The Final Act : Elderly, Ailing Couple Meet Death in Their Home

Leslie Hypes, 88, spent Monday morning giving his Anaheim neighbors peaches canned from a backyard tree.

He also called neighbor Harold Phillips and said, “First chance you get, come over and pick these peaches. No sense in these going to waste.”

That evening, Hypes shot his 87-year-old wife, Elsie, with a large-caliber revolver and then turned the gun on himself, Anaheim police said, killing them both.

Stanley Loy of Santa Ana, a friend of the family for 40 years, found the couple in their mobile home Monday evening and called police. Paramedics who arrived at 6:30 p.m. found the couple’s personal effects laid on a bureau, including a Manila envelope addressed to Loy, who is executor of their estate.

Police Detective David Tuttle said he also found Leslie Hypes’ wallet on the bureau, along with papers addressed to family members.

“It was obviously a prepared situation,” Police Sgt. John Harradon said. “Right now, it looks like a mercy killing on the part of the husband and then a suicide.”

There was no sign of forced entry or a struggle in the home, he added.

Detective Tuttle said that based on preliminary conversations with family members, whose names have not been released, Elsie Hypes was despondent over her blindness, which came on suddenly about two years ago. He said the aging couple also “may not have wanted to face life without each other.”

Katharine Blake, who lived next door to the Hypeses in the mobile home park on South Haster Street, said Tuesday that Leslie Hypes’ sister visited the park earlier in the day and expressed shock and dismay that “her brother would do something like that.”

“They had birthdays on the same day, June 15. They always get together on the birthday. This year, they had ice cream and cake, and he evidently had no thought of it then,” Blake said.

She described Leslie Hypes as a very friendly man, “who got all over the park and talked to people.”

Blake said park residents, including herself, are shocked at the shooting.

“I just think life became too much of a burden for them . . . ,” she added. “Let’s face it, they had nothing to live for.”

She said both the Hypeses were ill, he with a broken hip that did not heal properly and she with pneumonia. As for Elsie Hypes’ blindness, “I don’t know what caused it,” she said. “He (Leslie) always blamed it on a fall she had after getting sick from a can of chili. But I think it just happened over time.”

Leslie Hypes was in pain from a broken hip that never really healed, she said. After several surgeries, the hip, with a pin implanted, became infected. The pin had to be removed, leaving him with a weakened and painful joint.

Elsie Hypes also had been ill recently. “There’s a girl named Annie who comes to give her a walk around the court, and I haven’t seen her lately,” Blake said. “One thing Leslie always said was if anything ever happened to Elsie, he wouldn’t want to live.”

Elsie had only one child from a former marriage, she said, a daughter in Santa Cruz whose name has not been released.

Phillips, who often took the couple to the doctor for checkups, said Leslie Hypes called him Monday. When he arrived at the couple’s trailer on Lot 54, he said, “Elsie was having a spell. She said, ‘I feel half dizzy.’ I helped her to bed and told her to put cool cloths on her head.”

That’s the last he heard from them.

Phillips said he believes that chronic pain was part of the reason. “I’d see him in the garden grinding his teeth, suffering untold misery, but not saying a word. On top of that, I think Elsie’s going blind must have just put him over the brink.”