The 40-year-old father of five who shot to death his wife and five small children before turning the gun on himself said in a shocking suicide note faxed to a local Los Angeles TV station that the deaths were the fault of his job administrator.
Just prior to his bloody rampage, Ervin Antonio Lupoe had just been fired from his job at Kaiser Permanente’s West Los Angeles Medical Center, where he and his wife were technicians.
In his letter, Lupoe said they were being investigated for "misrepresentation of our employment to an outside agency for the benefit to ourselves's [sic], childcare." He said the initial interview was held on Dec. 19, and when he reported for work on December 23, "I was told by my administrator ... that 'You should not even have bothered to come to work today. You should have blown your brains out.'"
Said Lupoe in the fax, "after a horrendous ordeal, my wife felt it better to end our lives; and why leave our children in someone else's hands ... we have no job and 5 children under 8 years with no place to go. So here we are." The letter concludes, "Oh lord, my God, is there no hope for a widow's son?"
The scene was so grisly, CNN reports, that when police arrived at the victims’ home and saw the bloody bodies scattered in two upstairs rooms “there was an officer who came out of the house throwing up.”
Kaiser Permanente said in a statement Tuesday night that while the company is "saddened by the despair in Mr. Lupoe's letter faxed to the media ... we are confident that no one told him to take his own life or the lives of his family. ...While we may never fully understand why today's senseless deaths occurred, everyone who worked with the Lupoes is shocked and terribly saddened by the tragedy," said the statement. "It never should have happened."
Ana Elizabeth Lupoe was 38, according to the Los Angeles County coroner's office. The children were identified as 8-year-old Brittney Nicole; 5-year-old twins Jaszmin Lissette and Jassely Lisbeth; and 2-year-old twins Christian De Shawn and Benjamin Ryan.