The victims were identified as Nephew’s current wife, Kathryn Nephew (Ramsland), 45; their son, Oliver Nephew, 7; Nephew’s ex-wife Erin Abramson, 47; and her son with him, 15-year-old Jacob Nephew.

Abramson and Jacob Nephew were initially found slain at their residence Thursday afternoon after Abramson’s employer, the neighboring city of Superior, Wis., asked Duluth police to perform a welfare check. When they arrived, they found the pair dead from gunshot wounds, Ceynowa said.

After determining Anthony Nephew was a suspect in their slayings, police set up surveillance at another nearby house where he lived along with his wife and younger son. They used a drone to enter the house, where the bodies of Kathryn and Oliver Nephew were found, along with that of the suspected shooter, the chief said.

The investigation remains ongoing, he added.

“This is not something that happens often in our community,” Duluth Mayor Roger Reinert said at a press briefing. “We’re going to grieve, but we’re also going to make sure we support those families and our public safety team.”

Superior Mayor Jim Paine said Abramson was a leader of his city’s environmental services department staff.

“She dedicated her life and her work to protecting public health in Superior and the north woods of Wisconsin, and to protecting the health of Lake Superior,” he said. “Erin was a very valuable employee to the city of Superior and she will be very dearly missed for her work and her personality.”

Anthony Nephew was the author of a 2021 column in the Duluth News-Tribune newspaper about mental health, in which he wrote that most people ignore their struggles until it’s too late to prevent tragedies such as murder-suicides.

“Because they have to, because they’re told to, or because they don’t realize their mind is broken, they keep pushing forward, incurring one psychic injury after another, trauma after trauma, collecting interest, until finally the synapses overload, and they suffer a breakdown,” he wrote.