By Adrienne Fawcett
The last thing they heard was gunfire. The suicide notes and eyewitness attest to that. But what did James and Frieda Leider Stein hear before the gun shots that ended their lives in an apparent murder-suicide at Fort Sheridan Cemetery last Thursday afternoon? The distant rumble of the noon Metra train? The beeping of earth-moving trucks from the golf course nearby? Wind chimes jingling from a tree?
"It was a very warm and sunny day with a bit of a stiff breeze," said John Tannahill, chief of the Lake County Forest Preserve Ranger Police. "The place they did it, it was right behind a little birdhouse."
Caretakers Joe Rafferty and Chuck Garrett had just finished seeding a new burial plot in Section 15, a quiet cove in the cemetery's northeast corner where the newest graves are located. Mr. Rafferty left for a while, and Mr. Garrett headed over to another section to lay more seed. "I saw a man get out of the car and take out a wheelchair," said Mr. Garrett. "Not long after, I heard a loud bang and I wasn't sure what it was. So I looked up and saw the man standing there. And then I heard another bang and the man wasn't standing there any more."
The section of Fort Sheridan Cemetery where James and Frieda Stein died on Thursday
Mr. Garrett said gun shots are not uncommon in the cemetery. "A lot of people, they come down and lay wreaths, do a salute. Most every time we bury someone there's a 21-gun salute," he said. But after the second shot rang out five minutes after the first, Mr. Garrett rushed to the scene and found the bodies of an elderly woman wrapped in a blanket and slumped over in a wheelchair, and a man laying just in front of her with a face so pale that Mr. Garrett thought he was wearing a latex mask. "He was so, so, so white," he said."I yelled and screamed and hollared 'does anyone need any help!?' And then I saw a call to 911 was necessary."
"A gun shot like that in the chest, you would die immediately," said Lake County Coroner Richard L. Keller, noting that the weapon was a revolver. He said Mrs. Stein left a note saying she had cancer, was failing and did not want to continue living like that. "His note simply stated he can't live without Frieda, which was her name," said Dr. Keller, adding that the Steins also left their attorney's phone number and a plan for their funeral arrangements. Mrs. Stein's physician later identified her cancer as stomach cancer and said she was receiving hospice care. She was 72 and her husband was 73.
Except for the deer that get impaled jumping over the cemetery's sharp, angular fence, Mr. Garrett said no one has ever died on the premises, at least not that he knows of and he's been burying bodies at Fort Sheridan for 30 years. He's had a few sleepless nights since witnessing the murder-suicide on May 14. "I felt really goofy when it happened," he said. "It was weird and different and I felt a lot of shoulda-coulda-wouldas. But after it's all done I see it happened the way the couple wanted it to."
The thing that haunts him--aside from the image of the elderly man lovingly helping his frail wife out of the car---is the question of why they chose to die at Fort Sheridan, a cemetery between Westleigh Road and Lake Michigan that's the final resting place to some 2,453 career veterans of the U.S. Armed Forces, those who died during active duty, and their dependents.
"Are they going to be buried here?," he wondered. "Was he a vet? Did they know someone here? I know it's beautiful and peaceful, and there are a lot of good souls running around this place. But why here?" Neither he nor Mr. Rafferty, who has worked at Fort Sheridan for 13 years, recognized the Steins or their car as regular visitors.
Ranger Chief Tannahill said police speculate the couple chose the cemetery because they lived nearby in Highland Park and perhaps had some connection to the military. "It was her second marriage, his first. Maybe her first husband is buried there," he said. "Maybe he was a World War II vet? We don't know." He said the couple is survived by a son.
Services for the Steins will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 19, at the chapel of Shalom Memorial Park in Arlington Heights.
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