Seattle woman allegedly murders father with an ice axe over mundane household disagreement

Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of murder. Please take care while reading.

Corey Burke is accused of murdering her father in Seattle, WA, amid a mental health crisis, which worsened, she said, when her father asked Burke to keep the lights on in the home that she and her father shared.

On Nov. 5, Timothy Burke, 67, was found dead in his home around 8 pm. Corey, 33, was outside the house with blood on her face, and several windows on the upper level were broken. According to Seattle news outlet KIRO 7, Corey said after she and her father argued over not turning lights off in the house, she decided she “needed to do something” about her dad, who neighbors said was elderly and often housebound.

Corey later told the police that after the argument, she retrieved an ice axe, which was recovered at the scene of the crime, tripped her father, struck him multiple times with the axe, and then bit and strangled him with her hands until he was dead.

Afterward, Corey then broke the upper-floor windows of the home, which led neighbors to contact the police. When police arrived, KING 5 reported that Corey wouldn’t answer their questions and refused to let officers inside the house.

Corey told them she was sick, hadn’t eaten, and needed to go to the hospital, where she underwent a mental health evaluation. Once she was gone, neighbors said her father also lived there. Police then entered the residence and found Timothy’s body.

Corey confessed what she did

Corey told the police she was “overwhelmed” by her relationship with her father and said she “freaked out” when they argued over the lights, according to court documents reviewed by the New York Post. The docs stated Corey had been trying to set boundaries with her dad but felt “hyper-focused” and “disorganized” regarding her “attachment to her father.”

According to the documents, she seemed to struggle to take care of herself, and authorities determined she was a danger to herself. After Corey was charged with first-degree murder, she was held on $2 million bail. Corey was arraigned on Nov. 21, but, despite her confession, she pleaded not guilty, possibly to prepare an insanity defense.

Was the attack politically motivated?

Several reports have stated the murders happened on election day, Nov. 5, suggesting Burke murdered her father because he was a Trump supporter. However, outlets making that claim don’t cite their source of information. Corey did tell the police she “knew that there was something important about election day,” KING 5 reported, citing legal documents.

According to her LinkedIn page, Corey was a Training Program Manager at Blue Origin, a Seattle Jeff Bezos-owned aerospace manufacturer. She is married to Samantha Leigh Allen, a former Daily Beast reporter, noted transgender author of LGBT Stories From Red States, and a Condé Nast editor at Them, an LBGBTQ+ publication.

However, there is no publicly available evidence to suggest that the murder was motivated by her wife or gender politics, as some outlets have reported.

Otherwise, Allen and Corey’s living arrangements are unclear. The Daily Mail reports neighbors never saw Allen at the home where Timothy died. The Mail says Allen attended Corey’s arraignment hearing but reported they didn’t interact in the courtroom.