Teresa Jarding's death ruled overdose after 2 bodies found

FOWLER, Ind. (WLS) -- Teresa Jarding, 49, died of acute mixed drug toxicity, not natural causes, according to a coroner's report released days after her husband's dismembered body was found in his Chicago home and a woman's body was found in Jarding's Indiana home.

Both had been shot to death, officials said.

Milan Lekich's dismembered body was found Oct. 5 wrapped in plastic and a blanket inside his garage in the Hegewisch neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. An autopsy determined he died of several gunshot wounds. He had been missing since June 2013.

The second body, that of a woman, was found inside Jarding's Fowler, Ind., home on October 11. The woman, who was shot in the head, has not been identified. Jarding's mother, Nena Metoyer, 68, of Dunedin, Florida, was reported missing after coming to Fowler to care for her daughter in August.

Coroners originally ruled natural causes led to Jarding's death on September 25. She had been ill, and police doing a well-being check had found her near death inside her home, sitting in a recliner with a handgun on the chair's armrest. She died the next day at a Lafayette hospital.

Metoyer was not in the home at the time, and had not been seen since.

Jarding kept to herself, according to neighbors, and had lived in the two-story home in Fowler for about two years. Fowler is 75 miles south of Chicago.

"You'd see lights in the house, but those curtains or windows were always covered. I never thought anything about it," Karen Klemme said. "I'm thinking they worked odd hours and they keep their curtains closed ... and I wasn't going to bother them."

Chicago Alderman John Pope told The Times of Munster that Lekich was his former neighbor and had worked as an electrician at the nearby Ford Chicago Assembly Plant.