Mom: I Killed My Kids for Being 'Mouthy'

Julie Schenecker's kids "talked back, they were mouthy and she was tired of it," Tampa police say, so the 50-year-old Army wife shot son Beau, 13, twice in the head on the way home from soccer practice. With her dead son in the car, Schenecker says she drove home, parked, went upstairs, and shot 16-year-old daughter Calyx as she sat at her computer doing homework. Cops responding the following morning to a phone call from Julie Schenecker's worried mother found her in a bloody robe on the back porch, reports the Tampa Bay Tribune.

Julie Schenecker, who had bought the gun five days earlier, left a note detailing her frustrations and intentions, police say, and said she intended to kill herself. The AP notes that she was shaking uncontrollably as she was arrested, and was last night admitted to the hospital for an unspecified pre-existing condition. Neighbors and classmates tell a different story of Beau, a gifted athlete, and Calyx, a model student her principal calls "the perfect little child." Father Parker Schenecker is stationed in Qatar with Central Command; he's been notified, Army officials say. "Those kids had such a bright future," says a neighbor. "And now it's gone." (More Tampa Bay stories.)