Otto Youngers, 78, was found dead at his Tacoma home on South Wilkeson Street on February 1, 2018. Police conducted a welfare check after a friend of Youngers’ son reported receiving a disturbing text in which the son, Kurt Otto Youngers, then 53, claimed to have shot his father. Officers arriving at about 4 p.m. found Otto deceased on his couch from a gunshot wound to the face, his body covered with a blanket.

Kurt Youngers was at the scene and made statements to officers calling his father a monster and saying he had killed him, offering unusual explanations involving accusations his father refused to admit being a Nazi and to killing President John F. Kennedy. A shell casing described by Kurt as a keepsake was found in his pocket. Kurt, an internationally recognized wood sculptor, was arrested and charged with first-degree murder; neighbors had noticed increasingly strange behavior in the weeks before the killing. Questions about Kurt’s mental competency later led to a finding he was incompetent to stand trial and commitment to Western State Hospital, and the criminal case was dismissed without prejudice.

Does anyone have information about Otto’s final days, the father and son’s relationship, or neighborhood observations from that time?