Investigators are asking for help after an elderly married couple was found murdered in their Illinois home in a quiet residential area, authorities said.
The bodies of Michael Ladd, 79, and Lois Ladd, 68, were discovered around 10:30 a.m. Monday by a police officer in Edwardsville after one of Lois Ladd’s employees at her chiropractic office called cops and asked them to check on her, the Belleville News-Democrat reports.
“We’re working feverishly right now to get as many leads as we can,” Maj. Jeff Connor of the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis told reporters during a news conference.
Connor declined to give a possible motive for the crime or to provide details of the crime scene. Investigators are now working to establish the couple’s whereabouts within the past few days, he said.
“We are desperately asking any help [from] the public that can help us with this crime,” Connor told reporters. “One of the main things we need right now is the last people to see them alive.”
Lois Ladd ran a practice in Edwardsville called The Last Resort in Whole Body Health, specializing in chiropractic services, pain management and other treatments, the News-Democrat reports. She had been practicing as a pain management specialist for 28 years, according to HealthGrades.com.
Roughly 30 investigators were called to the couple’s home on a private road in a wooded residential area, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports.
Don Ladd, Michael Ladd’s brother, told the newspaper that his brother worked as a general contractor. He specialized in kitchens and bathrooms after starting to work with his father when he was just a teen, according to his LinkedIn profile.
“We have no idea what happened,” Ladd told the newspaper. “We’re all just really upset as a family.”
The couple attended St. Boniface Church in Edwardsville and had no children, a source close to the family told KTVI.
The double homicide shocked neighbors of the couple, including one who said he doesn’t know who would want to harm the Ladds.
“It’s a really scary thing to think that it can happen here,” one neighbor who asked not to be identified told KMOV.
Anyone with information about the case is asked to call investigators at (618) 692-7552.
