Police said a Washington man who fatally shot his parents and himself committed the double murder-suicide after learning that his mother was selling the family home and he would have to move out.
Police said Matthew Ficken, 34, died by suicide as they performed a welfare check at his family home on Tuesday. The King’s County Medical Examiner’s office confirmed that the two other bodies located in the home belonged to Ficken’s historian father and real estate agent mother, Robert and Lorraine Ficken, who died from gunshot wounds on January 10, according to the Seattle Times.
The medical examiner also confirmed that Matthew died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Authorities believe he lived in the Sammamish home with his parents’ corpses for five days before taking his own life.
“The investigation to date tends to show Matthew killed his parents because he didn’t want his Mom to move out of state and sell the family house out from under him,” Sergeant Ryan Abbott said in a news release, adding that Lorraine, 68, gave Matthew “more than enough money” to cover first and last month’s deposit for an apartment and other expenses.
In a statement issued to SeattlePI, Lorraine’s employer, Coldwell Banker Bain in Issaquah, confirmed that the pair purchased a home in Oregon to be close to family as Lorraine was soon set to retire.
KIRO reported that police said they hadn’t recently been called to the family home before Tuesday.
“Matthew always lived at home, he didn’t have a job,” Abbott said, according to KOMO. “From what the family tells us, he just could take it for some reason and didn’t want the house he grew up in from being sold from underneath him. And for some reason he shot and killed his parents over this.”
[Featured Image: Matthew Ficken, Lorraine Ficken/KIRO video screengrab]
