A 43-page handwritten note -- released Thursday by Wilmette police in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the Chicago Tribune -- included critical comments about various family members and other individuals, and predicted "total chaos" at the First Presbyterian Church of Wilmette, where his wife worked, when the deaths were discovered.
In an exclusive article in Friday's edition, the Tribune lays out a suicide note left by Richard Wiley, 54, who police say murdered his wife Kathryn Wiley-Motes, 50, and her son Christopher Motes, 17, on the afternoon of Feb. 28, and killed himself the following evening.
Police say Wiley shot and killed his family on Saturday, then took his own life sometime Sunday evening, likely having filled many of the in between hours with the creation of the missive "peppered with self-pity."
The Tribune reports that Wiley's note described how he killed the family's turtle, three cats, four small birds, and a parrot and wrote, "Our little loved ones could not be trusted to anyone else."
"She looked at me when I caught her with a knowing look," he wrote of a cat. "When I stabbed her she looked again. This one hurt me deeply."
Wiley wrote of his love for his wife and stepson and said said that, "People will say many things and nothing I say will matter."
He referred to his "crumbling marriage" and his brother-in-law, who confirmed that his sister was planning to divorce Wiley, said he thought that development may have been what put the man over the edge.
Still, the rambling letter gives some insight into a man tortured by his own demons and bent on writing "the final chapter."
