Five dead in family murder-suicide
Police found three children, parents shot in their home, with handgun, note nearby
Willow Short was never supposed to survive. According to doctors, she wasn’t even supposed to be born alive.
While still in her mother’s womb, doctors discovered a devastating heart defect. They said she’d likely be delivered stillborn.
But when she arrived, the newborn cried. She was alive.
Six days later, she received a heart transplant and with the help of a stringent course of daily medication, Willow thrived.
Her inspiring story filled the local newspapers, not to mention the New York Times. The Short family legacy, it seemed, was one of perseverance, faith and strength. That changed Saturday. Two years after defying death, police found the toddler and her two older siblings, Liana, 8, and Mark Jr., 5, dead in the living room of their Pennsylvania home.
Nearby were their parents, Megan and Mark Short, also dead, author- ities said. All had been shot. So had the dog.
Officers with the Sinking Spring Borough and Spring Township police departments in southeastern Pennsylvania found a handgun beside one of the deceased adults, though they didn’t specify who, and a handwritten “murder/suicide note” somewhere in the home, according to a statement from the Berks County District Attorney Office.
Authorities have not released a motive, but said the investigation thus far revealed there had been “domestic issues” between Megan Short, 33, and her husband, Mark, 40.
Online, Megan was not shy about those issues, a neighbour told the Reading Eagle.
On July 23, during an exchange on Facebook, Megan Short told Angie Burke, who lives down the street, that she planned to leave her husband. The two were commenting back and forth on a link Burke had posted to an opinion article published in the Washington Post titled “He didn’t hit me. It was still abuse,” Burke told the Eagle.
In it, author Leigh Stein previewed her forthcoming memoir, where she describes the humiliation, manipu- lation and psychological abuse she suffered while dating her ex-boyfriend. Burke provided the newspaper with screenshots of their exchange, recounted here.
“It really does a number on your mental health for sure,” Short commented.
Later, she added: “This is why I am leaving my marriage Angie. 16 years.”
Throughout the conversation, Megan Short said she had found a rental property and was waiting to be approved. She hoped to move to Yardley, she wrote, about an hour and a half from the family’s Sinking Spring home.
Then last week, Burke saw another Facebook post from Megan, the Eagle reported, soliciting friends to help her move. She would need their assistance, Burke said, on Saturday, Aug. 6.
When that day arrived, Burke told the newspaper she was on her way home from the bakery, where she’d picked up a birthday cake for her husband, when she saw not moving trucks, but police. “I just got sick,” Burke said. Police discovered the bodies when a family member called, concerned that Megan had not shown up for a scheduled lunch date, officials said.