Joseph Edward Adams Sr.

WELLSBURG — The death of a Wellsburg man ruled a suicide 37 years ago is now the basis of a murder charge filed against the man’s son.

Earlier this week, the Brooke County grand jury indicted Joseph Edward Adams Sr., 63, of Chester for murder following police testimony that Adams confessed to killing his then-65-year-old father, Edward Frank Adams, in 1987.

A criminal complaint filed against Adams states he called the Brooke County Sheriff’s Department on Nov. 10 to claim responsibility for the shooting death of his father at his home in the Rabbit Hill Road area of Wellsburg on Nov. 27, 1987.

It states Adams met later that day with deputies from the Brooke and Hancock county sheriff’s departments at the Chester Police Department.

There, Adams allegedly told them on the morning after Thanksgiving Day 1987, he had used a handgun to shoot his sleeping father in the head and, after wiping the weapon, told a Brooke County sheriff’s deputy his father had shot himself.

The criminal complaint states a death certificate signed by a Jefferson County coroner listed the cause of death “as a self-inflicted bullet wound.”

An obituary for Edward Adams appearing in the Herald-Star in 1987 stated he died at Ohio Valley Hospital in Steubenville, which explains why a Jefferson County coroner was involved in the investigation.

In the complaint, Brooke County Sheriff’s Deputy Shane Siranovic, said he noted during the interview “on multiple occasions that Mr. Adams stated that he felt guilty and was telling the truth.”

In a separate criminal complaint filed in Hancock County, Hancock County Sheriff’s Deputy D.G. DiJorolanio stated, “Mr. Adams made the statement to Sgt. Siranovic and I that if we do not arrest him today for murdering his father that he would kill his roommate.”

“Later in the interview, Mr. Adams stated that if we did not arrest him, he would go crazy and he did not know what would happen,” added DiJorolanio.

The alleged statements by Adams have been used as grounds for him to be charged in Hancock County with making terroristic threats, for which he’s being held in the West Virginia Northern Regional Jail on a $25,000 surety/cash bond.

The cases against Adams on that charge in Hancock County and for murder in Brooke County are pending in the 1st Judicial Circuit Court.