Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)



Richmond Times-Dispatch (VA)

January 3, 2006 | | |

Couple's death called murder-suicide

Family and friends believe the husband and wife loved each other too much to kill

Dateline: MARTINSVILLE

A husband and wife found shot to death in their Patrick County summer home last Friday likely died in a murder-suicide, police said, but family members and friends were skeptical of that explanation.

William McDonald, 61, and his wife, Catherine McDonald, 63, died from multiple gunshot wounds, the Patrick County Sheriff's Office said in a news release.

William McDonald was the lead news anchor for Corpus Christi, Texas, television station KIII in the early 1970s.

"He was very well liked and definitely a consummate journalist," KIII executive director Ken Sullivan said in a story in today's editions of The Free Lance-Star of Fredricksburg.

The woman's body was found in a bed and her husband's was found in a bathroom, Sheriff David Hubbard told The Martinsville Bulletin. Hubbard said one of the shots was "apparently not lethal initially and the weapon used wasn't the most powerful."

Investigators recovered a .38-caliber pistol and ammunition at the scene, Hubbard said, and investigators have theories as to what happened but declined to reveal that information. The bodies were sent to the medical examiner's office in Roanoke.

The couple lived in the Fredericksburg area. Neighbors and family members reacted with shock at the news, and skepticism at the theories of the sheriff's office, saying the McDonalds were a churchgoing couple whose love for each other was evident.

"They were so much in love with each other that it was obvious to everyone," Mary Messner, a close friend in Spotsylvania County, told The Free Lance-Star.

She said the idea of a murder-suicide is "inconceivable."

William McDonald's son, Houston prosecutor R. Darin Darby, viewed the bodies at the medical examiner's office yesterday and told the Free Lance-Star that police believe his father killed his stepmother, then himself with a shot to the right side of his head.

That makes no sense, Darby said.

"He was completely left-handed except one thing," Darby said. "He wrote right-handed.

Everything else - pitching a baseball, scratching his nose - he did left-handed."

Darby said police found no sign of a break-in or struggle at the home in Patrick County, and that they found the couple's bags packed for a return to Spotsylvania.

He also said his father had been having financial difficulties recently but doubted that would spark a murder-suicide. Darby also said no one reported seeing any signs that McDonald had been suffering from depression or serious medical problems.

William McDonald, Darby said, married his wife 15 years ago in the hospital when she was battling cancer, and friends said her recovery left them both blissfully happy.

William McDonald worked as an advertising executive in Fredericksburg and Catherine McDonald was a floral designer before her retirement, according to their obituaries in the Charlotte Observer. Darby told the Free Lance-Star that before the McDonalds moved to the Fredericksburg area, his father worked in advertising with the Charlotte newspaper.

The McDonalds had been at their home in Patrick County since Dec. 20, friends said. Their bodies were discovered after neighbors hadn't seen them for several days.

A funeral is planned for this afternoon in Mount Airy, N.C.

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