Nurse who found murder-suicide couple seeks £9m

A NURSE who discovered the bodies of a multimillionaire American businessman and his wife in a murder-suicide case is suing their estate and seeking damages for emotional trauma.

Lisa Ann Hayes, who regularly cared for Alexandra Jacobs, wife of prominent investor Irwin Jacobs, walked into their Minnesota mansion in April 2019 to find them both dead. Investigators found that Irwin had shot his wife before turning the gun on himself, amid health and financial troubles.

Ms Hayes’s attorney, Brian Stofferahn, said she has been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder by two doctors and has been unable to work since the incident. She claims that Irwin Jacobs’s actions were injurious to her health and “constituted wilful, wanton and malicious conduct”. She is reportedly seeking $12.5 million (£9 million).

Irwin Jacobs was a nationally known investor in the US who made a fortune as a corporate raider in the 1980s and 1990s. He was dubbed “Irv the liquidator” for his practice of breaking companies apart and then selling them off.

The Jacobs family’s lawyer Steven Sitek, who plans to seek dismissal of the lawsuit, called it “a grotesque betrayal” by a once trusted caregiver who had been treated like family.