Francie Billotti-Wood should have been in church today, volunteering in the nursery at the Holy Family Catholic Community parish, her priest said. Instead, she and her slain family were a focal point of prayers and remembrances at a Mass at the church in northwest Maryland.
by Matt Zapotosky and Michelle Boorstein
Excerpted from The Washington Post
Rev. Kevin Farmer opened the 9 a.m. service today by telling more than 400 somber parishioners that he had "no words to offer" to describe the "unspeakable act" that Billotti-Wood, 33, and her three young children suffered at the hands of their husband and father, Christopher A. Wood, 34, who shot them and then killed himself.
Some church members hugged and cried. Others looked stoic, disbelief written on their faces.
The bodies were found Saturday morning in the family's house in this community about 10 miles outside the city of Frederick. Billotti-Wood and the children -- boys 5 and 4 and their 2-year-old sister -- were each shot once in the beds where they were found, police said. Wood's body was found on the floor of the couple's bedroom.
Authorities are still trying to piece together what happened, and have yet to uncover a motive.
"It's just a tragedy," Maria Addington, a neighbor of Billotti-Wood's parents, said after the Mass. "I remember when she (Francie) was a baby."
Billotti-Wood was an avid volunteer at the church, though she and her family were only members since January, Farmer said. She had signed up to teach children's liturgy on Sundays and religious education for second graders during the week. She was a member of the parent advisory committee.
Deacon George Sisson's homily was devoted almost exclusively to the family. Events like this, he said, "We read about them in other places. Now it's not other places. It's a couple blocks from this church."
In a slow, halting, sensitive voice, Sisson told parishioners that it is natural to feel anger, to question one's faith, in the wake of such death. "This morning," he said, "the challenge for us is to believe, even when we think the signs of God have vanished from Middletown, Maryland . . . We need to grieve as a community for this terrible loss."
Read the full story here and a related story here.