Police authorities who investigated the slayings at first attributed the deaths to an underworld purge. It was not unusual for competitive criminal elements to engage in territorial disputes; the mass murder bore all the earmarks of a gang war.

But then the physical evidence began forming an entirely different picture. A local sports shop had been "burglarized" a few nights prior to the killings. A Marlin big-game rifle and a deluxe scope were missing, along with a supply of ammunition and a package of targets. A sum of money sufficient to cover the unorthodox purchase was left behind, and the shopkeeper had no complaints. He reported the incident to the police purely "for the record."

On the day following, the watchman at an inactive rock quarry just outside the city observed a tall young man in the act of test-firing and adjusting "a big game rifle." The man was apparently "sighting-in" the weapon and preparing trajectory graphs. The watchman saw no harm in these activities and did not report the matter until news of the slayings had been released.

The detective in charge of the homicide investigation recalled that a young soldier on emergency furlough from Vietnam had, some days earlier, been agitating for a closer police scrutiny of the deaths of his parents and teenage sister, whom the soldier had come home to bury. The official police blotter covering that earlier tragedy revealed an open and shut case of suicide-homicide, with the soldier's father as the culprit of the piece. The soldier had strongly protested this finding, insisting that underworld figures were at least indirectly responsible for his family's death.

Following a hunch, the Pittsfield police detective sent a query to the military police in Saigon. The reply, reproduced below, fully confirmed the detective's suspicions and laid to rest any ideas concerning a "gang war" in Pittsfield.