By Jorge Casuso

October 1, 2026 -- The husband and wife found dead in a Santa Monica apartment Saturday morning both died of gunshot wounds to the head in a murder suicide, the Los Angeles County Department of Medical Examiner said Wednesday.

Officers found the couple -- identified as Nicole Rabitzsch, 47, and Hendrik Rabitzsch, 48 -- dead in their home in the 3100 block of Pico Boulevard while conducting a welfare check, police officials said.

Detectives investigating the incident determined that Hendrik Rabitzsch fatally shot his wife before shooting himself, officials said.

Investigators believe the incident took place at approximately 6:42 a.m., according to police. A firearm was recovered at the scene. No other individuals are believed to have been involved.

According to Nicole Rabitzsch's LinkedIn profile, she had "worked for nearly 13 years at an Audi dealership in downtown Los Angeles and previously spent more than five years working for the automaker in Germany," the New York Post reported.

The incident comes five months after Jeremy Ferguson, the Director of Operations for Downtown Santa Monica, Inc (DTSM), and his wife, Mandy Zelinka, died in what the coroner's office determined was a murder suicide.

Ferguson, 53, fatally shot Zelinka, 49, before killing himself inside a home in Venice, LAPD investigators determined.

A report by the national non-profit Violence Policy Center found that 65 percent of the 237 murder suicides that took place in the U.S. in the first half of last year involved an intimate partner.

Of these, 99 percent were females killed by their partners, and 88 percent involved a gun. Eighty percent of the murder-suicides occurred in the home.