Woman, 2 Boys Slain; Tustin Man Wounds Himself

A 60-year-old Tustin man shot and killed his elderly mother and two children who lived with the family, then critically wounded himself Monday, police said.

Leon E. Huffman was in critical condition with a gunshot wound to the abdomen after undergoing surgery Monday afternoon at Western Medical Center in Santa Ana.

Dead are Huffman’s 86-year-old mother, Alice; 11-year-old Frankie Huffman and Billy Huffman, 8. The two boys came to the Huffmans as foster children in 1981, but the family had assumed legal guardianship of them in 1984.

Police had no motive for the crime, but Huffman’s wife, Betty, who was not home at the time of the shooting, told authorities that her husband had been depressed because of a heart ailment.

The shootings, which Tustin authorities called the most “shocking homicide (case) in the city’s history,” occurred about 5:30 a.m. in a quiet neighborhood of modest homes.

Betty Huffman had left the house about 15 minutes before the shootings for her secretarial job in a Huntington Beach office, said Tustin Police Lt. Bob Schoenkopf.

The boys were found in their beds in a bedroom they shared, each with a .22-caliber gunshot wound to the head. Alice Huffman was also found in her bed with a similar gunshot wound to the head.