At 11:30, Vernon called the police to report the crime, then shot himself with a .38 caliber blue steel revolver, a Colt Detective Special with a two-inch barrel that he had purchased at Marshall Field’s the previous year. While sitting on a bed, he put the gun into his mouth and fired twice. A third bullet was later found in the ceiling above him.
When Police Officer Manfred Paschky arrived 15 minutes later, he went up to the apartment with a man who worked at Marina City. They found Lydia and Vernon in the bedroom, Lydia in what the reporting officer described as a “hospital bed” and Vernon in a double bed nearby.
Lydia had been shot in the head, the bullet entering her left temple and exiting the right side of her face.
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The first homicide detective arrived just after noon and the coroner got there at 2:30 p.m. An assistant deputy chief of police was also on scene. Lydia and Vernon were taken to Henrotin Hospital on Chicago’s Near North Side and pronounced dead on arrival at 2:40 p.m.
In Vernon’s wallet was $80. In the living room, a note was found in a typewriter. It was addressed to Vernon’s wife, Virginia Meyer, who also lived at Marina City. (Left) Note found in a typewriter, addressed to Virginia Meyer, wife of Vernon Meyer. Redactions by Chicago Police Department. |
Virginia was at work when Detective Richard Morask notified her and asked her to identify the bodies of her husband and mother-in-law. She told police Vernon “had been complaining of general ill health and had been going to various doctors.”
Ever since Lydia returned from a nursing home on January 6, 1969, Vernon, according to his wife, “had been quite depressed over the health” of his mother, who, she said, “was bed-ridden and had to have a nurse take care of her.”
On February 5, 1969, a coroner’s inquest determined after hearing the testimony of Detective Bernard Kelly that a murder and suicide had occurred.
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