Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Man kills himself; daughters also dead
By HECTOR CASTRO SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
EDMONDS -- He e-mailed a suicide note to friends letting them know he planned to kill his two young daughters and himself, then the Edmonds man apparently followed through.
Yesterday, alerted by friends alarmed by his note, Edmonds police officers arrived at a home in a quiet neighborhood at 12:42 p.m. and discovered the bodies of Stephen James Byrne, 50, and his two daughters.
Mike Urban / P-I Neighbors console one another near the scene of an apparent murder-suicide in Edmonds on Monday. Police found the bodies of a father and his two daughters. Byrne was in the back yard of his home in the 8100 block of 188th Street Southwest, and the two girls were inside the home, Sgt. Debbie Smith said.
The father was dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, she said. But investigators did not know how the two girls had died.
An autopsy by the Snohomish County Medical Examiner's Office likely will establish that.
Some neighbors were visibly distraught by the news hours later, watching as police waited for crime-scene investigators from the Washington State Patrol to process the home for evidence.
Those closest to Byrne were left stunned and grief-stricken by this apparent murder-suicide.
"It's been enormously shocking," said Rita Hibbard, a close friend of Byrne's. "Steve was a wonderful person who loved his daughters."
Hibbard, an assistant managing editor at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, was one of the friends to receive Byrne's e-mailed suicide note. But nothing in that note explained his actions, she said.
She last saw Byrne on Sunday.
"I saw nothing that would lead me to believe this would happen," she said. "Everything seemed normal."
The note, Smith said, was sent to more than one friend.
It included comments that Byrne would take his own life and kill his daughters "and that he can't be deterred," the police sergeant said.
The e-mail told those who received it that it "would be too late" by the time they read the note to stop him, Smith said.
She also told reporters that police received a telephone call from a male caller who "asked to have police and medics sent to this address and then hung up."
Byrne and the girls' mother divorced in 2000. The girls lived primarily with their mother at her Shoreline home, neighbors said. Calls to the mother yesterday were not returned.
The woman's attorney, Paula Crane, said last night that when she last talked to the mother about two months ago, she and Byrne had "slight frictions" about the terms of the parenting plan.
"They must have resolved them because I didn't hear any more about it," she said.
Crane said she was not aware of any domestic violence in the couple's history.
Crane's last contact with Byrne was about 18 months ago when the girls' mother got a new job in North Seattle and wanted to relocate from Bainbridge Island; Byrne didn't want his ex-wife to move, so she went to court to obtain permission to relocate, Crane said.
Byrne had problems paying child support because he was unemployed for a period of time, she said.
A filing from the state Department of Social and Health Services indicated that in April, Byrne owed $8,673 in past-due child support and a lien was placed on his property.
The Shoreline School District yesterday said it was notified of the deaths of the two sisters, who were in the third and sixth grades at Sunset Elementary, and planned to have counselors available today for their classmates.
Byrne was a software developer who did consulting work for energy companies. He ran his company, Item Systems, out of his home.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. P-I reporter Hector Castro can be reached at 206-903-5396 or hectorcastro@seattlepi.com
Do you suppose this obit was written and paid for by her?
There is evil and sin in the world -ignoring sin or legislatively legitimizing it does not prevent the fruit it bears...
In my opinion, this is but one more indictment against social engineering that runs counter to true justice. The courts and sociologists carry on their morally relative crusade...
Liberal view: More than anything in the world, Steve loved his daughters, Kelsey and Hayley
Reality: Byrne would take his own life and kill his daughters
Liberal view: He loved his friends
Reality: "I remain concerned about my safety from Steve Byrne."
Liberal view: He was tolerant of other views
Reality: "He was unwilling to examine the effect his outbursts had on his children"
Liberal view: We will remember that savoring of life
Reality: "There was obviously a lot of anger"
You get the picture. Tragic. We cannot let liberal feel-good-ism be a whitewash for murder.
ONLY in Seattle....This is an example of the same warped mind set that exists at DSHS here in Washington State. Many children have been murdered here by their own parents after being returned by DSHS. Just as in this glowing obit.,not much mention of the fact he murdered his own daughters.....
They should not have run it, but THIS IS A PAID DEATH NOTICE, run in the classifieds.
As perhaps the final post to this thread - I E-Mailed the paper, expessing my outrage and revulsion AND THEY ACTUALLY RESPONDED. The following is what I sent:
Damn Seattle. Never any sun. Nuthin' but rain and coffee shops. The place is like some stinkin' dump Anchorage took! Course as an excellent father and role model (see my obit!) I had to kill the girls. I couldn't let them grow up and be free and loving people who would just end up in this eternally raining river of phlegm. What? So they could grow up depressed and and then kill themselves anyway??. Hell, I did'em a favor!
That's me, Stevie Byrne! All around great guy and psychotic! Truth be told, there's a lot more like me just waitin' to pull the trigger. We always take the ones we love with us. Thoughtful, huh?