Irwin Jacobs with wife & 3 daughters |
A prominent Minnesota businessman and his ailing, wheelchair-bound wife have been found dead inside their sprawling mansion in what a friend of the couple described as a murder-suicide.
According to the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, officers responded to Irwin and Alexandra Jacobs’s Tanager Hill estate at 1700 Shoreline Drive in Orono shortly after 8.30am and discovered the bodies of a man and a woman in a bedroom.
Dennis Mathisen, a close friend of the family, confirmed to the Minneapolis Star Tribune that the deceased were the Jacobs.
According to Mathisen, Irwin fatally shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. He was 77 years old.
The couple were reportedly found lying in a bed a next to a handgun.
The friend said he learned of the deaths and Irwin Jacobs' role in the murder-suicide from the man’s grown son, Mark.
Police have not officially identified the deceased, but said there is no risk to the public and that no suspect is being sought in their deaths.
Mathisen revealed to the paper that Alexandra Jacobs had been confined to a wheelchair for the past year and was showing signs of dementia, and that her husband was distraught over the state of her health.
When Mathisen last spoke to his friend three days before the tragedy, he said Irwin Jacobs sounded upbeat.