Marina City’s first murder

On January 13, 1969, Marina City became the crime scene of its first murder. A retired government employee, despondent over health issues, shot his 89-year-old mother in her 46th floor west tower apartment at 11:19 on a Monday morning.

At 11:30, Vernon A. Meyer, 65, called police to report the crime, then shot himself with a .38 caliber blue steel revolver, a Colt Detective Special with a two-inch barrel that he had purchased at Marshall Field’s the previous year. While sitting on a bed, he put the gun into his mouth and fired twice. A third bullet was later found in the ceiling above him.

When Police Officer Manfred Paschky (1932-1981) arrived 15 minutes later, he went up to the apartment with a man who worked at Marina City and from whom Paschky had obtained a key. They found Lydia and Vernon in the bedroom, Lydia in what the reporting officer described as a “hospital bed” and Vernon in a double bed nearby.

Lydia Meyer had been shot in the head, the bullet entering her left temple and exiting the right side of her face.

The first homicide detective arrived just after noon and the coroner got there at 2:30 p.m. An assistant deputy chief of police was also on scene. Lydia and Vernon were taken to Henrotin Hospital and pronounced dead on arrival at 2:40 p.m.

In Vernon’s wallet was $80. In the living room, a note (left) was found in a typewriter. It was addressed to Vernon’s wife, Virginia Meyer, who also lived at Marina City. (The redactions were made by the Chicago Police Department.) Virginia was at work when Detective Richard Morask notified her and asked her to identify the bodies of her husband and mother-in-law. She told police Vernon “had been complaining of general ill health and had been going to various doctors.” Ever since Lydia returned from a nursing home on January 6, 1969, Vernon, according to his wife, “had been quite depressed over the health” of his mother, who, she said, “was bed-ridden and had to have a nurse take care of her.”

On February 5, 1969, a coroner’s inquest determined after hearing the testimony of Detective Bernard Kelly that a murder and suicide had occurred.