After months of questions, two Mercer county families have their answers. A coroner's jury delivers its verdict on the deaths of Patti Jo Lindquist and Tim Meade, ruling them a homicide and a suicide.
Their bodies were found in a burning rural Aledo home back on July 5th. Investigators say Lindquist was on the phone with a relative, when that relative heard a gasp and knew something was wrong. She called police, who went to the house. They arrived in minutes, but it was already too late.
One of the first responders on the scene was also the man who testified at Thursday's inquest, detailing what happened. Mercer County Detective Dusty Terrill says, "It's terrible for any family to have to go through something like this." And Lindquist's family says it is. While Tim Meade's relatives did not attend the inquest, Lindquist's packed the small courtroom. Her father tells TV6, he had an idea of what happened that day, but no details about how or why his daughter lost her life.
He says inquest testimony will help him let her, and this case, rest. It came from Detective Terrill, the third officer on the scene that day. "Within just a few short minutes, the house was fully engulfed in flames, heavy smoke and a strong smell of gasoline." He says the door had been locked from the inside. Crews had to break a window to get in, where they found Lindquist's body.
"She had entered the house and been shot multiple times, one of those being fatal," Terrill says, going on to say Meade then doused the area with some kind of accelerant, and started a fire. "Once those fires were engaged, he then shot himself," says Terrill. He tells us police had been to the house before for a domestic violence complaint. Lindquist had taken out a restraining order days before this fire. But the day of, investigators say Meade texted her. "Sort of feeding into her belief he would not be there, giving her the okay to go into the house."
Police say evidence rules out a third person. The case is closed, for them and the families. Terrill says, "I'm not sure how somebody would deal with a situation like this involving a close family member, how it would ever be closed or final. I would think this is probably as close to that as it can be."
Testimony took a little less than half an hour. Investigators laid our their evidence in front of a jury of six. Those jurors took about a half an hour to deliberate before coming up with their verdict.
