Pleasanton Cops Close Freeman-Burton Case As Murder-Suicide

After an 11-week investigation, the  announced today that the were a murder-suicide.

 Pleasanton wife and mother Amy Freeman Burton, 37, shot and killed her daughter Ainsley Freeman, 13, and then shot and killed herself, police said.

Autopsy results on Ainsley, an eighth-grader at at the time,

The ruling on whether her mother was the shooter, or a victim of foul play, was not disclosed until today by police officials.

The lag time in the findings was due to a deluged Alameda County crime lab which was matching the firearm to the bodies' wounds, said Lt. Jeff Bretzing.

The bodies were discovered in the home's kitchen area, he said, but declined to speculate on what prompted the shootings. 

Amy Burton Freeman reportedly was panicked in February over an online "chat" relationship Ainsley had with a Kentucky teen, and even implored the police and FBI to investigate. No criminal activity was found, Bretzing said.

The 16-year-old boy was again contacted and cleared by Kentucky FBI following Amy's and Ainsley's deaths, he said.  

around 6 p.m. and shook Pleasanton.

The mother and daughter moved to Pleasanton in December from Missouri, along with Christopher Burton, 28, Amy's husband and Ainsley's stepdad.

It was Christopher Burton who reportedly discovered the grisly scene May 7 and called 911, Bretzing said. 

He was not present when shots were fired, police said.

 No calls were logged of gunshots in the area, so police do not know exactly when the shootings occurred. 

Freeman Burton died inside the home and her daughter, still breathing when police and paramedics arrived, was pronounced dead later at Eden Medical Center in Castro Valley, officials said.

Christopher Burton was initially a "person of interest" as he was the only surviving member of the household, but never labeled a suspect by police as he gave a full statement and cooperated in the investigation.

Officers recovered two handguns at the scene, one in close proximity to the  victims, police said. Burton acknowledged that the guns were given to him by his brother in Arizona. 

Ainsley was described as a sweet girl, according to reports, and though she'd just  moved to Pleasanton from the St. Louis area months earlier, she already had many friends. 

Hart administrators canceled STAR testing after the double-shooting, worried that students were too distraught over the death of Ainsley to concentrate, and counselors were dispatched to the school to help her troubled classmates cope with the news.

However, one person who struggled immensely at the time was Ainsley's grandmother and Amy Freeman Burton's mother, Linda Walp, of Chesterfield, Mo., who learned of the deaths from a television broadcast.  

"We found out from Channel 5. They were saying 'Amy Freeman' and so I called the local station to confirm and that's how we found out," Walp said in May.

"I hear about how Pleasanton is this nice place but California doesn't have a very good reputation for me right now. It doesn't fix the shock this morning of finding out your daughter has been murdered."

She said she last talked with Amy on that Monday of her death. 

According to reports, Ainsley was a star student with high grades, despite the fact that she was new to the school. One teacher said she was asked within weeks of moving here to be  a teaching assistant.

Walp told the St. Louis Post Dispatch that her  daughter and granddaughter had moved from O'Fallon, Mo., because Freeman Burton's husband had a new IT job in the Tri-Valley. 

According to the article, Amy Freeman Burton worked in the St. Louis area as a  compliance officer for Edward Jones, A.G. Edwards and Commerce Bank. She  started a new job in California in January as a compliance officer for  UBS Financial Services Inc., the article said.

She said Amy Freeman Burton grew up in  Chesterfield, Mo. and graduated  from the University of Kansas. The Burtons and Ainsley  previously lived in O'Fallon, Mo.

The mother and daughter left on Dec. 24 to start their  new life in California, Walp told the newspaper.

Prior to the Stacey Court incident, the last known shooting in Pleasanton occurred in but the injuries were minor. There was an attempted shooting during a  robbery in 2010 in a Rosewood Drive shopping center, but no one was  injured.

Reporting by Tanya Rose contributed to this story.