That’ll teach her!
A bitter Long Island widower set fire to his home, then drove to a nearby park and shot himself to death because a stepdaughter was trying to sell the house out from under him.
Vincent Whalen, 67, went on his suicidal rampage Tuesday following an unspecified domestic dispute in the Cape Cod-style residence in Coram, which hit the market the previous day.
The house had been owned by Whalen’s late wife, Anita, who died of cancer last week and left it to the younger of her two daughters, Susan Lavalle of Pompano Beach, Fla.
The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home was listed for sale at $324,999.
In a Facebook post, Lavalle, 39, said her mom died of cancer on April 21.
“She fought bravely but was taken way too soon. The heavens have gained a tremendous angel,” Lavalle wrote.
Neither Lavalle nor her older sister, Jennifer Alejandro, 42, returned calls for comment.
But neighbors said Alejandro was struggling with the tragedy.
“She hasn’t had a minute to grieve, with the mother dying and all this,” one said.
“She just hasn’t had a break with everything that went on.”
Next-door neighbor Stanley Felton, 90, said he “heard a loud pop” when the blaze broke out at about 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
“Big flames were coming out of the bedroom window,” he said.
“[Whalen] had a propane tank in there. He wanted to blow up the place.”
Felton said Whalen, a former ferry worker who recently ran a hot-dog stand out of his RV on Route 83, would often visit his neighbor’s home.
“I couldn’t tell anything like this would happen,” said Felton, who attended the funeral of Whalen’s wife last Saturday.
About 90 minutes after flames engulfed the house, Whalen was found slumped over in his car at Coram’s Tanglewood Park.
Suffolk County cops said a homicide investigation revealed that Whalen, who wasn’t identified by name, had suffered “a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”
Detective Sgt. Edward Fitzgerald of the Suffolk Police Department Arson Squad told Newsday that the house fire had started in the bedroom, and that cops had been called there earlier in the day over a domestic dispute.
The “totality of the circumstances” led arson investigators to conclude that the dead man set the fire, Fitzgerald added.