The couple murdered near Sheridan were “rich in love”

SIDNEY TOWNSHIP, Mich. (WOOD) — The family of Jessie and Virginia Seward, the elderly couple found dead in their home near Sheridan on Wednesday, wondered if the couple was targeted because of their kindness.

“Because Dad and Ginny had such good hearts, they would let anyone who was unlucky stay with them for a day, two months, two weeks. And honestly, I believe in my heart that their goodness was their undoing,” said Jessie Seward’s stepdaughter Deborah Soule.

The state police have made little comment on the deaths, but speak of a double murder.

“They’re not telling us anything, and I’m glad about that because I don’t want anyone to tell on us and get away with it,” Soule said.

Soule said a great-granddaughter discovered the bodies of the Sewards on Wednesday morning after the couple failed to show up for a 4-H horse show on Tuesday.

Police did not say whether there was evidence of a break-in at the ranch house on Beaver Drive near W. County Farm Road, but said there was no current threat.

“It didn’t make sense to me,” Soule said. “As long as the perpetrator is out there, we’re all under threat. We’re nothing special. It could happen to us.”

Soule, who lives across the street from the couple, said Virginia Seward, known to her loved ones as Ginny, recently quit her job at a market and Jessie Seward still works at a hardware store.

“They were not rich people. Their wealth, if you look at their walls, is just ten times greater,” she said, pointing to the photos of her grandchildren on her own walls. “Their wealth was their family. They were not rich people. Just rich in love.”

Jessie Seward was 81 and his wife was 80. They had so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren that Soule could no longer count.

Soule said she grew up in the house where the murders took place and was raised by her stepfather. She says he married Ginny after her mother died in the late 1990s.

“For 59 years he was the only father I knew,” she said.

She said she had not been able to sleep since the deaths and that her husband had armed himself:

“He loads a gun at night. I’m scared, but he says, ‘I’ll tell you what, Debbie, if anyone comes through that door, I’ve got a bullet with their name on it.'”