PALM BAY, Fla. -- A year after the massacre that stunned this coastal city south of Cape Canaveral, the accused sniper barely sustains life in his prison medical unit while Palm Bay residents await justice for the shootings that left six dead and 10 wounded.
Gaunt and gray and facing the electric chair, William Bryan Cruse Jr., 60, a retired librarian, eats just enough to endure isolation while awaiting trial that could come next fall.
Justice is 'on hold,' says State Attorney Norm Wolfinger, because of complicated legal issues before the Florida Supreme Court involving Cruse's mental competence and whether the state must pay lawyers to defend him.
No motive for the murders has been established, and Cruse's court-appointed lawyer, Burton Green, says he will argue his client is innocent by reason of insanity.
The slaughter, police say, began outside Cruse's tidy home on a warm Thursday evening. A neighbor boy playing basketball across the street was the first to fall, wounded by a gunshot. Police say Cruse, armed with a revolver, a shotgun and a semiautomatic rifle, then drove about a mile to resume his rampage.
Before dawn the next day, April 24, Cruse stumbled from a tear-gassed Winn-Dixie supermarket into the hands of police he had held at bay with hostages for at least six hours.
On the asphalt of the Sabal Palm Square shopping center parking lot and across Babcock Street outside the Publix grocery was the blood of four strangers shot dead without provocation and two rookie policemen killed trying to end the gunman's frenzy.
Two college engineering students from Kuwait, Nabil Al-Hameli, 25, and Emad Al-Tawakuly, 18, were the first to die. Ruth Green, 67, stopped at Publix to buy lettuce for the pet guinea pig she did not live to feed again.
Responding to reports of gunshots at the Winn-Dixie was the last act of duty for officers Ronald Grogan, 27, and Gerald Johnson, 28.
The sixth victim of the eight-hour shooting spree, Lester Watson, 51, was shot in the back and died behind the Winn-Dixie supermarket.
Ten others, including the neighbor boy, survived bullet wounds.
Cruse, facing the death sentence, is charged with six counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping his unharmed female hostages, and 28 counts of attempted first-degree murder for the people threatened by the gunman's shots.
Five days before his 60th birthday, Nov. 22, Cruse stopped eating, saying he feared someone was trying to poison him. He was strapped to a bed and force fed under court orders for four days before ending his hunger strike. He now eats mainly small meals of cereal.
'He's staying just one step ahead of the feeding tubes,' said sheriff's spokeswoman Joan Heller.
For local residents, memory of the gunshots won't go away.
'I know, and a lot of other people have told me the same thing, any time you drive by the Sabal Palm shopping center you still kind of get that strange feeling,' Acting Police Chief Ken Geyer said on the eve of the massacre anniversary.
Brad Roshto, owner of the Jewelry Gallery next door to the Winn-Dixie, was one of those who escaped injury. He was inside when his shop's plate glass windows were shattered by bullets from the Ruger .223 caliber semiautomatic rifle Cruse bought less than a month earlier.
'You can't really dwell on something like that, but I am slightly paranoid now,' said Roshto, 26. 'I scope people out a little more when they walk in.'
The nightmare of Palm Bay could bounce around the courts a decade or more.
'This is going to be another damn (serial killer Ted) Bundy case that'll drag on and on in the appellate process,' said Jim Nance, a lawyer suing on behalf of eight victims to collect damages from Cruse's homeowners insurance policy.
Despite showing assets of about $200,000, including property in his home state of Kentucky, Cruse has refused to hire a lawyer, saying the money is needed to care for his wife, who suffers a progressive nervous disorder. She moved to New Jersey to live with relatives after the rampage.
Trial could come this fall, but no one involved believes an impartial jury can be found in Brevard County, situated just south of the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral.
A year after the Palm Bay massacre, a 9-foot stone memorial to all county firefighters and law officers who died in the line of duty was dedicated at the cemetery where Grogan and Johnson are buried.
A candlelight memorial solemnly marked the city's night of terror.
'You just try to get on with life,' said Roshto. 'You can't predict a guy going off the wall like that. It could happen anywhere.'