2 Dead in Apparent Murder-Suicide : Oxnard: Bodies of Thomas and Linda Shipley are found in their home. Some say they seemed very much in love. Others cite the husband’s temper.

A 43-year-old Oxnard man apparently shot his 40-year-old wife and then killed himself Friday at the couple’s home on South F Street, police said.

The couple were identified as Thomas and Linda Shipley by Ventura County coroner’s officials.

A motive had not yet been determined late Friday, authorities said.

“We’re still talking to family, friends and neighbors,” said Oxnard police spokesman David Keith. “But it appears to be a murder-suicide.”

The bodies were discovered just before 1 p.m. Friday by Thomas Shipley’s mother, who told police she had become concerned when she hadn’t heard from the couple and went to check on them.

Coroner’s officials said the cause of death for both was gunshots to the upper body, but they had not determined late Friday how many shots were fired.

According to neighbors, the couple had lived in the modest but well-kept home for about eight years. Linda Shipley’s son, a student at Buena High School, lived with them.

Neighbors said Thomas Shipley was a plumber and worked at the Port Hueneme Navy base. Until recently, Linda Shipley worked at a dentist’s office, but left that job to take landscaping classes at a local community college.

Neighbors said she spent hours in her garden, carefully putting in rock borders and planting flowers and vegetables.

“She just planted those tomato plants,” said Edna Miranda, pointing toward several young plants in the Shipleys’ yard that are just beginning to creep up a homemade latticework of wood and twine.

The Shipleys were often seen together in the mornings drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes on the tiny front porch of the house, neighbors said. They described the couple as pleasant and--at least from outward appearances--happy.

“He used to bring her roses all the time,” said Sandra Benavides, whose grandmother lives across the street.

“They looked so much in love,” agreed her mother, Martha Benavides. “They were nice people. They were always together.”

A few years ago, Martha Benavides said, the couple had tried to start a Neighborhood Watch. “They cared about the community,” she said.

But other nearby residents, all of whom declined to give their names, said Thomas Shipley had a bad temper and was known to yell at neighbors, overreacting to the noise of a lawn mower or neighborhood children.

Miranda said the last time she saw the couple alive was Thursday afternoon, when both were out in their yard. Thomas Shipley was pacing up and down his driveway, Miranda said, and he seemed agitated.

“He looked like he was waiting for something or somebody,” she said. Eventually, his mother arrived and all three went inside, she said.