>>Anyway, what do you think of the following idea (could likely use 
>>some tweaking):

>I don't like the SIGKILL and I don't understand the reason for the sleep()s

I don't like it much either, only retained it for compatability.
The sleeps were to give the murdered make a chance to say good by.
I'd be quite happy for the behavior to just SIGINT or just SIGTERM
in the case of .KILL

--sjg