Appearances used to bother Kyle Moore, the thought of possessions he wanted but did not have, or the sight of youths with dyed hair and multiple body piercings -- all silly things, he thinks now, nine months after his 14-year-old daughter was slain in Seattle's most infamous mass killing in decades.

"I look at life a whole lot different than I used to," Moore said. "Material things aren't so important anymore. Mostly, I think, 'If you're thinking about doing something, do it, because you might not have tomorrow.' "

Melissa Moore, a ninth-grader at Fife's Columbia Junior High School, was one of six young people shot to death in a house on Capitol Hill after attending a rave dance nearby.

Her father still has nightmares, reliving the violence as he imagines it unfolding. There is the shooter, 25-year-old Kyle Huff, who knew neither Melissa nor many of the people at the house party and afterward committed suicide on the front lawn.

	Melissa Moore, 14, was one of six young people killed after Kyle Huff went on a shooting spree at a party, then killed himself. (MOORE FAMILY PHOTO)

The killing spree engendered an outpouring of grief and soul-searching. In the days and weeks after Huff's rampage, hundreds of mourners thronged the neighborhood. And four months later, they did so again, moving downtown after another gunman, Naveed Haq, burst into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle and shot six women.

"Oftentimes, I wish I had a magic wand that could take away people's pain, especially when it's new and so raw," said Jenny Wieland, executive director of Families & Friends of Violent Crime Victims, who became an advocate in 1992, after her own 17-year-old daughter, Amy Ragan, was shot in the back of the head.

This year, she said, the group's annual memorial for survivors seemed to include an unusually large number of first-time visitors.

For his part, Kyle Moore can no longer tolerate the sight of Huff. His wife, Kelley, shreds the newspapers any time one appears bearing a picture of the young man's face.

Many family and friends of last year's homicide victims don't even have that -- a person on whom to vent their rage. Of the 21 people killed by gunfire in Seattle last year, seven of the cases remain open with no arrest made, leaving survivors with no known assailant and no answers -- just a gaping hole where memories circle. Fourteen were younger than 30.

The Seattle P-I today profiles four of those victims and looks at how their families and friends have coped.

Brenda Lee's son Jared, 26, was shot and killed one afternoon in September, driving along Rainier Avenue. There were few witnesses, and police have not made an arrest.

Every day now, Lee trudges between her job as a phone operator at Harborview Medical Center and the apartment where she lives alone, staring at pictures of her only son.

"He really didn't even have a chance," Lee said. "When you die at 26, you really haven't been able to do anything yet."

While working with victims and survivors may seem unimaginably grim to outsiders, Wieland finds it healing.

"It's one thing for me to be sitting with a family, saying 'You're not alone,' and they have no idea. But it's quite another to be sitting in a room with 100 other people who've had loved ones murdered," she said. "Then they really do see."

At the group's remembrance ceremony last month, family members of the dead read poems. They flashed photographs on an overhead screen. A few, those who have come back to remember year after year, even smiled.

"You see people laughing, reaching out to others, and you know that they have built a new life," Wieland said. "People always ask me, 'How can you do this work, isn't it depressing?' No, it's not. It's heartening. You see people integrate these lessons and go on. It's never the same, but it can be good. You never forget. But you can build a new life."

Melissa Moore, 14

For a girl just barely into her teens, Melissa Moore displayed unusual forethought.

Months before the dance party that ended with her violent death in a Capitol Hill home, she'd planned what to wear, begging her father to take her shopping for special costume makeup. Then she spent hours setting up transportation for friends, making sure they would all go together to the rave at the Capitol Hill Arts Center.

The party had a title, "Better Off Undead," and Melissa painted her face accordingly, showing her father the Halloween-style creation hours before the first song played.

"She looked so cute," Kyle Moore said. "I gave her a little hug -- I didn't want to kiss her because she had makeup all over her face -- so I gave her a little hug and told her I loved her. It was just amazing -- the way she'd made up her face and set up rides for all these people. Really, she was such an interesting kid."

At school, he said, Melissa had always been the individual, outspoken and never shrinking from an opportunity to challenge her teachers.

"She was opinionated," her father said, chuckling. "A lot of times that would get her in trouble. But being opinionated myself, it was hard to get too upset."

The night of the rave, he drove her to a bowling alley near their home, where she'd arranged to meet friends, and never saw Melissa again.

In the months since, Moore has constantly replayed the events leading up to his daughter's death. They come in his dreams, or when he is driving his truck. He thinks of her carefully laid plans falling apart -- how she lost track of the friends with whom she'd planned to ride back home to Milton; decided to catch a bus instead; and how a young man urged her to wait out the pre-dawn hours at the house on Republican Street instead.

"When she lost her ride, she actually had tears in her eyes, from what I understand," Moore said.

She was sitting outside the house, getting ready to finally catch a bus home, when Kyle Huff walked up the front steps, a shotgun in his hand.

Joaquin Tavares, 43

Long black hair, all black clothing and charisma that filled a room -- that was Joaquin Tavares, a local artist and musician whose life ended in gunfire Jan. 12.

"It's like part of me died," Joaquin's sister Alma Tavares said.

Joaquin Tavares was 43 when he was killed. The trial for the man accused of murdering him, Troy Matthew McLeod, 34, is set for April 1.

Investigators believe McLeod, a tattoo artist, was angry at being evicted from the building in Sodo where he had his shop. For reasons that relatives and friends of Tavares cannot fathom, McLeod is accused of shooting Tavares five times at close range with a shotgun inside that building.

Tavares was there only because he spent the night after helping an acquaintance install a sound system.

Younger brother Christopher Beresford, 21, was the first in the family to learn the awful news. Then, he called his sister.

"That was probably one of the hardest things I've ever had to do," Beresford said.

There are mementos of Joaquin Tavares throughout Alma Tavares' Issaquah home: photos, artwork, even his guitar.

"They say with time it gets better," she said. "But it gets worse because you miss him more."

Beresford said he had meant to get together with his older brother a few weeks before the shooting, but that fell through and he regrets not having that moment, saying, "I never had a chance to tell him I loved him."

		Karen Ducey / P-I
	Christopher Beresford remembers his brother Joaquin Tavares, who was shot to death Jan. 12. The trial for the man accused of the shooting is April 1.

Joaquin Tavares, the oldest of five siblings, moved to Seattle from Mexico in the mid-1980s. At the time, he was studying computer engineering, but music drew him here.

Tavares began getting involved in the local music scene, playing keyboard, piano and guitar. For a time, he was keyboardist for the band Faith & Disease. Later, he performed pre-Columbian music with Quinto Sol.

"His paintings were pretty good," said band mate Alfredo Feregrino. "But music ... every time he got in front of a piano, he played really, really well. I really found a connection with him."

Before his death, Tavares had been focusing on his paintings and collages, drawing inspiration from his eclectic group of friends, his travels around the world and anything else he came across. He had planned on moving to New York and opening a gallery there.

There was more in his future. He had a daughter, Washara Eldridge, who was 12 at the time of his death, but whom he had rarely seen, having lost contact with her mother when he moved to Europe for a time.

Recently, on her own, the girl had begun trying to find her father.

Her mother, Tamara Eldridge, said her daughter had clung to the hope of building a relationship with her father.

"Unfortunately for her, that dream of knowing her father just went up in smoke," she said. "I think he would have wanted to know her."

Edward Michael Costello Jr., 60

Michael Costello liked to order scotch on the rocks -- usually the cheap stuff. But he also liked to buy drinks for friends as he regaled them with tales from sailing around the world.

The longtime seaman, who friends knew by his middle name, or his nickname, "Bubba," was a regular at the Chelan Cafe -- a small diner and bar in the shadow of the West Seattle Bridge, friends said.

"He was a hell of a guy," said Roger Peterson, who met Costello about six years ago at the bar. "His favorite line was, 'Sit down and I'll buy you a drink and tell you a little about myself.' "

Even as friends enjoyed his company, they knew Costello was into trouble. He made no secret of his criminal record. And in the months before his death, he had been out of work, evicted from his apartment, and in his final days sleeping in his car under an overpass behind the bar.

It was in that spot, in a parking lot on Port of Seattle property, where Costello died Aug. 16 after being shot multiple times in his car.

Seattle police and the Port of Seattle police both are investigating because Costello was slain on port property. No one has been arrested.

"I don't think it will ever be solved," said Peterson's wife, Sherri. "You knew he was into stuff, but you didn't know what. It's not that he was a bad guy. I think he just made a lot of unwise decisions in his life."

He most recently lived in a West Seattle apartment building. A manager there said he never posed any problems until his eviction and left behind few personal belongings.

Costello was an electrician and refrigerator technician aboard container ships, friends said. He had sailed all over the world.

Costello had previous run-ins with the law for drunken driving and assault. In 1999, a jury convicted him of felony harassment and misdemeanor assault for threatening his former wife and disabling her car so she couldn't leave his home, court records say.

The couple had a son, who was 5 years old during the court case, court records say.

Costello always was willing to help out a friend, Roger Peterson said.

"I hate to say negative things about him. I like to focus on the good things," he said.

Jared Leroy Dahl-Lee, 26

At 26, Jared Dahl-Lee still was trying to get a foothold in life. He'd had two sons and various girlfriends, worked informally as a mechanic and ambled among the homes of his mother, sister and friends.

But there was one thing, everyone agreed, that the young man could truly claim as his own.

"When he was about 2 years old, I sat down with a pen and paper and started drawing cars with him," said his mother, Brenda Lee.

"He picked it up immediately -- fantastic pictures of cars. He never even had one art class."

Dahl-Lee's fixation with cars -- drawing them, fixing them, driving them -- lasted throughout his life, until he was shot to death by another motorist driving along Rainier Avenue South.

Seattle police have made no arrest in the September killing, and it is unclear whether Dahl-Lee or his passenger, who survived, knew their assailant -- a man in a Cadillac with tinted windows. Road rage? Random violence? Neither Dahl-Lee's mother nor sister has a clue.

"All I know is I'm pretty sure he was on his way to see me," said Brenda Lee, 51.

The two had always shared a strong connection. Jared would appear suddenly whenever his mother needed help, she said, offering to fix the car or take her to the grocery store.

"It was like he had radar for Mom. I'd need something, and sure enough, five minutes later, he'd pull up," Lee said. "An amazing guy."

On the day he died, Dahl-Lee had tried to call his mother several times, but her cell phone was off so all she has left are his messages, "Mom, call me back."

Lee, ironically, was at her job manning the trauma center phones at Harborview, when medics brought in two young men -- one who'd just been shot in a car and was headed for the operating room; the other, already dead, was going straight to the medical examiner.

"My sister called me crying," Lee said. "She said, 'I think your kid's dead.' She'd seen it on the news and recognized his puppy in the car."

Lee tried to phone her son, but he didn't answer, so she kept working. No one else contacted her. No one came by to notify her of the death. "Nobody said it was him, and I just wanted that one night, not to know," she said.

In the last message Lee received from her son, he isn't even speaking. His phone, she believes, accidentally dialed hers while he was walking.

"So all I heard was his footsteps," she said. "Almost like he was walking out of my life."