A Shooter in the Hills | The New Yorker

Beaudette had been shot through the head. The autopsy report, which was released nearly a year later, showed that a copper-jacketed lead bullet had entered just below his hairline and penetrated his brain. It was a homicide, but an utterly baffling one. The weapon’s make and model were unknown. There were no eyewitnesses, no suspects, and no motive. Rumors flew around Malibu. Had his vaccine work made him a target of “Big Pharma” or “the government”? Was the perpetrator a disgruntled former park worker? Someone associated with an illegal marijuana grow? None of it made sense; it felt both terrifyingly random and shockingly precise. Beaudette had been killed while he slept beside his children, and no one knew why.