SOUTH SALT LAKE — David Partridge knew right away it was a cry for help from his daughter.

On Saturday, while going through a notebook of drawings belonging to his granddaughter, Partridge found a four-page handwritten letter from his adult daughter, Tracie Williamson, stuffed between the pages. The note outlined Williamson's turbulent relationship with live-in boyfriend, Peter Perez, who, with his explosive temper, threatened several times to kill her, her daughter and her family.

"It's in her writing. A desperation letter for someone to step in and get her away from him because he threatened her life," Partridge said in tears outside his West Jordan house Tuesday.

Monday night, Williamson, 28, her daughter, 10-year-old Linzie Williamson, and her boyfriend's 1-year-old daughter, Jessica Perez, were found dead inside Williamson's home. All were shot multiple times. Also in the house, police discovered the body of Peter Perez, dead of a single gunshot wound, and a suicide note. Detectives believe Perez killed the others before shooting himself. Investigators were unsure Tuesday how long the victims had been dead.

"It's unreal. You hear people on the TV say, 'I didn't think this would happen to my family.' And you just think, 'It'll never happen to my family,"' said Natalie Cleverly, Tracie Williamson's older sister.

For nearly a year, Partridge said, he did all he could to get his daughter away from Perez. His daughter told him she was scared to death of Perez, he said. In the letter, Williamson wrote that Perez threatened to "chop (Jessica) into little pieces" and if Williamson went to her family or police for help for the mental and physical abuse she was suffering, he would kill her.

"He made threats against me, he made threats against my mom, saying that if they call the police one more time that my mom would find herself in the back of a Lincoln," Cleverly said.

Partridge assumes the letter was written four or five weeks ago.

"She said she was really scared for her life," Partridge said.

So scared, family members say, that Tracie never went to police for help. Although police were called to Williamson's house a few times over the past year for non-domestic violence related matters, and an officer once questioned Williamson about possible domestic violence, according to her father, she never filed a domestic violence report with police or sought a protective order.

"He basically scared her into staying with him. She was afraid to leave him," Cleverly said.

Whenever the family tried to talk to Williamson about Perez's threats, she would brush them off and try to convince them he didn't really mean what he was saying, Cleverly said.