Killer Really Didn't Seem To Like Anyone -- There Was Almost No One On Train Against Whom He Had No Vendetta

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - He did not like white people or Asians. Nor, according to four scrawled pages of notes police found on him after his arrest, did he like "so-called civil-rights leaders," "Uncle Tom negroes," rich "black attorneys," officials in the Cuomo administration, the Workman's Compensation Board and his neighbors.

The man held in the killing of five people and wounding of 18 on a crowded Long Island commuter train Tuesday night appears to have been so pathologically bigoted that there was almost no one on the train against whom he had not sworn some silent vendetta, law-enforcement officials said yesterday.

For three long minutes, as the 5:33 p.m. train from Pennsylvania Station neared this Long Island town, he fired and fired, reloading his 9mm semiautomatic pistol twice before three passengers overpowered him as he paused to load again.

The gunman, identified by police as Colin Ferguson, 35, of Brooklyn, was charged in Nassau County Court with four counts of intentional murder and four counts of depraved indifference to murder. He was ordered held without bail. Late yesterday the fifth person died of injuries.

After arraignment, Ferguson, a burly, short-haired man who police said is a native of Kingston, Jamaica, stared resolutely at the ground as police hustled him into a waiting car.

Later, Nassau County police told reporters that during extensive questioning Tuesday night, Ferguson was quiet and unresponsive.

Police said they also found other papers Tuesday night when they searched a room rented by Ferguson in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn. Based on his notes, they said, the shooting spree seems to have been less random than it first appeared.

On what they termed his hate list is Adelphi University, from which he was suspended as a student for disciplinary reasons in June 1991, officials said, and which is minutes away from the Merillon Avenue station where Ferguson began shooting. The notes also state, police said, that Ferguson chose not to shoot in New York City because he did not want to embarrass its outgoing mayor, David Dinkins.

Ferguson wrote: "New York City was spared because of my respect for Mayor David Dinkins. . . . Nassau County is the venue."

Dinkins yesterday called the gunman "a deranged person."

According to officials at Adelphi in Garden City, Ferguson briefly was a student there, enrolling in fall 1990 after transferring from Nassau Community College. But after two semesters of studying business administration, he was suspended for disciplinary reasons in June 1990, they said.

Ferguson's neighbors in Flatbush described him as a quiet, almost reclusive, man who lived alone, spent a lot of time working on his motorcycle and seemed unemployed.

Ferguson's handwritten notes suggested a troubled side, a world of deep paranoia and rage. In four pages of large-lettered scrawl, police said, he detailed people and institutions that he felt had wronged him.

Under the heading "Reasons for This," he listed New York City police and New York Transit Authority police in an apparent reference, they said, to a fight he had with a white woman over a seat on a subway. Elsewhere, under "additional reasons for this," he referred explicitly to the incident, writing, "the false allegations against me by the filthy caucasian racist female on the 1 line."

Another incident that seemed to have motivated him strongly, they said, involved his compensation claim after the job injury. He blamed the "racism" of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Workman's Compensation Board under "Reasons for This" and singled out "those corrupt black attorneys who not only refused to help me but tried to steal my car." He then named a lawyer, a law firm, the Legal Aid Society and the "court system."

Finally, he mentioned "those filthy swines" who also lived in his rooming house. They "are not my friends," he wrote. "Once they hear of this, they will loot all the evidence in my room such as documents and tapes. I hate them with a passion." ------------------------------------------------------------------- Shooting victims

Thumbnail sketches of the gunman's five victims:

Dennis McCarthy, 52, of Mineola, office manager at the Prudential Securities brokerage in Manhattan, was riding home with son Kevin, 26, who lived at home and had recently started work in the firm's mutual-fund department. Dennis was killed; Kevin was hospitalized in critical condition with a head wound. McCarthy and his wife, Carolyn, were "just getting to the point in their lives where they were able to enjoy things," said her brother. "The house was paid for, Kevin was out of college, they were just beginning to be able to think about themselves."

Marita Theresa Magtoto, 30, a native of the Philippines, was a lawyer. She and her husband, Myto, an inspector for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, had moved into their Westbury neighborhood a few months ago. Her father, Edgardo Tumangan, is secretary-general of the Philippine Senate. She was a 1991 honors graduate from the University of the Philippines College of Law. "She was the most pleasant person I ever knew, a real sweetheart," said a neighbor. "She was just full of life. The wrong person to take."

James Gorycki, 51, an account executive at Moore Business Forms and Office Systems in Manhattan, lived with his wife, Joyce, and an 11-year-old daughter, Karen, in a garden-apartment condo a few blocks from the Mineola station. Older children include two sons, both married, and a daughter in college, according to an office colleague.

Richard Nettleton, 24, was the oldest of three children in a family of two boys and one girl. Single, he lived with his parents in a two-story home on a tree-lined street in Roslyn Heights. "They were such a happy family," said a neighbor for the past four years. "All the children are so friendly."

Mi-Kyung Kim, 27, lived in New Hyde Park. She was a library assistant at Columbia University's math library, said a university spokeswoman. Kim was a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Trimel said. Her mother, reached by phone at the family's address, would not give any information about her daughter.

Associated Press