Joseph Thomas Wesbecker (April 27, 1942 – September 14, 1989) was identified as the shooter. When he was 13 months old, his father, a construction worker, died in a fall. After his father's death, he was raised as an only child by his mother Martha, herself only 16 years old at that time, and her family, though he was often passed from place to place during his early childhood, and at one time deposited in an orphanage for almost a year. His grandfather, to whom he felt closely attached, died when he was four.