On August 3, 1978 Rebecca David, aged thirty-eight, took her seven children to the eleventh floor of the International Dunes hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah. Six of them died: Elizabeth, fifteen, Joshua, ten, Deborah, nine, Joseph, eight, David, six, and Rebecca, five. Rachel, fourteen, survived a fall from the balcony. David then killed herself.
The accounts of the mechanism differ and this should be stated plainly rather than smoothed over: some reports have the children going over the balcony, others describe her shooting them, and the surviving daughter's account and the medical examiner's findings were not reported consistently at the time. This roster gives shooting as the method and also refers to falls from the balcony.
She had a documented history of psychiatric illness and had been under treatment. There was no trial, and therefore no record of the kind that resolves questions of this sort.
The entry is here as a family killing and suicide in one act, not a serial case. The sourcing is contemporary Utah press reporting and later retellings, and it is not adequate to the detail that circulates.