Police: Waterford man kills wife, self Truck driver recently lost job

By Robb Frederick
robb.frederick@timesnews.com
WATERFORD -- An unemployed truck driver shot and killed his wife Tuesday afternoon and then drove to a remote area of North East Township, where he parked his car on a railroad trestle and shot himself in the head, authorities said.
Police found Dean Carlson's body on the bank of Twenty Mile Creek. They had traced the signal from his cell phone, sources said.
Troopers found his car on the Gulf Road railroad trestle, not far from the New York state line, just before 6 p.m.
"He was in a pretty remote area," Erie County Deputy Coroner Korac Timon said. "It took a while to get him out of there."
North East firefighters helped carry Carlson's body back to the road.
Other troopers remained at Carlson's home, a raised ranch in the 1200 block of Bagdad Road in Waterford Township. Yellow police tape ringed the house and the two cars parked in front of it. A family cat looked out from under a blind on a side window.
Police went to the house, on a rural road dotted with farms, a saw mill and some mobile homes, at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, after Carlson's father called 911 to say his son had killed his wife. Troopers found Peggy Lee Carlson, 42, dead in a bedroom. She had been shot.
Neighbors said the couple had lived in the home for at least 11 years. It was not clear whether any of their five children -- four from Peggy Carlson's previous marriage, and a daughter that Dean Carlson brought to the relationship -- was in the home at the time.
"I just saw them yesterday, driving down the road together," Lynn English, who lives across the street, said of the couple. "This is crazy."
Word of the slaying spread quickly.
"I had just sat down in my La-Z-Boy when the telephone rang," Karen Alterio said. She and her husband, Bob, went to check on their daughter's house, which is next to the Carlsons'.
The police were still there.
Maureen Fuller stood on the next lawn. She and her family had been camping; they returned at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday and were still unpacking when the police arrived.
"It was a bit of a shock," Fuller said. "We don't expect stuff like this to happen out here."
She said Peggy Carlson was a corrections officer at the state prison at Albion. Prison officials said she also had worked in the facility's infirmary.
Dean Carlson, 40, was a long-haul trucker who had lost his job at the start of the year, Fuller said. The couple had fought about him not working, she said.
"He seemed like an OK guy," she said. He once helped fix her car.
More police came, followed by news crews and slow-driving crime-scene sightseers.
"This is the most traffic we've ever had," Fuller said.
Staff writers Ed Palattella, Lisa Thompson and Gerry Weiss contributed to this report.
ROBB FREDERICK can be reached at 870-1733 or by e-mail.