CLAXTON -- For huge Richard Howard, the glory days were years ago on the football field, from high school through college.

With a rape charge dogging him and beset by other personal demons, the mountain of a man took his life Thursday -- but only after killing his two small daughters.

Howard played in 11 games in three seasons (1993-95) at UT as a reserve offensive guard.

Howard, 32, who towered 6 feet 8 inches and weighed more than 300 pounds, put a gun to his head while parked at the back of a gravel lot next to TVA's Bull Run Fossil Plant.

Shocked investigators later found the bodies of 3-year-old Brionna Howard and 2-year-old Markayla Howard lying covered up on the car's back seat.

In a suicide note found on the front seat, Howard confessed to his daughters' murders and told of his plan to end his own life.

A TVA police officer on routine patrol had approached Howard about 11 a.m. as he sat behind the wheel of a green, 10-year-old Ford Crown Victoria.

He was out of gas, Howard told the officer, and he was waiting for someone to bring him either gas or money.

It was while the officer was in his cruiser, receiving information that the former football star was wanted in Montgomery County, Tenn. for rape and domestic assault, that Howard killed himself.

The officer didn't hear any gunshot but returned to Howard's car to find his lifeless body slumped over the wheel, a bullet wound to the head and a pistol in hand, TVA Police Director Jim Carver said.

Authorities late Thursday weren't revealing the contents of the suicide note or the way Howard killed his daughters or how long they had been dead.

Carver said Howard was estranged from his wife, who lives in Middle Tennessee. Howard, in an interview in February with The Oak Ridger newspaper, described himself as a single father of two daughters who did security work in Clinton.

A spokesman for the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office said late Thursday a grand jury there indicted Howard on the rape and domestic assault charges.

The spokesman said the indictments remained sealed, and he didn't know when they had been returned by grand jurors.

TVA police say they're baffled why Howard was parked next to the coal-fired steam plant, located off Edgemoor Road between Oak Ridge and Clinton. They said Howard had no connection to TVA.

Carver said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is heading up the continuing investigation, and the bodies of father and daughters were taken to Methodist Medical Center of Oak Ridge.

Howard's heyday came early, while playing football at Oak Ridge High School and in college.

He was a member of the Oak Ridge Wildcats' 1991 state championship football team and won numerous honors, including all-state offensive tackle and lineman of the year.

But in several years as an offensive lineman for UT, Howard never realized his full potential, and he transferred to Carson-Newman College.

Howard later signed as a free agent with the Baltimore Ravens, but he never made that pro team.

After his football career, Howard's immense size helped him land jobs as a security guard in Clarksville, Tenn., where he also worked as a personal bodyguard and a bounty hunter.

Howard recently returned to Oak Ridge. He said he made the move because he wanted to be near family, he told an interviewer.