What drove an electrician to commit one of the worst crime sprees in Tri-Cities history?

For at least six years Ryan Kaufman took his depression and psychosis medication, keeping his delusions at bay.

Without the drugs his mind went to dark places.

He thought his parents sold a non-existent twin sister to the government to “fund a lavish lifestyle” and that his Finley neighbors were entering his home at night to poison him.

When he took his medicine, the 43-year-old Tri-Cities union electrician lived on his own with his dog, helped his mother with her home projects and joined his dad for pheasant hunting.

Then he stopped taking his prescriptions.

His relatives and neighbors said he became more erratic by the spring of 2021, and in August that year he went on a murderous, fiery rampage that stretched nearly 50 miles.

Three hours later, four people and three dogs were dead, another person was wounded, three homes burned and nearly a dozen other fires were started.

One of the dead was Kaufman. He died in a gunfight with police in front of a West Richland car wash.

It’s taken a team of specially-trained detectives 1 1/2 years to sort through the details of that day and to answer what happened.

One of the biggest questions is why. What caused his rage?

The Tri-City Herald examined the police reports totaling more than 2,000 pages that were obtained through the Washington Public Records Act.

The documents included the murders of Kaufman’s parents and a neighbor, the arson investigations and the final, deadly confrontation in West Richland.

The reports answer many of the public’s lingering questions, but some mysteries remain.

Kaufman’s brother and sister provided police with the best insights into his deteriorating mental state before the attacks.

Logan Kaufman told the Herald he believes the tragic deaths could have been prevented by the availability of decent mental health services in the Tri-Cities. His brother tried to get help but was denied, he said.

Kaufman’s parents

Logan Kaufman, a Tri-Cities bookstore operator, had planned to meet up with his father, Daniel, the morning of Aug. 25 to work on a Richland house.

When his dad, a longtime engineer for the city of Kennewick, didn’t show up, he tried calling his parents. But they didn’t answer.

He grew worried and just before noon he drove across town to their home on the 4300 block of Gum Street in east Kennewick.

Daniel and Vickie Kaufman, a respected Tri-Cities educator, went out of their way to help their three adult children.

That was especially true for Ryan.

Some of his mental health issues dated back to when he was a kid, but he wasn’t diagnosed with depression and psychosis until about six to 10 years earlier.

Ryan Kaufman had always been a “high-intensity dude,” his brother told investigators. And when he wasn’t being medicated, he suffered from delusions.

His sister Heidi Zanotelli said he sometimes put a padlock on his fridge and believed his neighbors were responsible for poisoning him.

The last time Ryan Kaufman was “off his meds,” his parents were so busy trying to help him that Logan Kaufman had trouble reaching them, he told investigators.

This time, his parents confided they were worried about Ryan. He wasn’t seeing his psychiatrist, and could not get mental health help because of a waiting list that was lengthy because of the COVID pandemic.

The brothers hadn’t spoken to each other for two months. Ryan Kaufman’s family had been keeping their distance because he had become so unpredictable, according to the police reports.

So when Logan Kaufman approached his parents’ door on Aug. 25, his worry deepened when he heard no barking from their Brittany spaniel and chocolate Lab.

He noticed a bag of groceries sitting on the porch as he put his key in the lock. Then, he realized the door was already unlocked.

As he took a step inside, he saw his father lying dead near the entryway and the house was full of smoke. Instinctively, he knew his brother had been there.

He immediately feared for the safety of the rest of his family. He raced to his car and dialed 911. He then called his sister, who lives out of town. And he told his wife to get out of their home immediately.

What Logan Kaufman didn’t know is that his brother was already dead. He’d died nearly six hours earlier in a shootout with police in West Richland about 6:30 a.m.

Police would later find both his parents and their dogs dead from gunshot wounds in their Gum Street home. Ryan Kaufman had also started a couch on fire.

The smoldering blaze damaged the interior of the house, but didn’t destroy it, despite a can of gas he’d left nearby.

Erratic behavior

Ryan Kaufman worked as an electrician and was a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. He lived with his dog, Montana, in a home on Finley Road, east of Kennewick.

One of his closest friends, a former boss, told investigators that he was a great employee who took pride in his home and was always helping his parents.

He said he was the best employee he’d ever had, but had been laid off from working at an Amazon facility in Boardman, Ore.

And by August 2021, he’d been unemployed about a year.

What remains unclear from the police reports is when and why Kaufman stopped taking his medications.

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, he complained to neighbors and a union official that doctors weren’t able to help him.

He told his sister he intentionally stopped taking his medications but also that a psychiatrist had stopped prescribing the medication.

His sister said he was seeing a psychiatrist in a local hospital, but the hospital constantly changed who he was seeing, which made him upset because there was no consistency.

He also reportedly tried checking himself into a Tri-Cities mental health program three months earlier, but wasn’t accepted. The reasons are not clear.

Logan Kaufman told police he heard that his brother’s psychiatrist refused to continue seeing him because of his brother’s temper.

Neighbors told police they started to notice his erratic behavior. One time that spring, they spotted him get out of his vehicle and start yelling “absurd things to no one,” said a Benton County sheriff’s report.

His brother told investigators that Kaufman owned at least 50 and maybe as many as 100 guns, including rifles, handguns and shotguns, and he warned police that he may have booby trapped his home.

3-hour rampage

His rampage began about 3:30 a.m. that day when he set his own home and some outbuildings on fire. He then headed next door, where three generations of the Zlatich family lived.

Emil “Bo” Zlatich, then 28, reported Kaufman was wearing body armor, a helmet and carrying what looked like an AR-15-style rifle, when he broke in, shot two of them and burned their home to the ground.

His father Emil “Bobby” Zlatich was wounded and his grandfather Emil “Bob” Zlatich, 77, former owner of a Zip’s restaurant in Kennewick, was killed with a shotgun. His body was found in the burned house.

Investigation reports never show that he was armed with an AR-15.

Ryan Kaufman left Finley with his dog in his orange pickup, starting a series of grass fires along his path by firing a flare gun into dry grasses.

He showed up at his parents’ house shortly after 4 a.m., when police now believe he killed his parents and tried to burn down their home.

And by 4:30 a.m. he was seen on security video breaking into his IBEW union hall on Edison Street in Kennewick and then a union training center. Both caused little damage.

He drove to Richland and on out of town toward Prosser, igniting several roadside fires along the way, before his pickup truck apparently overheated. That’s when he pulled off along Interstate 82 was spotted by a Benton County Sheriff’s deputy.

She realized he was the shooting suspect being searched for in the Tri-Cities and didn’t stop to confront him alone.

SWAT team officers started to head toward Benton City to help in his arrest when a West Richland officer saw Kaufman’s pickup driving into West Richland.

Smoke was billowing from the truck’s engine compartment, forcing Kaufman to pull onto the sidewalk of a car wash on one of the town’s main streets. It was just before 6:30 a.m.

Soon, two Benton County deputies and a Pasco officer arrived to help the West Richland officer.

Deputy Ivan Hernandez said he saw Kaufman turn to face him inside the truck and began shooting. Hernandez and three other officers returned fire with their rifles, said the reports.

The truck continued to burn and ammunition inside exploded with the heat from the fire, preventing officers and firefighters from getting near.

When crews were able to get close, Kaufman and his dog are dead.

Several hours later, his parents would be found dead at their home.

The report of the Regional Special Investigations Unit (SIU) that investigated the actions of the officers was finalized and was sent to the Benton County Prosecutor’s Office to determine if any laws were broken by the officers.

This story was originally published February 18, 2023 at 5:00 AM.