The case is closed and murder/suicide has been ruled in the death of two people in May, in Scioto County.

The case involved Christy L. Grice, 37, of 8411 Filmore Lane, Wheelersburg, whose body was found on May 8, and Keith A. “Butch” White, 45, of 3593 Ohio 14, discovered dead the next morning.

Scioto County Sheriff’s deputies answered a 911 call to the 8411 Filmore address where an alarm was going off. Deputies went into the dwelling, where they turned off the alarm, but they found Grice, surrounded by blood, on the ground in a neighboring yard.

A squad was dispatched, and arrived on the scene where they immediately went to work on Christy Grice. She was taken to Southern Ohio Medical Center where she was pronounced dead.

Scioto County Sheriff’s Detective Denver Triggs told the Portsmouth Daily Times on Thursday when announcing the finding in the case, that an autopsy performed in the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office showed she died of two gunshot wounds — one in the chest area from behind, and one in the head.

“At that time I talked with them (coroner’s office) and asked them to do a test of her (finger)nails, because of what we had seen at the scene,” Triggs said. “There was some sort of confrontation. We determined that because there were groceries and things scattered around. So we believe that she had attempted to fight off, or had a confrontation with the assailant. At that point we kind of knew that it was not a robbery or a burglary because nothing was taken.”

Triggs said shortly after the body was discovered, the sheriff’s office went about gathering information as to a possible suspect from friends and acquaintances.

That is when they found out Grice was divorced a year earlier, so they brought in her ex-husband “Butch” White.

“We questioned Mr. White and he denied any involvement in the death of Christy Grice,” Triggs said.

The next morning, the sheriff’s office received a call that friends had found White’s body at his home on Ohio 140, where Triggs said it appeared he had committed suicide.

“We had BCI&I (Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation) come out and process that scene as well,” Triggs said. “Through that we had our evidence sent off to BCI&I’s crime labs. We took a sample of White’s DNA. And, of course, it takes several months to get the results of that test.”

Scioto County Sheriff Marty V. Donini explained why it takes months to get all the results from evidence sent to BCI&I.

“It’s that way for any county that does not have its own crime scene,” Donini said. “I don’t know If Cincinnati PD or Columbus has their own crime lab where they can run DNA, but in the smaller areas we use BCI&I. And they have a backlog — plus in this particular case — we were pretty confident that we knew what had happened. The suspect wasn’t at large, so it just takes time when you have a public lab doing it for you.”

Triggs said it didn’t take long to do one test in which it was determined that gunshot residue was found on White’s hand, meaning he had fired a weapon recently. The GSR test was also run on other suspects at that time.

However, it was not until the nail scrapings from under Grice’s fingernails turned up with White’s DNA that a ruling was made to close the case and rule it a murder/suicide.

“The possibility of recurrence of White’s DNA was one in 791 trillion,” Triggs told the Times.

Triggs said the sheriff’s office had notified the families of both individuals of the ruling.

“It is officially a murder/suicide, which is very unfortunate for both sides of that family,” Triggs said. “Our thoughts and prayers go out to them.”

Frank Lewis may be reached at (740) 353-3101, ext. 232.