(Photo via the Justin Levens Remembrance Album on CombatLifestyle.com / Props to Deadspin‘s brilliant “Dead Wrestler of the Week” feature for the inspiration.)

By Ben Goldstein

All murder-suicides are shocking. Not all of them are entirely surprising.

On December 17th, 2008, UFC/WEC veteran Justin Levens and his wife Sara McLean-Levens were found dead inside their condominium in Laguna Niguel, California, both from gunshot wounds. Initial evidence suggested that Justin was the shooter. “It was a chest wound that penetrated her heart and killed her, and his was to the head,” said O. C. Sheriff Coroner’s Office spokesman Jim Amormino.

Amormino confirmed that painkillers and anti-depressants were discovered in the Levens’s home, along with the handgun Justin allegedly used to end their lives. Police had visited Justin and Sara at least twice in the previous month, once to investigate a possible drug overdose.

At the time of his death, Justin Levens was 28 years old and hadn’t won an MMA match in over two years. He’d gone 0-5 in 2007 — an agonizing year in which his close friend and IFL teammate Jeremy Williams committed suicide, also by shooting himself — and was dealt a six-month suspension by the California State Athletic Commission in July 2008 when a pre-fight drug test came back off-the-charts for the painkiller Oxymorphone. For the last five months of his life, Levens was unable to earn a living as a fighter, and fell deeper into a spiral of depression and prescription drug use.

Justin didn’t leave a suicide note. There were no signs of a struggle. He and Sara had already been dead for four days when their bodies were discovered.

Autopsies conducted by the Orange County Sheriff Coroner’s Office are leading authorities closer to ruling the deaths of the fighter and his wife a murder-suicide, with Levens as the suspected shooter.  A spokesman for the coroner described the fatal gunshot wounds to Sherdog.com, saying: “It was a chest wound that penetrated her heart and killed her and his was to the head.”

The two were found next to one another in their bed, with a gun found next to Levens’ body.  Autopsy results put the deaths at around four days ago.

In the Laguna-Niguel condo the Orange County Sheriff’s Department found prescription painkillers and anti-depressants, though the pills were not in the typical pharmaceutical containers.  

An AP report claims that police had visited the condo twice in the last month, once for a possible overdose.  An “anonymous source” tells NBC Sports that Levens was “never the same” after the suicide of IFL teammate Jeremy Williams in May of 2007.

Levens’ one-time agent, Ken Pavia, described him as having become “disenchanted with his career and the sport.”

No suicide note has been found.