Police believe Wayne Zickefoose shot his wife Herminia Zickefoose, who was sitting in a chair in the backyard of their Anaheim home, in the head with a handgun the night of June 13, before shooting his 3-year-old son three times, firing at and missing his 5-year-old son and then finally shooting himself in the head near a fence that blocks the backyard swimming pool.
Only the boys survived.
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Herminia Zickefoose was a 39-year-old native of Baguio in the Philippines. Her 51-year-old husband–and killer–owned an automobile repair business in Buena Park and shared advice in online columns on investing and something known as theta healing.
Money problems may have sent the Wisconsin native over the edge; the Zickefooses were awash in credit-card debt and facing the foreclosure of their home in the 500 block of North Fairhaven Street, the Orange County Register reports.
Police believe the shootings began around 8 p.m. Sunday, June 13.
The 5-year-old Zickefoose boy, who was not identified, reached a colleague of his father's the morning of June 14. Police were then alerted.
Officers arrived at the Fairhaven home to find the 3-year-old hiding behind trash cans in his yard and clinging to life with gunshot wounds to his chest, shoulder and abdomen.
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.