Paranoid About Neighborhood Kids, MASS man kills family, then himself on RR tracks

Neighbors knew Robert McDermott as a man who believed neighborhood children were plotting to gang up on him. He hid in the bushes with a camera to catalog their identities, they say. He also had a volatile relationship with his on-again, off-again girlfriend, with whom he fought frequently. Relatives were so alarmed by his recent behavior that they called police Friday.

Sometime between late Saturday and late Sunday, police say, McDermott, 39, shot his girlfriend in the head with a .44-caliber revolver as she lay in bed, killing her. He also allegedly shot in the head two of the woman's three daughters, leaving them critically injured in a second-floor hallway, and killed the family dog. He left the scene and drove to commuter rail tracks in Walpole, where he stood between the rails and shot himself seconds before he was crushed by an onrushing train.