"Pressed to K*ll: Inside Newspapers' Worst Mass M**der"

Publisher's summary: For all Tom Marquardt knew, Ramon Escara was just an unhappy reader. What the editor didn’t know was that Escara was about to become a mass murderer.

Marquardt, the former editor of Capital Gazette newspapers in Annapolis, MD, was a target of a 38-year-old loner who sought to avenge a 2011 article that reported Escara’s conviction of sexually harassing a former high school classmate. For years the man sued the editor, the reporter who wrote the story and the newspaper for defamation, then took to Twitter (now X) to lash out against the newspaper staff. Representing himself in court, Escara’s lawsuit rambled and failed to persuade a judge who easily dismissed it and the appeals that followed. When he exhausted his legal remedies, Escara spent the next three years silently plotting an unfathomable attack on the Capital Gazette newsroom.

On June 28, 2018, Escara blasted his way through the locked doors of Capital Gazette offices and killed five employees, four of whom were journalists pounding out stories and preparing for the next day’s edition. The killer called 911 to confess, then hid under a desk while waiting to surrender to approaching police. For eight minutes, he was undetected as police escorted six surviving reporters past his lair to safety.

After a lengthy trial, the killer was sentenced to life in Pr*son without parole for the murders.

Marquardt spent two years reviewing police and court files, eyewitness accounts, the killer’s interview with a state psychiatrist and video footage to chronicle in stunning detail what lead up to the crime and how the killer escaped detection.

“Pressed to K*ll: Inside Newspapers’ Worst Mass M**der,” is a chilling account of carnage inside the newsroom that day, but more so it is about the lives of those who died, their heroism, and the remarkable response from a community that rushed to the newspaper’s side."

Host or Publisher Press Club of Southwest Florida