UPDATED: Hanover Co. officials say deaths of father, twins were murder-suicide

Hanover County authorities and the state medical examiner's office have concluded that all three victims found Saturday at their home near Mechanicsville suffered carbon monoxide inhalation and lacerations to the neck area.

Authorities ruled the deaths a murder-suicide.

Sheriff's Sgt. Chris Whitley said this afternoon that his department would not release a specific cause of death but that each of the victims, twin 3-year-old daughters, and their father, Robert D. King, died either from the lacerations, the inhalation of the deadly gas or a combination of both.

"We're not going to get into the specifics beyond that because of the nature of what happened" and out of respect for the family, Whitley said.

According to a search warrant filed today, the mother of the twins, Kristina Hooper, King's estranged wife, entered the house and found the three together before calling authorities.

The search warrant describes how Hooper lifted up one of her daughters, finding her cold to the touch, and then placed her back down before calling 911. It was not clear how Hooper was able to negotiate the carbon monoxide fumes, which police vented from the home by breaking windows.

Whitley said there is no indication that an intruder was involved in the killings and that there is no effort under way to locate a suspect.

From earlier reports

A man and his 3-year-old twin daughters were found dead in their Mechanicsvile home Saturday by the man's estranged wife, according to court documents.

A search warrant affidavit and divorce petition records on file in Hanover County Circuit Court this morning indicated Kristina Hooper found the bodies of her two daughters and her husband in a front bedroom that had been linked to the exhaust pipe of a van parked outside the Mechanicsville house.

The court records said Hooper called 911 at 3:36 p.m., and when Hanover County deputies arrived at the house in the 7900 block of Wynbrook Lane, just off Mechanicsville Turnpike, they found Hooper in the driveway “crying on her knees and stating, ‘My babies are dead. They’re in the house.’ "

Deputies also found a van backed up near the residence with flexible duct tubing attached from the exhaust pipe “which continued into the bedroom” where the three were found, the court papers indicated. When authorities tried to enter the house, “they were initially overcome by fumes and began ventilating the residence.”

Among the items investigators recovered at the house, according to the court documents, were blood-stained sections of duct tape tubing, a wallet and two notes of unspecified content.

Declared dead at the scene were Robert D. King, 40, and Caroline R. King and Madison R. King. Hanover County authorities have declined to discuss how the three died.

The three bodies were taken to the medical examiner's officer in Richmond, where autopsies were scheduled for today.

Court records indicated Hooper married King in March 2008 and their twin daughters were born Aug. 15 of that year.

The couple's divorce petition indicates Hooper left King on Sept. 28, 2011, and has been living in the 5000 block of Pole Green Road.

The divorce file indicates Hooper deserted the family in September, claiming he had been verbally abusive to her and he refused to leave, so she did.