Man Says Jealousy Behind Murders

The grieving boyfriend of a slain woman thinks jealousy drove a longtime friend he called “Uncle Walt” to shoot her family and himself.

Shoshone residents still wonder how Walter Schoolcraft, a well-liked bachelor sharecropper, could have committed the apparent murder-suicide that rocked the rural community.

“I think it was jealousy, plain and simple,” Dean O. Barney of Shoshone said Monday.

Denise McCoy, 32, and her children, Genevieve, 11, Jordan, 10, Chelsea, 8, and Adrianna, 2, were shot to death at his home while he was away on June 11.

“I think (Schoolcraft) was jealous of me for Denise and the kids, because I had a family and he didn’t,” Barney, 25, said.

McCoy and her children were living for the summer at Barney’s home in rural Lincoln County. Investigators theorize sexual molestation might have been the motive, but they are waiting for results of crime-scene tests.

Schoolcraft’s body was found in a pickup at his farm on June 12.

He had a bullet hole in his head and a rifle on his lap.