In a letter written shortly before Patricia Birosik and her husband fatally shot themselves, she describes how the “unfair” prosecution of her husband for trying to have sex with a minor led to their decisions.
The bodies of Birosik, 49, and Paul James Scott, 54, a British citizen, were discovered Saturday outside their home at 154 Betasso Road in Boulder County – two days before Scott was to be sentenced to up to 12 years in prison, according to authorities.
After completing his prison sentence, Scott would have been deported, authorities said.
A gun was found next to each body, and it appeared each died of a self-inflicted gunshot to the head, according to the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office.
“When faced with guaranteed (deportation) Paul and PJ decided to take their own lives rather than tear apart their family, home and business. They had no wish to endure their final years as a penniless elderly couple in a place not of their own choosing,” Birosik wrote in the seven-page letter delivered to The Denver Post by Fed Ex on Tuesday, referring to the couple in the third person.
The letter said the couple was survived by a close friend and a parrot.
She said that early last year her husband had a number of setbacks, including the death of his father, the mental breakdown of his mother and the loss of his job producing “sounds of healing” for elderly people in nursing homes.
Scott also had suffered a nervous breakdown and was trying to find someone who would kill him when he started sending e-mails in the summer of 2004, Birosik wrote.
Her letter said that in Scott’s delusional mind, he believed it was more likely that someone would be willing to kill him if he said he wanted to molest a child.
Scott had pleaded guilty to one count of solicitation of a child prostitute, said Colorado Springs police Detective Clay Blackwell.
“This was definitely a very bizarre case,” he said Tuesday. “He did ask to be killed but wanted to have sex with underage children for a week first.”
Blackwell said he started investigating Scott after receiving a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which had received copies of e-mails from Scott in which he was looking for a mother and child with whom he could have sex and then kill.
When Colorado Springs detectives contacted Scott while posing as someone willing to arrange a meeting with a woman and child, Scott wrote in e-mails that he wished to be killed as well, Blackwell said.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
