Millionaire British businessman Christopher Foster, believed to have massacred his family and then set fire to their U.K. mansion on Aug. 26, went on the rampage rather than face his six-acre spread being repossessed, The Sun reported.
Foster — whose breakdown was filmed by his own CCTV security cameras — hid his financial plight from his wife for a year.
A source revealed: “In the end his state of mind must have been, ‘If I can’t have all this nobody will.’
“He adored his wife and daughter so he must have been in a terrible mental state to do what he did.”
The source added: “A villager who had kept a horse there for years was told out of the blue days before the fire that she’d have to move it. Chris was preparing the ground for what he was going to do.”
Police have recovered CCTV footage showing Foster, carrying a rifle, leaving a burning stable block after shooting three horses.
He is then seen running to the main house where wife Jill, 49, and 15-year-old daughter Kirstie were already dead.
Kirstie's body – the last to have been found – has now been removed from the ruins of the mansion.
A pathologist will carry out a postmortem examination on its remains Tuesday afternoon.
Crazed Foster, 50, killed the family’s four dogs before turning the rifle on himself as the house burned around him.
On Monday, detectives showed the grainy footage to an elderly relative for identification.
Film from other cameras will also be studied but much was destroyed in the blaze.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox