Ex-Marine Uses .357 Caliber Handgun to Slaughter Cheating Wife and other Family members
Steve Fischer
The following appears courtesy of today's American Broadcasting Company news
wire:
Searching for Clues
December 2, 1999
ABC
(BALDWIN) -- Police are still looking for clues on the deaths of a Baldwin
family. The bodies of Louis and Nancy Kramer, their eight-year-old son Sean and
five-year-old daughter Heather were found inside their home in Baldwin this
week. All four of them had been shot to death. Police say it appears Louis shot
his wife and children, then himself.
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The following appears courtesy of the 12/2/99 online edition of The
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review newspaper:
Pittsburgh News - December 2, 1999
Friend saw no warning before slayings in Baldwin
By Vince Guerrieri
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
A close friend who knew Louis Kramer for more than 30 years said Wednesday he
saw no signs of the turmoil that apparently led the ex-Marine to slaughter his
wife and two young children in their beds and then turn the gun on himself.
"His wife should be down there right now," Kramer's lifelong friend, Glen
Subbot, said as he stood outside the family's Baldwin Borough home and watched
school buses driving by around noon. "His daughter would be getting off the bus
now."
"There were no signs," said Subbot, who had talked with Kramer, 42, on Sunday.
That was the last day Nancy Kramer, 39, and the couple's children, Shaun, 8,
and Heather, 5, were seen, investigators said.
Baldwin police discovered their bodies Tuesday night after Subbot's brother,
who worked with Kramer as a security guard at a department store in Century III
Mall in West Mifflin, went to check on the family and found the car outside and
the home locked.
Nancy and Heather Kramer's bodies were found upstairs in the same bedroom, and
both had been shot in the right temple, according to the Allegheny County
Coroner's Office.
Shaun Kramer's body was found in another bedroom, also shot in the head.
Police said the three were clad in pajamas.
The coroner's office so far was unable to determine approximate times of death.
Inspector Ken Fulton of the Allegheny County police said Kramer, whose body was
found in a bathroom, left a note admitting he shot his family, but didn't
explain his motives very clearly.
A .357-caliber handgun was found near his body.
Investigators say Kramer shot himself once in the forehead sometime between 8
p.m. Monday, when his brother Chaz talked with him, and 8 p.m. Tuesday, when
police broke into the home in the 3500 block of Oakleaf Road.
Baldwin police Detective Sgt. Daniel Turner said that while no specific motive
has been found, he believes there may have been problems in the marriage.
"If you reach a tragedy of this point, there has to be some kind of problem,"
Turner said. "We just don't know what."
Turner said that police had checked out reports that Kramer told someone he
thought his wife was having an affair. But interviews with friends, family and
associates found no evidence to support any belief that infidelity had
occurred, Turner said.
Turner said police had never been called to the home before Tuesday.
"There's never been any problems there before that we're aware of," he said.
Friends said Kramer's family moved to the Oakleaf Road home in the early 1960s.
Glen Subbot and Kramer attended Oakleaf Elementary and Paynter Middle schools
together, and Shaun Kramer was a pupil at Paynter, now a grade school.
Kramer's parents divorced and he attended Brentwood High School, graduating in
1976. The men remained close over the years and Kramer even played Santa Claus
for Subbot's children.
Subbot and his brother, Denny Subbot, 44, who worked with Kramer at the mall,
said Kramer was an average guy who loved his wife, whom he married in 1990, and
his children.
He kept cassettes of Jimi Hendrix and Deep Purple in his car. He was a big Dan
Marino fan. Kramer also was patriotic and had a personalized license plate on
his car that read ILUV-USA.
Nancy Kramer, whose family lives in nearby Whitehall, graduated from Baldwin
High School in 1979. Her maiden name was Nesbitt.
Glen Subbot described Nancy Kramer as a nice woman who was devoted to her
children.
She took her daughter to dance lessons at Karen Tobias Dance Studio in Baldwin.
Tobias said Heather had started taking instruction there on Sept. 9, and came
every Thursday for a preschool combination dance class.
But because last Thursday was Thanksgiving, she hadn't seen Heather Kramer in
two weeks.
"I don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, when the students come to
class," Tobias said yesterday. "Those girls are 3 and 4 years old. What do you
say to them?"
The little girl also attended nearby First Impression day care center.
Denny Subbot said Kramer was very devoted to his job. He said Kramer never
missed work and was never late for work without calling first.
That is why Denny Subbot was surprised when he came home from hunting Tuesday
afternoon to find a message from Kaufmann's, saying that Kramer hadn't shown up
for work that day. After checking on the family, he called police.
Glen Subbot said he called Kramer about 9:30 p.m. Monday and got no answer.
Chaz Kramer declined comment, saying he didn't want to say anything while a
police investigation was still under way.
Calls to relatives of Nancy Kramer were referred to attorney Robert Sebastian
of Dormont, who released a statement giving funeral details.
Funeral arrangements for Nancy, Shaun and Heather Kramer will be handled by
Slater's Funeral Home in Brentwood, and the funeral will be at St. Gabriel's
Catholic Church in Whitehall. Arrangements for Louis Kramer had not been
announced.
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The following appears courtesy of the 12/2/99 online edition of The
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper:
Police begin to untangle what led Baldwin man to kill self and family
Thursday, December 02, 1999
By Jonathan D. Silver, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Moving from one bedroom to another inside his Cape Cod-style home in Baldwin
Borough early Tuesday morning, Louis Kramer Jr. shot and killed his wife and
two young children, each with a single bullet to the head, apparently while
they slept.
David Subbot cannot understand why his friend Louis Kramer Jr. would apparently
kill himself, his wife and two children. Subbot lives down the street from the
Kramer home. "This was out of the blue," he said.
His son Shaun, 8, was found in his upstairs bedroom, the one Kramer had painted
blue. His daughter Heather, 5, and his wife of nine years, Nancy, 39, were
found in a downstairs bedroom of the Oakleaf Road home.
Kramer was discovered lying in a hallway, his .357-caliber Magnum a short
distance away.
Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht yesterday ruled that Kramer's death
was a suicide and that the others were homicides.
Relatives, friends and neighbors were puzzled by the incomprehensible slaughter
of what some said was an all-American family. Initially investigators were,
too.
People described a father who dutifully mowed the grass, tossed a football with
his son, and threw popcorn at the TV in disgust while watching Steelers games.
They told of a stay-at-home mother, a 1979 graduate of Baldwin High School, who
played with her doe-eyed children every day, walked them to the bus stop and
picked them up there after school.
"Louie was the kindest, sweetest kid," said Phylis Chedwick of Brookline, who
had known Kramer since he was a child. "I'm trying to find reasons. Of course,
we're not in our right minds if we do something like this, but it's just not
Louie. It's not in his nature to be violent like that. Something just snapped."
The Kramers seemed like an ordinary family in an ordinary neighborhood, one
populated with nearly identical modest brick homes and flat, grassy yards.
There were no red flags to look for in Kramer's behavior, no warning signs that
violence was imminent. The police had never visited the premises. How, people
wondered, could anything go so wrong?
Eventually, investigators got an inkling that something indeed had been wrong.
It came from Denis Subbot, Kramer's lifelong friend and Chedwick's brother, who
lives at the other end of Oakleaf, said Baldwin Sgt. Daniel Turner.
Subbot was the one who first alerted police to trouble after fielding a
concerned call Tuesday from Kramer's employer for three years, Kaufmann's
department store at Century III Mall in West Mifflin. Kramer, who worked there
as a plainclothes store detective armed only with handcuffs, had not shown up
for work -- highly unusual for someone known to be punctual.
Subbot tried to reach his friend by phone. Then he went to his house, where the
lights were on. Parked in front was Kramer's black Chevrolet Cavalier, with the
ILUV-USA license plate, U.S. Marine Corps hat in the back and the Deep Purple
and Jimi Hendrix cassettes up front. The car bore a registration sticker for
2000. Sensing something was wrong, Subbot called police.
Baldwin officers arrived at 7:50 p.m. and broke down the back door to the
basement. They found blood that had seeped through the floor.
Investigators began canvassing, probing for any information that could explain
the shootings. They asked questions, checking the usual traps. Money problems.
Gambling debts. Drug use. Nothing was cropping up. The mortgage was paid, the
car was owned outright, Kramer had to submit to drug tests as part of his job.
"This was out of the blue," said Denis Subbot's brother, David. "There was no
indication this was going to happen."
Police inquired about whether the couple, who had met at a McDonald's where
Nancy Kramer worked, had marital problems, David Subbot said. It was the first
marriage for both.
That question provoked an intriguing response. Police said Denis Subbot told
investigators that a week earlier, Kramer had confided to him that he suspected
his wife was having an affair, Turner said.
Police have not turned up any evidence that Nancy Kramer was cheating on her
husband, Turner said.
And in an interview yesterday with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Subbot denied
that Kramer ever told him that.
But yesterday, the investigators' belief that Kramer suspected marital
infidelity deepened after a handwritten suicide note was found on Kramer.
Nothing, however, could make sense of why Kramer shot Shaun, a third-grader at
W. Robert Paynter Elementary School in Baldwin, and Heather, who attended First
Impressions Daycare Center and the Karen Tobias Dance Studio. Authorities had
previously said she was 2 but corrected it to 5 yesterday.
"I just don't understand what happened here," Denis Subbot said. "He's not a
monster."
Allegheny County homicide Inspector Ken Fulton refused to discuss the note or
disclose its contents.
Late yesterday afternoon, the television trucks were still parked on Oakleaf
Road, a quiet cul-de-sac, and curiosity seekers still drove past the house,
past the white shutters and unadorned facade that provided no clue about the
horrors within.
John F. Slater Funeral Home in Brentwood is handling arrangements for the
children and Nancy Kramer. Services have not yet been scheduled.
Nancy Kramer is survived by her mother, Catherine Ann Nesbitt of Whitehall; a
brother, Terry Nesbitt; and sisters Colleen Nesbitt, Sharyn Abbot, Kathleen
Collier, Patty Folsom and Cynthia Nesbitt.
There was no information last night on arrangements for Louis Kramer. He is
survived by his father, two brothers and a sister, according to David Subbot.
--
/Steve D. Fischer/Atlanta, Georgia/str...@netcom.com/
mdan...@gmail.com
I live on Oakleaf Road where this took place and Sean Kramer, the eight year old boy, was my best friend. If you could point me in the proper direction, please email me back. Again, I understand if this is a dead end, but I thought I would try.
Thank you for your time,
-Matthew Danko
juliann...@gmail.com
Thank you,
Julie Nesbitt
