DULUTH — The man suspected of killing four people and himself last week had previously threatened his wife with a knife and said he wanted his family killed if Donald Trump became president.

Search warrants filed this week in the West Duluth murder-suicide investigation also reveal that Anthony “Tony” Nephew applied for and received a gun permit in September, two months after he was hospitalized in following the domestic assault call.

Authorities believe Nephew, 46, fatally shot his ex-partner, Erin Abramson, 47, and their son, Jacob Nephew, 15, before going to his home and killed his wife, Kathryn “Kat” Nephew Ramsland, 45, and their son. , Oliver Grandson, 7 years old.

Clint Austin / File / Duluth Media Group

The nephew has openly discussed mental health struggles in the past, saying the issue has been “left untreated or ignored by society” and ominously foreshadowing

in a 2021 News Tribune op-ed:

“For millions of Americans, a crisis leads to suicide — or homicide before suicide.”

Warrants indicate a Superior City employee contacted police Thursday, Nov. 7, after Abramson failed to show up for work. He was considered “strange to her”, and she had told a colleague that Tony Nephew had gone “all over”.

Officers went to Abramson’s residence, 6009 Tacony St., shortly after 2 p.m. and found her and Jacob Nephew dead.

Police then went to Tony Nephew’s nearby home, 4401 W. Sixth St., and set up a perimeter. Officers deployed a drone to search the home and then a robot to open the locked bedroom door. Inside, they found the bodies of Ramsland, Oliver Nephew and Tony Nephew.

Warrants indicate police were dispatched on July 3 when Ramsland reported her husband had killed himself. An officer wrote that Tony Nephew “attacked her and needed help.”

He admitted to the officer that he held a knife to Ramsland’s throat, the report said, but was described as “cooperative” and asked to be transported to Aspirus St. Luke’s.

The nephew also claimed that “the Russians have been controlling his mind since he was 6 years old” and asked the officer “to come back after midnight if Trump takes over and puts a bullet in his head and his families.”

The staff of St. Luca was informed of the comments and was left in the hospital’s care that night, according to the report.

Clint Austin / File / Duluth Media Group

Police records indicated the nephew applied for the gun permit on Sept. 9 and received it the same day. Although he was known to have mental health issues, Minnesota court records do not list any criminal convictions or civil commitments in his record.

Police said last week they were still working to determine a precise motive and timing of the crime. But the warrants indicate “the recent election of Donald Trump as President-elect of the United States” and “past statements by the grandson” were suspect factors.

Investigators obtained permission to search both homes and two cars parked at the Sixth Street address. Among the evidence, they seized numerous electronic devices that “may contain messages that show what happened in the moments leading up” to the murders.

About 500 people gathered for a candlelight vigil Wednesday night, walking nearly a mile from the Sixth Street residence to the Tacony Street home.

Abramson worked at Superior’s Environmental Services Division and served on the Duluth Public Utilities Commission. Her son, Jacob Nephew, attended Marshall School.

Ramsland, married to Tony Nephew since 2014, was a professor in the art department at Lake Superior College. Oliver Nephew was a first grader at Rockridge Academy in the Duluth Public Schools.

Tom Olsen has covered crime and the courts and the 8th Congressional District for the Duluth News Tribune since 2013. He is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Duluth and a lifelong resident of the city. Readers can contact Olsen at 218-723-5333 or [email protected].