AMSTERDAM, N.Y. — It was 6:28 p.m. when the phone rang that Saturday, shattering the nervous quiet that had cloaked Tom and Linda King’s home in upstate New York after word of a terrible crash hit Facebook.

The woman on the line was frantic. There had been a limousine accident, she said, before passing the phone to a State Police trooper.

The trooper told Mr. King that the limo carrying his four youngest daughters had crashed near an intersection in rural Schoharie, N.Y.

“Are there any survivors?” Mr. King recalled asking.

“And he said, ‘No, they were all killed.’”

Four of the Kings’ seven children — Amy, Allison, Abigail and Mary — were among the dead. Three of their sons-in-law were also killed in the Oct. 6 crash that claimed a total of 20 lives.