Soldier's Widow Slain By Father

[NATO AIR]

I pray she is reunited with her husband in God's Kingdom. A tragedy that makes you just go "damn"

http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/04/08/war.widow.ap/index.html

Soldier's widow slain by father
Couple's marriage remembered as one to envy
Friday, April 8, 2005 Posted: 11:48 AM EDT (1548 GMT)

PORTLAND, Maine (AP) -- Lavinia Gelineau's grief-filled odyssey began a year ago when her husband was killed in an ambush by Iraqi insurgents, just a few weeks before their second wedding anniversary. She spent the following months attempting to ease the pain by lending support to other widows of soldiers.

She visited graves, left flowers and notes and attended funerals -- at each ceremony clutching a bright pink teddy bear her husband had given her on Valentine's Day.

The story took a final, tragic turn last week: Gelineau's estranged father brutally strangled her with a rope in her home before hanging himself.

On Saturday, she will be buried alongside her husband in Portland.

Police have said Gelineau's parents had a history of domestic violence in Romania, and she had voiced concerns about her safety to friends before she agreed to allow her father to visit her at her new home in Maine.

Those preparing for her funeral haven't thought about that. They remember, instead, a storybook marriage in April 2002 of two students who met at the University of Southern Maine, an unexpected death that tore the couple apart, and the devotion that inspired everyone who knew them.
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