APPARENT MURDER/SUICIDE: Sheriff's office seeking reasons for double shooting
By MARTHA ELLEN
TIMES STAFF WRITER
FRIDAY, AUGUST 6, 2010
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DEKALB JUNCTION — The apparent murder/suicide of a husband and wife Thursday morning at 2657 County Route 19 in the town of DeKalb left neighbors and co-workers stunned and searching for answers.
St. Lawrence County sheriff's deputies said they believe Jeffrey L. Paquette, 43, shot his wife, Denise J., 44, with a .357 caliber handgun, then turned the gun on himself. Each apparently was shot a single time.
There was no note or any other indication of what led to the deaths.
Asked whether mental health was a factor, Sheriff Kevin M. Wells said, "We're looking into possible causations, things that may have been a trigger. We're talking to the family."
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Mr. and Mrs. Paquette were quiet members of the community who didn't draw attention to themselves. They did not have children.
"There's no indication of a domestic, nothing like that," Sheriff Wells said. "They'd been together for a long time."
The emergency dispatch center in Canton received a call from a man at 8:42 a.m. Thursday who gave the address of an emergency at 2657 County Route 19 in DeKalb, said "please hurry," and then hung up. Attempts by dispatchers to reach anyone at the home failed.
Deputies arrived at the scene about 10 minutes later and opened the door, which was not locked, after there was no response to knocking.
"You could see right through the window on the door," Sheriff Wells said.
Deputies found Mr. Paquette lying on the floor of the living room with a pistol in his hand and Mrs. Paquette slumped over in a chair next to him. Both were dead of apparent gunshots from a handgun that was registered to Mr. Paquette.
St. Lawrence County Coroner Russell B. Lawrence III officially pronounced the couple dead at 10:11 a.m.
"We're still looking into it," Mr. Lawrence said Thursday. "We're going to have an autopsy at Claxton-Hepburn Hospital (Ogdensburg) tomorrow before we could really say for sure."
Mrs. Paquette worked as a senior account clerk at Hermon-DeKalb Central School, where she will be missed, Superintendent Ann M. Adams said.
"She was a wonderful person. There's a whole bunch of us who eat lunch together and she was part of that group," Ms. Adams said. "We all enjoyed working with her. She's been there a long time."
Ms. Adams said Mrs. Paquette never said a bad word about her husband, who was a carpenter. She did not have a driver's license, and he drove her to work and picked her up every day.
Mrs. Paquette went to work Thursday morning, then left at 8:32 a.m. for a doctor's appointment, with her husband driving her, Hermon-DeKalb Principal Mark E. White said.
Whether she had an appointment or not, the couple went home, which was about two miles from the school, because the call to 911 came within 10 minutes.
Mr. White saw yellow police tape around the Paquette home later that morning while on a practice run with a school bus driver.
"Obviously, something tragic had occurred," he said. "I just didn't know what."
Soon after, deputies contacted the school to find out when Mrs. Paquette had left work. After school officials believed next of kin had been notified, Ms. Adams alerted board members and the school started a phone tree to let staff and teachers know.
"They're just floored," Mr. White said. "It's definitely a sad day for Hermon-DeKalb."
A woman who answered the telephone at the home of Mr. Paquette's parents, Gary and Gerry, who live nearby, said the family would have no comment.
Relatives of Mrs. Paquette didn't answer their telephones.
Mr. and Mrs. Paquette were married Oct. 10, 1992, at the United Methodist Church in Canton. Mrs. Paquette, the former Denise Newman, was a 1984 graduate of Canton Central School. She earned an associate degree in business administration from SUNY Canton and also had worked at KeyBank.
Mr. Paquette was a 1984 graduate of Hermon-DeKalb and was self-employed.
The news also flabbergasted neighbors.
"This was a terrible shock to us. Our first reaction when we saw the tape was that they had been robbed," neighbor John M. Miller Jr. said. "It just didn't sink in what could have possibly happened."
Although the Paquettes were Mr. Miller's nearest neighbors, he said he did not know them well.
"We went our way, and they went their way," he said.
St. Lawrence County Legislator Frederick S. Morrill lives about half a mile from the Paquette home but knew them only as acquaintances.
"They were kind of quiet and kept to themselves," he said.
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