Expert Witness and Family Found Dead in San Clemente Home
May 28th, 2008UPDATE 1: June 2, 2008: Grace Ucar Maintained Wiki Page on Bacillus Anthracis (Cause of Anthrax Disease)
As with all strange cases, we note the Coincidences:
Bacillus anthracis, from MicrobeWiki, Edited by Grace Ucar
Obviously, it’s not weird for a girl who majored in biology to maintain such a reference. We’ll probably never know just how weird the rest of it got.
—End Update—
Via: Los Angeles Times:
Five people found dead over the weekend in an upscale San Clemente home were identified as a husband and wife, their twin daughters and the woman’s mother — none of whom had been seen in at least two weeks, a sheriff’s official said Tuesday.
Although at least two of the family members suffered gunshot wounds, the investigation has not revealed how the family died.
The badly decomposed bodies were identified through fingerprints as Manas Ucar, 58; his wife, Margrit, 49; their twin daughters, Grace and Margo, 21; and Margrit Ucar’s mother, Fransuhi Kesisoglu, 72.
Manas and Margrit Ucar were shot, but autopsies have not determined how they died, said Lt. Erin Giudice. Two handguns were found near their bodies, she said. One pistol was registered to Margrit Ucar. Giudice declined to comment about the other weapon.
There were no obvious signs of trauma to the bodies of the daughters and their grandmother, and toxicology tests are underway to help investigators determine what killed them.
“The bodies were very decomposed. It will take a few weeks before we know the cause of death for any of them,” Giudice said.
She said there were no signs of a struggle inside the home, which is on a bluff overlooking the ocean in the gated Sea Pointe Estates neighborhood.
There is no record of domestic violence calls to the Ucar’s home on Campanilla, Giudice said. Neighbors said the family members were close-knit and kept to themselves.
It was a neighbor who first became concerned after the family had not been seen for a few days.
Giudice said a the neighbor asked the Sheriff’s Department to do a welfare check at the home on May 14. A deputy knocked on the door, got no response and walked around the house looking for anything amiss.
“There was nothing unusual or out of the ordinary,” she said.
Ten days later, brothers of the husband and wife asked the department to do another welfare check when they had not heard from their siblings. But Giudice said the family asked the deputies not to break into the house, believing the Ucars might be on vacation.
The couple’s brothers went to the San Clemente house the following day , Margrit Ucar’s 49th birthday, and discovered the bodies in a bottom-floor bedroom. Manas and Margrit Ucar were found near a closet.
Kevin Morrow, a spokesman for Syracuse University in New York, said Manas Ucar earned a masters and a doctoral degree in engineering from the school and was an assistant professor before leaving in the 1980s. He said Ucar’s specialty was thermal engineering systems.
Ucar is listed as a consulting engineer on an website of accident investigation and reconstruction experts in California.
Giudice said Margrit Ucar formerly owned a jewelry store, and the twins were students at UC San Diego.
