Son, Police Seek Motive in Man’s Alleged Killing of Wife

Outside Long Beach Optical Co. on Wednesday, Terry McLendon smoked cigarettes and tried to figure out why his 70-year-old father might have shot McLendon’s ailing mother to death in the couple’s apartment above the business.

“I’m totally shocked. I really don’t understand it,” said McLendon, of Anaheim. “I had dinner with them the week before Christmas. Everything seemed fine to me.”

Police said the body of Lois McLendon, 71, was discovered Tuesday morning in the couple’s living quarters above their shop in the 1400 block of Santa Fe Avenue in west Long Beach.

Authorities said an employee arrived for work about 9 a.m. Tuesday and saw a note on the front door saying “Closed due to death” and giving directions for customers to pick up their orders.

After going inside and up the stairs to the living quarters, the worker found Lois McLendon in bed with several gunshot wounds to the head. Minutes later, she told police, she saw McLendon’s husband, Wilton, acting incoherently in the shop. As she dialed 911, she said, he left.

Police arrested him about 2 1/2 hours later after he was involved in a minor traffic accident in nearby Signal Hill. Officers there took him to a hospital to be checked for injuries. When they received a bulletin about the slaying, they notified Long Beach detectives.

McLendon was being held without bail in Los Angeles County Jail on suspicion of murder.

Officer David Marander, a department spokesman, said investigators found a note in the apartment with instructions for taking care of the couple’s cat and two birds, but no explanation for the shooting. They also recovered a handgun.

Police did not release any conclusions Wednesday about the possible motive. They said, however, that the slaying may have occurred as early as Monday night.

Although his mother suffered from health problems related to a heart transplant seven years ago, Terry McLendon said, he did not know whether that had a role in the slaying.

“I can’t say or even speculate about what happened,” said McLendon, who was calling defense attorneys and police in an attempt to reach his jailed father. “They were doing OK. My mother had ups and downs, and my father had health problems of his own, but they did not appear to be that serious.”

McLendon said his parents had been married 51 years and had run the business, which makes safety and prescription glasses, for almost 40 years. They had moved to the Santa Fe Avenue site in the early 1990s.

Up the block, at the Las Comadres Mexican Restaurant where the couple routinely dined on Thursdays, manager Trinidad Ramirez said they “gave no indication to us of any problem. They just seemed like good, God-fearing people.”