WOMAN CONVICTED OF MURDERING 4 SONS

VISTA, Calif. (AP) -- A woman who shot her four sons to death and blamed it
on drugs, alcohol and bad relationships has been convicted of murder and now
faces the possibility of a death sentence.

Jurors will return next week to consider whether Susan Eubanks, 35, should
get the death penalty or life in prison without parole.

Ms. Eubanks shot her sons, ages 4 to 14, after an argument with her
boyfriend in October 1997. She stopped once to reload the .38-caliber
revolver and then shot herself in the stomach.

She was convicted Wednesday.

Defense attorney Bill Rafael claimed his client -- an unemployed,
debt-burdened nursing assistant -- was a good mother until work-related
injuries led to her addiction to pain killers. She also began drinking to
kill the emotional pain caused by bad relationships with men, Rafael said.

Prosecutors argued that Ms. Eubanks deliberately plotted to kill the
children to torment her boyfriend and the boys' fathers -- her two ex-husbands.

Eric Eubanks, the father of the three youngest boys, testified he was
concerned after receiving a cryptic message on his answering machine from
Ms. Eubanks that said: "Say good-bye."

The day of the killings, Ms. Eubanks' boyfriend, Rene Dobson, called police
and asked deputies to accompany him to her home. The two had been drinking
all day and argued, and she took away his car keys and slashed his tires.

Eubanks stopped by during that time, and Dobson said he told the father,
"She's a little whacked and I want you to know that's she's talked about
killing herself and the boys."

Less than three hours later, deputies found 14-year-old Brandon Armstrong
shot twice in the head, laying face-down on the living room floor, his
half-eaten cereal spilled around him.

In a bedroom, his 7-year-old brother, Austin, was found sitting upright on
the top level of his bunk bed, dead from two shots to the head. Two younger
brothers, 6-year-old Brigham and 4-year-old Matthew, were on the bottom
bunk, also with gunshot wounds to the head.

In a bedroom, deputies found Ms. Eubanks crying and clutching a bloody towel
to her stomach.