VENTURA : Couple Found Dead of Gunshot Wounds

An elderly Ventura couple were found in their bed with gunshot wounds to their heads Thursday in what police believe was a homicide-suicide prompted by ill health.

The bodies of Rex Pratt, 79, and his 75-year-old wife, Marie, were found Thursday afternoon by their gardener and a family friend, said Ventura police, who found a small-caliber handgun nearby. Police released no other details. Coroner’s investigators will conduct an autopsy today.

“They were perfect candidates for murder-suicide if that’s what it was because she was a stroke victim and she was his life,” neighbor Leslie Avila said.

Marie Pratt suffered a stroke about 15 years ago and seldom left the house, neighbors said. When she and her husband went to Our Lady of the Assumption Church on Telegraph Road each Sunday, she had to be transported in a wheelchair.

She could not straighten her left hand, wore a brace on one of her legs, and had difficulty speaking, neighbor Eloise Schmidt said. The two women used to go to the beach together 25 years ago when the Pratts moved into their house on Eva Street, she said.

Eloise and her husband, Lyle, were considered to be the Pratts’ best friends on the block. Lyle Schmidt said Rex Pratt had prostate cancer and a bad back, although Pratt did not complain of pain except for the occasional aches. Pratt, who sold coffee for Farmers Brothers Coffee before he retired, golfed twice a week.

Although the Schmidts and other neighbors were astounded by the violent incident, they believed that ill health could be the only motive.

“It it’s anything, that’s what I’d have to say,” Lyle Schmidt said. The couple speculated that Rex Pratt must have pulled the trigger, an image neither one could understand or see coming. The Pratts did not seem frustrated or depressed lately, they said.

Sandy and Phil Adair, the Pratts’ next-door neighbors, described Rex Pratt as a man who was always smiling and friendly. He often brought over roses from his well-tended garden, or fruit.

“He was the perfect neighbor,” Phil Adair said. “He was just the guy that everybody liked.”

“He always waved at you when you drove by,” his wife added.

The Schmidts and Kent Towers, who also lived next-door to the Pratts, recalled that Marie Pratt also seemed to be in good spirits lately. She continued to send birthday, Easter or no-occasion notes signed with happy faces and lately closing with “The Pratt kids.”

“They were real nice, good folks,” Tower said. “ . . . I had tears welling up in my eyes all day about it.”

The Pratts left a son, Greg. The Schmidts said the son is in his 50s and lives in Baja California, Mexico.