillow like someone was trying to muffle that sound. the victims were identified
for days after the fire, investigators combed through the scorched rubble for evidence of how the deadly blaze ignited. what the fire investigators saw when they first arrived is fire from the floor to the ceiling, charring on the floor. looking for so-called arson indicators, they search for any signs that the fire was intentionally set. soon, they find one. a dark outline that snakes through the length of the house. there was what we call a burn pattern in the house. which they did find. it went from the front door all the way to the dining room area, kitchen and into the back bedroom where one of the victims was. the burn pattern also called a pour pattern, is a sign to the investigators that someone has dispensed a flammable liquid along the floor and has ignited it. the investigators also find evidence of burning underneath the doors of the house. they believe it to be the result of an accelerant being poured on the floor and then seeping under