Earlier today I heard a snippet of news on the radio about an active search and rescue going on at the famed Skyway Bridge. The announced said he thought that a van may have gone into the water. I shivered a little and thought of my own van plunging over the side and that tremendously long drop.

There was also news of bodies being found in a Largo apartment after neighbors reported hearing gunshots. At the time I am not sure if anyone was reporting that the two items were related.

Now that more details are available, it seems that a teacher for Pinellas County and USF is at the heart of both situations.

Oliver Bernsdorff (also known as Thomas Bernsdorff) 36, was a suspect in the shooting deaths of his ex-wife, Jennifer Davis, 27, and her lover Andrea Pisanello, 53, who lived at the Monterey Bay apartment on Ulmerton road where the bodies were found. Neighbors reported hearing shots fired at 6:45 a.m. One child, a girl of 4 or 5 years, was found alive in the Largo apartment. This child is assumed to be Pisanello’s daughter.

The neighbor who lives above the Largo apartment says she heard 4-5 shots around 6:45 a.m. and then what sounded like hammering. She then heard a baby crying and yelling “Mommy! Mommy!” Another neighbor heard the two women who live in the apartment yelling before the shots were fired and saw a man wandering out behind the apartments who said he was lost just minutes fore the shootings. Another neighbor reported seeing a white van quickly leave the scene. Yet another neighbor says Davis was heard arguing on the phone yesterday and made a comment that if anything happened to her, people would find something in her car. There was turmoil brewing.

Then at around 10:30 a.m., a man’s body was found shot in the head in an apparent suicide inside a 1992 Toyota van registered to Bernsdorff. This is on the far Manatee County side of the bridge. A Florida Highway Patrol trooper saw the van swerving as it headed south on the Sunshine Skyway signaled for the van to pull over. As the van left the road it kept rolling into a stand of mangroves and when the trooper approached the van he saw the driver was dead. There was a handgun was inside the van.

If that is not enough, the bodies of his two children were found at Bernsdorff’s Clearwater home.

Bernsdorff filed for divorce from his wife back in August and the settlement gave him primary custody of their two children, 4-year-old Olivia and 2-year-old Magnus. Davis was ordered to pay child support and had fallen into arrears.

Records indicate that Bernsdorff was in debt, including $135,000 in student loans, $27,000 owed the IRS, a $33,000 private loan and $50,000 in credit card debt. He taught for the Pinellas County School District, as an adult basic education and GED prep instructor with the Clearwater Adult Education Center as well as taking on classes as an adjunct instructor at USF’s St. Petersburg campus.

The couple got married just a few months before my ex and I got married. I am looking at their wedding pictures online and seeing how much can change over time. I’m incredulous as I look over the webpage built by Bernsdorff. At one time he was obviously amazingly proud of his wife and his family, of the birth of their son at home, of their lives. Apparently, Davis confided to her ministers that her husband had been abusive throughout their marriage. More recently, Davis had begun living with her lesbian lover.

Bernsdorff, Davis and Pisanello had attended Unitarian Universalists of Clearwater for several years. A friend commented that the separation must have driven Bernsdorff to this. Personally, it would be hard enough for me to see my spouse take up with someone we both went to church with – especially if it was a same-sex relationship. I understand his anguish, but I cannot understand his decision to end his life, his wife’s life and the lives of his dear children.

Details continue to come to the surface.

Edited to add:
I got a call from one of my best friends the next night, because she really needed to talk. It turns out that Jenn was one of her friends. They had been in a breastfeeding group together for a couple of years, because their daughters were born 10 days apart at the same hospital. When the Bernsdorffs owned a party business, my friend had a job working for them as a birthday party hostess. She worked every weekend throwing parties for kids. She loved it. Thinking back on it, I can see now why I felt like these people were so familiar to me as I read the news stories. I’d heard about them a lot and received a lot of e-mail forwards from my friend that had originally come from Jenn. May she and her loved ones rest in peace.