Children, man found dead

EDMONDS – The e-mail came too late to save the two little girls.

The two sisters, ages 9 and 11, were found dead Monday at the Edmonds home of their father, Stephen Byrne, after Byrne e-mailed family and friends saying he planned to kill his daughters and himself.

He apparently carried out that plan, Edmonds Assistant Police Chief Al Compaan said. Byrne shot himself in the backyard of his home Monday afternoon.

Inside his home, police found the bodies of two girls belived to be his daughters, Hayley and Kelsey.

The girls lived with their mother in Shoreline but visited their father on weekends, neighbors said.

The sisters attended Sunset Elementary School in Shoreline. Hayley was in third grade, Kelsey in sixth.

“We’ve sent extra counselors and support staff to be at the school,” Shoreline School District spokeswoman Marjorie Ledell said.

It may be weeks before investigators determine how the girls died. Their bodies, found in a bedroom, had “no apparent signs of trauma,” Edmonds Sgt. Debbie Smith said.

The Snohomish County Medical Examiner performed autopsies Tuesday, Compaan said.

Police are investigating the deaths as a possible murder-suicide, he said.

Officers went to Byrne’s home in the 8100 block of 188th Street SW at 12:43 p.m. after receiving a call from a man there telling dispatchers to send police and medics to that address. Police believe Byrne made the call.

Police also received several calls from Byrne’s friends who’d received his e-mail and hoped there was still time to reach him and the girls, Smith said.

In his e-mail, Byrne wrote that by the time it was read, “It would be too late,” police said.

Byrne, 50, says in his note that he was “angry and frutrated” by the court system, Compaan said.

Byrne, who divorced his wife in October, 2000, wanted his daughters to spend half their time with him. He was upset when a Kitsap County Superior Court judge ordered that the girls spend about 40 percent of their time living with him, said Paula Crane, a lawyer for his former wife.

“He continually tried to change” the custody plan, Crane said. “He refused to accept the fact he got 40 percent of the time as opposed to 50 percent. He couldn’t move on.”

Byrne, a self-employed software engineer, seemed to have a close relationship with his daughters, neighbors said.

“They were really nice people,” next-door neighbor George Wandel said. “I thought he was a real happy guy. I was shocked.”

Byrne moved into his cream-and-blue rental in the Seaview neighborhood of Edmonds a little more than a year ago, Wandel said. Police have no record of any responses to the house during the time Byrne lived there.

“He was really intelligent, knew something about everything. And he had been everywhere, traveled all over,” said neighbor Thomas Abrahamson, 16. “This whole thing is just out of the blue. A few days ago, I saw him and the kids watching a movie together.”

When the girls visited, they and their dad would go for bike rides and play together, neighbors said. They were planting a garden in front of their father’s home, which he rented.

Bill France, a victim advocate for the Snohomish County prosecutor’s office, said he studied in college the phenomenon of caregivers who kill children and themselves. He became convinced that such outbreaks of violence are “actually an extended suicide,” with the killer somehow viewing the victims as part of themselves.

“I’ve never seen or heard anything that dissuades me from that,” France said. “It is really different from somebody who kills their child and just turns themselves in, or who kills a bunch of co-workers.”

Crime scene technicians from the State Patrol were at the Byrne house Monday searching the scene. Chaplains also were available for police who responded, some of whom have young children.

“This was pretty traumatic for the officers,” Smith said.

Enterprise reporters Shanti Hahler and Jennifer Aaby contributed to this article.

Katherine Schiffner and Scott North write for The Herald in Everett.