Coroner in Ohio changes ruling in 1972 death

By JoANNE VIVIANO

The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A coroner in southeast Ohio has changed the ruling in the 1972 death of a woman after her widower killed three relatives and himself last month in front of his cancer-stricken second wife — the first wife's sister.

Hocking County Coroner David Cummin said Friday that he changed the ruling of suicide in Carolyn Gilkey's death to undetermined after reviewing decades-old photos and reports. She suffered a shotgun wound to the head.

"When I look at the photos now ... it looks very staged," Cummin said. "I'm convinced she was sitting in the chair where she was, but the rest of it's pretty staged."

Cummin said the woman is in a chair in a kitchen area with her hand behind a shotgun that is propped up against her with the butt on the floor. "Her arm should be around it to pull the trigger," he said. "But it's in front of her arm, so she'd have to reach around the wrong way."

Cummin made his ruling Jan. 31. It was first reported Friday by the Logan Daily News. He said it's not uncommon to review old findings, but that this is the first time in 13 years he's changed a ruling.

Cummin decided to review the case after Carolyn Gilkey's widower Paul Gilkey fatally shot three people on Jan. 9 at his rural Logan home over a dispute about what his ill wife, Darlene Gilkey, should eat.

Darlene Gilkey, 59, watched from a hospital bed in the living room as her husband killed their adult son and two of her other sisters and then himself. She was not injured but died five days later.

Authorities said Paul Gilkey, 63, used a semiautomatic handgun to shoot one sister twice in the head at close range and another sister in the head and chest. The Gilkeys' son was killed with three close shots to the head.

Cummin said Darlene Gilkey had divorced Paul Gilkey after he killed a cousin with a metal fence post in 1974, but remarried him when was released from prison 10 years later.

He said there would be no forensic value in exhuming Carolyn Gilkey's body for further tests and that further review would serve no purpose because authorities "could not go after her killer because he's already dead."

He said he thinks it does help her family to know that it wasn't a suicide.

"I don't think you can do more than that. Even though it does look somewhat staged, we don't have a witness and we don't have anything else," he said.

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February 10, 2012 10:01 PM EST

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