Tetraplegic shoots wife

Press, 12 September 1987, Page 9

Tetraplegic shoots wife

NZPA-Reuter Houston A wheelchair-bound tetraplegic who thought his bride of two weeks was cheating on him killed her with a pistol rigged to fire with a string in his mouth, police said. James Byron Burns, aged 40, was arrested and confessed to murdering his wife, Berta (“Sissy”) Mae Burns, aged 37, they said. “He was in a lounge

i (bar) with his wife and I was mad at her because t he believed she was seei ing another guy,” said i Sergeant J. C. Mosier. I Police said Burns, who ; was paralysed from the neck down when a former wife shot him in the spine, had a .9mm pistol hidden in a homemade container in his lap. At the bar, Burns asked his wife to put a string in his mouth, then jerked his

head back to pull the trigger and pump three bullets into her, they said. "I never cease to be amazed by the creative violence some people can come up with,” Sergeant Mosier said. Investigators said they were searching for Burns’s brother, who drove him to the bar and whom they suspect may have helped rig the device.