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Foul play is not suspected in the deaths of gambling news website operator Kenneth B. "The Shrink" Weitzner and his longtime wife, Jacqueline, who were both found dead this past Saturday in Chesapeake, Virginia, USA.
The deaths came about because of a "suicide pact" between the couple, said Bob Oman, owner of the Oman Funeral Home & Crematoria in Chesapeake, in an exclusive interview Monday night with Gambling911.com. The funeral home is handling funeral arrangements for the Weitzners.
"The bodies were turned over to us today by the Tidewater District medical examiner," Oman said. "There will be a memorial service here for the Weitzners on Tuesday, and then a day or two later they will be cremated, as per the wishes of the family."
The medical examiner's office would not have turned the bodies over to the funeral home so quickly if foul play were suspected in the deaths, Oman said.
"If there was any suspicion of foul play whatsoever, the medical examiner would be conducting a full investigation and we wouldn't have gotten the bodies," Oman said. "But that (foul play) is apparently not the case. There were no autopsies. There were no toxologicial tests. The bodies won't be embalmed, just cremated."
When a death appears to be an obvious suicide, authorities, if there are no special circumstances, often will not conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death.
Oman described the couple's deaths as a "double suicide" and said it was part of a "suicide pact" where both Weitzners apparently agreed to mutally commit suicide.
Oman said he was told that by authorities who investigated the deaths, although he added that he was not given specific details.
Ken Weitzner ran the website Eye on Gambling (www.eog.com).
Notices posted on that website by one of his step-sons announced the deaths--"They took their own lives"-- and attributed them to "sleeping pills" and "carbon monoxide," with no further details given.
In most cases, a suicide note is left when there is a suicide, but Oman said he did not know if one was left in this case.
Weitzner was Jewish and his wife was not.
Under the rules of Judaism, cremation is frowned upon because it is seen as desecrating the human body, which is holy.
"It's unusual but not unheard of for Jews to be cremated," Oman said. "Especially if they are not very religious."
By Tom Somach
Gambling911.com Staff Writer
