Iraq Vet Kills Family, Himself

An Iraq war veteran killed his pregnant wife and young daughter before turning the gun on himself, and police are having a tough time figuring out why. The bodies of Matthew Magdzas, 23, April Oles-Magdzas, 26, and 13-month-old Lila, along with their three dogs, were found Wednesday—the day April was set to give birth to the couple's second daughter—in the family's home in Superior, Wis., but Magdzas left no clues to explain his actions, the AP reports. "Unfortunately, sometimes in these things, if they don't leave a note, we don't definitely have a why," a local police captain said.

Investigators say they have found no signs of domestic trouble or unusual stress, but a sibling of Magdzas' wife told the Duluth News Tribune that Oles-Magdzas and her daughter had been staying with a relative for weeks. "She wasn’t living with him at the time," the sibling said. "They had had some kind of problem but I could see they were…trying to work it out." Magdzas enlisted in the National Guard in 2004 and was deployed to Iraq in 2006. He returned in 2007 and had been working as a firearms instructor.
(More Matthew Magdzas stories.)