Relationships among man, victims emerge

The city worker stabbed both his estranged wife and a woman with whom he’d sought a relationship.

PORTSMOUTH, Ohio (AP) — His wife had left him and filed for divorce. A young woman he was seeing may have had second thoughts about her relationship with an older man.

Mike Layne stabbed them both — his estranged wife in her grade school classroom in Portsmouth and the other woman in an alley at her nearby home — then put a shotgun in his mouth and killed himself, police said. The critical wounds hospitalized the women, but police have said they both were stable.

Christi Layne’s fifth-grade pupils at Notre Dame Elementary School saw Mike Layne barge into her classroom and stab his estranged wife Thursday morning, and adults at the school saw him in the building. Police followed him to his home near the Ohio River, where they later found him dead after a standoff.

But police at first didn’t know why Layne would have attacked another woman a few blocks from the school, or her relationship to the Laynes.

By Friday, it had become evident: William Michael Layne, 56, a retired city water works employee, had sought a relationship with Stephanie Loop, 22, who had been stabbed outside her apartment.

Loop’s cousin, Chrissy Shepherd, told the Portsmouth Daily Times that Layne considered Loop to be his girlfriend, and that she spent time at his house.

“I don’t know if he feared she was abandoning him or what,” she told the paper for a story published Friday.

Police Chief Charles Horner said investigators also had talked with Shepherd and believed that Layne had a relationship with Loop.

“That’s what we’ve been able to ascertain,” Horner said.

Officials were still sorting out other parts of the story, the chief said, and had not determined how much to make public. They had declined to talk about details of the attacks, the motive, weapons and what was found in Layne’s home.

As to the romance with Loop, there was only her cousin’s account.

Shepherd said that Loop had called her Wednesday night to ask for a ride home from Layne’s house. On Thursday morning, he attacked Loop as the two women returned home from a visit to a tattoo parlor, Shepherd said.

“He kept slashing at her, but for the most part, the knife was just ripping her coat,” she said. “We jumped inside and I locked the door — locked the front door, too — and called 911.”

She said Loop had stab wounds in the chest and left shoulder.

“I sat with her on the couch and held pressure on her wounds until the police and ambulance came,” Shepherd said.

What was on the record was that Christi Layne, 53, had left her husband and had filed for divorce Jan. 25, about the time Horner said police were summoned to quell a domestic dispute.

Christi Layne had said her husband threatened her and her son Dec. 26. A judge on Jan. 15 ordered him to stay at least 100 yards from her because she feared the kind of attack that occurred Thursday.

“He said I better enjoy myself because it will be soon,” she wrote in a request for a restraining order. “I am afraid that he will hurt me or my son when he is mad.”

A neighbor said she had a security system installed before moving into the apartment complex about two months ago.

Christi Layne had hired Portsmouth attorney George Davis III, whom she had known since junior high, to file her divorce petition. Davis declined to talk about the filing on Friday other than to say he would ask the Scioto County Common Pleas Court to dismiss it, in light of Mike Layne’s death.

“Just from my own observations, having nothing to do with what my client told me, I think he was a person who was clearly troubled,” Davis said.

Mayor Jim Kalb said although Mike Layne was a city employee, he knew him only slightly. But he said those who knew him, spoke highly of him.

“It was just one of those cases where you hear that people snap,” Kalb said. “I guess that’s what snapping is.”

A neighbor, Jack Freeland, said Mike Layne had a temper.

“If he didn’t like something, he’d tell you straight up how it was,” Freeland said.

Layne was friendly, but sometimes acted strangely, he said. For example, he saw Layne digging in his yard in the middle of the night, he said.

Christi Layne was taken to Cabell Hospital in Huntington, W.Va., where she underwent surgery. Hospital personnel would not release her condition.

Loop was at Grant Medical Center in Columbus, where staff would not release information about her at Loop’s request.