In the late hours of a November evening in 2020, a welfare check at a residence in the affluent Tucson Foothills unveiled a grim scene. Inside the home on North Pontatoc Road, deputies from the Pima County Sheriff's Office discovered the body of 51-year-old Wanda Zhang Peirce. She had succumbed to gunshot wounds. Elsewhere in the house, her 78-year-old husband, Hayford Peirce, was found with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The initial discovery on the night of
November 19th set in motion an investigation into what appeared to be a murder-suicide. Wanda Zhang Peirce, a former restaurateur who had owned Wanda Z's Chinese in Oro Valley, was pronounced dead at the scene. Her husband, a science fiction author, was transported to a local hospital for his injuries.
Hayford Peirce ultimately died from his injuries on November 20, 2020. The investigation by the Pima County Sheriff's Office pointed towards a sequence of events where Hayford Peirce fatally shot his wife before turning the gun on himself. The incident left the community in shock, marking a violent end to the lives of the couple.
