Prosecutors opened their case file Thursday on Jim David Adkisson, 58, who pleaded guilty a month ago to killing two people and wounding six others at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville. The file includes interviews with investigators and a suicide note Adkisson left in his car.

Now serving a life sentence, Adkisson told police during an hour-long interrogation three hours after the July 27 shooting that he was unemployed, depressed and ready to take his anger out on what he called “an ultra-liberal” church that “never met a pervert they just didn’t embrace.”

“They just glory (in) these weirdos and sickos and homos,” he said in an interview recorded by investigators.

He also railed against the Unitarian Church: “That ain’t a church, that’s a damned cult,” Adkisson said.

The Knoxville church said in a statement Thursday that the congregation was still healing and that many hoped Adkisson would also “be healed of whatever motivated his actions.”

Adkisson walked into the church, pulled a sawed-off shotgun from a guitar case and fired into a congregation of about 230 people watching a children’s musical performance.

He expected police would kill him. Instead, church members wrestled him to the ground.

Recorded calls to Knox County’s 911 Center proved the panic and rapid response by church members. Just four minutes after the first 911, a police officer reports Adkisson is in custody.

Shortly after a woman caller told dispatchers of the attack, a man calling from the church reported that worshipers had disarmed the attacker and weren’t about to let him go.

“They may beat him to death, but they’ve got him,” the caller said.

Adkisson left a four-page suicide note in his SUV in the church parking lot. In it, he described the attack as “a hate crime,” “a political protest” and “a symbolic killing.”

He railed against extending constitutional rights to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, about the news media being “the propaganda wing of the Democrat Party,” and how he would like to kill every major Democrat in Congress. But he said they were inaccessible and decided to go after “the foot soldiers, the (expletive) liberals that vote in these traitorous people.”

Adkisson concluded, “I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your country before you go. Go kill liberals.”

Adkisson told police he had never attended the church. But his fifth wife, Liza Alexander, who divorced him in 2000, had attended the church and convinced him to work as a counselor at Unitarian youth camps.

“I was in a marriage and I loved this woman, but she was just … I’d never been around somebody that liberal in my life,” he said.

Before she divorced him, Alexander got a protection order, claiming Adkisson threatened “to blow my brains out and then blow his own brains out,” according to file documents.

Catherine Murray, who was friends with the couple, told police Adkisson had drug and alcohol problems and “basically was afraid of anybody or anything that was not like him.”

Adkisson had worked a series of industrial jobs, including as a pipe worker at a Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear plant and on the Saturn Corp. auto assembly line, until 2006.

He complained in his suicide note and later in his interview with police that he was always being laid off and his prospects were growing slim as he got older. Again, he blamed liberals and Democrats.

He entered the church with 50 shotgun cartridges. He told police he planned to kill every adult in the sanctuary, but would spare the children because they also were “victims.”

“I regret that I have but one life to give for my country,” said Adkisson, an Air Force veteran. “I hope I start a movement.”

Adkisson told interrogators he was “crazy” and depressed but had never been diagnosed. His lawyer has said Adkisson rebuffed attempts to pursue an insanity defense.

“I just did what I did today,” Adkisson said. “See if you’d met me in a bar … on a street, you’d say, ‘Well, that’s a nice fellow.’ And I am.”

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, had been scheduled to stand trial next month, likely claiming an insanity defense, but his public defender said last week his client changed his mind.

After Adkisson entered his plea, Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz sentenced him to life in prison without parole.

Adkisson was accused of pulling a sawed-off shotgun from a guitar case on July 27, 2008, and firing three deadly blasts into an audience watching a Sunday morning children’s performance of the musical “Annie.” Members of the audience of about 200 subdued him.

Police say Adkisson targeted the church because of its liberal open-door policies, including acceptance of gays, and fully expected to keep shooting until responding officers killed him.

Greg McKendry, a burly 60-year-old usher, was hailed as a hero for shielding others from gunfire. He was fatally shot along with 61-year-old Linda Kraeger, a retired English professor who had come to see a friend’s grandchild in the play.

Adkisson faced two counts of first-degree murder and six counts of attempted first-degree murder. Each murder charge carried a possible life sentence and each attempted-murder count up to 25 years in prison.

Adkisson had been scheduled to stand trial on March 16. His public defender, Mark Stephens, indicated last year an insanity defense was planned.

The church issued a statement last week saying the justice system was providing an “appropriate sentence” for Adkisson’s crimes.

The Unitarian Universalist church promotes progressive social work, including advocacy of women and gay rights.

(Bogota) Police in Bogota are hunting for the killer of Norberto Salamanca, an attorney who was a strong advocate of same-sex couple rights.

Salamanca was shot four times by a group of men who approached him while he waited in his car for his sons. He was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Police say they have few clues in the slaying and do not know if it is related to his work on behalf of gay couples.

A notary, Salamanca was licensed to record same-sex partnerships and became famous for the large number of couples who sought him out.

In April, Colombia’s Constitutional Court ruled that the government must extend health and pension benefits to same-sex partners.

The ruling said that to exclude same-sex partners would violate the principle of non-discrimination and human dignity as the expression of personal autonomy, protected by international law.

Last year the Constitutional Court ruled that gay and lesbian couples must have the same property rights as opposite-sex couples.

In that case, the court carefully noted the decision did not automatically permit civil unions. That issue, it said, was up to the Congress.

Colombia’s Congress then passed legislation giving same-sex couples most of the same rights as opposite-sex married couples, but the bill died in a procedural move by conservative senators.

The reversal came after the powerful Catholic Church in Colombia warned lawmakers they were violating Vatican policy and could be denied the sacraments.

President Alvaro Uribe had said he would sign the bill into law.

The Colombian Congress has discussed more than six legislative initiatives related to same-sex partnerships benefits in the last 10 years. None of them have been enacted into law. 

Jim D. Adkisson, 58, an out-of-work trucker driver, is accused of killing two people and wounding eight others during a children’s musical at the church Sunday morning. Some of those children ended Monday’s service by singing, “The sun will come out tomorrow,” a line from the signature song from the musical “Annie.”

Gunfire shattered the performance of that song at the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, which authorities said Adkisson targeted because of its congregation’s liberal policies. A four-page letter found in Adkisson’s SUV indicated he picked the church because, the police chief said, “he hated the liberal movement.”

Three people who were shot were upgraded from critical to serious at Tennessee Medical Center, hospital officials said. A fourth was in stable condition. Killed were Greg McKendry, 60, and Linda Kraeger, 61.

An overflow crowd of more than 1,000 people attended the memorial service at the Second Presbyterian Church next door.

“We’re here tonight to make sense of the senseless,” the Rev. William Sinkford, president of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations, told the gathering.

About 200 people were watching 25 children perform when authorities said Adkisson entered and fired three blasts from a semiautomatic shotgun.

Adkisson’s ex-wife once belonged to the church but hadn’t attended in years, said Ted Jones, the congregation’s president. Police spokesman Darrell DeBusk declined to comment on whether investigators think the ex-wife’s link was a factor in the attack.

Adkisson, who had been on the verge of losing his food stamps, remained jailed Tuesday on $1 million bond after being charged with one count of murder. More charges are expected.

The attack Sunday morning lasted only minutes. But the anger behind it may have been building for months, if not years.

“It appears that what brought him to this horrible event was his lack of being able to obtain a job, his frustration over that, and his stated hatred for the liberal movement,” Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen said of Adkisson.

A police affidavit used to get a search warrant for Adkisson’s home said the suspect admitted to the shooting.

Adkisson “stated that he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country,” investigator Steve Still wrote.

Adkisson was a loner who hates “blacks, gays and anyone different from him,” longtime acquaintance Carol Smallwood of Alice, Texas, told the Knoxville News Sentinel.

Authorities said Adkisson’s criminal record consisted of only two drunken driving citations. But court records reviewed by The Associated Press show that his former wife obtained an order of protection in March 2000 while the two were still married and living in the Knoxville suburb of Powell.

The couple had been married for nearly 10 years when Liza Alexander wrote in requesting the order that Adkisson threatened “to blow my brains out and then blow his own brains out.” She told a judge she feared for her life.

Calls to Alexander’s home were not answered Monday, and the voice mailbox was full.

In Adkisson’s letter, which police have not released, “he indicated … that he expected to be in there (the church) shooting people until the police arrived and that he fully expected to be killed by the responding police,” Owen said.

Witnesses said the attack was cut short after audience members tackled the gunman.

The Unitarian-Universalist church advocates women’s rights and gay rights and has provided sanctuary for political refugees. It also has fed the homeless and founded a chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to its Web site.

Adkisson told authorities he had no next of kin or family. He lived about a 20-minute drive from the Unitarian church – one of three in the Knoxville area.

The police chief said the suspect bought the shotgun at a pawn shop about a month ago, and he wrote the letter in the last week or so. A .38-caliber handgun was found in his home.

Jamie Parkey crawled under the pews with his daughter and mother when the second and third shots were fired. He saw several men rush the suspect.

“I jumped up to join them,” he told AP Television News. “When I got there, they were already wrestling with him. The gun was in the air. Somebody grabbed the gun and we just kind of dog-piled him to the floor. I knew a police suppression hold, and I sat on him until police came.”

Owen said police would not release several videos of the performance by audience members or Adkisson’s letter until they have been analyzed for evidence.

Adkisson, who is due in court Aug. 5, was on active duty with the Army beginning in 1974. Army records show he was a helicopter repairman, rising from a private to specialist and then returning to private before being discharged in late 1977.

Brandon McInerney is charged with murder as a hate crime in the Feb. 12 shooting of 15-year-old Larry King in a classroom at E.O. Green School in Oxnard, Calif.

McInerney’s attorney fought to have the teen tried as a juvenile.

Under California law, if McInerney is convicted as an adult he could be imprisoned for 50 years to life, plus an additional three years for the hate crime provision. If convicted as a juvenile, he would have been freed at age 25.

On Thursday, Ventura County Superior Court Judge Douglas Daily ruled that the case could proceed to trial in adult court and that the life penalty McInerney would face if convicted would not be unconstitutional.

In April, a coalition of 27 LGBT rights groups called on the district attorney not to prosecute McInerney as an adult.

“The facts in this matter seem clear: one boy killed another in a climate of intolerance and fear about sexual orientation and gender expression. The alleged perpetrator, who turned 14 years old less than three weeks before the shooting, should be held accountable for his actions. But we support the principles underlying our juvenile justice system that treat children differently than adults and provide greater hope and opportunity for rehabilitation,” the groups said.

King was honored earlier this year at schools across the country as part of the National Day of Silence.

Several classmates have said King would wear feminine attire, making him an unpopular figure with other boys at his campus. Some students said that McInerney was upset that King had flirted with him.

McInerney’s attorney has suggested that some of the blame for the murder must rest with the school. He told the Los Angeles Times earlier this year that while the school allowed King to explore his sexuality, it did nothing to quell the unrest among other students.

“Brandon is not some crazed lunatic,” Quest told The Times. “This was a confluence of tragic events that could have been stopped. If there is partial blame in other places, let’s not throw away Brandon for the rest of his life.”

King was shot in the head during a morning class. More than 20 other students were in the room at the time. McInerney was arrested shortly after the shooting.

King died in the hospital after his mother agreed to have life-support removed.

McInerney will be arraigned Aug. 7.