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Gian Luigi FERRI
Classification: Mass murderer
Characteristics:
Revenge
- Dissatisfied with the legal services he
had received from the law firm of Pettit & Martin
Number of victims: 8
Date of murders:
July 1,
1993
Date of birth: December
29, 1937
Victims profile: Allen J. Berk, 52; Jack Berman, 36; Donald Merrill,
48; Shirley Mooser, 64; Deborah Fogel, 33; Jody Jones Sposato,
30; David Sutcliffe, 30; John Scully, 28
Method of murder:
Shooting
(two TEC-9's and a .45 semi-automatic pistol)
Location: San Francisco, California, USA
Status: Committed suicide by shooting himself the same day
Gian Luigi Ferri, 55,
killed eight people and wounded six others before committing suicide at
an office building at 101 California St. in San Francisco
July 1, 1993
Apparently dissatisfied with the legal services he
had received from the law firm of Pettit & Martin, he entered their
offices on the 34th floor of 101 California Street at 2:57 PM and within
4 minutes had killed 8 people and wonded 6. He then is reported to have
killed himself.
The weapons, two TEC-9's and a .45 semi-automatic pistol,
have caused some controversy. Lawyers for the families of the deceased
have sued both the gun makers and the store where the guns were
purchased. They charge that the sellers of the gun acted irresponsibly
because they should have known the weapon they sold to Ferri was
inappropriate for legal use.
101 California Street Shootings
is the name given to a mass shooting that took place
July 1, 1993
in San Francisco, California, claiming the lives of eight people and the
shooter. The killings sparked a flurry of legal and legislative actions
that were precursors to the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement
Act that took effect in 1994.
The
Shootings
At 2:57 p.m. on
July 1, 1993,
55-year-old businessman Gian Luigi Ferri entered an office building at
101 California Street in San Francisco, and made his way to the 34th
floor and the offices of the law firm of Pettit & Martin. (Ferri, who
had been a client of the firm at least ten years prior to the shootings,
nursed an irrational grudge against Pettit & Martin for many years.)
Exiting the elevator on the 34th floor, Ferri donned
a pair of ear protectors and began to open fire with a pair of TEC-9
handguns and a .45 pistol. After roaming this floor he then moved down
one floor through an internal staircase and continued shooting. The
carnage was continued on several floors before Ferri eventually shot
himself fatally as San Francisco Police closed in. Eight people were
killed in the attack, and six others injured.
The reason for the shootings was never fully
determined, but a letter left behind by Ferri claimed a long list of
complaints.
The
Victims
Allen J. Berk, 52, was a partner in Pettit &
Martin, and was well respected in the San Francisco legal community. He
earned an undergraduate degree from City University in New York, and
received his law degree from George Washington University. Berk was
experienced in labor law, and had represented a number of management
groups.
Jack Berman, 36, was a partner with the firm
Bronson, Bronson, & McKinnon who was visiting the offices of Pettit &
Martin on the day of the shootings. A president of the American Jewish
Congress known for his work specializing in employment law and chairing
the firm's pro bono committee, Berman was born in Moosup, Connecticut,
in 1957 and graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in 1979 before
completing his juris doctor from Boston University School of Law.
Berman's community work extended beyond the AJC, as
he also co-founded TAX-AID, an organization that provides free income
tax preparation, and the San Francisco Transitional Housing Fund, a
program to aid homeless individuals in finding housing. In recognition
of Berman's service to the legal profession and the Bay Area populace,
the California Young Lawyers' Association gives an annual award in
Berman's name.
Donald Merrill, 48, was an employee of the
Trust Company of the West, which had offices at 101 California Street.
He had worked as an energy industry consultant, working with independent
energy projects
Shirley Mooser, 64, was a secretary at the
Trust Company of the West, which had offices at 101 California Street.
Deborah Fogel, 33, was a legal secretary for
the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, which had offices at 101
California Street.
Jody Jones Sposato, 30, was a young mother.
David Sutcliffe, 30, was a law student at the
University of Colorado at Boulder who was interning at Pettit & Martin
for the summer.
John Scully, 28, was a lawyer with Pettit &
Martin who died, according to news reports, while protecting his wife
from the gunman. Interested in labor law, Scully earned his bachelors
degree from Gonzaga University, then received his law degree at the
University of San Francisco.
Injured in the attack were Vicky Smith, 41; Sharon
Jones O'Roke; Michelle Scully, 27; Brian F. Berger, 39; Deanna Eaves,
33; and Charles Ross, 42.
Reaction
The shootings spurred calls for tighter gun control
and were followed by a number of legal and legislative actions.
Shortly after the incident, President Bill Clinton
signed the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act, also known as the
Brady Bill, which was a precursor to the sweeping 1994 Violent Crime
Control and Law Enforcement Act, which included the contentious Federal
assault weapons ban. Lawmakers chose not to renew the ban, which expired
in 2004. The ban had little effect in California because its gun control
laws were already more stringent.
California, at the state level, implemented some of
the toughest gun laws in the United States. The state also repealed a
law that had given gun manufacturers immunity against lawsuits,
following an attempt by some relatives of 101 California street victims
to sue the companies that made the weapons Ferri used.
A number of organizations were formed in the wake of
the shootings, including the Legal Community Against Violence, which
acts as a resource for information on federal, state, and local firearms
policies. The AJC founded the Jack Berman Advocacy Center to lobby and
organize with regard to gun control and violence reduction.
Wikipedia.org
Suit Can Proceed Against Maker Of
Guns Used in 1993 Killings
The New York Times
Wednesday, April 12, 1995
A state court judge has ruled that the maker of the
guns used in a shooting that killed eight people in a law office in 1993
could be sued for the deaths.
The ruling by Judge James Warren of San Francisco
Superior Court on Monday did not address the question of whether the
manufacturers of the magazines and ammunition in the weapons could be
included in the suits. That will not be decided until this summer.
Judge Warren refused to dismiss a series of lawsuits
against the makers of the guns that Gian Luigi Ferri used when he burst
into the law firm of Pettit & Martin and sprayed the offices with
bullets.
Using three guns, including two semiautomatic weapons
and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, Mr. Ferri, killed eight people and
wounded six others before shooting himself.
Judge Warren ruled that gun manufacturer Navegar Inc.
might be liable under legal theories of strict liability and negligence.
Strict liability allows damages to be awarded for any harm caused by a
dangerous product.
A lawyer for Navegar, Ernest Getto, contended that
the semiautomatic guns Mr. Ferri used were legally made in Florida and
sold in Nevada. Neither state had a ban on assault weapons at the time.
"The bottom line is that nothing Navegar did has any
connection whatsoever to what happened," Mr. Getto said. "We did nothing
unlawful in California."
Judge Warren's decision is the first that an assault-weapon
maker may be held accountable for the damages resulting from the
criminal misuse of its product.
The judge based his ruling on the fact that the TEC-DC-9
gun used by Mr. Ferri was a slightly modified version of one banned by
the California Legislature in 1989. He reasoned that the company
introduced the gun into the general market even though it could have
foreseen that the weapon would eventually turn up in California and
possibly be used for criminal purposes.
The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence filed eight
lawsuits in May on behalf of the survivors and the families of the
victims. The suits maintain that the manufacturers negligently made and
sold products that "would be used to kill or injure innocent people in a
violent criminal act."
They maintain that the makers are liable because
their products have no legitimate sporting or self-defense purpose and
are easily adapted to mass killings.
The suits named Navegar, maker of the TEC-DC-9; Hell-Fire
Trigger Systems, maker of the trigger accelerator used; USA Magazines,
maker of the 32-round magazine standard in the TEC-DC-9; and Superpawn,
the Nevada pawnshop where Mr. Ferri bought his guns.
Michelle Scully, whose husband,John, died trying to
protect her from Mr. Ferri, said the ruling would force makers of
assault weapons to think about the consequences of their products.
"This means they cannot sell these weapons and market
them to the criminal element, take the money they make and sleep well
that night," Mrs. Scully said. "They will have to think about how those
guns are used, the shattered lives they leave behind, the innocent
people they are going to kill."
Victims of Chance in Deadly Rampage
The New York Times
Wednesday, July 7,
1993
When a gunman began his shooting spree in the halls
of the Pettit & Martin law firm here last Thursday, his first victims
were Jack Berman and Jody Jones Sposato, who were trying to do what the
gunman himself apparently thought he was trying to do: fight the system.
Colleagues say Mr. Berman, a lawyer with Bronson,
Bronson & McKinnon, had worked hard to persuade his firm to spend less
time defending corporations and more time helping people fight former
employers. Ms. Sposato's case was one of the first in his campaign.
"Jack Berman was helping Jody Sposato fight the
system," said Sarah E. Robertson, an associate who worked for Mr. Berman.
"It's unfathomable that this madman came in and tried to hurt the system
and he got Jack and Jody."
The six other people killed by Gian Luigi Ferri last
Thursday included a secretary, a summer intern and an executive aide.
Two victims were lawyers with Pettit & Martin, which 10 years ago gave
Mr. Ferri the advice that he blamed for his financial downfall. But
neither had had anything to do with that advice. And none of the dead or
wounded were on a "hit list" Mr. Ferri had carried in with him. Hurting
the 'Little People'
The lack of a link between Mr. Ferri and his victims
has made it all the harder for family, friends and colleagues of those
who were shot to make sense of the violence. It is, they say, like
trying to draw moral lessons out of an event that was as random and
impersonal as a natural disaster.
The people Mr. Ferri gunned down may have worked in a
high-rise office in the city's financial district, but they were "little
people doing humble jobs," said Charles Ross, a lawyer who was among the
six who were shot but survived.
Mr. Ferri, a 55-year-old mortgage broker and unlucky
real-estate speculator from Los Angeles, ended his 15-minute rampage by
raising a gun to his chin and killing himself.
This week, the funerals and memorials began, as did
attempts to create some good from the grief. At nearly every service,
mourners are talking about stricter laws to control the semiautomatic
pistols Mr. Ferri legally bought before using them to kill. On talk
radio shows, callers discuss the "Falling Down" syndrome, a term taken
from the title of a recent movie to describe middle-aged men who crack
under financial and emotional pressure. And Harvey Saferstein, president
of the California Bar Association, has called for an end to lawyer
bashing, which he said contributed to Mr. Ferri's rage. No Connection
With Firm
A rambling letter found in Mr. Ferri's bag and
released over the weekend by the police makes clear that the man saw
himself as a victim of a system out to crush him. Among others, he
blamed the law firm Pettit & Martin, which had given Mr. Ferri advice in
several real estate transactions in 1981.
Among the first victims of Mr. Ferri's paranoid rage
were four people in a glass conference room of the Pettit & Martin
offices on the 34th floor. The firm had occasionally represented one of
the parties and had lent the room for a deposition, although no one with
the firm was in the room.
Mr. Berman, 35, sat with Ms. Sposato, 30, who was
filing a sex-discrimination suit against her former employer, Electronic
Data Systems, over her dismissal several years ago. Deanna Eaves, 33, a
stenographer, took notes as Sharon O'Roke, 35, a Texas lawyer for E.D.S.,
took Ms. Sposato's deposition.
The deposition was to have taken only a day, but it
spilled over for a second, putting them in harm's way. The gunman fired
through the conference room's glass window, killing Mr. Berman and Ms.
Sposato on the spot. Ms. Eaves hid under the table, and Ms. O'Roke ran
for her life, while being shot five times. Ms. Eaves, who was shot in
the arm, was released from the hospital today, and Ms. O'Roke is still
in the hospital in serious condition. Dying for His Wife
Down the hall, John C. Scully, 28, an associate with
the firm, heard the shooting and ran down a staircase to an empty office
on the 33d floor where he had left his 27-year-old wife, Michelle Scully.
A lawyer at another firm, Ms. Scully had come to her husband's office to
use the law library and study privately, friends said. They ran toward
the elevator to escape but were confronted by the gunman.
As Mr. Ferri aimed, Ms. Scully later told The San
Francisco Examiner, her husband thrust himself in front of her and was
fatally wounded. Ms. Scully, shot in the arm, was released from the
hospital over the weekend.
On the same floor, it had become a habit for David
Sutcliffe, a 30-year-old summer intern from the University of Colorado
law school, to break the monotony of work in the early afternoon and
visit Charles Ross in his office. The intern liked to ask the 42-year-old
lawyer, who was working for the firm as an independent contractor, for
advice ranging from how to maintain integrity as a lawyer to what sights
he should visit in California.
That afternoon, Mr. Sutcliffe was excited about
having met the California Attorney General, Daniel E. Lungren, at a
luncheon with Pettit & Martin. "He seemed a little star struck," Mr.
Ross recalled. Fearing a 'Pathetic Death'
Moments after Mr. Sutcliffe left his office, the
gunman appeared in the doorway and shot Mr. Ross in the arm.
"I knew I was confronting a reality I couldn't even
imagine," said Mr. Ross in an interview Monday at his home, where he is
recovering from his wound. "The gunman was cold, detached, impassive as
if I could be anybody. It made me realize that I had to be as cold-blooded
to him as he was to me." He added, "I was worried that I would die some
pathetic death in the office."
Mr. Ross slammed his door shut, only to have the
gunman open it again. Then, yelling, "Who the hell are you?" Mr. Ross
said, he pushed past the gunman and ran down two corridors, ducking into
a room to hide.
Those not as fortunate as Mr. Ross had, like him,
never seen or heard of the gunman, the police said. Besides Mr. Berman,
Ms. Sposato and Mr. Scully, the dead were Allen J. Berk, a partner with
Pettit & Martin; Deborah Fogel, 33, a secretary with the law firm Davis
Wright Tremaine; Donald Michael Merrill, 48, who worked for Trust
Company of the West as a financial consultant, and Shirley Mooser, 64,
an executive assistant at the Trust Company of the West.
Brian Berger, 39, a Pettit & Martin lawyer, remains
in critical condition with massive chest injuries; Victoria Smith, a
marketing vice president for the Trust Company of the West, is in fair
condition.
The hardest thing about the ordeal, Mr. Ross said,
was hearing that Mr. Sutcliffe had been killed soon after leaving his
office. Breaking down in tears, Mr. Ross described the intern as "a
friendly kid who had a Jimmy Stewart sincerity that was rare."
"I worked for what I got," Mr. Ross said, haltingly.
"I fought for my life. But I have survivor's guilt."
Seeking Motive in the Killing of 8:
Insane Ramblings Are Little Help
By Robert Reinhold - The New York Times
Sunday, July 4, 1993
The deadly rampage in a law firm here appears to have
been the irrational and desperate act of a deranged man.
That is the almost inescapable conclusion from a
rambling semiliterate screed found on the man's body after he killed
eight people, wounded six others and finally killed himself on Thursday
at the law offices of Pettit & Martin here. The 55-year-old gunman --
variously identified by the authorities as Gian Luigi Ferri or Gianluigi
Ferri -- carried a list of more than 30 names, apparently targets of his
wrath, but no one on his list was among the victims.
In his four-page typed letter, Mr. Ferri ranted about
a flavor enhancer in food, monosodium glutamate, the Food and Drug
Administration, and the legal profession. Excerpts of the letter were
published today in The San Francisco Chronicle.
In his letter, Mr. Ferri said he had been "raped" by
Pettit & Martin. Contrary to rumors of a recent connection between Mr.
Ferri and the law firm, Pettit & Martin reported Friday that it had
advised him a dozen years ago on some real estate deals in the Midwest
but had no contact with him since then.
The letter, filled with misspellings and grammatical
errors, said, "The last thing that made all of this come to a head is
that I am one of those people of the 5% of the population (12.5 million
people), where the poison monosodium glutamate (MGS) has reached such
high levels in our cells, that a minimum amount more can kill us."
The letter ended with a blast at lawyers. "When you
hire a consultant or an attorney you don't hire for the purpose of
getting raped and than having all your efforts toward legal recourse
totally thwarted by a corrupt legal system of 'esquires'. Esquires in
the dark ages romed the countryside to steel from the working people and
give tothe prince. Do attorney want us to call them esquires because
their allegiance is to the monarchy?"
None of the dead or wounded appeared to have any
connection with Mr. Ferri or were on his "list of criminals, rapists,
racketeeres, lobbyists."
Among the dead were a young law intern at Pettit &
Martin, three of the firm's employees and four other people who did not
work at the firm.
The Broker Who Killed 8: Gunman's
Motives a Puzzle
By Robert Reinhold - The New York Times
Saturday, July 3, 1993
He appeared to be a portly middle-aged professional
carrying an attache case and wheeling a lawyer's case on a dolly. But
when he stepped into the law offices on the 34th floor of a downtown
office building here, he shed his jacket, donned a pair of orange ear
protectors and went to battle with three semi-automatic pistols.
The question today in San Francisco was what drove
the gunman, identified as Gian Luigi Ferri of Los Angeles, into a
murderous spree on Thursday afternoon in which he killed eight people,
wounded six others and then ended his own life with a bullet from a .45-caliber
Colt placed under his chin.
But a murky picture began to emerge today of Mr.
Ferri as a real estate speculator who once won a million-dollar judgment
and more recently sought to file for bankruptcy. Members of the firm he
assaulted, Pettit & Martin, were at first unable to recognize Mr. Ferri,
but later today they discovered that he had been a client in 1981. They
had given Mr. Ferri advice in several real estate transactions, mainly
to buy several trailer parks in Indiana and Kentucky. No Contact Since
'1982
Shortly after that, said Vickie Spang, marketing
director for the firm, he complained that the seller had made
misrepresentations. She said the firm had helped him find local counsel
in Indiana that helped him win a $1 million judgment there. Pettit &
Martin had no records of any complaints about its own work from Mr.
Ferri, Ms. Spang said, and had had no contact with him since 1982.
Whether he ever collected the judgment could not be
learned, but it appeared that when he began shooting Mr. Ferri was a man
down on his luck. He recently approached a law office in Hollywood
seeking to file for personal bankruptcy.
He told the lawyers in Hollywood that he had lost
$300,000 in a land deal in Leadville, Colo., near Aspen. "Somebody did a
real number on him," Elias Francisco, a paralegal at E. Francisco &
Associates, a law firm run by his brother Emilio, said today.
The county coroner, Boyd Stephens, identified the
gunman as Mr. Ferri, 55, of the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles,
owner of ADF Mortgage, which was incorporated in Nevada in 1987. The
police found his 1986 or 1987 Cadillac in a parking garage in the
Embarcadero Center, a block from the 48-story glass and granite tower
where Mr. Ferri spread carnage. Described as Quite Man
"His name didn't mean anything to me," said Richard
E. Climan, a partner in the Pettit firm, which has 160 lawyers in six
offices and practices mostly business law. The chairman of the firm,
Theodore Russell, could not be reached for comment.
In Woodland Hills, neighbors of ADF, which occupied a
second-story office in a shopping strip, described Mr. Ferri as a quiet
man who spoke with a foreign accent, when he spoke at all. He appeared
to be in financial trouble, they said, and would sometimes sit in his
car for two hours at time.
"He always stayed by himself and seemed lonely and
sad," said Marilyn J. Petlack. "I never saw any clients going in there.
I knew he was not doing well financially, but he didn't seem like a
criminal type." At the nearby Oakwood apartment complex where he rented
a furnished one-bedroom apartment, the manager said Mr. Ferri had not
paid his June rent.
The police said they found a list of names on Mr.
Ferri's body, but no one on the list appeared to be among the victims.
And at least two of the dead appeared to have been entirely unrelated to
any issue he had with the firm: Jack Berman, a 36-year-old partner in
another San Francisco law firm, Bronson, Bronson & McKinnon, and a
client of his, Jody Sposato, 30, who were there to give a deposition in
a lawsuit she had brought against a former employer over her dismissal.
The San Francisco County coroner said the others
killed were Deborah Fogel, a secretary for the law firm Davis Wright &
Tremaine; Donald Michael Merrill, 48, of Oakland, whose employment and
reason for being in the building were unclear; and four employees of
Pettit & Martin, John C. Scully, 28, an associate lawyer in the firm; a
law partner, Allen J. Berk, 52; a summer legal assistant, David
Sutcliffe, 30, of San Francisco, and a secretary, Shirley Mooser, 64.
Last October, Mr. Ferri walked into the Hollywood
offices of E. Francisco & Associates, bankruptcy lawyers based in Irvine,
Calif., to ask about filing for bankruptcy. "He was very gentle, very
friendly, a chubby little guy," recalled Elias Francisco. "But he was
hard up. He was hurting."
He said Mr. Ferri described losing $300,000 when he
was not allowed to build on land in Leadville. "I got the feeling he had
a lot of money at one time," Mr. Francisco said. He said Mr. Ferri could
not afford the $1,100 fee to file for bankruptcy. 'Prepared for Battle'
San Francisco authorities gave this account of
Thursday's events:
Mr. Ferri, dressed in a dark business suit and
carrying his cases, entered the elevators at 101 California Street
shortly before 3 P.M. At the 34th floor, "He shed his coat and prepared
for battle," said Inspector Napoleon Hendrix.
His battle armaments were two 9-millimeter Intratec
DC9 semi-automatic machine pistols, carried in shoulder straps and each
loaded with 50-round magazines, a smaller .45-caliber semi-automatic
handgun and hundreds of rounds of ammunition loaded into dozens of
magazines carried in his innocent-looking lawyer cases.
Without speaking a word, Mr. Ferri opened fire on a
glassed-in conference room where a deposition was in progress, killing
Mr. Berman, the lawyer, and his client, Ms. Sposato. He killed another
person on the 34th floor, then moved to lower floors, leaving five more
dead and six wounded.
Two minutes after the first emergency call, 110
police officers arrived and shut down the elevators. Terrified office
workers tripped the fire alarms, but the police turned the alarm off,
which locked the doors in the stairwell, trapping the gunman who was
trying to escape down the stairs. Somewhere below the 29th floor, Mr.
Ferri saw officers coming up the stairs, and fled back up the stairs and
then shot himself to death with a single bullet.
The shootings brought calls today for tighter
controls on the machine pistols that Mr. Ferri carried under his jacket.
"Believe it or not, they are legal," said Mayor Frank Jordan, the former
police chief here. "There is absolutely no place for them in an urban
society. They are used for only one purpose, warfare."
Mr. Ferri bought his semi-automatic weapons from two
stores in Las Vegas, Nev., this spring, said a spokesman with Las Vegas
Metropolitan Police Department. In April, he purchased a semi-automatic
at Super Pawn, a pawn shop in Las Vegas. A month later, he purchased the
same make of gun at Pacific Tactical Weapons in Las Vegas.
The semi-automatic Intratec DC9 is legal to possess
in California without registration with state officials.
