Police said Stuart's car was found about 7 a.m. on the lower level of the Tobin Bridge. A handwritten note of four or five sentences and Stuart's license were found in the car. Police divers found the body about six hours later, and drowning was given as the official cause of death.

As a stunned city and suburbs turned to radios and television for details of the case, the father of Stuart's wife, Giusto DiMaiti, was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital with an undisclosed ailment. He was treated and released.

Flanagan said Stuart, a 29-year-old fur sales agent, became a suspect Wednesday after Boston police and investigators from his office interrogated several people late into the night. He said that around midnight the officers searched "some waters" in Revere for "physical evidence." He would not say what area was searched but that it was not the home there of Stuart's parents.

Edward Marchand, chief of police in Reading, said Stuart's house had been watched by police overnight after Boston police informed him that Stuart was a suspect in his wife's death, but Stuart never returned home.

Marchand said he believed Stuart was aware his house was being watched.

Marchand would not say why Stuart had become a suspect, but he said "there's a lot more to the story."

The Stuart case gained national attention after police released a tape recording of Stuart's anguished pleas for help on the telephone in Carol Stuart's car. He had suffered a stomach wound and his 30-year-old wife, an attorney, lay dying.

He left the hospital to be at his son's side at his death. And he wrote a statement for his wife's funeral in which he said: "...for us to truly believe, we must know that [God's] will was done and that there was some right in this meanest of acts. In our souls, we must forgive this sinner because he would too."

Shortly before Christmas, Stuart viewed a lineup containing an alleged suspect, and while officials refused to say publicly whether an identification was made, many media outlets said Stuart had made firm indications that Bennett, who appeared in the lineup, could be the assailant.

The case stirred such emotions that the funeral was attended by the governor, mayors and other politicians.

Father Jack Bennett, a priest in the Mission Hill neighborhood where the shootings took place, said that the case was disturbing to minorities because "it seemed like total blame was placed on the Blacks and the Hispanics, and that upset us."

In the early hours of news reports of the dramatic developments yesterday, some still refused to believe Stuart could have had anything to do with the shootings.

One neighbor of the Stuart's Reading home wailed that, if he killed himself, he "just wanted to be with them [his dead wife and child]."