That the killer had emerged from a community more like family than what most campuses offer seemed especially wounding. "It hit us hard when we didn't expect it," Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire wrote on a reporter's pad.

Students who knew Mesa still could not believe the news, despite his arrest and impending trial. One told reporters that he'd attended high school with Mesa and believed he was not the kind of person who would kill anyone, but others said he'd often been in trouble. A