By Jane Prendergast
Enquirer staff writer

Hamilton County Coroner Carl L. Parrott, Jr., M.D., uses two bullets to describe the inconsistencies in the weapons involved in the death of Daniel Buie during a press conference held in the coroner's office. (Gary Landers/The Enquirer)

At first, it looked like a murder-suicide:

Husband kills wife, then dies himself from one shot to the chest. He's found with his finger still on the trigger of a gun.

Three hours after Daniel Buie was seen fatally shooting his wife, Kimberly, in Sayler Park Saturday night, he fell dead, too, across town on Carmalt Street in Mount Auburn.

But when forensic analysts at the Hamilton County Coroner's Office started examining the body, they realized Buie couldn't have killed himself.

Buie was holding a .22-caliber Ruger, but the slug in his chest was a much larger caliber.

And the signs of close-range gunfire - things like gunpowder on his shirt and tiny abrasions on his skin - weren't as pronounced as they should have been in a suicide victim, county Coroner Dr. Carl Parrott Jr. said Thursday.

HOMICIDES UP

So far this year, the Hamilton County Coroner's Office has handled 74 homicide cases - 19 more (34 percent) than at this time in 2003. To help his office handle the increasing caseload, Coroner Dr. Carl Parrott Jr. asked county administrators for money to hire another firearms analyst. That request was denied, but he said Thursday he would try to work with officials to come up with other ways to handle the extra cases. Of the 74 victims, 70 died from violence in Hamilton County, Parrott said. The other four were hurt elsewhere, but died at hospitals here. A large part of the increase in cases comes from Cincinnati, where 53 people have been victims of homicide this year. That's an increase of 11, or 26 percent, over the 42 Cincinnati this time last year.

That proved the gun wasn't fired as closely to Buie as it would have been if he'd pulled the trigger himself.

Buie, 38, shot his wife to death about 10:45 p.m. and took her white Jeep Grand Cherokee from the shooting scene on River Road.

Detectives know that because the driver of the cab Buie took to the scene of his wife's shooting witnessed it, Parrott said.

And before Kim Buie died at University Hospital, she told officers it was her husband who shot her.

Officers found a .38-caliber pistol at the scene, and it matched the three bullets in her torso and one in her leg.

"So you've got one (gun) in his hand," Parrott said, "one at the scene of her shooting and one somewhere else."

Detectives are trying to piece together the time in between the shootings, including how and where Buie got another gun.

Parrott said he didn't know if investigators thought Buie might have been defending himself with the other gun, or if his killer put the gun in his hand.

"We're still working on it,'' homicide Sgt. Robert Liston said Thursday.

E-mail jprendergast@enquirer.com