''It's like being a celebrity, but for nothing good,'' Mr. Larson said. ''I'm labeled as this poor, sorry person. If I knew someone like me, I'd ask, 'What's this guy doing wrong?' ''

Unrelenting Pain In an Unsafe World

Mr. Larson says he sometimes feels like he is trapped in a revolving door. Inside it, spinning with him, are the murders, all the sadness and horror of losing his sister and his wife. Outside is a safe and sane place that he has to get back to, but the doors just keep on turning.

It has left him with an emptiness and a dull and unrelenting pain, Mr. Larson said recently, as he sat in the neat living room of his house in a quiet, tree-lined suburb of Orlando, a home most people in middle-class America would see as safe. But they do not look at the world through Jim Larson's eyes.

''Sonja was safe in her bed when she died, and my wife was at a Publix supermarket at 12 noon, not in a nightclub, not in a 7-Eleven at 2 A.M.,'' said Mr. Larson, a trim, 38-year-old man whose narrow face has a sadness in it that shows through even when he smiles. ''No one in my family had ever been to jail, because we just didn't have that kind of life. I felt we were good people. So, why? Why did it happen?''

''I have friends who are Catholic, and I've heard them say that because they are close to God, bad things won't happen,'' he continued. ''My sister never did anything wrong. My wife never did. I guess I just don't know what the plan is anymore.''

Daughter Provides A Reason for Living

Mr. Larson is talking about finding reasons to go on living when a 2-year-old girl, with golden hair and laughing eyes, stomps into the room in fuzzy slippers. She crawls around the floor, then spots a stack of books. She wants a bedtime story.

And, because it happens every night, Mr. Larson finds his reason to keep on living in the face of his daughter, Jessica, and between the pages of Dr. Seuss. She prefers ''Horton Hears a Who.''