AFTER almost a year as a US Navy reservist in the Gulf, Paul Berkley went home to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend Christmas with his family.

Four days later, after hearing his son sing in the school choir and playing video games with his daughter, the 46-year-old sailor was killed by a gunshot to the head while walking in the park with his wife, Monique.

Mrs Berkley, 26, who was shot in the shoulder, has been charged with murder. Also charged are her alleged teenage lover, Andrew Canty, and her stepdaughter’s boyfriend, Lawton Johnson, both aged 18.

Both Mr Berkley and his daughter, Becky, wrote internet blogs about the mood in the family before and — in Becky’s case — after the crime.

“It’s all just so ironic, isn’t it?” Becky wrote on MistressBecky. “My dad was in the Middle East for months and months and didn’t get shot . . . then he came home, where you’d assume he’d be much safer . . . and then, all this happened.”

Paul Berkley, who was married twice before, moved to the outskirts of Raleigh two years ago so that his wife could be closer to her family.

A computer technician, he joined a local navy reserve unit and was deployed in January to a Bahrain-based unit.

Back in North Carolina, Monique Berkley looked after her husband’s two children from an earlier marriage, Ezekiel, 18, and Becky, 16.

If Mr Berkley suspected anything was going wrong in his marriage, he did not disclose it in his postings on his blog before his Christmas break. “Oh, 16 days till Xmas vacation and I am getting antsy,” he wrote last month. “I know I have to come back again, probably for a long time, but I’m still pretty jazzed I am going home, however briefly.”

But Mrs Berkley had apparently begun a relationship with Andrew Canty, who went to school with the children.

Christine Canty, Mr Canty’s mother, told The News & Observer of Raleigh that her son moved in to the Berkley home in April and retrieved his belongings from the house only the day after Paul Berkley returned from the Gulf. Mrs Canty said that her son drove Monique Berkley’s car and she paid his mobile telephone bill. Mrs Berkley showered the young man with love notes, including one postcard of two tigers that read: “That white tiger looks like she is about to attack that colored tiger. I bet she’ll devour him. Reminds me of us.”

Mr Berkley seemed happy to be home. At 6.51pm on Saturday he updated the blog. At 2.57am on Sunday his wife, bleeding from a bullet wound to her left shoulder, rang police on her mobile phone. Mr Berkley could be clearly heard struggling for breath on the tape of the 15-minute call.

THEIR OWN WORDS

Paul’s blog:

“We did a sentry training program called ‘shoot don’t shoot’, which gives you scenarios and asks you if you would shoot the person or not. Becky didn’t shoot anyone, preferring to give them the benefit of the doubt and she was blown up or shot a few times.

“I had to do four of them, and knew the correct answers”

Becky’s blog:

“I can’t even begin to describe how it feels to lose Dad, Monique, Andrew, Latwon, my life in Clayton.

“It’s all just so ironic, isn’t it? My Dad was in the Middle East for months and months and didn’t get shot”

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