Wife Slain After Putting Ketchup Lid on Too Tightly, Prosecutor Says
BEND, Ore. — An 86-year-old Oregon man on trial for the shooting death of his wife carried out the attack after a series of grievances with his family that prosecutors said included the failure of his stepdaughter to wish him a happy birthday and his complaint that his wife put the lid on the ketchup bottle too tightly.
Deschutes County prosecutor Mary Anderson told jurors about Lawrence Loeffler’s complaints during opening statements Wednesday at his murder trial.
Anderson said Loeffler made the criticisms about his family during questioning by officers about the death of 83-year-old Betty Loeffler. The prosecutors said the killing was a calculated act.
Anderson said Lawrence Loeffler took the phone off the hook, retrieved a .25-caliber handgun in the middle of the night from the bedroom where she slept and then “set a trap” to get his wife onto the deck at the back of their house near La Pine, a town of about 1,670 people on the east edge of the Cascade Range in Central Oregon.
He shot her once in the neck and then again in the head in what he described to investigators as a “kill shot” to make sure she was dead, Anderson told jurors.
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