Dad in Custody Battle Cut Throats of Twin Daughters, 3

A Virginia man in the middle of a custody battle for his 3-year-old twin daughters funneled carbon monoxide into his suburban Richmond house and cut the throats of his girls and himself. Police aren't certain yet whether the gas or the cuts killed the three. The twins' mother called deputies, and was found sobbing on her knees in the driveway. "My babies are dead," she told officers. Before they could enter, deputies had to first break windows to ventilate the house, which was filled with fumes from a flexible tube Robert King, 40, had attached to the exhaust pipe of his car. He placed the other end of the tube in the bedroom where the three bodies were found.

King filed for divorce last year, claiming wife Kristina Hooper had abandoned the family. Hooper argued in court that she was driven from the home by King's paranoid behavior and verbal abuse, which made "living conditions intolerable," reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The girls, Madison and Caroline, lived with Hooper, but were spending the weekend with King when he killed them. (More suicide stories.)