Deaths of Man, Wife May Be Double Suicide : Sherman Oaks: The possibility that a bit-part actress killed her husband, then shot herself, is still under investigation.

A novice actress and her husband, who was training to become a school police officer, died in their Sherman Oaks apartment early Monday in what police described as an apparent double suicide.

But investigators were still looking into the possibility that Victoria Howden, 26, fatally shot her husband, Charles House, 40, before turning a handgun on herself, Los Angeles Police Lt. Richard Blankenship said.

Each died of a single wound to the chest after Howden phoned a friend saying that House had just shot himself, Blankenship said. The shootings, overheard by neighbors, occurred about 2 a.m. inside the couple’s apartment in the 4600 block of Willis Avenue.

Howden appeared on an episode of the NBC sitcom “Dear John” on Nov. 28, uttering a single line in which she rebuffs a man in a bar. It was her first acting part, said the show’s executive producer, Hal Cooper, who remembered the English native because she lacked a green card and had trouble getting paid.

“I knew it was her first job as an actress,” Cooper recalled Monday, adding that he believed that she had modeling experience. “It was a nothing job but she was excited about it.”

House was hired by the Los Angeles Unified School District in February and was in his 10th week of training in the district’s police academy, a district spokesman said.

Blankenship said Howden had reportedly been despondent over a friend’s recent suicide. But when she phoned a friend early Monday, she said her husband had just shot himself and she didn’t know what to do, Blankenship said.

The friend’s husband kept Howden on the line while the woman contacted police from another phone, Blankenship said.

When paramedics arrived, they found House fatally wounded in the apartment’s dining area and Howden dead in their bedroom. He was pronounced dead at UCLA Medical Center.

Because the handgun was found near Howden, investigators believe that she either followed her husband’s suicide or possibly shot him before killing herself, Blankenship said.

He said investigators hoped that autopsies and forensic reports would resolve the question, but were inclined to believe that the tragedy was a double suicide because of Howden’s call to her friend.

“In all likelihood, they each took their own life,” Blankenship said.