Accused Slayer of 7 Prepared for Massacre, Prosecutor Says

The week before Richard Farley allegedly shot and killed seven people, he stockpiled weapons, practiced shooting and dropped from his will the former co-worker he had stalked for years, a prosecutor said Monday.

Farley’s friends and fiancee at the time said he seemed happy and “was getting his life together” just days before the Feb. 16, 1988, shootings, Assistant Dist. Atty. Charles Constantinides told a Santa Clara Superior Court jury at the start of Farley’s trial.

Farley, 42, faces seven counts of first-degree murder, three counts of attempted murder and one count of assault with a deadly weapon stemming from the attack at ESL Inc., a top-secret Sunnyvale defense contractor. He has pleaded not guilty.

Prosecutors say the slayings capped more than four years of threats and harassment Farley aimed at co-worker Laura Black, the object of his unrequited love. She was shot in the shoulder and survived the attack.

Deputy Public Defender Gregory Paraskou told the jury that Farley “did not plan . . . to kill people. This is one case that does not involve first-degree murder.”

Paraskou described Farley as obsessively in love with Black, an electrical engineer, and said the fixation caused him to lose his job, two homes and his perspective.