KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WVLT) -- Police are calling a case of murder and suicide that stretched over almost eight hours -- and two counties.

It ended, with gunfire just outside Volunteer TV's side door, and just before our morning newscast began Friday.

Police say convicted felon Ricardo Holston, 28, must have thought he could lose them in the woods of Bearden Hill, but an hour before sunrise, after police tracked, blocked, and cornered him, police say he came out just behind Campbell's Pool and Spa off Papermill Drive.

He ended his life, the same way he took his girlfriend's.

Doris Stewart is the Victim’s parents’ neighbor. She says, "At about 10:00 p.m. we heard the door slam, but it didn't bother us…I said, 'well she'd probably worked hard and she probably was mad.'"

Police say somebody was mad. Not Doris Stewart's next door neighbors, but Holston.

He was reportedly kicking in the door, packing a gun, looking for the neighbor's daughter.

Knoxville Police spokesman Darrell Debusk says, "We believe they'd actually been seeing each other for about a year, and that some situations developed about four or five months ago."

Bad enough, police say, that he would force 25-year-old
Katoia Banks into a borrowed car, and the two would spend the next six hours driving.

DeBusk says, "He kept making calls to both his family and her family--
making threats that he was going to kill her."

Police won't say how they tracked him, but the care turned up at Kingston Square Apartments just after 4:00 Friday morning. Katoia Banks was dead inside with a gunshot wound.

Debusk says, "Officers saw him actually running into the woods from the vehicle…He was under a lot of stress. If he shot a person that he cared about, he could very easily shoot a stranger without hesitation."

Officers warned the neighbors, including Volunteer TV, to lock down while they tried to flush him out.

At 5:25 a.m., they did.

Debusk says, "...not at a close range but they could see him, he saw the officers--made a quick statement and then pulled the trigger."

Three hours later, Ricardo Holston died of a bullet wound to the head.

"Shocked, real shocked"

Doris Stewart never met Ricardo Holston, or Katoia Banks, and says she barely knew Banks' parents.

"They all seemed fine--there's no commotion over there at all."

Now that Holston has meted his own justice, DeBusk says police are left trying "to figure out why this occurred, what precipitated it, and answer questions the family has at this point."

Questions like where did Holston get the car, and the gun?

Police say Katoia Banks has no record with them, but Holston's goes back 11 years.

His history includes charges of aggravated robbery, burglary, assault, and even a federal indictment for trying to deal cocaine.

Katoia's family members say they don't want to talk, and want to grieve in private.

Police are still trying to determine what family Ricardo Holston might have.

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Originally posted 7:30 AM May 9, 2008

Knoxville (WVLT) - Police say the East Tennessee woman kidnapped late Thursday night and found shot in a car at a West Knoxville apartment complex, has died.

The search for the kidnapping suspect, identified by multiple sources as Ricardo Elliott Holston, 28, ended Friday morning at Campbell Pool and Spa on Papermill Drive in West Knoxville.

He died at 8:30 AM, at UT Medical Center.

Police say Holston had a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and was taken to U.T. Medical Center.

Authorities say he kidnapped his girlfriend, Katoia Banks, 25, at gunpoint Thursday night at about 10 p.m at a home on Watauga Dr.

Police tracked him to the Kingston Pointe Apartments on Kingston Pike in West Knoxville, police found the girl dead in Holston's car and began searching for the suspect in the Bearden area.

WVLT Volunteer TV News studios were put on lockdown by police as they searched the woods around the TV station for the suspect.

The place where police say he shot himself is a short distance from the front doors of our studios.