Insiders Describe Shooting Scene at Daytrading Firms

His voice unusually stunned and subdued, Harvey Houtkin, president of Montvale, N.J.-based All-Tech Investment Group, was on the other end of the phone running through the scene that had unfolded just minutes earlier in Atlanta.

Television cameras were just arriving at the scene to report the carnage. "Some madman shot up our Atlanta office. There are at least five dead. Apparently he was a customer, but he hadn't been around for a couple of months," he said.

Thursday night, Atlanta police found the former customer, Mark O. Barton, dead. He had allegedly killed nine people after opening fire at the offices of All-Tech and Momentum Securities, both daytrading firms. Authorities later found the bodies of his wife and two children. ...