In 2014, facing eviction from his Alabama home, John Russell Houser set out to make sure no one else could ever live in that house. The new owners found Houser had it booby-trapped: the gas starter tube in the fireplace was twisted out and ignited, the logs removed.

Houser had grown into someone better known by neighbors and colleagues as an angry provocateur.

In April 2008, Houser’s wife, Kellie, his daughter and others filed court papers seeking a temporary protective order against Houser, saying he had “perpetrated various acts of family violence” and had a history of manic depression and bi-polar disorder.

Police say his anger culminated Thursday night in a slaughter at a movie theater in Lafayette, Louisiana, leaving two women dead and nine other people hurt.

Houser fatally shot himself inside the theater.