3 in Greenwich are Found Slain in Home

Published: September 4, 1982

NY Times- A woman and her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son were found shot to death in their Greenwich, Conn., home yesterday morning, and the police later said the mother, who had a recent history of depression, apparently had killed the children and herself.

The police said all three were afflicted with Marfan's Syndrome, a genetic disease of the ocular, skeletal and cardiovascular systems that had severely impaired the children's eyesight and had rendered the mother legally blind.

The slayings were the first in the affluent suburb 20 miles north of New York City in more than six years. Greenwich, a community of sedate homes and landscaped corporate headquarters, has 60,000 residents and a reputation as one of the country's safest cities.

The police said the victims, 43-year-old Linda V. Sandor and her children, Michelle and Scott, had each been shot once in the head. They were found in separate upstairs bedrooms of their recently purchased eight-room, $130,000 home at 14 Lincoln Avenue in central Greenwich, at 10:40 A.M. by a stepson, Richard, who called the police. Husband Reportedly at Work

Mrs. Sandor's husband, Michael, a Greenwich building contractor, had left the house about 8 A.M. and was at work when the slayings occurred, according to the Greenwich Police Chief, Thomas G. Keegan, and his deputy chief, John J. Cornelius.

''Both children had been shot once in the head, while in their beds, apparently asleep,'' Chief Keegan said. Mrs. Sandor, he said, was found fully clothed, lying beside a .38-caliber handgun that was apparently used in the killings. It had been purchased by Mrs. Sandor at a local gun store on Thursday, the chief said.

''Preliminary investigation and testing indicate that the fatal wound to Linda was self-inflicted,'' said Chief Keegan, who added that there was ''no evidence of foul play.''

The chief said that Mrs. Sandor ''had been suffering from severe depression and had attempted suicide earlier this year.'' A factor in that depression, the Chief said, may have been the disease that had afflicted the family. The woman was becoming progressively more blind and may not have wanted her children to suffer further, the Chief said. Both children wore heavy corrective lenses.

The family had moved into the three-story frame home from the Glenville section of Greenwich in July and was not well-known to neighbors. Mr. Sandor had been renovating the white-shingled home, whose small yard yesterday was strewn with lumber, concrete blocks and other building materials.