Bill Drake, an 85-year-old male Tucson resident whose ethnicity was not specified in public reports, died on February 8, 2018, in what authorities described as an apparent murder-suicide at the midtown home he shared with his wife, 71-year-old Margaret Hoyt, in the 2700 block of East Copper Street near Alvernon Way.
That evening, Tucson police were sent to the residence on a welfare check after the property owner, who rented the home to the couple, received a letter from one of them
instructing her to call police so their bodies could be recovered from inside. Officers found the house unlocked and, once inside, discovered Drake and Hoyt dead together in a bedroom, both with obvious gunshot wounds. Detectives from the Tucson Police Department’s Homicide Unit responded and recovered several handwritten notes in the home that appeared to be authored by Hoyt. Those notes explained that Drake was suffering from serious and ongoing medical or health problems and laid out directions for what should happen to the couple’s property and pets after their deaths. Investigators indicated that they could not pinpoint the exact time the shootings occurred but treated the scene as a murder-suicide rather than a broader homicide investigation.
Based on the physical evidence at the scene and the contents of the notes, police concluded that Hoyt shot her husband and then used the gun to take her own life. News reports and later summaries of the case state that there were no indications of involvement by anyone other than the couple themselves, and officers reported no signs suggesting an outside assailant or additional foul play. As a result, no arrests were made; Hoyt was treated as the sole and primary suspect, and the case has been recorded in public databases as solved with the suspect deceased.
