People terrorized by a serial killer who shot five people to death in their small community were relieved after police said they killed the man responsible. He was shot dead on Monday and he was a career criminal paroled just two months ago, authorities said. But with his death, an answer to why he launched the bloody spree remains unknown.

The name of the serial killer who killed five people in the small town in South Carolina is Patrick Tracy Burris, and he was 41 at the time of his death. He was shot to death by officers investigating a burglary complaint at a home in Gastonia, North Carolina, 30 miles from where the killing spree started June 27. Ballistics tests showed his gun matched the one used to kill residents in and around Gaffney over six days last week, said State Law Enforcement Division Chief Reggie Lloyd.

Patrick Burris was a career criminal paroled from a North Carolina prison in April after serving nearly eight years for felony breaking and entering and larceny, authorities said, describing him as transient who had a drug and criminal past. “Look at this,” Lloyd said, waiving a stapled copy of Burris’ criminal record. “This is like 25 pages. At some point the criminal justice system is going to need to explain why this suspect was out on the street.”

But investigators don’t know if Burris fatally shot five people in Cherokee County, S.C., for drug money – or if the career criminal was motivated by nothing more than the desire to kill. At the crime scenes, he left behind cash and valuables, police said. Instead, they said he took items out of character for a robbery, but they wouldn’t say what those items were. “Some of the (valuable) things weren’t taken,” said Gaffney, S.C., police Chief Richard Turner. “You have to back up and say, ‘If it’s not a robbery, then what was the intent?’”

“He was unpredictable. He was scary. He was weird,” said Neil Dolan, deputy director of the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. “The mind of a psychopath is something you cannot predict.”

- – - – -

Here is a short transcript from the article: Serial killer became more and more brazen, dangerous. To read the rest of this detailed article, written by Jason Spencer, go to goupstate.com:

As the terror slowly subsides in rural Cherokee County following the death of a serial killer who claimed five lives, people are asking more and more: Who was the killer? Who was Patrick Tracy Burris?

Burris was a bully. He was a bully whose behavior no class, program, jail or prison was ever able to correct, control or contain. He was a bully who, because he was able to continue getting away with things, became increasingly brazen, reckless and dangerous. He was a bully with substance-abuse problems who should not, under any circumstances, have had access to the .25-caliber handgun he used to shoot five people to death.

At 19 years old, he began racking up numerous felony convictions for burglary and grand larceny. Within three years, he would move to Rockingham County, N.C., though not without first violating his probation…