Scott Thorpe in a jail booking photo shot Wednesday night.

Marilyn Thorpe has seen this story before - the multiple victims, the bloodshed, the mourners, the quest for understanding.

She could never fathom losing a loved one in such a shooting spree.

Now she's coping with the flip side of such a tragedy, after the youngest of her four children, Scott Thorpe, was arrested Wednesday night for allegedly shooting five people and killing three of them.

Two died at the Nevada County Behavioral Health Department in Nevada City, where the 40-year-old Thorpe was a client, and another died at Lyon's Restaurant in Grass Valley, which Thorpe believed was trying to somehow poison him, authorities say.

"You just can't even talk," the 70-year-old widow said by telephone from her Omaha, Neb., home. "You read about it in the paper. When it happens to one of your own, it's a whole new situation."

She said her son had been diagnosed with depression, anxiety and agoraphobia - the fear of being in open or public places - after his mental illness emerged seven to eight years ago.

"He's gotten real paranoid," she said. "He's just not done well recently."

News of the shootings came to her through a family member. It was another son, Sacramento Police Sgt. Kent Thorpe, who negotiated Thorpe's surrender at his Smartville home.

Others who knew him detected no sign of trouble.

Gary Dalbey, who lives across Mooney Flat Road from Thorpe's house, knew Thorpe had a hard time socializing. He said his neighbor realized he had a problem and sometimes reneged on planned shopping trips.

He always thought Thorpe was paranoid from the effects of smoking marijuana, which Dalbey supposed Thorpe used to take the edge off the drugs he took for back pain.

But he couldn't believe his friend was the suspect, even as he listened to his police scanner and SWAT team members converged on Thorpe's 11-acre parcel.

"He always spoke good of (the Behavioral Health Department). They were helping him," Dalbey said at his home. "I just hope they can get him a mental commitment instead of spending millions of dollars on a trial."

Thorpe raised chickens and took care of neighbors' sick pigs, and he wanted to raise goats to make cheese. He had guns, and he and Dalbey went to gun shows, but Thorpe was always more interested in the survivalist displays.

"He was extremely gentle. He wanted to get back to the land," Dalbey said.

Doug Vickery, a next-door neighbor, said Thorpe was quiet and that they had rarely spoken in the four years since Thorpe moved onto the property. Thorpe once became concerned, but not angry, after learning tree-trimmers were on his property to cut branches near a power line, Vickery said.

Christine York owns the Driftwood Inn at Mooney Flat Road and Highway 20. She said Thorpe drank a beer there last Friday as he sat quietly next to a Pac Man machine and watched karaoke performers.

"I didn't make the connection until I saw a report," York said. "He was a very nice gentleman."

Marilyn Thorpe said her son's mental illness came on about the same time he suffered a debilitating work-related injury several years ago.

Before then, she added, "he was very, very outgoing" and enjoyed "anything outdoors, camping and fishing." She said her son also had an "on-again, off-again" girlfriend who lives in Grass Valley, but declined to identify her.

From 1988 to 1992, Thorpe was a nighttime janitor at Lyman Gilmore and Scotten schools, according to Grass Valley School District Superintendent Jon Byerrum. Thorpe passed a state Department of Justice criminal-background check and there were "no ill circumstances" during his tenure.

Thorpe's janitorial stint ended the same year he was arrested on suspicion of drunken driving in Nevada County - his only known run-in with the law, according to Sheriff Keith Royal. He resigned the same year he bought the 9 mm Ruger handgun allegedly involved in Wednesday's shootings, Royal said.

In recent years, Thorpe received disability pay for his back injury, Dalbey said.

He was born in Sacramento on April 1, 1960. Besides his brother Kent, whose wife declined comment Thursday night, Thorpe has a sister in Nebraska and a brother in Southern California.

Their father, Gerald, died at age 68 in 1995, a year after he and Marilyn moved back to his native Nebraska. She is from Iowa.

Marilyn Thorpe last saw her youngest child in December, during a 10-day holiday visit to California. She last talked with him Tuesday, and nothing seemed unusual.

"I'm just stunned that these other people were involved and had to lose their lives," she said. "I have no idea what triggered this. It's a nightmare, is all I can tell you."

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