In a suicide note, Karthik Rajaram wrote that he had considered killing only himself because of his financial troubles, but decided to take his family with him.

Mr. Rajaram, 45, shot his wife, three sons and mother-in-law in their bedrooms over the weekend, the police said, then shot himself. The police found him on Monday on the floor of a bedroom his youngest sons shared, close to their bodies.

On Tuesday, friends and colleagues said they were stunned to learn of the killings and unaware of the family’s financial problems. The police said that in one of his two suicide notes, Mr. Rajaram said he was “broke,” having lost most of his assets in the plummeting stock market. The police said he had been planning the killings for weeks.

Hopefully this will be the last person to choose this way out of the crisis, but I fear that it is only the beginning.