Unsealed court documents reveal new details about five deaths in Sheffield murder-suicide

Sheffield — Domestic discord drove Justine Wilbur to consider ending her marriage in the dark hours preceding the grisly murder-suicide her husband perpetrated on her and her three young children, court documents suggest.

Search warrants and affidavits issued shortly after the bodies of the family members were found on the morning of March 13 in their Sheffield home were unsealed this week, revealing that Luke Karpinski likely killed his wife by slitting her throat the day before setting their house on fire.

 The cause and precise timing of the deaths of Karpinski, Wilbur and the children remain unclear, pending autopsy results from the state medical examiner’s office in Boston and a final report from State Police, Berkshire County District Attorney Andrea Harrington has said. 

After receiving a call at approximately 7:50 a.m., firefighters responded to the Karpinski house on 1343 Home Road. After battling the blaze, they entered the house at about 8:35 a.m. and found Wilbur dead on the first floor in what appeared to be a “utility/furnace room.” Firefighters could smell gasoline. One found a near-empty gas can in the front yard.

A Great Barrington firefighter who had responded to the scene removed Wilbur’s body from the house and noticed that rigor mortis had set in. After rolling Wilbur over, firefighters then noticed a deep laceration that had severed Wilbur’s windpipe down to the bone and was consistent with an attacker “slicing Wilbur’s throat in the most violent and aggressive manner possible,” the search affidavit said. “Note that the degree of violence associated with this laceration cannot be overstated.” 

The three young children — 7-year-old twins Alex and Zoe, along with Marek, 4 — were found dead in the second-floor master bedroom whose entrance was barricaded by furniture. Their bodies were “huddled together” and “badly damaged by the fire,” the affidavit said.

Two family dogs, both dead, were found in a bathroom closet. Two 20-pound propane tanks were also found. Karpinkski was in a third-floor loft accessible by a ladder. Karpinski’s body was found “in a bed apparently lying down,” the affidavit stated. 

Investigators interviewed several neighbors, as well as Justine Wilbur’s mother, Teresa Wilbur, who said she was not aware of any “domestic issues” between the two. Most of the neighbors agreed with Teresa Wilbur, but others had heard loud arguments coming from the house, one as recently as March 11, when members of a neighboring family heard, at about 10 p.m., “a female yelling” who “sounded like she was in an argument.”  

Another said he observed no interior lights on at the Karpinski residence the evening before the fire. Yet another, a friend of Wilbur’s, said Wilbur had confided to her that Wilbur had almost left her husband at one point “in the past,” but that they had managed to work things out. The couple, both 41, had been married for approximately 20 years. 

On a counter in the master bedroom bath, State Police investigators also found a prescription bottle in Wilbur’s name for oxycodone, a powerful and highly addictive opioid prescribed as a painkiller. 

Wilbur’s Subaru hatchback was found halfway down the driveway with the keys inside. In addition to her cell phone and laptop computer, inside the car was a storage box containing “miscellaneous family related financial paperwork.” In a pocketbook on the front passenger seat was Karpinski’s wallet containing $191.

Shortly after the tragedy, Harrington pronounced the event a murder-suicide with Karpinski the sole assailant. She said Karpinski killed his wife and children and intentionally set fire to the home before committing suicide.

Wilbur was a patent attorney at the Albany firm of Hoffman Warnick. Karpinski worked from home as a patent examiner. The couple, high school sweethearts from Dalton, Mass., and 1996 graduates of Wahconah High School, had recently built a home on the property at 1343 Home Road after moving back to Berkshire County from Virginia. 

The town of Sheffield was rocked by a number of deaths in a two-week span before the Home Road tragedy. Over the previous weekend Sheffield native Samya Stumo, 24, and a 2010 graduate of Mount Everett Regional School, died as a result of the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 near the town of Bishoftu, Ethiopia. On Feb. 28, Jesus A. Santos, 19 and a recent graduate of Mount Everett Regional High School, died in a single-car crash on Berkshire School Road.