Stripper Shot Husband and Then Herself, Police Say : Crime: The couple wed seven months ago to allow the British woman to get an immigration permit. Relatives called it a marriage of convenience.

Homicide detectives have concluded that a British stripper found shot to death with her husband in their Sherman Oaks apartment killed him and then committed suicide by turning the revolver on herself, a Los Angeles police official said Wednesday.

Police initially thought the deaths were a double suicide because Victoria Howden phoned a friend and said her husband, Charles House, had shot himself.

But coroner’s reports and forensic evidence show that Howden, 26, fatally shot House, 40, in the head early June 10 after he fell asleep at the dining room table, Lt. Richard Blankenship said.

Then she went into the bedroom and shot herself in the chest with the same .357 magnum revolver, Blankenship said.

The couple wed in Las Vegas about seven months ago to enable the English-born Howden to obtain an immigration permit to live and work in the U.S., according to Blankenship and relatives of House, who described the marriage as one of convenience.

House, a former police officer in his native Kentucky and a former Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy, was training to become an officer for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

Police and relatives said that House’s clean uniform, a packed lunch for the following day, and his plans to spend Father’s Day with his children from a previous marriage were among many signs that he had no plans to take his life.

On Wednesday, the family sources said House had planned to move out of Howden’s apartment and obtain a divorce as soon as he graduated from the school district police academy, where he was excelling.

Howden, who had a bit part on a television sitcom last year, had been despondent since the May 7 suicide of a California Highway Patrol officer with whom she was romantically involved and whose marriage proposal she rejected, Blankenship and a homicide detective said.

The CHP officer, 34-year-old Ronald Webb of Sherman Oaks, referred to Howden in a suicide note. In her own suicide note, Howden asked to be buried next to Webb, police said.

Her motive for killing House is less clear, Blankenship said Wednesday.

On the night he was killed, House had apparently fallen asleep, as was his habit when he worked or studied late, Blankenship said.

When police responded to the 2 a.m. shooting, House was found sitting up in a chair with both hands in his lap, Blankenship said. That, and the fact that his hands were clean, was evidence that he did not fire the gun himself, Blankenship said.

Howden’s hands, however, were covered with blood and residue from the fired revolver, Blankenship said.