A Thanksgiving Day double murder shocked the small San Antonio suburb of Utopia, in which 80-year-old Juana Tweedy and her friend, 79-year-old Muriel Teed were murdered by Tweedy’s son-in-law, according to Kens5 News. The Uvalde County Sheriff Charles Mendeke told Kens5, that Tweedy “had filed an eviction notice on her son-in-law and her daughter who had been living in a house on her property.” They were expected to be evicted in February, but Tweedy’s pastor, Chuck Crane of United Methodist Church in Utopia “said it was Nelson and the daughter that had kicked their mother-in-law out of her own home and had forced her to live in poor conditions on the property.”
Pastor Crane told Kens5 that he was worried that some sort of abuse such as this had occurred, but it seems as if no one expected things would go this far. He also said that Tweedy had been “afraid for her life for several months” leading up to the murder. When sheriffs arrived the confessed murderer, 63-year-old Thomas Nelson met officers at the door and admitted to killing Tweedy and Teed. He was “cooperative and did not resist arrest.”
A 2004 report from the University of West Florida notes “rates of homicide (per 100,000 population) were significantly higher and raters of suicide significantly lower or national holidays compared to similar days of the week in the same month.” The homicide rate for an average day of the year is 27.9. On any given holiday, the murder rate is 32.4 per 100,000. Thanksgiving—the day on which Tweedy and Teed were killed—is significantly lower, but still higher than any average day, at 28.6.
If you or someone you know has been accused of a crime such as this, don’t go through it alone. Contact a dedicated San Antonio criminal defense attorney today.