Four Dead In Murder, Suicide in Va.

Neighbors said the couple "seemed happy" and showed no signs of trouble.

"Her daughter was gorgeous," said Melinda Goddard, whose kids played with the couple's children in the gravel driveways between the trailers. "They were precious babies."

Goddard and other neighbors said that Thomas worked in child care and that Jackson was a landscaper but was having trouble finding work lately.

"They stayed in the house a lot," said neighbor Rosemary Hollestelle, whose mobile home is a few feet from where the slayings occurred.

At times, she said, the couple would play music too loud, and her boyfriend knocked on their door Monday about 7 p.m. to ask them to lower the volume. They did but never came to the door, she said. She and her boyfriend were awakened a few hours later when police and paramedics arrived.

None of the neighbors interviewed at the small mobile home park said they heard more than a single shot -- and most dismissed the sound as a firecracker.

Richard Atchley, who manages the park and tends a propane-filling station along the highway out front, said Thomas had approached him over the weekend asking whether she could be removed from the lease.

"She wanted to move back with her family," he said, adding that there had been no indication of trouble at the couple's home Monday.

But Price said that the couple had been feuding and that Jackson had invited her and her daughter to move in next month because Thomas and the children were moving out.

Price said that she had known Jackson for several years but that the two became romantically involved after meeting up Friday at Buffalo Wild Wings Grill and Bar in Fredericksburg.

She said they spent the night at a Travelodge and bought two grams of cocaine the next day before driving to Culpeper, where they went to a club and spent the night at the Sleepy Hollow Motel.

"We were just having fun," she said, adding that Jackson "didn't seem like the kind of person who would do this."

She said, however, that Jackson had a knife and two handguns, telling her he had a concealed weapons permit. She also said Jackson bought a large bottle of whiskey and drank heavily from it over the weekend.

He was drinking from it again and using cocaine when he called Price on Monday to ask for a ride, she said.

She said Jackson then told her, "I'll probably go to jail tonight," but she dismissed the comment as a joke.

The nearly empty bottle of Evan Williams was visible yesterday through the shattered window of the family's mobile home.