New Hampshire man shoots wife to save her from 'bipolar demons,' then kills self to 'join her spirit'
A man killed his wife at a New Hampshire hospital this week after saying that he was going to free her from "bipolar demons," and then he turned the gun on himself.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Mark Lavoie predicted that his wife's death was "going to be officially ruled a murder/suicide when in all actuality it is a double suicide."
"My baby was trying to escape the bi-polar demons that have been swirling around in her brain since childhood and now because of my selfishness in dialing 911 she is experiencing the only thing she feared more than her illness…life support on a respirator," he said. "I am more than happy to sacrifice my life to fix my doing and join her spirit in a happier place."
Casey Mitchell, a family friend, told the Boston Globe that he saw the message on Facebook and rushed to Wentworth-Douglass Hospital in Dover. But both Lavoie and his wife, Kathy, were already dead.
Neighbor Candy Coy called Lavoie "one of the most kind-hearted men I ever met in my life.”
“He would do anything for his wife and kids and friends, family," Coy said. "He would have done this because he loved her so much and respected her.”
It was not immediately clear why Lavoie's wife was hospitalized or why she would have worried about needing a respirator for bipolar disorder.
Lavoie's sister, Dorcas, would only say that her brother did it "out of love."
“They never had any domestic issues at all. There was no drug use. They went to church,” Mitchell pointed out. “They were an iconic couple.”
Lavoie predicted that many would not understand why he killed his wife and himself.
"Though a difficult subject I hope my family whom I love dearly can make some sense of what I’m doing though unless you have dealt directly with mental illness if will be difficult," Lavoie wrote in his final Facebook post.
“Love you all, peace out!” he concluded.
Watch the video below from NECN, broadcast Dec. 30, 2014.