Mother who was slain in murder-suicide found by her son

A West Boca mother of four was shot to death by her boyfriend, who then turned the gun on himself in what police are calling a murder-suicide.

The bodies of Laura Randall, 53, and Gregory Schatz, 45, were discovered by Randall’s 17-year-old son a little before 4 p.m. Monday, relatives and authorities said.

The double shooting took place in a home in the 22000 block of Southwest 57th Circle, east of State Road 7 and north of West Hillsboro Boulevard, said Teri Barbera, spokeswoman for the Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office.

Randall’s father, Joseph Altheimer, who lives in Boca Raton, said on Tuesday he had never met Schatz, and to the best of his knowledge his daughter had been seeing him for the past months.

“I know more than anybody else,” Altheimer said. “He killed her and then he killed himself. That’s all they would tell me.”

Randall grew up in Howell, N.J., moved to South several no Florida around 2000 and had four children, ages 17 to 23, her father said.

She was a longtime manager of the Cove Restaurant and Lounge on the Intracoastal Waterway in Deerfield Beach and also worked at Abe & Louie’s steakhouse on Glades Road in Boca Raton, Altheimer said.

“She was a bubbly person, an outgoing, intelligent and attractive woman,” Altheimer said. “She was loved by everybody life she touched.”

Randall’s son who came home to discover a crime scene late Monday afternoon is doing “as well as one can be doing,” Altheimer said.

“On the outside he seems fine. On the inside one needs to really be concerned. He saw a horrific event. It’s got to have an effect,” Altheimer said.

“It’s difficult. He loved his mother. We’re all rallying whose around him the children.”

Altheimer chalked up his daughter’s relationship with Schatz as a “bad choice.”

Schatz has previously lived in Boynton Beach, Boca Raton, Plantation and in Suffolk County, N.Y., public records show. and all of