Tom Marquardt, a Central Michigan University alumnus, could have been in the line of fire inside the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland on June 28, 2018.

That is when Jarrod Ramos, the 38-year-old convicted of five counts of first-degree murder, busted down the doors and shot and killed five employees inside. Marquardt retired before the tragedy but worked with four of the five people whose lives were lost that day.

"This is the worst mass murder in newspaper, and I thought a book had to be written about it," Marquardt said.

Marquardt was the former editor for Capital Gazette and a target of Ramos who found that the newspaper wrote an article about the reader's conviction of sexually harassing his former high school classmate in 2011. Ramos later sued the reporter, Marquardt and the newspaper for defamation. He also took it to social media and threaten employees.

"He would just say he wished I stopped breathing. So he would be very careful not to say, I want to kill you," Marquardt said.

Once Ramos lost the court case and went silent on social media, the newspaper thought it was over. But what they didn't know that is seven years after the article about Ramos was released, he would decide to open fire inside the Capital Gazette.

Marquardt said that this situation is almost a warning to upcoming journalists.

"The world is totally different than what it was when I went into the world, in which newspapers were respected," Marquardt said. "But today given the political climate, there's always an opportunity for revenge that comes from the end of a weapon."

The book cover of Tom Marquardt's new book "Pressed to Kill: Inside Newspapers' Worst Mass Murder." Courtesy Tom Marquardt.

During the pandemic, Marquardt decided he wanted to write a book about the tragedy called "Pressed to Kill: Inside Newspapers' Worst Mass Murder".

In addition to providing the story of the deadliest mass murder at an American newspaper, the book focuses on the lives of those who perished, their bravery on that day and the response from the community that gathered to help.

"It was the city's history that needed to be recorded and the lives of those lost needed to be memorialized," Marquardt said. "So the book goes into who those people were and what kinds of lives they had".

He spent two years evaluating court and police files, the killer's interview with a state psychiatrist, eyewitnesses, video footage with details of what led up to the crime eyewitness accounts and how the killer managed to escape recognition from threat assessors.

"We didn't know that there are actual threat assessors out there that could have taken a look at everything and said 'You know what? This guy is dangerous," Marquardt said. "We didn't know that. We thought the police were the threat assessors and they sort of failed us."

Marquardt also said that there were warning signs that could've been found.

"If you look at the criminal psychologist and these threat assessors who have examined this case, this is a classic mass murder in the making and we just didn't see it," he said.

In the book, Marquardt does not use Ramo's name, as he thinks it gives the killer unneeded attention.

"There are people making the argument that you need to take the 'W' out of the who in the book because identifying the killer gives him a podium, it gives him glory, it gives him all the feelings of life, which is what he was trying to accomplish," Marquardt said.

He also said he wants this book to teach the readers a lesson about the extensive effects of mass murders.

"We have not been able to learn the lesson or stop the proliferation of mass murders," Marquardt said. "We moved on to the next mass murder. In fact, after this event, there were 190 mass murders".

Marquardt said that all his work is done and all the profits from the book will go to the Fallen Journalist Memorial Foundation.

"It can happen in your neighborhood, just not at newspapers," Marquardt said. "It can happen at churches, malls, concerts which is where it has happened in the past. So nobody is safe."