Christopher Bryan Speight Rigged House with Explosives Before Killing 8, Say Va. Police
Photo: Christopher Speight is led out of police headquarters Jan. 20.
PICTURES: Virginia Family Massacre Victims
Bomb technicians found a "multitude" of explosives at the Appomattox house where the massacre took place. State Police Sgt. Thomas Molnar said Wednesday that neighbors would hear detonations all afternoon as explosive devices found at the home were disposed of.
Photo: Appomattox, Va., home where eight people were killed Jan. 19, 2010.
PICTURES: Virginia Family Massacre Victims
After an all-night manhunt ended with Speight's sunrise surrender, police became concerned that Speight might have rigged the house he shared with three of the victims with explosives. Bomb-sniffing dogs found explosive "devices inside and outside the house," according to Sgt. Molnar and bomb technicians were called in to explode them.
The drama that started around noon Tuesday paralyzed the rural area about 100 miles southwest of Richmond that is best known as the place where Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered his army in 1865 to Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant to end the U.S. Civil War.
Photo: Christopher Speight.
PICTURES: Virginia Family Massacre Victims
Sheriff O. Wilson Staples said that Speight lived in the home where three bodies were found inside and four outside. The eighth victim, who was found barely alive on the road just outside the house, died at the hospital.
Speight, 39, was wearing a bulletproof vest but had no weapons when he turned himself in to police around 7:10 a.m., Sheriff Staples said. Authorities say he fired at a state police helicopter, rupturing its gas tank and forcing it to land, but no one on board was hurt.
Police still have not revealed a motive nor identified the victims.
MEDIA
PICTURES: Virginia Family Massacre Victims
MORE ON CRIMESIDER
January 20, 2010 - Christopher Speight, Suspected of Killing 8 in Virginia, Surrenders