It was at about midnight on Saturday, when Emily Staupe - distraught, jobless and 30 - apparently left a final note to all her Facebook friends.

"Each one of you has made my life special," a friend said she wrote, just a few hours before her family found her dead in her bedroom, police said.

A bag of crystallized cyanide was by her side, authorities said.


Yesterday, some of her stunned friends, co-workers and a former boss recalled Staupe as brilliant and "empathetic to a fault."

They said she was a devoted friend, a dedicated scientist and a passionate ice skater.

"Being on the ice made her calm," said Natalia Diaz, a former co-worker.

Staupe, who was known as "Dawn" in grade school, was a 2005 Northeastern University graduate who worked at a few different science labs at the school after graduation, according to a former boss.

Diaz said Staupe told her she had been laid off, when they last spoke Friday evening.

"She said she didn't really have a specific plan on what she was going to do next, but she sounded fine," Diaz said.

On Saturday, according to Milford police Chief Thomas O'Loughlin, Staupe took a Boston-bound train to Northeastern and entered a Northeastern lab.

He said it appears she was rushing, because "in her haste, she locked the door and left her keys inside."

Later, at a commuter rail station in Westwood, where she had left her car, she called her father and brother to pick her up, he said.

Then at midnight, with her car still in the Westwood garage, the chief said she posted her final note on Facebook.

Shortly after 2 a.m., her family called police.

O'Loughlin said she was dead when police arrived.

News of her death sent shock waves through the neighborhood.

"She was a lovely girl, smart, on the honor roll," said Ann Sartain, a longtime neighbor. "I don't know why she would do such a thing."