WOODSTOCK — The gunman in Tuesday’s murder-suicide at a downtown home lived at the residence owned by his mother, who had traveled from Florida to put the property up for sale, according to neighbors and a real estate agent who had been contacted to list the property.

On Tuesday, authorities named Jay Wilson, 45, of 13 Slayton Hill Terrace in Woodstock Village, as the suspect who shot and killed a man on the property on Tuesday afternoon. Shortly before midnight, Wilson’s body was discovered by police inside the home with an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, according to authorities.

On Wednesday afternoon, Vermont State Police identified Wilson’s victim as Dieter Seier, of Cornish. Following an autopsy, police deemed the shooting a homicide and said Seier died from “gunshot wounds” to his torso.

According to police, Seier, 67, had accompanied Wilson’s mother, June, to her Woodstock home, where they planned to meet with her son and transfer a vehicle to him.

At some point, a “family dispute involving Wilson and his mother” relating to “property and money” erupted and culminated with Wilson shooting Seier.

June Wilson was not physically injured and was able to flee, police said.

Tuesday’s shooting followed conversations June Wilson had with real estate brokers to put her Slayton Terrace property up for sale, including one who was the subject of an angry outburst by Jay Wilson when he visited the property on Monday. The agent, John Bassette, said he was on his way to a second meeting at the house Tuesday when June Wilson called him to say her son had COVID-19 and the meeting was canceled.

Jay Wilson was a 1995 graduate of Woodstock Union High School, where June Wilson taught home economics for many years. He resided at his mother’s Slayton Terrace home by himself and rarely interacted with others in the neighborhood, people who knew Wilson said Wednesday.

“Just trying to say ‘hi’ to him was hard. He was very, very reclusive,” said Thaddeus Wildasin, who said he’d known Wilson since high school and lives on Highland Avenue above Slayton Terrace and sometimes would see him “walking around town.”

“I’m a bartender and pretty good at getting people to open up, but not him,” Wildasin said outside his home on Tuesday.

Vermont State Police continued to have Slayton Terrace blocked off to all but residents on Wednesday as investigators from the major crimes unit worked the scene, including operating a small drone in the area.

Many residents on the street, a leafy, quiet bend on the south side of Route 4 with quintessential village homes tucked into a hill a short walk above Mac’s Woodstock’s Market, could not return to their homes until almost midnight on Tuesday,

Patty Topliffe, who lives down the street from the Wilson residence on Slayton Terrace, said she was at work at Woodstock Union High, where she teaches history, and her husband, Jon Hussey, was at work in the advancement office at Dartmouth College, when a neighbor texted them to alert them about the shooting.

At the time, Topliffe’s and Hussey’s two children, ages 7 and 4, were at home with Topliffe’s parents, as residents in the area were instructed by police to lock their doors and stay inside.

“I called my mom and tried to get home, but everything was blocked,” Topliffe said.

Her husband drove back from Hanover, and they stayed at a friend’s house until midnight “when they opened the roads,” said Topliffe, who moved to Woodstock from Washington, D.C., two years ago.

Massive police response to shootings like the one in Woodstock on Tuesday are not unusual in large cities “but you don’t really expect moving to Woodstock something like this to happen,” Topliffe said outside her home on Tuesday while her son played in the yard.

Keri Bristow, a former Spanish teacher at the high school who lives on Highland Avenue near the Wilson residence and has known June Wilson since they taught together, said of Jay Wilson: “He didn’t say much. He kept to himself. You wouldn’t see much outside, occasionally mowing the lawn.”

“He didn’t have a job as far as I know,” Bristow said, adding that at times Jay Wilson resided in a house that June Wilson owned in Rutland and that mother and son generally kept out of each other’s way.

“They kept to each other’s space,” Bristow said. “They didn’t see a lot of each other.”

Woodstock real estate agent Laird Bradley, one of the Upper Valley agents that June Wilson had been consulting about listing her home, said he had been hoped to sign an engagement letter with her this week.

“Our last conversation we had she said she was going to be leaving on Wednesday and she’d let me know what her decision was,” Bradley said.

Bradley said he had met with both June and Jay Wilson at the Slayton Terrace residence to talk about listing the property and described the son as “pleasant but not outgoing.”

Bradley said the plan was for Jay Wilson to move to his mother’s home in Rutland, where he had lived previously and at one time had worked at a bakery in the pastry department.

Bristow said she had not seen much of June Wilson in recent years because she had moved to Florida. But she can only imagine the pain her friend is suffering.

“My heart goes out to her,” Bristow said. “This is every mother’s worst nightmare.”

John Lippman can be reached at jlippman@vnews.com.

]]>