ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, May 17, 1990                   TAG: 9005170080
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS                                LENGTH: Medium


FARM COUPLE GIVE UP, END OWN LIVES IN LATEST CRISIS/

There was the drought of '88, torrential rains in '89, an early freeze and then this spring's deluge threatening their cotton and wheat farm. Finally, a suicide pact.

James McMullen shot his wife, Billie, to death, then turned the gun on himself Sunday night after a weekend of heavy rain.

Both were 58 years old.

Billie McMullen wrote and signed the note they left, detailing their wishes for funeral services but offering no insight into why they decided on suicide, said Capt. Marvin Melton of the DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office.

The timing has led some friends to speculate that the flooding in their northwestern Louisiana community of Evelyn was a factor. Friends said James McMullen, who suffered a heart attack last year, had become quieter and more withdrawn recently and that he and his wife seemed closer.

But Steve Schutz hadn't noticed any difference in their behavior.

"I guess I'm one of the few who really hadn't seen a change in him," Schutz said in a telephone interview. Schutz is Red River Parish's county agent, a local representative of the U.S. Agriculture Department.

"I was with him Friday evening, looking at a wheat crop that had failed - which was an insured crop. He had good coverage on the crop. It was lost to cold, wet weather this spring," Schutz said.

"He just needed to go through the insurance procedures, and then I assumed he was going to go ahead and plant soybeans there," he said. "But I'm the only one I know of who had that impression. Everyone else I've talked to says that when they think back, they noticed a change."

The McMullens' home, a restored plantation house, sits on a knoll overlooking the farm outside of Evelyn - about 1,500 acres of table-flat land bordered by Bayou Pierre, a backwater of the Red River.

The Red is out of its banks, sweeping over 200 square miles of Louisiana farmland, and Bayou Pierre had no place to go except over the McMullens' land and other nearby farms some 240 miles northwest of New Orleans.

The McMullens are survived by a son. Another son died about 20 years ago in a farming accident when he was 5.

Buddy Johnson, also a farmer, knew James McMullen well and said he understands why his friend took his life.

"Farming is not just a business. It's a lifestyle. It's your whole life," Johnson said. "If you've got high hopes and all of that is suddenly taken away from you, what have you got to live for?"

It costs about $300 an acre to produce a cotton crop, and McMullen already had reseeded his land once this spring after rains buried his work in mud.

Schutz said he believed McMullen was back in decent financial shape after a couple of really rough years. At least three generations of McMullen's family were farmers.

"I think he had turned the corner. He maybe wasn't very far from the corner, but it appeared to me that he had made it," Schutz said. "To me, that he was able to get financing on such a large operation indicated that the banks had faith in him. A lot of people couldn't get financing."

As Schutz and McMullen wound up their visit on Friday, rain began to fall. Eight inches fell on Saturday, and flood water roared down the Red River from Arkansas and Texas. On Sunday, about 36 hours after their visit, McMullen and his wife were dead.



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