Nancy Lee Lindwedel Dancer, a 78-year-old White/Caucasian woman from Summersville, West Virginia, was killed on February 19, 2026, inside the home she shared with family members in the Tara Estates area of the city. Her obituary identifies her as Nancy Lee Lindwedel, born October 23, 1947, in Lake Charles, Louisiana, the daughter of John Franklin Smith and Mary Fontenot Smith. She had been a homemaker.
The circumstances surrounding her death emerged only after authorities were called to the family residence on Ashley Lane, where a devastating scene involving three members of the same household was discovered.
Shortly after 5 p.m. that Thursday, Nicholas County 911 received a report that three people suffering from severe head trauma had been found inside the residence. Summersville police officers responded along with the West Virginia State Police and the Nicholas County Sheriff’s Office. Inside, authorities found Nancy, her daughter Dawn Morrow, and Dawn’s husband, Douglas Morrow, unconscious and unresponsive. All three were dead. A West Virginia State Police Crime Scene Team was called to process the house, and the bodies were subsequently transported to the West Virginia State Medical Examiner’s Office for autopsies. Police initially treated the deaths as an active investigation while assuring the community that they did not believe there was an ongoing danger to the public.
As investigators reconstructed what happened, Summersville Police Chief Brad Reed identified Douglas Morrow as the shooter. According to the preliminary findings released by police, Douglas shot his wife, Dawn, and his mother-in-law, Nancy, in the front portion of the house. He then went into a bedroom and fatally shot himself. Authorities characterized the incident as a double murder-suicide and said the evidence indicated that it was isolated to the people inside the residence. Nancy and Dawn were described by police as having suffered apparent gunshot wounds.
The deaths were discovered by another family member who also lived in the house. Police said that person had been away at work when the shootings occurred and returned home a little after 5 p.m., found the three bodies and called 911. Investigators questioned that resident, who reportedly told them he had no idea what could have driven Douglas Morrow to kill his wife and mother-in-law. Chief Reed said investigators had found no indication that anyone else was involved. The available reporting did not identify a publicly established motive for the killings.
There was therefore no surviving murder suspect to arrest. Douglas Morrow, the person police identified as responsible for killing Nancy and Dawn, died by suicide during the same incident. Police specifically said they were not looking for additional suspects and that no other individuals were believed to have participated in the shootings. Because the identified shooter was dead, there was no arrest, criminal prosecution, trial or conviction arising from the killings. Although authorities continued to describe the matter as an open and ongoing investigation while the crime-scene work and autopsies were being completed, the online reporting located does not show the emergence of another suspect or any later arrest connected to Nancy’s death.
