Sweethearts Forever. Then Came Alzheimer’s, Murder and Suicide.

Richard Shaver was a man that enjoyed planning ahead but not as far into the future as his final years. He was more flippant about the subject of his death, commenting that he wanted a party with booze in lieu of a funeral and even going so far as joking about overdosing on pills. He was adamant on one thing – he did not want to go to “The Place,” his term for a nursing home, and he did not want to send his wife there, Alma, even after she was deteriorating from Alzheimer’s disease.

The couple had known each other since they were children and had eloped shortly after high school. During their 60 years of marriage they raised three daughters, but Richard’s focus and adoration was always on his wife. When Alma was first diagnosed with Alzheimer’s he did not discuss it with his children, saying that he was “taking care of it.” He refused in-home care, a cleaning service, or the offer of moving closer to one of his children to make things easier. When Alma’s mind became so broken that she could no longer remember her husband and her children, she told a friend and neighbor, Valerie Dominioni, “We have to go away. You understand, don’t you?” An a Sunday afternoon in June, while Alma was sleeping, Richard shot her in the back of the head before laying down and putting the barrel in his own mouth. 

Two weeks after their bodies were discovered, their granddaughter, Alissa Ryan, got married. The only note that Richard had left was addressed to her. “May you both have many years of happiness,” it read. “May life be good to you.”

See Corina Knoll, Sweethearts Forever. Then Came Alzheimer’s, Murder and Suicide, New York Times, December 29, 2019.