A married couple was found dead Wednesday morning inside their Santa Monica home in what police believe was a murder-suicide. It is the third suspected murder-suicide in the city this year.
The Santa Monica Police Department received a request for a welfare check at about 9:04 a.m. on Oct. 14 at a residence in the 2400 block of Fourth Street, police said. Officers found two adults dead inside. Both had apparent gunshot wounds.
The Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner lists the death of Ryan Lewis, 44, as a suicide and the death of Elizabeth Lewis, 53, as a homicide on that date.
Detectives believe no one else was involved, police said. They described the deaths as an isolated incident and said there is no ongoing threat to the public.
The Lewis deaths are the latest in a series of suspected murder-suicides in Santa Monica and on the Westside in 2026. Before Wednesday, Santa Monica had recorded two such cases this year, and two more had occurred in nearby Venice and Westwood. In each of those four cases, a man and a woman who knew each other died and a firearm was involved.
On Sept. 26, Hendrik Rabitzsch, 48, fatally shot his wife, Nicole Rabitzsch, 47, and then himself in their Pico Boulevard home. The medical examiner ruled her death a homicide and his a suicide. No prior domestic violence calls have been reported.
On July 10, Gul Erdogan, 45, was fatally shot in Westwood by her husband, Aytac Camdeviren, 43, who then killed himself.
On April 21, Jeremy Ferguson, director of operations for Downtown Santa Monica Inc., shot his wife, Mandy Zelinka, 49, and then himself at their Venice home.
On Feb. 7, officers conducting a welfare check in the 1900 block of Ocean Avenue found the bodies of a man and a woman, both 54. Police described the pair as "known to one another" and called the case a suspected murder-suicide.
Nationally, murder-suicides claim an estimated 1,000-plus lives a year, according to the Violence Policy Center's ninth "American Roulette" study.
The study analyzed news reports of murder-suicides from Jan. 1 to June 30, 2025. It found 237 murder-suicide events in that period, or about nine a week. Those incidents left 526 people dead: 289 homicide victims and 237 people who died by suicide. The VPC doubled that figure to estimate 1,052 murder-suicide deaths for all of 2025.
Firearms were involved in 207 of the 237 cases, or 87%. Of the people who died by suicide, 92% were male. Of the homicide victims, 76% were female.
Sixty-five percent of the cases involved an intimate partner. In those cases, 99% of the victims were women killed by their partners, and 88% involved a gun. Eighty percent of all the murder-suicides happened in the home.
Children were also affected. Forty-five of the homicide victims, or 16%, were younger than 18. Another 27 children and teens survived after witnessing some part of a murder-suicide.
"The presence of a gun can escalate an argument to homicide and suicide in an instant," said Kristen Rand, the VPC's government affairs director. "The catalytic role played by firearms must be taken into account in any prevention strategy."
No publicly available comprehensive national database tracks murder-suicides, so the study relies on news reports, the VPC said. The group says its yearly estimate is consistent with other research.
The VPC recommends several measures:
- stronger domestic violence prevention laws and state domestic violence task forces
- restricting firearm access where the risk of murder-suicide is higher, such as when a person has a history of domestic violence or has threatened suicide
- aggressive enforcement of laws barring people with misdemeanor domestic violence convictions or domestic violence protective orders from having guns
- support for older caregivers dealing with depression
- a public national database to track murder-suicides
Anyone in crisis can call or text 988. The National Domestic Violence Hotline is 800-799-7233.