Two Park Shore residents were found dead inside their home in what investigators say is a murder-suicide in the quiet, well-manicured Naples neighborhood Wednesday.

With crime scene tape wrapping the front yard of a home at 655 Fountainhead Way and patrol cars guarding the scene, Naples police recorded the first homicide in the city since February 2001.

Family members confirmed that Stephen John Lennon, 48, and Nilda C. Mattaini, 51, were found dead inside the house.

Police hadn’t released the victims’ names late Wednesday and wouldn’t confirm who had been the murder victim.

More than a year ago, Naples police had been called to the home when Mattaini reported that Lennon tried to strangle her.

Police were confident that it was a murder-suicide from the evidence officers saw inside the house. They wouldn’t elaborate on what led them to that conclusion.

But they did want neighbors to know that that there wasn’t a killer on the loose in the upscale neighborhood west of U.S. 41 North, toward the northern end of the city.

“We don’t want the neighbors to think that there’s someone out there who did this,” police Lt. Jon Maines said.

He said there was no forced entry into the home and no signs of a struggle.

The home is owned by Mattaini, whose boyfriend, Lennon, lived with her at the house. He was arrested in October 2004 on a domestic violence charge, according to arrest reports.

In that case, Mattaini was nearly strangled by a pillow being twisted around her throat, police say.

Photo by Tracy Boulian

Naples Daily News

Crime scene investigators walk around the property of the home in Naples in which there was a possible murder-suicide.

Neighbors said there had been “domestic squabbles,” at the house of the couple they described as nearly “reclusive.”

It was a co-worker of Lennon’s who told police around 9:30 a.m. Wednesday that Lennon hadn’t been seen recently. The co-worker was concerned because both cars, two Mercedes, were parked at the house, yet no one answered the phone or the door, Maines said.

One Mercedes was in the garage, while the other, a silver Mercedes S430 registered to Mattaini, was parked in the driveway, he said.

By late afternoon, Florida Department of Law Enforcement crime scene specialists had arrived to begin their investigation into what happened inside the house.

Neighbors said Lennon worked for a moulding company and that a work truck was often parked outside.

On his booking sheet, Lennon listed his job as working for Superior Moulding.

In a 2004 arrest report, Naples police say that Mattaini called for help on Oct. 5, 2004.

The two had been in a romantic relationship for two years at that time, reports say.

Mattaini told officers that he pinned her down and grabbed her face and hurt her lip. Lennon then twisted a pillow around her neck.

“Fearing she was going to be strangled, Mattaini screamed,” the report says.

Mattaini told police that Lennon has become angry with her in the past when he’d been drinking alcohol, reports say. He was apparently intoxicated at the time.

Mattaini told police she feared for her safety and didn’t want Lennon come to her home again and asked that he be banned from another home she owned on Gulf Shore Boulevard North, reports say.

Neighbors said there were very few people who came to the house other than Mattaini and Lennon. They believed he’d lived there about four years.

Andrea Lennon, who is Lennon’s former wife, said she was in shock Wednesday night after police left her home after telling her what had happened and that they believed it was a murder-suicide.

“We just found out,” she said, her voice cracking. “I’ve been pacing, walking in circles. I can’t believe this.” The Lennons have two children.

Her former husband, who was born in Liverpool, England, according to arrest reports, had no other family in the United States.

Andrea Lennon said she wasn’t certain whether Lennon had married Mattaini.

“Just us,” she said. “That’s all he had.”

She described Lennon as a successful businessman and a “wonderful master carpenter.”

She said he worked in multimillion dollar homes in Beverly Hills at one time.

“He was a beautiful craftsman,” she said. “He was very skilled.”

She said he always went golfing with his young son on Saturdays.

“All I care about now is my kids,” she said. “I’m just in shock. I can’t believe it.”

Other neighbors in Park Shore said they’d hardly ever seen anyone outside of the house, just their cars coming and going. A few recalled hearing shouting matches and still others recalled the night when the police came to make an arrest.

Neighbor Harvey Thompson, who said he probably knew Mattaini and Lennon best among all the neighbors, said he’d been inside the house before and said it had been nicely renovated. He recalled that the mouldings were especially nice.

Property appraisers’ records indicate that Mattaini bought the house in 1999. Thompson said it was a few years later that Lennon moved in.

Homicides occur very rarely in the city of Naples. The last homicide in the city happened in February 2001 when a man fatally shot his terminally ill former wife outside of her oncologist’s office in Naples.

Joseph Anthony Lasco Sr. of Fort Myers, embraced his wife Sylvia, 62, of Golden Gate, and then shot her in the chest and neck and then held her hand as she died.

Before that homicide, the last murder in the city of Naples happened in March 1992.

Naples Daily News
Naples Sun Times
The Banner

Collier Citizen
Vista Semanal
PrepZone

Coastalbeat
Set Anchor
SWFLMoms