BY JOHN HOPKINS
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A coroner's finding in the deaths of two Cleves teen-agers suggests they died as the result of a murder-suicide.
The preliminary finding was that 16-year-old Michelle Gatto and 19-year-old Adam L. Skirvin took their lives in a double suicide on Sept. 16. The two were found slumped in the front seat of a car at the U.S. 50-Interstate 275 interchange in Greendale, Ind.
But Dearborn County coroner's office confirmed Thursday that Ms. Gatto shot Mr. Skirvin twice in the chest, then turned the gun on herself.
The coroner's finding brings some closure to the deaths, said Mr. Skirvin's mother, Vicki Fitzgerald of Cleves.
"The initial story was that he shot her and shot himself," she said of the unofficial talk surrounding the deaths. "We just want the truth. We just want his name cleared."
On the morning of Sept. 16, the teens were traveling westbound on I-275 and had just crossed into Indiana when a Greendale police officer noticed their car had a burned-out headlight.
Mr. Skirvin turned onto the Greendale-Lawrenceburg exit ramp and drove over an island at the interchange. The car came to a stop in the westbound lanes of U.S. 50, where the two were found with fatal wounds.
