Biography: Robert Price, associate of the victim

Robert Glen Price was born June 12, 1972 in Milledgeville, Georgia. He was the only son of local highway trooper, Lonnie Price, who was killed in the line of duty just seven days after his only son's birth. Price's mother, Marguerite, committed suicide when he was eight years old, and Price was forced to spend the remainder of his youth being moved from foster home to foster home. According to records from an adoption agency in Atlanta, Robert was a problematic child. By age 16, he was serving time in a juvenile corrections facility.

At the age of 21, Price moved to the West Coast with aspirations of becoming an actor. While few jobs materialized in the acting field, he became an apprentice for Bob Stanfield, a special effects whiz who ran an independent firm. There he learned how to construct realistic make-up effects, rig small explosions and create squibs -- blood packets placed under the clothing and connected to a tiny explosive that, when fired by remote control, create a believable gunshot effect.

He employed all of these skills later when he returned to Georgia and began what he termed "guerrilla theatre," a violent drama staged in public places in which the players enacted high-adrenaline scenes, such as drive-by shootings, beatings, and stabbings, to thrill and frighten unsuspecting passersby. Corwin Fitz reportedly joined Price's theatre group in 1999 and began performing these skits with Price and a rotating group of players in cities all around the South.

Apparently, Price and Fitz became quite close friends during those years. With Helen Troy, they became known as the "Terrible Trio" because they were willing to do almost anything -- far beyond what the other players would agree to do -- to give the group's performances ever-increasing shocks and thrills. In August 2003, witnesses who refused to be identified say Fitz abruptly left the group without a word.

Police around the South, including the State of Mississippi, had been alerted to Price and his group's dangerous theatrics and had been on the lookout for Price himself. In January 2004, he was arrested in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for armed robbery, possession of marijuana and LSD, driving under the influence, and hitting a pedestrian with his vehicle. He is currently serving a twenty-year sentence in the state penitentiary at Parchman.