Relatives say it was a married couple in their 70s and 80s who were the victims of what’s being investigated as a double homicide case in South Davis.
Yolo County coroner’s officials have not yet released the names of the couple, whose bodies were discovered at about 9:20 p.m. Sunday after their daughter called the Davis Police Department to request a welfare check.
However, family members have confirmed the couple were Oliver “Chip” Northup Jr., 87, and 76-year-old Claudia Marie Maupin.
According to the Davis police log, the daughter had not heard from the parents all day, but had gone by the residence in the 4000 block of Cowell Boulevard and saw the car on scene and lights on in the home, one in a row of light-brown condominiums that line the south side of the street.
Information about the cause of death also has not been released. Police say there were signs of forced entry at the residence but did not elaborate.
“It’s just a disturbing thing,” said Greg Gibbs, a next-door neighbor whose home shares a wall with that of the slain couple. While Davis is not immune to violent crime, “to have one right next door, with people we know, it’s very concerning.”
Gibbs said he and his wife Pam “heard quite a bit of noise around 9:00 or so,” but later learned it was likely caused by police officers who had arrived to check on the couple. Other than that, they heard nothing unusual coming from their neighbors’ home.
Officers made contact with the Gibbses around 11:30 p.m. to advise them to stay inside their home, but it wasn’t until this morning that they learned their neighbors apparently had been murdered.
“They were very, very nice people,” Gibbs said of the couple, who had lived next door for about five years.
Gibbs, who serves as president of the board of his neighborhood association, said board members recently met with residents of Vista Way, the street directly to the south of Cowell Boulevard hit recently by several residential burglaries.
Apparently, the thieves would gain access to the homes by going onto the condominium property and jumping a fence separating the condos from the homes’ back yards.
Residents of that and other nearby streets have reported 18 home break-ins, petty thefts and grand thefts over the past three months, according to the Davis Police Department’s interactive crime map.
But whether the spate of property crimes has any connection to the homicides, police aren’t saying. No motive or suspects have been identified.
The couple’s deaths mark Davis’ first homicide case since Oct. 1, 2011, when police say James Elron Mings fatally strangled Kevin Gerard Seery in the victim’s J Street apartment in what was an apparent case of assisted suicide. Mings, who has been charged with murder, is slated to go to trial later this month.
And today’s scene is just a stone’s throw from the Clearwater Apartments — formerly the Tennis Club Apartments — where 35-year-old Dennis Edward Thrower was gunned down in the doorway of his second-floor apartment on Nov. 18, 2004.
Thrower, who also was armed, fired off his own shots before he died, striking one of his assailants, who left a blood trail through the apartment complex as he fled the scene. Eric Steven Chase Jr. is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for the crime.
For complete coverage, see Tuesday’s Davis Enterprise.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @LaurenKeene
