A man accused of driving across the country to fatally shoot his estranged wife and another man inside a New Jersey church confessed to the shooting rampage, a Georgia prosecutor told the Associated Press.
Walton County Assistant District Attorney Eric Crawford said Joseph Pallipurath, 27, gave a videotaped confession on Tuesday, hours after he was arrested at a motel 40 miles east of Atlanta. Crawford says Pallipurath told investigators he would have killed everyone in the church if he'd had a machine gun.
Pallipurath told authorities he was unhappy that church members were blocking his attempts to contact his wife, who had left him three months ago, the Associated Press reported.
Pallipurath waived his right to extradition Tuesday as officials revealed he had rented a room near the New Jersey church where the shootings took place.
Pallipurath, of Sacramento, Calif., appeared in a courtroom 40 miles east of Atlanta after he was arrested late Monday in Georgia. Officials there plan to return him to New Jersey within 10 days.
Pallipurath answered only "yes" and "no" to the judge in Monroe, Ga., where he appeared without an attorney.
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Pallipurath is suspected of shooting and killing his wife, 24-year-old Reshma James, inside the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya Church in Clifton, a suburb about 15 miles west of Manhattan.
Also killed was Dennis John Mallosseril, who maintained the church's Web site. Witnesses said he had tried to intervene and stop the rampage.
A third person, James' 47-year-old cousin Silvy Perincheril, was shot in the head and remains hospitalized in critical condition.
James had previously taken out a restraining order against Pallipurath, prosecutors said.
Pallipurath's father, Mathai Pallipurath, told CBS13.com in Sacramento that he'd left a message with his son to turn himself in.
"I told him to surrender to the police, surrender; wherever you are, surrender," Mathai Pallipurath said. "And the first time I called him (I said) it is better to kill me first then because she was my daughter."
The elder Pallipurath took out a restraining order against his son in May, saying he was "threatening my life and my property" and "threatening and abusing his wife," the station reported.
"He loved her too much," Mathai Pallipurath told the station. "I don't know what happened."
He did not return a call for comment from FOXNews.com.
The younger Pallipurath stayed with an unidentified couple in Paterson, only a few miles from the church, according to Passaic County Prosecutor James Avigliano. Avigliano didn't provide details about the man and woman the suspect stayed with, but said it did not appear that they were related to him.
The couple was questioned but not charged in connection with the shootings.
Joseph Pallipurath was arrested late Monday night in Georgia and charged with two counts of homicide.
He is being held in Walton County Jail. Authorities said he was arrested without incident at a motel in Monroe, east of Atlanta, after the manager recognized his face from a photo.
"We had a good idea where his relatives lived, and the U.S. Marshals, the Walton County Sheriff's Department and the Monroe police did a great job," Avigliano said. "They checked every motel."
James had come to New Jersey to stay with Perincheril three months ago to escape what relatives said was an abusive marriage to Pallipurath.
The couple wed in an arranged marriage just over a year ago in India and moved to Sacramento in January.
The shootings have reverberated throughout the Knanaya faith, a close-knit Christian minority in India who are even more insulated in the United States.
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Click here to see the father's interview at CBS13.com.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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