Already in deep, Drega decided he might as well keep going, and headed downtown to shoot a judge named Vickie Bunnell whom he’d had a minor grudge against. His final murder victim was local newspaper editor Dennis Joos, who had rushed out on hearing the shots that killed Vickie Bunnell and attempted to wrestle Drega to the ground, getting himself shot in the process.
From there, after shooting and wounding another police officer, Drega took off for his house, burned it to the ground, and then fled to Vermont, where he died in a police shoot-out. On his property were found the remnants of various assault rifles, a large cache of home-made bomb parts, and surveillance equipment.
The violent deaths of these four prominent citizens have been memorialized in a small park just outside the News and Sentinel offices of which Joos had been the editor and near the spot where he was killed. Set prominently in that park is a black stone rectangle with the portraits of all four victims etched into its polished surface. At the bottom of the stone it reads, “Their deeds are their memorials.”
