Kosciusko County police are investigating the death of a Warsaw man who was hit by a Jeep after his moped crashed west of Pierceton. The county crash investigation team said Brandon D.A middle-aged couple found dead Tuesday in their mobile home south of Warsaw apparently made a “collective decision” to end their lives, police said Wednesday.
James Willis Kinzer, 47, and his wife, Jane Ellen Kinzer, 46, lived in Brown’s Mobile Home Park on South Country Club Road. They had no children, and they were unemployed, said Sgt. Chad Hill, spokesman for the Kosciusko County Sheriff’s Department.
They both had medical conditions, but neither was terminally ill. They also had financial woes, he said.
On Sunday, Jane Kinzer told a neighbor that she and her husband may be evicted from their home and that their electricity had been shut off because of unpaid charges. She also told the neighbor, “They did not know how they were going to go on in life,” according to Hill.
That neighbor became concerned after not seeing the Kinzers for a couple of days and asked the sheriff’s department to check on them Tuesday morning.
That’s when the bodies were discovered, Hill said.
Near James Kinzer’s body, investigators found a .380-caliber semi- automatic handgun.
He died from a single self- inflicted gunshot wound to the neck, according to autopsy results.
Jane Kinzer died from a single shot to the head, but authorities were not able to determine whether the wound was self-inflicted, Hill said. On Tuesday, the county coroner said the deaths appeared to be the result of a homicide-suicide but did not say who fired the gun.
At the scene, investigators came across an 11-page letter, handwritten by Jane Kinzer, explaining that the couple had each agreed to end their lives, Hill said.
“It was a collective decision, based on what appeared in the note,” said Hill, who had not read the letter.
Hill declined to further discuss the contents of the note. He said the couple’s financial and medical problems were possible motives in their deaths.
There was no history of violence between the two, and police had never been at the couple’s home for a criminal investigation, Hill said.
The case remains under investigation as the coroner awaits the results of toxicology tests, Hill said.
