Not to be confused with Australian businessman and private investor Richard Farleigh.
Richard Wade Farley was born in Texas on July 25, 1948. He was the oldest of six children. His father was in the military, therefore the family frequently relocated, and eventually settled in California. He graduated from high school in 1966 and attended Santa Rosa Junior College. Farley then joined the United States Navy in 1967 where he stayed for ten years. After his discharge in 1977, Farley began working as a software technician at ESL Inc., a defense contractor in Sunnyvale, California.[2]
Stalking
In April 1984, 35-year-old Richard Farley met 22-year-old Laura Black, who also worked at ESL Inc. Farley described himself as immediately smitten and later said that he instantly "fell in love" with Black. Farley began leaving gifts, including letters and homemade baked goods, on Laura Black's desk and asked her out numerous times.[2] Black repeatedly refused the invitations and later said in an interview that she "tried really to ignore him but to be cordial".[3] Despite her refusals, Farley persisted; he began calling her desk every few hours as well as showing up at Black's aerobics class. By providing false information to the ESL HR department through pretexting, Farley was able to obtain Black's home address and home phone number. Farley was also known to have befriended the custodial department in an attempt to copy keys to Black's desk so he could rifle through her files to gain an insight into her life. He was also known to have pried through confidential personnel files of Black through false pretenses.
During this time, Farley was sending one or two letters to Black a week. Though there were periods of time during which the letters would cease, in total Farley sent about two hundred letters over a period of four years, with the final letter sent from his prison cell after his rampage at ESL. Black moved four times during those four years, but Farley was able to obtain her address every time. Farley doctored photos of him and Black being together and mailed them to her.[4]
In fall of 1985, Black asked the Human Resources Department at ESL for help. ESL ordered Farley to attend psychological counseling sessions, and despite attending these sessions, his harassment of Black continued. By spring of 1986, Farley was threatening fellow ESL employees. Because of his poor performance, his employment with ESL was terminated in May 1986.[5][6] He had been working for ESL for nine years and spent several months stalking Black full-time, then found work at a rival company, Covalent Systems Corporation in Sunnyvale.[7]
Black filed for a temporary restraining order against Farley on February 2, 1988, and it was granted by a family court judge. A court date was set for February 17, 1988 to see if the restraining order should be made permanent.
Farley bought a shotgun and various other weapons and equipment. The restraining order did not prevent him from buying weapons during that time. He also owned a variety of other weapons which were not present during the shooting at ESL, including a Mossberg shotgun barrel and a Ruger .22 LR carbine and over 3,000 rounds of ammunition. On February 9, 1988, he left a package with Black's attorney, claiming to have evidence that he and Black had a longstanding relationship. The package included items such as photographs purportedly showing Black and Farley on dates, a garage door opener to Black's house, and hotel and credit card receipts. Farley claimed that Black kept a stash of cocaine that they shared once. Black's attorney dismissed the package as utter fabrications.[citation needed]
Carrying over 1,000 rounds of ammunition with him, he approached ESL’s M-5 Building, intending to make his way to Black’s second floor office. First, he fatally shot Lawrence J. Kane, 46, in the parking lot as he left the building. Farley then turned and fired at Randell Hemingway, who ducked behind his car door. [8]
He entered a side door by shooting through the glass of the Mardex Security Door. After entering, Farley killed a man behind his desk near the lobby. He then entered a stairwell where another victim was killed. On the second floor, two men and two women were killed in a hallway as Farley approached Black’s office.
Upon arriving at Black's office, he opened her door which she slammed in his face. He fired a shotgun round through the door, hitting her in the left shoulder and collapsing a lung.[7] The injury sent her unconscious to the floor while Farley moved on.[7][9]
At 3:15 p.m., Farley called emergency services and stated “I’m the one who’s been wasting people.”. He claimed he was doing it because of Black and the restraining order against him. He also requested that people be kept 300 yards from the M-5 Building.
Farley then held a police SWAT team at bay for five hours by moving from room to room so the SWAT snipers could not target him. During the five-hour standoff, Farley spoke to negotiator Ruben Grivalja. He expressed remorse for his actions and repeatedly threatened to commit suicide. He also claimed to have had severe financial difficulties after losing his home, car, and computer and falling $20,000 behind in his taxes. Farley also fired upon computer equipment within the building.
At 3:35 P.M., Farley stated, in response to being asked if would surrender, that he wanted to “Gloat a little bit.”.[10] He also stated that he had enough ammunition to “last two hours” if he fired continuously.
At some point in the siege, he allowed longtime friend and former landlady Linda Walden to leave the building. During this exchange, fellow employee Christine Hansen left her hiding spot and also asked to leave, which Farley allowed. At several points, he told Grijalva that he did not plan to leave ESL alive and, at one period, claimed that he had changed the beneficiary of his life insurance policy from Black to his girlfriend, Mei Chang.
At 4:30 P.M,. Farley agreed to allow officers to rescue wounded individuals on the first floor. Negotiators also obtained audio recording of the conversations, where Farley stated “There’s no more reason to harm anybody, I’ve run out of enthusiasm for things.”.
He also expressed regret for shooting Black, and asked about her well-being. He claimed that he wanted Black to live so she could regret what happened. Despite this, Farley never expressed remorse for the seven victims he killed, and claimed he shot them because they were a threat. [11]
Meanwhile, Black regained consciousness and managed to prevent her wound from bleeding further while she and other survivors hid from Farley. Black and other survivors eventually escaped.
At approximately 8:30 p.m., Farley surrendered to police after requesting a sandwich and a soft drink.[7] Seven people were killed by Farley with four more wounded, including Black.[7] Ninety-eight rounds were fired.[12]
The next day, court commissioner Lois Kittle made the restraining order against Farley permanent and commented, "Pieces of paper do not stop bullets."[17]
Black survived, but was hospitalized for nineteen days. She continued to work for the same company. Farley wrote to her again from his prison cell, claiming that she had finally won.
During trial, Farley admitted to the killings, but pled not guilty, claiming that he never planned to kill but only wished to get Black's attention or commit suicide in front of her for rejecting him. His attorney claimed that Farley was never a violent man and only had his judgement temporarily clouded by his obsession with Black, and that he would likely never kill again. Prior to the shooting, Farley did not have a criminal record.
The prosecution documented every step of the stalking, produced all the letters he sent, and documented his shotgun and ammunition purchases a week before his rampage at ESL, as well as his other weapons. All this amounted to extensive planning, which was evidence of premeditation.
On October 21, 1991, Farley was found guilty of all seven counts of first degree murder. On January 17, 1992, Superior Court Judge Joseph Biafore Jr. sentenced Farley to death. Because of California law, there were several automatic appeals. On January 22, 1992, Farley was admitted to San Quentin State Prison. On July 2, 2009, the California Supreme Court upheld Farley's death sentence (People v Richard Farley (2009) 46 Cal.4th 1053). As of 2023[update], Farley was still on death row at San Quentin State Prison, as CDCR Number H23501. By April 2024, however, he was moved to California Health Care Facility, having been moved out of San Quentin as part of a larger transfer of former death row inmates.[1][18] On August 9, 2024, district attorney Jeff Rosen sought to reduce Farley's sentence to life without parole.[19]
This massacre helped prompt California's 1990 passage of the first anti-stalking laws in the U.S.
Sunnyvale is a city located in the Santa Clara Valley in northwest Santa Clara County in the U.S. state of California.
A restraining order or protective order is an order used by a court to protect a person in a situation often involving alleged domestic violence, child abuse, assault, harassment, stalking, or sexual assault.
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, 545 U.S. 748 (2005), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled, 7–2, that a town and its police department could not be sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for failing to enforce a restraining order, which had led to the murders of a woman's three children by her estranged husband. This decision affirmed the controversial principle that the police have no duty to protect the public, a similar ruling as the one in DeShaney v. Winnebago County. The decision has since become infamous and condemned by several human rights groups.
During the Troubles in Northern Ireland, British security forces were accused by some of operating a "shoot-to-kill" policy, under which suspected paramilitary members were killed without an attempt being made to arrest them. This alleged policy was claimed to be most frequently directed against suspected members of Irish republican paramilitary organisations, such as the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA), Official Irish Republican Army (OIRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA). According to a 1985 inquiry by a team of international lawyers titled Shoot to Kill?, undercover security force units were "trained to shoot to kill even where killing is not legally justifiable and where alternative tactics could and should be used." The British government, including the Northern Ireland Office, consistently denied that there was ever a "shoot-to-kill" policy, stating that "like everyone else, the security forces must obey the law and are answerable to the courts for their actions."
OVS is a Mexican American (Chicano) gang from Ontario, California.
On October 29, 1984, Eleanor Bumpurs was shot and killed by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). The police were present to enforce a city-ordered eviction of Bumpurs, an elderly and disabled African American woman, from her New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) public housing unit at 1551 University Avenue in the Morris Heights neighborhood of the Bronx.
ESL Incorporated, or Electromagnetic Systems Laboratory, was a subsidiary of TRW, a high technology firm in the United States that was engaged in software design, systems analysis and hardware development for the strategic reconnaissance marketplace. Founded in January 1964 in Palo Alto, California, the company was initially entirely privately capitalized by its employees. One of the company founders and original chief executive was William J. Perry, who eventually became United States Secretary of Defense under President Bill Clinton. Another company founder was Joe Edwin Armstrong. ESL was a leader in developing strategic signal processing systems and a prominent supplier of tactical reconnaissance and direction-finding systems to the U. S. military. These systems provided integrated real-time intelligence.
Sin-Eater is a name given to several fictional characters appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character usually appears in comics featuring Spider-Man and Ghost Rider.
Ruben Grijalva is a former director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, appointed in 2006. He received some media attention during the California wildfires of October 2007. In one press report, he asserted that state agencies had done all they could to send useful resources to battle the wildfires. He resigned from the position in February 2009 and went to work as a private consultant.
The Lindhurst High School shooting was a school shooting and subsequent siege that occurred on May 1, 1992, at Lindhurst High School in Olivehurst, California, United States. The gunman, 20-year-old Eric Houston, was a former student at Lindhurst High School. Houston killed three students and one teacher and wounded nine students and a teacher before surrendering to police. Houston was sentenced to death for the murders, and he is currently on California's death row in San Quentin State Prison.
M. Gerald Schwartzbach is an American criminal defense attorney.
I Can Make You Love Me, also known as Stalking Laura, is an American 1993 made-for-television psychological thriller film starring Richard Thomas and Brooke Shields. It is based on the true story of American mass murderer Richard Farley, a former employee of ESL Inc. whose romantic obsession and stalking of co-worker Laura Black led to Farley's murder of numerous colleagues at ESL's headquarters in California. The case drew national attention, ultimately resulting in the enaction of the first anti-stalking laws in the United States.
The Marin County Civic Center attacks were two related attacks in 1970 at the Marin County Superior Court, located in the Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael, California, United States, tied to escalating racial tensions in the state's criminal justice system.
Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez, better known as Richard Ramirez, and nicknamed The Night Stalker, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose killing spree occurred in Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the state of California. From April 1984 to August 1985, Ramirez murdered at least fourteen people during various break-ins, with his crimes usually taking place in the afternoon, leading to him being dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer, and the Valley Intruder. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 and died while awaiting execution in 2013.
The murder of Renisha Marie McBride, a 19-year-old African American teenager, occurred on November 2, 2013, in Dearborn Heights, Michigan, United States. Renisha McBride crashed her car while intoxicated at a street in Detroit, and then walked to a neighborhood in Dearborn Heights where she knocked on the door of a house. The homeowner, 54-year-old Theodore Wafer, shot McBride with a shotgun. Wafer contended that the shooting was accidental and that he thought his home was being broken into after he heard her banging on his door at 4:42 in the morning.
Threat assessment is the practice of determining the credibility and seriousness of a potential threat, as well as the probability that the threat will become a reality. Threat assessment is separate to the more established practice of violence-risk assessment, which attempts to predict an individual's general capacity and tendency to react to situations violently. Instead, threat assessment aims to interrupt people on a pathway to commit "predatory or instrumental violence, the type of behavior associated with targeted attacks," according to J. Reid Meloy, PhD, co-editor of the International Handbook of Threat Assessment. "Predatory and affective violence are largely distinctive modes of violence."
Johnny Robinson (1947–1963) was a young African-American teenager who, at age 16, was shot and killed by a police officer in the unrest following the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama. A Birmingham police officer, Jack Parker, who was riding in the back seat of a police car, shot and killed Robinson. Parker was never indicted for the killing.
Cassie Randolph is an American television personality who came to national prominence in 2019, as the winner of season 23 of The Bachelor, starring Colton Underwood.
↑ Michael H. Stone & Gary Brucato. The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2019), pp. 90-95.
↑ Kelleher, Michael D. (1997). Profiling the Lethal Employee: Case Studies of Violence in the Workplace. Greenwood Publishing Group. p.46. ISBN0-275-95756-X.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
