"I am sorry, Mom . . . I can't do it. I'm sorry. I love you and would have never made it this far without you."
Those were the words 23-year-old John Gurule scrawled across a piece of paper in a letter left for his mother before ending his life and that of his 15-year-old former girlfriend, Jonni Behning, Thursday.Behning was shot twice in the back and twice in the head with a 9 mm handgun. John Gurule suffered one fatal gunshot wound to the head.
His mother, Mary Gurule, found the couple dead in his West Valley apartment, 4000 S. Redwood Road, some six hours after their last conversation. Despondent, John Gurule called his mother at midnight and at 4 a.m. Thursday to say he wanted to kill himself.
"He was depressed, but he told her everything was OK," said his brother, Nick Gurule. "She believed he was sincere about not hurting himself. That's why she didn't call the police."
An often depressed and drunken John Gurule had made many such calls to his mother during the middle of the night over the past three years since a drunk driving accident left him a paraplegic, Nick Gurule said. More than once, he had threatened suicide.
"This call seemed like just another thing he's done before," Nick Gurule said.
But what the Gurule family members didn't know was that this time their son and brother had a gun. John Gurule had a gun several years ago, but his mother had taken it away from him, Nick Gurule said.
"We don't know - no one seems to know how he got it," Nick Gu-rule said.
Nick Gurule is less surprised by the fact that his brother took his own life than that he took Behning with him. The two had not dated in a year although John Gurule was hopelessly in love with Behning, Nick Gurule said.
But the young girl repeatedly broke John Gurule's heart, Nick Gurule said.
"John was trying to help her, to take care of her, he loved her. But she would just disappear and going out with his friends and then his best friend," Nick Gurule said. "When they broke up, she would just keep calling and coming over. She couldn't let go."
Behning seems to have been at the core of John Gurule's most recent bouts of depression and the reason that he decided to commit first murder and then suicide.
"Mom, I told her not to call me anymore . . . but she always said, it's a habit. I miss you. I've been begging her, if you have any feelings, don't do this. I'm too unstable . . .," the letter reads. "Mom, I have a hard time thinking where she's at, who she's with . . . I can't do it."
But Behning's sister, Wynter Vigil, Magna, said the situation was reversed. It was John Gurule, whom Behning met in the parking lot at a grocery store three years ago, who couldn't let go.
He often parked outside Vigil's home while the sisters were living together to monitor what was going on and who was visiting them, she said. John Gurule was also physically abusive with Behning.
Vigil said Behning wasn't living at home with her mother because she wanted more freedom. No matter what their mother said, Behning always did the opposite, Vigil said.
And admittedly, Behning did have a weak spot for John Gurule, Vigil said.
"She had no problem letting go of him, but she loved him as a person, she just didn't know how to tell him to stay away," she said.