MURDER-SUICIDE Slain woman considered protection order

Keefer and her two daughters had moved in with her mother the night before she was killed.
CAMP HILL, Pa. (AP) -- A woman who was shot by her boyfriend in a murder-suicide outside an elementary school this week had asked police how to go about getting a protection-from-abuse order shortly before she was killed, a prosecutor said.
When New Cumberland police told Kim Keefer that a court order would be formally served on her boyfriend, James Zeigler, she became visibly upset, Cumberland County District Attorney M.L. "Skip" Ebert Jr. said Thursday.
"She was extremely distraught that that very act of him being served with the papers would set him off even more," said Ebert, adding that police gave her written information about the PFA process.
Keefer, 32, had left Zeigler the night before Tuesday's shootings and moved with her two daughters into her mother's home in New Cumberland.
Shortly before leaving to pick up her younger daughter at Highland Elementary School in neighboring Camp Hill, she told her twin sister she was worried about what Zeigler might do.
"I told her to drive five blocks to talk to the [New Cumberland] police. Tell them you need protection," said the sister, Shanna Myers.
History of abuse
Zeigler, 47, had abused Keefer for months, Myers said.
"There were threats. He pushed her against a wall. He threatened her with a gun and with a baseball bat. She was afraid to go to sleep sometimes," she said.
Keefer, a hairdresser, had been separated from her husband, an Army man stationed in another state, since 2002, relatives said. She had lived with Zeigler in Lower Allen Township since last year.
Zeigler had a history of violence. His second wife, Tracy Zeigler, obtained a PFA order against him when they separated in 1999, and they later divorced, according to her attorney, John King.
Keefer "always thought she could change him," Myers said. "She always tried to see the good in him."
Zeigler accosted Keefer in the school parking lot when she arrived to pick up her daughter. He shot her seven or eight times with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun, according to the county coroner, then killed himself.