NEWINGTON -- In the hours before Matthew Beck hunted down four top lottery officials, he would place at least two telephone calls. One was to a newspaper reporter; the other was to his union steward to find out how much longer it would take to resolve a grievance against his employer.

Beck in 1980 school photo.

But the portrait of Beck that emerged in the hours after the massacre in Newington was far more chilling than a simple picture of a disgruntled lottery accountant impatient to resolve a dispute over pay.

Beck was a 35-year-old man who friends say had tried to kill himself, who had taken four months away from work because of stress, who had a permit to carry a gun and boasted in a resume about being "skilled in a variety of weapons" and having "received tactical response training and situational analysis."

At the Beck family home in Ledyard, a sticker on the front screen door of the light blue cape reads: "Warning!! Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again."

When the news about the shooting flashed around the state, Richard Plourde knew who had pulled the trigger. A close friend of Beck's, Plourde said Beck had been very depressed for the past year and seemed to be harboring a lot of anger. He returned to his job only 10 days before the shootings.

"You could see it was coming," said Plourde, of Griswold. "He was like a time bomb ready to explode."

Beck, who never married, enjoyed guns and had quite a large collection, Plourde said.

"He was really into paintball, you know, that soldier of fortune-type stuff," Plourde said.

A combination of personal problems and difficulties at work tormented Beck, said Plourde. Beck suffered an emotional breakdown about a year ago and was hospitalized twice in 1997, at least once at the Elmcrest psychiatric hospital in Portland, Plourde said.

But even with the treatment, Plourde said, Beck just couldn't seem to shake his anger.

"I guess all those things mounted up," said Plourde. "He held a grudge against everybody. For the past year or so it seemed like nobody could do anything right."

Beck's call to The Courant Thursday was never answered because the reporter was out of town. But a few months ago, Beck traveled to The Courant's Broad Street headquarters to expose what he thought were flaws in the way the lottery was run.

Beck laid out his concerns with the precision of an accountant, but became so intense during the interview that spots of white spittle appeared at the corners of his mouth.

That visit, in early November, was about the same time Beck left his $45,400-a-year job at lottery headquarters in Newington for four months because of stress. Neighbors said he moved out of his own apartment in Cromwell around the same time.

Co-workers noticed changes in both Beck's appearance and manner as he drew more and more into himself.

"He cut his hair in a military style; he already was losing his hair," said John Krinjak. "He seemed to lose weight. He had a very severe look about him... . It got so when I saw him, I got the feeling if I didn't say hello, he wouldn't have either."

His supervisor, Karen Kalandyk, said that when Beck returned to the office last week, he seemed different, shunning small talk with his colleagues. "He was like talking to a stone," Kalandyk said. "Some people were afraid of him. I wasn't, but I guess I was wrong."

To what extent Beck's grievance sparked Friday's shootings is unclear. Shortly after moving from the Department of Special Revenue to the newly created Connecticut Lottery Corp., Beck, an accountant, took on additional duties in data processing at the request of his bosses, union officials said.

When he realized he was making less than others doing the same work, Beck asked his union to file a grievance. The papers were filed on Aug. 18, 1997, bringing Beck and several of Friday's victims closer together in a contentious process.

Michael T. Logan had been one of Beck's supervisors. Frederick Rubelmann III was one of the officials who handled the grievance. Both were involved in the early stages of the dispute.

Linda A. Blogoslawski Mlynarczyk, who was the lottery's chief financial officer, met with him on Feb. 27 -- one week before the shooting -- to discuss his new duties working solely as an accountant.

It was Otho R. "Ott" Brown who headed the entire operation. His signature is on a letter offering Beck a job in 1996. "Congratulations," Brown wrote. "I look forward to working with you in this new venture."

In dollars and cents, Beck's grievance does not appear to be about huge sums of money. According to state payroll records, the difference between the data processing job Beck was doing and the accounting job was, on average, about $2 an hour.

Beck had already won on a critical point -- that he had been doing duties not in his job description, union officials say. The negotiations over how much back pay he was entitled to were just getting under way.

"He was unsure when he was going to get his money," said Joseph Mudry Jr., the steward at the Administrative and Residual Employees Union. "It was just frustrating."

But although Mudry said Beck was frustrated with the process, he said Friday that Beck gave no indication of any deep hostility when he spoke with him about 9:30 a.m. Thursday. Mudry said he often chatted with Beck; Thursday's conversation was their second this week.

"There was no indication of him doing anything like this," Mudry said. "He seemed fine."

Still, Mudry said Beck wanted to get out of the lottery division. He had applied for several other jobs, including positions at the state auditors office and Central Connecticut State University.

"He just didn't feel comfortable working with the lottery," Mudry said.

Neighbors and associates said Matthew Beck had lived alone in Cromwell for about a year. He rented a small apartment at 4 S. Park Place.

Cromwell police said that 14 months ago they received a call from a friend of Beck's who was worried about his well-being. The friend told police Beck was depressed and had attempted suicide before, according to the police report.

Beck graduated from Ledyard High School in 1980 and earned a bachelor's degree at the Florida Institute of Technology in 1984.

Before taking a job with the state Department of Revenue Services in 1989, he had worked as a taxpayer representative for the Internal Revenue Service in Hartford and as a security officer for Globe Security Systems.

In his resume, Beck claimed that he held "top secret security clearance" while employed with Globe. Plourde said he and Beck became close friends when Beck was a security officer at the United Nuclear uranium plant in Montville.

Plourde said he and Beck played golf frequently and were about to take a trip to Mexico together when Beck became ill last year.

"I got a call from his dad who said Matt would not be able to go because they took him to the hospital," Plourde said.

Beck's father, Donald, said Friday night that he already had told state troopers all that he knew. He said he could only apologize to the families of the victims.

"But I know that doesn't help them, and it doesn't bring them back," he said. "It was an awful thing."

He said he had no explanation for what his son did.

"I saw him this morning before he went to work, and he appeared perfectly normal and in good spirits," he said. "I know he had a grievance going and he thought there were a lot of things there and maybe there are. But that doesn't excuse what happened."

He started weeping. "I can't excuse him, and I can't bring anybody back, including him."

Reports from Courant Staff Writers Matthew Hay Brown, Lisa Chedekel, Lee Foster, John Moran and Stephen Ohlemacher, Courant Librarian Sandy Mehlhorn and The Associated Press were included in this story.