Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax Shot His Wife Multiple Times Before Dying by Suicide
The two were reportedly in a “domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce," according to police.
Photo: Getty Images
Former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D)—whose rapid political rise came to a screeching halt after he was accused by two women of sexual assault in 2019—was found dead in his home late Wednesday after killing his wife, Cerina, and then himself. Per police investigations, he shot her multiple times.
According to Kevin Davis, the police chief of Fairfax County, the two were in a “domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce” when Fairfax killed his wife in the basement. Afterwards, he went to an upstairs bedroom (the two were separated, and did not share a room) and killed himself. Their two teenage kids were home, the older of whom called the police shortly after midnight, telling the dispatcher he believed his mother had been stabbed.
Fairfax was 47, and Cerina was 49. She was a practicing dentist at a family practice.
“This is certainly a fall from grace for a relatively high-profile family that seemingly had a lot of things going for them,” Davis said. “Tragic for the children to lose both parents. Extra tragic for them to actually be in the home when it occurred.” And extra extra tragic, I say, that over 55% of women killed in the U.S. each year are murdered by current or former intimate partners.
Speaking to reporters, Fairfax suggested the “spark” may have been because Fairfax was recently summoned to a Monday court date for divorce proceedings. Per court documents, Cerina was awarded custody of the two Fairfax kids last month, and next week’s trial was meant to go over how the two would split their assets.
The files say Fairfax was a “cloistered” man who drank daily and made a “profound retreat from domestic life,” with other documents saying he—despite having campaigned for gun control during his political tenure—bought a gun in 2022, using money meant for his kids’ horseback-riding lessons.
Fairfax repeatedly denied the women’s accusations, at one point releasing the partial results of two polygraph tests in an attempt to self-exonerate. All this was at a particularly pivotal point for his political career, as then-Gov. Ralph Northam (D) was caught in another scandal in which his medical school yearbook featured a photo of two individuals; one wearing blackface, and another wearing a KKK robe (he never specified which one was him). He was pressured to step down, but never did.
In 2021, Fairfax ran to take Northam’s spot as governor, but finished in fourth place—with a measly 3.54%. It was apparently because he then lost his security detail as Lt. Gov. that he decided he needed to buy a gun.
According to the Bexar County Family Justice Center, on average, more than three women are killed by their husbands and boyfriends each day, and 94% of the offenders in these murder-suicides are male, with 75% occurring in their home.
Like what you just read? You’ve got great taste. Subscribe to Jezebel, and for $5 a month or $50 a year, you’ll get access to a bunch of subscriber benefits, including getting to read the next article (and all the ones after that) ad-free. Plus, you’ll be supporting independent journalism—which, can you even imagine not supporting independent journalism in times like these? Yikes.
Keep scrolling for more great stories.