A TIME TO MOURN; TEXAS GUNMAN HAD HISTORY OF MOOD SWINGS.

Byline: Jim Yardley The New York Times

The man who walked into the Wedgwood Baptist Church here Wednesday did not look like he belonged with the congregation. No one apparently knew Larry Gene Ashbrook or what this man in blue jeans and a black leather jacket might want. People would later learn that he was a jobless loner, an ex-sailor prone to foul moods and feared by several of his neighbors.

But at that moment, the only thing that seemed strange was that he was smoking a cigarette in church. A janitor approached him about the cigarette, and the authorities say Ashbrook shot him. He shot a woman sitting nearby in the head. And then he followed the sounds of music and voices into the main sanctuary where hundreds of teen-agers had gathered for a contemporary Christian music concert. He walked inside and began firing.

``People were crying,'' said Bob Bollinger, a Sunday school director. ``They didn't understand it. They were in shock.''

By the time the night was over, seven people were killed, three of them teen-agers, and Ashbrook became the eighth fatality when he turned the gun on himself. Seven other people were wounded, two of whom remained in critical condition Thursday.

As investigators gathered evidence about Ashbrook's rampage and as local officials sought to comfort a grieving city, the suspect emerged as an angry, desperate man who apparently had called two local newspapers in recent months to say he fantasized about serial killers.

In Washington, President Clinton decried the attack and offered the nation's sympathy to the victims, their families and the people of Fort Worth. ``Yet again, we have seen a sanctuary violated by gun violence, taking children brimming with faith and promise and hope, before their time,'' he said.

Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican presidential front-runner, canceled campaign appearances Thursday in Michigan and went to the hospital in Fort Worth to comfort the families of the victims. Even as people expressed horror that such a brutal attack could happen in a house of worship, Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr alluded to the recent string of mass shootings across the country, notably the school attack at Littleton, Colo.

``Fort Worth isn't the first place to have this kind of tragedy,'' Barr said. ``My great fear is it won't be the last.''

Ralph Mendoza, Fort Worth's acting police chief, said Ashbrook, 47, apparently screamed insults about ``the Baptist religion'' during the shooting, but investigators had not yet discerned his motives. Ashbrook did not leave a suicide note or any written evidence of his intentions, the police chief said. He lived several miles from Wedgwood Baptist, and members of the church had no idea why he chose them as a target.

``He was saying, `Your religion is nothing, it's not worth anything, it means nothing,' '' said Mary Beth Talley, 17, who was wounded in the attack.

Local police and federal agents with the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms on Thursday morning searched the home Ashbrook had shared with his late parents and uncovered the raw materials for a pipe bomb.

Mendoza said Ashbrook threw a pipe bomb into the front of the sanctuary during his attack.

Officers also found at the house what Mendoza called ``ledgers'' or ``journals.'' Mendoza said: ``These were things sometimes that were written as far back as possibly the 1980s and are complaints. He's complaining about people. He's complaining about his job. He believes people are out to get him.''

Acts of heroism

As details from the shootings emerged, church members told of acts of heroism. As Ashbrook sprayed bullets from two handguns, teen-agers ducked for cover in the pews. But Heather McDonald, a young woman with Down syndrome, remained sitting upright, apparently confused. Talley shielded the girl with her body as the suspect fired and hit her.

``I just kept saying to Heather, `You've got to be quiet and stay down with me,' '' Talley said Thursday. Even after she was shot, Talley kept comforting her friend. ``I just wanted to make sure she was calm.''

Another church member, S.M. ``Chip'' Gillette, was watching television in his nearby home when he noticed his dog, Jake, standing atop a chest and barking furiously at the window. An off-duty Fort Worth police officer, Gillette saw people streaming out of the church. He radioed for police help, grabbed his service revolver and rushed inside the front door with a uniformed officer who had just arrived at the scene.

Gillette said he ran toward the gunshots and arrived just after Ashbrook shot himself as he sat in a back pew of the church. Investigators said Ashbrook used semiautomatic handguns, a 9 mm Ruger and a .380-caliber AMT. He fired at least 30 shots, and officers found 10 Ruger ammunition clips in his pockets and near his body. He bought both guns in February 1992 at licensed firearms dealers in a flea market-type operation called Trader's Village, just outside Fort Worth, investigators said.

Fearing that Ashbrook might have brought more than one pipe bomb into the church, investigators had sent in robotic bomb-sweeping equipment in the hours after the attack. No other explosives were found, and the bodies of the victims were removed from the sanctuary early Thursday morning, about five hours after the attack.

Puzzling suspect

To a large degree, Ashbrook remains a puzzle to investigators. At least publicly, Mendoza and other officials said they weren't certain of his motives. However, he had apparently called the local Fort Worth Star-Telegram and an alternative newspaper, FW Weekly, in recent months.

In an angry, rambling discourse, Ashbrook told a reporter at FW Weekly that he fantasized about serial killers, particularly Ricky Lee Green, a mass murderer who was from Fort Worth who was executed in 1997 for four killings in Texas and was linked to at least eight other deaths.

Ashbrook lived in a modest brick ranch house in Forest Hills, a lower-middle-class bedroom community in southeast Fort Worth, about seven miles from the church. At age 47, Ashbrook was the youngest of five siblings, and he lived at home with his elderly father, Jack, until he died two months ago.

His father had retired after 35 years as a switchman for the Missouri-Kansas-Texas railroad, and had been a fixture at the Pleasant Ridge Church of Christ for 40 years. Neighbors said the suspect had been close to his mother, Ethel Muriel Ashbrook, who died in 1990.

``You could never tell what kind of mood swing he was in, so I kept away from him,'' said Venita Hord, 50, who lived directly across the street. ``I never did trust him.''

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1 -- color) Marjorie Cubillos, left, Katy Baker and Krystal Vasquez, all high school freshmen, gather to mourn slain classmate Joseph Ennis.

Eric Gay/Associated Press

(2) Elizabeth Johnson is comforted after a memorial.

Rodger Mallison/Fort Worth Star-Telegram

(3 -- color) Ashbrook