Karen Solomon disappeared after her Worcester police officer husband was found dead at home, and the search for the wanted 58-year-old ended in woods near a rehabilitation hospital just before his funeral week.
Kurt Solomon, 57, had served 31 years with the Worcester Police Department and had two sons. His wife was being sought on an arrest warrant tied to the death inside the couple’s Wildwood Avenue home.
The search ended Monday afternoon, when medical workers at Fairlawn Rehabilitation Hospital came across a body in a wooded area near the facility, Worcester Police Chief Paul Saucier said.
Authorities believe the body was Karen Solomon’s. A handgun was found nearby, though police said it was not a service weapon. Investigators also had preliminary evidence of a gunshot wound.
“We believe this case is a tragic muder-suicide that occurred, and we still have plenty of work to do as far as wrapping up all the pieces to this,” Saucier said.
The discovery came one day before Kurt Solomon’s wake and two days before his funeral.
Karen Solomon had been wanted on a charge of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing bodily injury. Police had spent days searching the Worcester neighborhood after her husband’s body was discovered.
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The first public glimpse of her movements came from a Ring camera outside a veterinary medical facility about a mile from the home.
The camera recorded Karen Solomon around 5:40 a.m. last Tuesday, roughly 10 minutes after officers found her husband dead. She walked past the animal center with a slight slouch and looked back over her left shoulder at one point.
Another video released to the media showed her going into the water at Coes Pond. Saucier said the wooded area where the body was recovered was just over a half of a mile from that pond.
Worcester District Attorney Joseph Early declined last week to say how Kurt Solomon died and referred to the case as a domestic incident. Saucier later said that wording came from Massachusetts state law.
For Worcester police, the investigation put officers in the position of searching for a suspect while mourning a longtime member of their own department.
The New England Police Benevolent Association said Kurt Solomon dedicated more than three decades of his life to serving Worcester and was known as “an incredibly dependable officer, colleague and friend.”
“The New England Police Benevolent Association extends its deepest condolences to the family, friends and fellow officers of Worcester Police Officer Kurt Solomon, a 31-year veteran of the Worcester Police Department and valued member of the NEPBA family,” the group said.
Saucier also read part of a letter from the couple’s family Monday, after the search ended in another death.
“The nightmare of the past week has left our family heartbroken and rudderless,” the letter said.
The family also expressed gratitude to the officers investigating the case.
The Worcester case was not the only recent killing investigation to put a public safety family inside a spouse’s death case.
In Missouri, the evidence that changed the case against assistant fire chief Jeremy Perrien came from a hidden folder on his wife’s cellphone and a crime lab review of the vehicle where she died.
Perrien, 45, had spent more than a year saying Shelby Perrien, 31, killed herself during a June 25, 2025, drive home from a bar in Cape Girardeau.
An affidavit says Perrien told authorities his wife said, “I’m sorry, I’m a piece of s—,” pulled out a .380 caliber handgun and shot herself in the head.
His story shifted when deputies asked whether he stopped after the shooting.
“I lied, I pulled over on Kingshighway to p—,” Perrien allegedly told investigators.
He also allegedly told authorities the ride had been “non-argumentative.”
Investigators later found a 90-second video on Shelby Perrien’s phone that had been recorded about a month before her death. The affidavit says the recording showed Jeremy Perrien striking her, grabbing her by the throat, choking her and repeatedly punching her.
Investigators said Perrien threatened to kill her multiple times during the video.
The physical evidence also cut against the suicide account. Crime lab analysis of blood spatter and evidence inside the vehicle determined Shelby Perrien could not have pulled the trigger, authorities said.
Perrien was arrested Friday, Aug. 21, at Fire Station Four in Scott County, Missouri, after a 14-month investigation.
He was charged with second-degree murder, felony harassment, domestic assault and two counts of tampering with physical evidence in a felony prosecution. He is being held without bond at the Stoddard County Jail.
A California fire captain’s stabbing death brought a different kind of spouse case, with a guilty plea and a prior fatal stabbing conviction.
Yolanda Olejniczak Marodi, 54, admitted in early August that she murdered her wife, Rebecca “Becky” Marodi, 49, a veteran Cal Fire captain.
Rebecca Marodi was found fatally stabbed at the couple’s Ramona home in February 2025. Prosecutors said surveillance video showed her fleeing the home on Feb. 17 as Yolanda Marodi chased her.
The firefighter had multiple stab wounds, and authorities said injuries to her neck, chest and back were consistent with a stabbing.
Yolanda Marodi’s plea to second-degree murder also included an admission that she had a prior serious felony conviction from the 2000 stabbing death of her husband, James Joseph Olejniczak.
She had pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in that earlier case in 2003 and was released in 2013, according to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Investigators said Yolanda Marodi fled to Mexico after Rebecca Marodi was killed and stayed there for more than a month before she was arrested in Mexicali and returned to the United States.
Yolanda Marodi had initially pleaded not guilty before changing her plea to guilty to second-degree murder. She is scheduled to be sentenced Sept. 2.
