Justin Fairfax, the former lieutenant governor of Virginia, and his wife, Cerina Fairfax, a dentist, were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide at their home shortly after midnight on Thursday, according to Fairfax County police.
Fairfax, 47, shot and killed his wife before turning the gun on himself, Police Chief Kevin Davis said. The couple’s teenage children were home at the time of the shootings.
Davis described the deaths as the result of an “ongoing domestic dispute surrounding a complicated or messy divorce.” Court records show that the Fairfaxes had been engaged in divorce proceedings this year.
Fairfax, a Democrat, served as Virginia’s lieutenant governor from 2018 to 2022 after winning election in 2017 alongside Gov. Ralph Northam. He largely remained out of the spotlight until 2019, when a series of scandals engulfed the state’s Democratic leadership.
The crisis began when old medical school yearbook photos surfaced appearing to show Governor Northam in blackface. As calls mounted for Northam’s resignation, two women came forward to accuse Mr. Fairfax, who would have been next in line for the governorship, of sexual assault. One alleged the assault occurred in 2000 at Duke University; the other said it took place in 2004 at the Democratic National Convention, the NY Times reports.
Fairfax denied both allegations - but the accusations effectively stalled momentum to force Northam from office. The situation grew more chaotic when the state attorney general, the third-ranking Democrat in Virginia’s executive branch, admitted he too had worn blackface as a college student. All three men ultimately served out their full terms.
Insisting he had done nothing wrong, Fairfax launched a bid for governor in the 2021 Democratic primary. In one televised debate, he accused his rival, former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, of “treating me like Emmett Till” for calling on him to resign over the sexual assault allegations.
With minimal institutional support and limited fundraising, Fairfax finished fourth in the primary, receiving just 3.6 percent of the vote. Mr. McAuliffe won the nomination but lost the general election to Republican Glenn Youngkin.
Fairfax had kept a low public profile since leaving office. Thursday’s tragedy marks a grim end to a once-promising political career that was repeatedly overshadowed by scandal and personal turmoil.