On March 19, 2014, Garry Flyte walked into his neighbor’s rural Saylorsburg home, said “I’ve got to do this,” and calmly opened fire on Jeff Place and his disabled adult stepson, Steven Powell.

Flyte then walked into a dark bedroom and aimed his great-grandfather’s .410 shotgun at a figure on a bed, believing it was Wendy, Place’s wife of 20 years. The figure was the Place’s shepherd mix, Cam, who died of his wounds three hours later.Hours earlier, Place had been playing with his 14-month-old granddaughter, Julia, holding the giggling toddler upside down over his shoulder.Place, shot in the stomach, was killed instantly. Powell, shot in the arm and chest, died hours later on the operating table.After the killing, Flyte walked back home, put the shotgun on a couch, then walked back to the Place house and called 911 to say he had just shot three people.“We had no trouble with Garry. That’s the weirdest part,” Jeff’s widow, Wendy Place, says. “We knew him for 26 years, never had an argument, didn’t have a fight with him or anything. That week, one of their friends got stuck in the snow and my husband and son got up at midnight, got the truck chains, pulled his friend out, he said thank you. Jeff would be working in the garage, Garry would come over.”Four days earlier, Flyte had been helping Jeff string lights in a shed he had built.“Why he chose us, I don’t know,” Wendy says.On Monday, Flyte pleaded guilty to two counts of first degree murder. He was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences.Trouble brewingFlyte, now 56, was a truck driver whom another relative said was about to lose his home to foreclosure, and he had been out of work, his niece Tiffany Flyte Torres told the Times News the week after the shootings.According to online court documents, Flyte’s sole criminal record was a charge of driving under the influence on Nov. 15, 2012, filed by state police at Lehighton.The Place and Flyte families, while not friends, maintained an amicable coexistence. The Flytes were in the neighborhood when the Places moved in 28 years ago.But although the Places were friendly with Flyte, “We were never friends. We didn’t go into his house, and he didn’t come into ours,” Wendy Place says.But she says Flyte was an unhappy man, given to strange behavior. About a week before the killings, Flyte walked the street with a shotgun. Police arrived, walked him home, and gave back the shotgun after unloading it.That day, he was fighting with his wife and his daughter-in-law, who lives nearby and shares a water supply.Flyte was known to have turned off the water to his daughter-in-law when he was unhappy with her, Wendy says.After the shootings, Flyte’s granddaughter would tell reporters that Flyte had sat at a window facing the Place home, holding his shotgun, convinced the Places were watching him.“He was always crazy, but it’s been worse since he’s on drugs,” Flyte’s daughter-in-law, Christina Flyte, told a Times News reporter the day after the shootings.He struggled with mental health issues, Christina Flyte said in that interview, and was about to lose his home, which was in foreclosure. He had been using methamphetamine, she told the reporter.“He had cameras set up all around the house, and he said people were out to kill him,” she said at the time.“He’s someone who has needed help for a long time.”A methodical ambushIt was about 6:50 p.m. March 19, 2014, a cold and rainy day. Julia had gone home, and Jeff, Wendy and Steven had just finished a light supper of club sandwiches and french fries.But before they could settle down in their small, comfortable living room to watch a funny movie, Flyte walked in through the unlocked entrance.While it was the first time he had entered their home, the Place family had no reason to fear him.“He never threatened us. Never. That’s what got us. He came through the door with a gun and we still didn’t think he was out to get us,” Wendy says.“He fell coming in through the door. I was in the kitchen, Stevie was in (the living room),” she says.Steven, 30 and severely learning disabled, lived at home.“Are you all right, Garry?” Steven asked.“Yeah, buddy, I’m fine, I’m OK,” Flyte said.“He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t mad,” Wendy recalls.“Where’s Jeff?” Flyte asked.Jeff came into the living room and said, “Hey, Garry. How ya doin’?”“Oh, I’m doin’ good, Jeff. How are you?” Flyte said.Then, Wendy says, Flyte told her husband he had seen “surveillance race cars” on his roof.As Jeff asked Flyte what he meant, Wendy walked down the narrow hall leading from the kitchen to call her son Jerry Place, who lived nearby, to tell him of the odd visit.“All of a sudden I heard (Flyte) say, ‘I’ve got to do it’ and he shot Stevie,” she says, brushing tears.“Stevie come runnin’ out and said ‘Mom, he shot me. Run!’ ” she recalls, her voice breaking.They ran out through the back door into a field, where Steven collapsed.Once or twice, he sat up and looked at the gaping hole in his arm, where Flyte’s shotgun had blasted through. Steven typically stood with his arms crossed over his chest, Wendy says.At first, neither realized the shot had also penetrated his chest. Steven later died on an operating table at Pocono Medical Center as doctors struggled to save him.“We laid there out in the field. It was rainy and cold,” Wendy says.“The next thing I know I heard a second shot. He had killed Jeff, right there at the door,” she says, indicating the white wooden door that separates the entry room from the living room.“Then I hear two more shots. Well, he had thought he had heard me in the bedroom, and he shot my dog.”Cam suffered for three hours before dying, Wendy says. He’s buried in the backyard.“He took his gun home, then he came back here,” she recalls. “I’m talkin’ to the cops on my phone, and here comes Garry through the back door.”“He asked us if we were OK. I said ‘No, you shot Steven. Where’s Jeff?’ ”Flyte said “He’s OK. He’s on the ground but I got an ambulance comin,’ ” she recalls.“I said ‘Garry, why did you do this?’“He said, ‘I don’t know. Voices. I don’t know,’ ” Wendy recalls.Flyte went back into the house. Jerry Place came through the house, and Flyte handed him his cellphone, saying “the cops want to talk to you.”Jerry later would tell Wendy he saw Flyte talking to Jeff’s body, saying, “It’s OK, buddy, we’ll get through this.”Jerry told Flyte to get out. Flyte left, but stood by Jeff’s truck. Jerry made sure he stayed until police arrived.The ambulance came for Steven. Patty, Flyte’s wife, came to the door and asked what happened. When Wendy told her, she said he didn’t do it, that his gun was at their house.AftermathSince the shootings, animosity between the families has escalated to the point where Wendy’s adult son, Trey Powell, and Ray Flyte, Garry Flyte’s son, got into a fistfight outside the courthouse after a hearing.Now, the families spar on Facebook and keep a wary eye on each other from their homes across the street.As for Wendy, she’ll stay in the home she owns, a home whose built-in cabinets and gardens are her late husband’s handiwork. Trey Powell has moved back home from Texas to make sure his mother is safe.“I didn’t do anything wrong. Why do I have to pack up and leave,” Wendy says. “This is where my kids grew up.”She and Jerry returned a day after the shootings and cleaned up the blood.“We just go one day at a time,” she says.She keeps busy, caring for Julia, who is now 2 1/2. The little girl remembers her grandfather and Steven, Wendy says. She says she hears Julia talking to them at times.“She’s what keeps me going,” Wendy says.