Laugh-Filled Dinner Gave No Hint of the Rampage to Come

A few hours before Christopher Golly shot his father, Steven, and then later killed a police officer and himself, the five members of the Golly household sat down for an uneventful dinner.

For Susan Bever, Steven Golly’s live-in girlfriend, there was no hint of the horrific events to come.

“Chris ate like a horse,” said Bever in an interview at the house in Northridge on Wednesday.

“He took roast beef, poured gravy all over it and made a sandwich. We all laughed.”

Also at the dinner were Bever’s son, Aaron, 22, and his girlfriend, Connie McGovern, 21. There was none of the friction, Bever said, that had so often arisen between Steven, 49, part-owner of an electrical supply company, and Christopher, 17, over the teen-ager’s school and drug problems.

Tensions in the house had been especially bad since Feb. 14, when Christopher was convicted of possession of marijuana, and the judge suspended his driver’s license for a year.

“He went into a depression, his personality became darker than before,” Bever said. “He didn’t take it too well.”

After dinner, while Bever was doing the dishes and Steven Golly was reading a newspaper, Christopher defied the suspension by taking his truck for a drive, Bever said.

When Christopher returned about 8:30 p.m., father and son argued and Steven said he intended to make sure Christopher could no longer drive the truck. “I guess I have to disable the (truck),” he told Bever.

Christopher’s friend Matt Conner, 18, came by the house about 9 p.m., according to Conner, who was also interviewed Wednesday. The two teen-agers sat on the front lawn and talked. Conner said his friend was angry at his father.

“Chris said he was going to take the assault rifle and shoot him,” Conner said, referring to Steven Golly.

“He said he wanted to be on the news,” Conner said, “he wanted to be famous.”

At one point, Christopher confessed to Conner that he thought he was crazy. But he didn’t seem worried about it.

“Gee, Matt, insanity is fun,” he told Conner.

During the approximately hour-and-a-half that the teen-agers sat talking, Steven came out three times and argued with his son about the truck, Conner said. “Each time it was longer and more explosive,” he said.

Conner tried to console him by saying, “There’s always tomorrow,” but Christopher replied: “No, this is the end.”

Conner said he left and Christopher went back into his house about 10:30. By 11 p.m., Bever said, she and Steven Golly had gone to bed.

McGovern, also interviewed Wednesday, said she returned home from an evening with a friend about 11:30 p.m. Christopher asked her to drive him to a nearby service station to buy cigarettes. When they came back, she said, they went to the back yard where he sniffed nitrous oxide, an anesthetic often called “laughing gas.” At 12:30 a.m., McGovern said she went to bed.

Shortly before 1 a.m., Bever said, she awoke and felt vibrations from the stereo in Christopher’s room next door. About five minutes later, she said, “suddenly, the stereo was cranked on high.”

Loudly enough that McGovern could hear it in a bedroom on the opposite side of the house, Christopher Golly turned up the volume on “The End,” by The Doors--a song in which the singer fantasizes about killing his father.

Dressed only in white pajama shorts, Steven Golly headed to his son’s door.

Bever heard Steven open the door and angrily ask his son what was “going on?”

There was a “pop” sound and then a flash of light.

“I knew it was a gun,” Bever said.

In the hallway she saw Steven face down on the floor of Christopher’s room. Christopher was standing next to the body, she said, holding a rifle in his right hand.

She said to Christopher, “Oh my God, Chris, you really did it,” and walked toward the body, she said.

Christopher calmly warned her away. “Get out of the house, you don’t want to see this,” she said he told her.

Aaron Bever joined his mother in the hallway. He spoke to Christopher. “I told him to give me the gun,” Aaron said on Wednesday, “and he told me to get out of the house.

“He seemed scared, but he seemed to know what he was doing,” Aaron Bever said.

Susan and Aaron Bever left. McGovern was already outside--she had gone out when the music was turned up because she thought the sound was coming from the garage. When she heard the shots, McGovern said, she immediately thought Christopher had gone on a rampage.

“I knew right then it was Steve,” she said. “I was waiting to hear another one for Susan.”

McGovern ran back for a cordless telephone. As she walked to the street, she called 911.

As all three walked toward a neighbor’s house, they heard the sirens of approaching police cars, and McGovern walked back toward the house to meet the officers.

She said she got as far as the mailbox on the sidewalk in front of the house when shots rang out.

“I heard people scream, ‘Get down!’ and a police officer pushed me to the ground,” McGovern said, but she saw neither Christopher, nor the policewoman he fatally shot.

“I’m lost,” Susan Bevers said quietly during the interview. “Steven was my best friend.”