COLUMBUS, Ohio – Pickaway County sheriff’s investigators say robbery appears to have been the motive behind a double murder-suicide in Orient Saturday night.
Michael Melrose apparently shot Eugenia Anderson, 62, and Harry Butler, 68, to death inside their Fairfield Road home just before 10:00 p.m. and took his own life as deputies closed in, Sheriff Roberty Radcliff said.
Melrose, 42, was said to be an out-of-work carpenter who was in a dispute with the couple over unfinished work at their home, but Radcliff says he was holding several guns when he came out of the home.
Three deputies who had arrived on the scene in response to a woman’s 911 call about a man with a gun confronted Melrose as he was running out the back door of the home, holding several long guns, Radcliff said.
Melrose dropped the gun, but pulled a handgun from behind his back and shot himself with it, Radcliff said.
Deputies found Butler tied up in the home’s front room, suffering from gunshot wounds, and he died on the way to Mt. Carmel Hospital, Radcliff said.
Anderson was found dead in a back room where she had been partly tried up and shot several times, Radcliff said.