Investor rage, lethal trap

He was enraged, police say, over a nest egg he believed had turned rotten in a $1.3 million real estate investment.

Vincent J. Dortch was so angry, investigators say, that he plotted a lethal trap for those he felt had scammed him.

Dortch, 44, of Newark, Del., called a meeting of investors in Watson International Inc. late Monday at an office in South Philadelphia's Navy Yard. His ostensible agenda was to bring a new investor aboard.

The tools of his true mission lay secreted in a pair of bags he carried: two handguns, fully loaded.

When the 8:30 p.m. meeting commenced around a conference table, Dortch pulled out one of the guns and told everyone to "say your prayers."

Minutes later, three key investors lay dead, shot through the head. A fourth man who was gravely wounded managed to summon police.

After trading fire with an officer, Dortch shot himself through the head, ending a brief but terrifying siege and the life of an outwardly mild man who exuded a veneer of prosperity.

The three men Dortch targeted and killed were identified as Mark David Norris, 46, of Pilesgrove, N.J.; his brother Robert E. Norris, 41, of Newark, Del.; and James M. Reif Jr., 42, of Union, N.Y.

Robert Norris was vice president of business development for Watson International, which a year ago bought a 200-year-old country club - formerly owned by IBM - in Union, near his home town of Endicott, N.Y.

His brother was president and chief executive officer of Zigzag Net Inc., the primary occupant of the Navy Yard building where the three were killed. Reif, a former deputy sheriff in Broome County, N.Y., was a friend of the Norrises' from Endicott.

Wounded was Patrick Sweeney, 31, of Maple Shade, Zigzag's human resources manager. He was listed in critical condition yesterday at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

Police said Dortch may have invested up to $200,000 in Watson International. Its country club resort was heavily damaged in a flood last summer, but police could not confirm whether Dortch had lost any money because of that.

Philadelphia police gave this account of Monday night's carnage:

As the meeting began, Dortch pulled out an AK-pistol - a shorter version of the AK-47 assault rifle - and told his three intended victims they had stolen from him.

"He said something to the effect that you have a minute or two to say your prayers," Chief of Detectives Joseph Fox said.

Brandishing the gun, Dortch pulled out the phone lines and ordered someone in the room to bind Reif and the Norrises to their chairs with duct tape. He ushered two fellow investors from the room, assuring them he would not harm them.

"We know what the shooter believed," Fox said. "The shooter believed that he and the two individuals . . . lost money."

Returning to the conference room, Dortch opened fire, shooting the Norrises, Reif and Sweeney. He brought one investor back into the room and told him to resecure Sweeney.

"I have to finish this job," he allegedly said, and then shot Reif and the Norrises point-blank in their heads.

Still, he was not done.

A fourth key investor in New York, Vasantha Dammavalam, had been on a conference call during the meeting. Dortch took the two unharmed investors to his car at gunpoint, put the AK pistol and a briefcase in the trunk, and ordered them to drive with him to New York, where he planned to kill Dammavalam, police said.

The two talked Dortch out of it. He returned with them to the building, where he bound them with duct tape in a back office - one so tightly that police had to cut him free.

Meanwhile, despite his wounds, Sweeney had managed to splice the disconnected phone wires together with his loosely bound hands and call 911 on the speaker phone.

Police rushed into the building. "Don't come any further," Dortch told one officer before firing once with his other handgun as the door slammed shut.

The officer fired back, apparently wounding Dortch through the door. Dortch then shot himself in the head.

Fox said Dortch had told one survivor he meant no harm to Sweeney. "I didn't want to shoot him, he didn't have anything to do with this," Fox quoted Dortch as saying.

The scene in the conference room was "utter chaos," said Deputy Police Commissioner Richard Ross, who called the shootings "a shocking and unspeakable act."

"You've got seven children who'll never see their fathers again," he said.

Watson International had paid $1.32 million for the country club building and about 10 surrounding acres, said Jim Walsh, co-owner of Walsh & Sons Construction Corp. of Vestal, N.Y., the previous owner.

Walsh said that he knew the three slain men and Dammavalam, but that there were other investors from the Philadelphia region whom he had never met.

And though the New York property suffered a severe hit from flooding in June, Walsh said he believed Watson International was in line to receive an insurance settlement to help cover the damages.

John Serpentelli, an animation artist who once lived with Mark Norris in West Philadelphia, said his former partner "played close to the edge," always alert for the next big chance.

"He was always wheeling, dealing," Serpentelli said. "The stakes kept getting higher and higher. I saw the down sides, the risks of it. Obviously, nobody thought it was going to come to this."

Indeed, Watson International's Web site still featured a gung-ho, invest-now tone yesterday.

"Entertainment is serious business," the site proclaims. "That's why your investment to develop the former IBM Corporate Getaway Resort provides you with a profitable business opportunity."

Instead, its Monday board meeting was the city's deadliest shooting spree since the Lex Street massacre of December 2000, when seven people were fatally gunned down in a West Philadelphia crack house.

Equally incongruous to the killer's relatives and acquaintances was Dortch's role in the carnage.

Described by his mother-in-law yesterday as tall, handsome and "very nice," Dortch drove a Lexus and lived for five years in a five-bedroom, split-level house in Newark with his wife, Stephanie.

A former neighbor, Jeff Stevenson, said Dortch was an unassuming, impeccably dressed man who kept his yard in pristine condition.

Still, there were indications of past financial strains, including a $9,000 federal tax lien in 2003.

On June 29 - three days after the New York flood - Dortch sold his house for $270,000. Kenneth James, the agent who listed the property, said the house sold in less than a week.

According to James, Dortch had moved to an apartment and was watching the market. He was looking for an upscale development, James said, similar to one inhabited by a business acquaintance of Dortch's.

A business acquaintance named Robert Norris.