On the morning of September 25, 1982, a shooting rampage in Wilkes-Barre and nearby Jenkins Township left thirteen people dead. The attacker, 40-year-old prison guard George Emil Banks, began at his home on Schoolhouse Lane, where he shot and killed three of his girlfriends and five of his children and then shot two men across the street, killing one and wounding the other.

Banks then drove to the Heather Highlands mobile home park, forced his way into the trailer where 24-year-old Sharon Mazzillo lived with her son Kissmayu Banks, and shot Sharon and the sleeping 5-year-old Kissmayu, killing both. Sharon’s mother Alice Mazzillo and her 7-year-old nephew Scott Mazzillo were also killed; two of Sharon’s brothers survived by hiding and later identified Banks as the shooter.

After fleeing the scene, Banks carjacked a vehicle, visited his mother to confess, and later engaged in a four-hour standoff with police at a friend’s house before surrendering. He was charged with multiple counts of murder and related offenses; at his 1983 trial the defense argued insanity, but a jury convicted him of twelve counts of first-degree murder and one count of third-degree murder and imposed the death sentence. Does anyone have memories of Kissmayu or the Heather Highlands community from that time, or any information that could add to the record?