Richard Farley

Richard Farley
Richard Farley escorted by police officers
Born	Richard Wade Farley (1948-07-25) July 25, 1948 (age 68) Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, United States
Criminal penalty	Sentenced to death
Killings
Date	February 16, 1988
Location(s)	Sunnyvale, California, United States
Target(s)	ESL employees
Killed	7
Injured	4

Richard Wade Farley (born July 25, 1948) is an American convicted mass murderer. A former employee of ESL Incorporated in Sunnyvale, California, he stalked co-worker Laura Black for four years beginning in 1984. Black obtained a temporary restraining order against him on February 2, 1988, with a court date set for February 17, 1988 to make the order permanent.

On February 16, 1988, Farley shot and killed seven people at ESL and wounded four others, including Black. He was convicted of seven counts of first degree murder, and is currently on death row at San Quentin.

Farley was born July 25, 1948 in Texas. He was the oldest of six children. His father was in the military, therefore the family frequently relocated, and eventually settled in California. He graduated from high school in 1966 and attended Santa Rosa Junior College. Farley then joined the United States Navy in 1967 where he stayed for ten years. After his discharge in 1977, Farley began working as a software technician at ESL Inc., a defense contractor in Sunnyvale, California.

In April 1984, Farley met 22-year-old Laura Black, who also worked at ESL Inc. Farley was instantly smitten and later said that he instantly fell in love with Black. Farley began leaving gifts, including letters and homemade baked goods, on Black's desk and asked her out numerous times. Black repeatedly refused the invitations and later said in an interview that she "..tried really to ignore him but to be cordial". Despite her refusals, Farley persisted; he began calling her desk every few hours as well as showing up at Black's aerobics class. By providing false information to the ESL HR department through pretexting, Farley was able to obtain Black's home address and home phone number. Farley was also known to have befriended the custodial department in an attempt to copy keys to Black's desk so he could rifle through her files to gain an insight into her life. He was also known to have pried through confidential personnel files of Black through false pretenses.