Week in Review : MAJOR EVENTS, IMAGES AND PEOPLE IN ORANGE COUNTY NEWS : AT THE SCENE : Deaths Called Murder-Suicide

A neighbor who noticed a broken window was first to come upon the gruesome scene.

Police soon arrived at the town house in Eastbluff, Newport Beach, and found the rooms in disarray as if there had been a struggle. They found both residents and even their dog slain, their bodies left lying in various parts of the house.

The broken window beside the front door suggested an intruder, but a different story quickly emerged.

Investigators said it appeared that 34-year-old John Hartford McMullin, despondent over losing his job and undergoing psychiatric treatment for depression, had killed his 63-year-old mother, Harriet Barding McMullin, with a blow to the head with a 12-pound rock found in the town house. Her body was found lying near the broken window.

McMullin also killed the family’s small dog by slashing its throat, police said. The dog was found lying on a bed.

Then McMullin killed himself, they said. His wrists were slashed, but an autopsy declared the cause of death to be a bullet wound to the head, apparently from a pistol found near his body, which was lying beside the dog’s on the bed.

A neighbor described the younger McMullin as “a weird guy, a real loner.” His mother, the neighbor said, was “a very lovely woman; she wouldn’t speak poorly to anyone.”