A man made a chillingly calm call to police to report that he shot and killed his wife, stepson and mother-in-law.
Patrick Waite, 77, dialed 911 on Thursday to confess to the triple killing inside his home in Haubstadt, Indiana.
‘I shot them all. I’m certainly not proud of that fact,’ said Waite, according to a sworn affidavit filed by the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office on Monday.
‘I’m as guilty as guilty can be.’
Waite told dispatchers that he had argued with his wife about who would have ownership of his home, and that it devolved into violence around 8.30pm.
He also admitted to shooting a fourth family member, who was taken in critical condition at a hospital in Evansville.
Waite said he would be waiting for police in front of his garage.
He then told dispatchers that he had to get off the line ‘so he could call his children and tell them what he did’, a detective wrote in the affidavit obtained by the Evansville Courier & Press.
Officers arrived at Waite’s home on the 12900 block of South Scottsdale Drive eight minutes after he hung up the phone and arrested him without incident.
The victims have been identified as his wife Alma Waite, 61; his son in-law Fernando Tapia Ramirez Sr, 39, and his mother in-law Gloria Garcia Tapia, 81.
Patrick spoke with two detectives at the Gibson County Sheriff’s Office interview room. He said that he had been married to his wife for about two years and that they recently began talking about separating.
The couple allegedly fought all afternoon and evening, about him going to bible study instead of taking care of his mother-in-law, and about him bringing a gun into the house after shooting a watersnake outside.
‘Patrick Waite said Alma Waite told him she filed a quitclaim deed and put their home in her daughter’s name,’ states the affidavit.
‘Patrick Waite stated he told her he wouldn’t leave the house because he had lived there for 27 years.’
Records showed that Patrick married Alma in 2024 and that she became the sole owner of the home at that time. But in March, Alma put her daughter’s name to the deed.
Patrick said that his wife was standing near the kitchen sink and turned to him, and that he shot her an unknown number of times, according to the affidavit. He said that Alma’s sons were in the den and that he heard the men telling him something, and shot at them.
Ramirez Sr and Garcia suffered fatal wounds to the head and a third male family member was struck in the neck and chest, according to charging documents from the Gibson County Prosecutor’s Office.
He has been charged with three counts of murder and a count of attempted murder.
‘Patrick Waite said he knows what he did was wrong and that God will never forgive him,’ the affidavit reads, and that he ‘stated he was sorry for what he did, and he didn’t deserve to live’.
Haubstadt is about 150 miles southwest of Indianapolis.
The triple homicide happened nearly two years after a man confessed to shooting dead his parents and two friends inside a home in Bowdoin, Maine, and stealing nine guns from them.
