VA: Stone wasn't 'suicidal or homicidal'

Bradley William Stone, the former Marine who brutally murdered his ex-wife and five of her relatives in Montgomery County on Monday, had met with a psychiatrist from the Department of Veterans Affairs a week before he went on a horrific killing spree.

A VA spokesman said in an email this afternoon that Stone, 35, met on on Dec. 8 with the psychiatrist at a veterans medical facility in Coatesville.

The psychiatrist noted that Stone was "without any suicidal or homicidal ideation."

The VA now intends to conduct a comprehensive review of his care.

Stone, who the military said on Monday spent less than three months in Iraq in 2008, was "100 percent service connected disabled for post-traumatic stress disorder effective Oct. 28, 2010," the spokesman said.

His last monthly compensation was $3,268.12.

Stone was found dead in the woods not far from from his Pennsburg home on Tuesday afternoon, bringing an end to an unnerving manhunt that began early Monday after police began following the trail of blood that Stone left behind as he moved from Souderton to Lansdale to Lower Salford Township , killing his ex-wife, Nicole Stone; her mother; her grandmother; her sister; her brother-in-law and her niece, and critically injuring her 17-year-old nephew.

At a news conference that followed the discovery of Brad Stone's body, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman said she did not believe that Stone had PTSD.

But the VA spokesman said today that Stone received health care at VA facilities in Coatesville, Willow Grove, Norristown and Philadelphia, and at  the War Related Illness and Injury Study Center in East Orange, N.J.

Stone's last VA interaction was on Dec. 12 as part of the Veterans Justice Outreach Program.

The VA said it wanted to express its "heartfelt condolences" to the victims of Stone's rampage.