Mary Ann Holder was thirty-six and lived on Cocoa Drive at Pleasant Garden, south of Greensboro in Guilford County, North Carolina.
On the morning of Sunday November 20, 2011 she shot four young people at that house: her son Robert Dylan Smith, seventeen; his girlfriend Makayla Woods, fifteen, a sophomore at Southeast Guilford High School; her niece Hannaleigh Suttles, eight; and her nephew Richard Suttles, seventeen.
She then drove to the aviation centre of Guilford Technical Community College, near the airport on Regional Road, and shot a man named Randal Lamb in the arm. The sheriff said the two had once had an affair. Lamb survived.
After that she collected her younger son, Zack Smith, fourteen, from a friend's house. She shot him in the car. Then, in the same black Ford Explorer on Remora Road, she shot herself.
The five deaths were spread over four days. Dylan died at the house on the Sunday. Hannaleigh and Zack died at Moses Cone Hospital on the Monday. Makayla Woods died on the Wednesday. All five had been shot in the head with a .38 calibre handgun.
She left two notes taking responsibility for the shootings and apologising for the pain she had caused.
On January 10, 2012 the sheriff, B J Barnes, issued a statement confirming she had been the only shooter. Ballistic tests showed that the gun found in her hand was the weapon used at all three scenes, and her mobile telephone records placed her at each of them.
The state medical examiner's office released the autopsy reports on February 14, 2012. Hers found only caffeine in her system. A small plastic bag containing cocaine, and a chemical used to dilute it, was found in her vehicle. Barnes said investigators could not find a clear motive.
This is a single sequence of killings rather than a series, and it is in the archive under that classification.