Walter Peca was reportedly in declining health, but Oregon law reserves end-of-life decisions for qualifying patients under a regulated medical process.
KEIZER, Ore. — The daughter of an Oregon woman charged with murdering her sick husband has described her father as suffering through a steep health decline, bringing an intensely personal account of illness into a criminal case that remains legally separate from Oregon’s regulated process for terminally ill patients seeking to end their lives.
Shelly Rae Peca, 56, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of her husband, 59-year-old Walter Arthur Peca. He was found dead July 17 at the couple’s Keizer home. Police later searched for his wife in Washington before a federal fugitive task force arrested her July 27 in remote Chelan County. Court records released weeks afterward added a central allegation: A woman identifying herself as Shelly Peca had called Keizer police and reported that she had killed her husband. She has not been convicted, and the charge against her remains an allegation.
Before those court records were made public, comments attributed to the couple’s daughter, Summer Peca, drew attention to another part of the family’s story. The daughter described Walter Peca as having longstanding health problems and said his condition had recently left him unable to do things for himself and in significant pain. She wrote that she loved both parents and expressed hope that her mother would remain safe. Her statements were sympathetic to Shelly Peca, but they did not claim to establish what happened inside the house and did not provide medical documentation of Walter Peca’s condition.
That distinction matters because Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act does not permit relatives to make a unilateral decision to hasten the death of an ill family member. The statute allows certain terminally ill adults to seek physician-prescribed medication through a defined process. State requirements say the patient must be at least 18, capable of making and communicating health care decisions and diagnosed with an incurable and irreversible disease expected, within reasonable medical judgment, to cause death within six months. The decision belongs to the patient.
The law also requires medical review. An attending physician and a consulting physician must confirm the diagnosis and prognosis and determine that the patient is capable and acting voluntarily. The patient generally makes oral and written requests, and the written request must be witnessed. The prescribing physician must discuss the diagnosis, prognosis, expected result and alternatives such as comfort care, hospice and pain control. A patient may withdraw the request. Oregon’s official guidance also makes clear that the law concerns medication voluntarily requested and used by the qualified patient; it does not authorize another person to directly cause the patient’s death.
No publicly released record reviewed for this story shows that Walter Peca had sought to use the Death with Dignity Act, qualified under it or asked another person to end his life. Authorities have not released his medical records or announced the nature of the health problems described by his daughter and neighbors. The available reporting therefore supports only a narrower conclusion: Walter Peca was described by people around him as seriously ill, while his wife faces a murder charge arising from a death police are treating as a homicide.
Neighbors provided some support for the description of declining health without supplying a diagnosis. One neighbor told KOIN that Walter Peca had been hospitalized at least twice during the weeks before his death. Neighbor Sue Saxton said she had not realized how sick he was and described the family as kind and pleasant in ordinary encounters. Her comments reflected surprise that Shelly Peca had become the subject of a homicide investigation. Police declined to publicly discuss the daughter’s social media statements when they surfaced.
The criminal investigation had already begun by then. According to an affidavit made public in August, a woman called Keizer police at about 9:58 a.m. July 17 and identified herself as Shelly Peca. The caller directed officers to the family home and said she did not want the couple’s children to be the ones who found Walter Peca. She also told the dispatcher she had the gun involved, according to reporting based on the affidavit. Walter Peca Jr., the couple’s son, later confirmed that the number used for the call belonged to Shelly Peca, the records say.
Police approached the residence cautiously. A detective used a drone to check the home and saw a person down upstairs before officers entered. Walter Peca was found with a gunshot wound to his head, according to the affidavit. The Keizer Police Department first announced that it was investigating a suspicious death and later identified the case as a homicide. Investigators did not initially publish the information about the call or the gunshot wound. Instead, their public attention turned to finding Shelly Peca.
Police said a 1999 Ford Explorer Sport Trac associated with her had been seen leaving Keizer early July 16. The vehicle was later observed in Brewster, Washington, on July 17. After about 10 days, members of the U.S. Marshals Service Portland Pacific Northwest Violent Offender Task Force located Shelly Peca off a Forest Service road in Chelan County. She was taken into custody on the Oregon murder warrant and initially held in Washington while officials arranged her return.
By August, she was back in Oregon and being held in the Marion County Jail without bail. The unsealed affidavit shifted the public picture of the case from a largely unexplained homicide and fugitive search to an investigation that includes an alleged admission reported to police before officers entered the house. Even so, an alleged statement is evidence to be examined through the court process; it is not itself a conviction. Prosecutors still carry the burden of proving the charge beyond a reasonable doubt.
The daughter’s public defense and Oregon’s end-of-life statute raise questions that are emotionally powerful but legally distinct. A family member may believe a sick relative is suffering. Oregon also has a law allowing some terminally ill adults to choose a medically regulated path toward death. Neither point, on the presently available record, establishes that Walter Peca chose that path or that the circumstances of his death fell within it. His own wishes have not been documented in the public materials reviewed for this report.
The case is therefore moving forward as a homicide prosecution rather than a proceeding under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. Shelly Peca’s attorney did not respond to questions reported by local media after the affidavit became available. Her next court proceeding was scheduled for Sept. 28. Until prosecutors and the defense present more of their evidence, the medical history described by relatives and neighbors remains context surrounding the case, not a substitute for the legal findings a court must make.
Author note: Last updated August 30, 2026.