For all Tom Marquardt knew, Ramon Escara was just an unhappy reader. What he didn’t know was that Escara was about to become a mass murderer. Marquardt, the former editor of Capital Gazette newspapers in Annapolis, MD, was a target of a 38-year-old loner who sought to avenge a 2011 article that reported Escara’s conviction of sexually harassing a former high school classmate. For years the man sued the editor, the reporter and the newspaper for defamation, then took to Twitter (now X) to lash out against the editor and reporter.

Representing himself in court, his lawsuit rambled and failed to persuade a judge who easily dismissed it. Escara spent the next three years silently plotting his attack. On June 28, 2018, Escara blasted his way through the locked doors of Capital Gazette offices and killed five employees. He called 911 to confess, then hid under a desk while waiting to surrender to approaching police. Marquardt spent two years reviewing police and court files, eyewitness accounts, the killer’s interview with a state psychiatrist and video footage to chronicle in stunning detail what lead up to the crime and how the killer escaped detection. 

“Pressed to Kill: Inside Newspapers’ Worst Mass Murder,” is a chilling account of the worst mass murder at an American newspaper, but more so it is about the lives of those who died, their heroism on that day, and the remarkable response from a community who rushed to its side.