Sons suspected in man’s killing were reclusive

CLEVELAND — Two adult brothers suspected of being involved in the fatal shooting of their physician father before turning guns on themselves during a SWAT standoff were reclusive, paranoid and probably mentally ill, a suburban Cleveland police chief said.

Police found Dr. Richard Warn, 59, shot multiple times at his home in the upscale suburb of Beachwood on Aug. 9 after his wife reported that she couldn’t get inside after her return from a European vacation. Warn had flown with his wife to Newark, New Jersey, for an overseas connection but then decided not to continue the trip because of motion sickness. Instead, he drove home in a rental car.

A SWAT team accompanied detectives to a modest home in South Euclid that Warn had bought in 2011 for his sons, 31-year-old Michael Warn and 29-yearold Mark Warn. The SWAT team breached the front door of the home with an armored vehicle and was met by high-powered rifle fire that shattered the vehicle’s ballistic glass window. The SWAT team returned fire and then waited 12 hours before going inside and finding the brothers dead from what a medical examiner has ruled to be self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

Beachwood Police Chief Gary Haba has said it’s unclear whether one or both of the brothers killed their father.

South Euclid Police Chief Kevin Nietert told The Associated Press on Friday that he could only speculate why the Warn brothers would have wanted their father dead. “In this case, we’re going to struggle to get conclusive answers,” Nietert said.

It appeared that the brothers relied on Richard Warn for financial support, Nietert said. They had no jobs, had no apparent presence on social media, and drove an older-model sedan that their father had bought for them.

A Beachwood police report from September 2015 describes Richard Warn’s wife — the brothers’ stepmother — calling 911 from a bathroom because she could hear voices in the home. Police officers found the outside doors locked. Richard Warn soon arrived and said that a car in the driveway belonged to his sons. The brothers told police they were looking for hats.

“Richard said that Michael and Mark were not to be at the house because they no longer lived there,” the police report said.

Later that night, two officers returned to the home and listened to a voice mail Michael Warn had left for his father. Michael Warn said in it that the house he and his brother lived in was uninhabitable because of mold and that people do “crazy things” when they don’t get enough sleep. He then warned his father that if he didn’t provide money, Jehovah might become upset and start burning things.

Nietert believes that both men suffered from mental illness, although he said no records have been found to show they had been diagnosed or had received treatment.

South Euclid police reports show that Michael Warn called police a half-dozen times in 2014, mostly to complain about cars parked too close to his driveway.