A woman identified as Jennair Gerardot allegedly shot a woman who she believed was having an affair with her husband. She came up with a plan of revenge, one that would lead to a bloody murder-suicide and stun a quiet Pennsylvania town, authorities said onTuesday.
Police in Pennsylvania,USA said the deceased,Meredith Chapman, was her husband’s 33-year old mistress. She also happened to have worked with Gerardot’s husband at the University of Delaware.
After finding out about the affair, Gerardot plotted a “calculated attack,” police said. “There were emails and text messages indicating what she planned to do,” Radnor Township Police Superintendent William Colarulo said in a news conference on Tuesday.
On Monday, Gerardot took a train from Delaware to Chapman’s new home in a tranquil residential neighborhood in Radnor, wearing a wig in disguise, Radnor Township Police Lieutenant.Christopher Flanagan said in the news conference.
Gerardot broke through Chapman’s front door, stopping to clean the shards of broken glass off the floor.
With her Taurus Tracker .357 revolver in hand, she waited for Chapman to get home. As soon as Chapman walked through the door, police said, Gerardot shot her.
Then, Flanagan said, Gerardot turned the gun on herself.
When police arrived in response to a 911 calls, both women were lying dead near the kitchen.
Melissa DeJoseph, 40, who lives two doors down from Chapman’s residence, told the Philadelphia Inquirer she saw Chapman walking out of her Audi and into her house Monday evening just before she heard the loud sound.
“In my head, I was like, ‘Is that a gunshot? No, it can’t be a gunshot,’ ” she said.
Outside the bloody scene, police came across the man who brought the two women together Gerardot’s husband, Mark. “My wife might be inside,” he told police.
Mark Gerardot, who lived with his wife in Wilmington, Del., was supposed to meet Chapman for dinner that night. When she hadn’t shown up, he became concerned and showed up at her house in Radnor, police said.
The tragedy “rocked the world” of the township and the surrounding neighborhood, Flanagan said, describing it as a “tight knit community” with many children and families. “Nobody wants to see something like this happen in their neighborhood,” Flanagan said.
(Washington post)
