Motive a mystery in newlywed murder-suicide

TERRE HAUTE, Ind. - Some guests at the Indiana home of a couple married just hours earlier noticed tension between them, but authorities said they had no indication as to what sparked the violence that would leave both of them dead in an apparent murder-suicide.

About a dozen friends and relatives gathered for an after-party at the home of 54-year-old George Samson and 50-year-old Kelly Ecker Samson following a wedding reception Saturday night at a Terre Haute banquet center, the Vigo County Sheriff's Department said.

Witnesses told detectives that George Samson left without his wife after becoming irritated near the end of the formal reception, and that some guests saw that they weren't talking with each other during the after-party. Investigators, however, haven't been able to determine what led to the argument, Sheriff Greg Ewing told the Tribune-Star.

"There's nobody to ask," Ewing said. "We're talking to attendees at the wedding, but we will never know the reason why."

Only Kelly Samson's young son and George Samson's parents remained at the house when she made the first of four 911 calls within a few minutes starting about 1:20 a.m. Sunday, according to a sheriff's department report.

Kelly Samson told a dispatcher that her husband had threatened to kill her, but gave an incorrect location for the house a couple miles east of Terre Haute by transposing two numbers in the street address. During the final call, a dispatcher heard screams and multiple possible gunshots.

Deputies arrived to find Kelly Samson dead in a bedroom from gunshot wounds to the head and chest. The others there were safely removed from the house and a SWAT team later confirmed that George Samson was dead in the basement from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

George Samson was an anesthesiologist at Terre Haute's Union Hospital, where Kelly Samson was a registered nurse in the intensive care unit. The couple had lived together at the house since at least since midsummer, sheriff's Chief Deputy Clark Cottom said.

Investigators found an estimated 90 to 100 guns - including rifles, handguns, silencers and fully automatic weapons - and a store of ammunition in the house, Ewing said. George Samson was registered as a firearms dealer with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

"We talked to the ATF and we mutually agreed it was best to seize the weapons for safekeeping," Ewing said. "So they are secure until his estate can deal with them."