Former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax and his wife, Cerina Wanzer Fairfax, were found dead in their Northern Virginia home early Thursday morning in what police say was an apparent murder-suicide.

Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis said Fairfax first shot his wife several times in the basement of their home in the Annandale area, then shot and killed himself in an upstairs bedroom.

“This has been an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce,” Davis said at a news conference Thursday morning outside the couple’s home.

Fairfax, a Democrat, was elected to Virginia’s second-highest office in 2017, becoming the second African American elected statewide in Virginia. He served with former governor Ralph Northam and was once a favorite to become the state’s governor before allegations of sexual assault effectively ended his political ambitions.

But his career was derailed when two women accused him of sexual assault in years past – allegations that Fairfax denied and fought vociferously for years after.

Davis said that Fairfax, 47, was recently served paperwork related to an upcoming court proceeding. The couple, he said, were separated but living together. They married in 2006.

Both of the couple’s children, a teenage boy and girl, were at home when the shooting occurred, Davis said. The couple’s son called 911, he said.

In January, Davis said, Justin Fairfax called police and reported that he had been assaulted by his wife. Police responded and determined by viewing footage from cameras installed inside the home by Cerina Fairfax that no assault had occurred. Davis said it was the only time the Fairfax police department had been to the home.

The leafy street on which the Fairfax family lived in the Woodburn neighborhood of Annandale was quiet late Thursday morning. Police tape cordoned the property. Neighbors in nearby homes declined to comment. Shortly after 10 a.m. two stretchers were wheeled from the home into a waiting van and driven away.

News of the murder-suicide reverberated across the Commonwealth Thursday, evoking expressions of sympathy for surviving family members from political and community leaders.

“Pam and I are devastated by this heartbreaking news. I had the privilege of getting to know the Fairfaxes while our families served together,” former Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who was in office when Fairfax was lieutenant governor, said in the statement Thursday morning that mentioned the couple’s children. “We are praying for … the entire Fairfax family during this incredibly difficult time.”

Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) also expressed her sympathy for the family, calling the incident “a horrific tragedy.”

“Dr. Fairfax was a devoted mother, beloved dentist in the Fairfax County community, and engaged supporter of her alma mater, Virginia Commonwealth University,” Spanberger said in a statement. “My prayers are with the Wanzer and Fairfax families as they mourn their own loss, endeavor to make sense of this tragedy, and comfort the Fairfax children.”

Former Attorney General, Jason Miyares, a Republican, posted on X: “My heart goes out to the Fairfax family today, particularly the children. For anyone struggling with this kind of darkness, the most courageous thing you can do is ask for help. There is more help and friendship out there than we realize.”

Cerina Fairfax was a dentist with her own practice, Dr. Fairfax & Associates, in the Fairlee area of Fairfax County. She graduated from Duke University in 1999 and Virginia Commonwealth University’s Medical College of Virginia School of Dentistry in 2005, according to the dentistry practice website. Justin Fairfax also attended Duke, graduating in 2000.

A voice recording at Cerina Fairfax’s practice Thursday morning said the office was closed because of a family emergency.

Attempts to reach family members, friends and colleagues of Cerina Fairfax Thursday were unsuccessful.

“The death of Cerina Fairfax leaves an immeasurable void in the lives of all who knew and loved her,” her divorce lawyer Amy Spain, counsel at Boies Schiller Flexner, said in a statement. “Above all else, Cerina was a devoted mother to her beautiful children, who were the very center of her world.”

Spain called the incident “an absolute tragedy” and said that Cerina Fairfax would be remembered “for the beautiful spirit she brought to the world.”

The couple had separated in June 2024 but continued living together in their Annandale home and signed a post-nuptial agreement in December of that year, according to court documents.

“While it is their hope that their marriage will be long and happy, [they] desire at this time to anticipate and plan now for contingencies in order to preserve their marriage at this time as well as in the future,” the agreement said, according to a court decision.

But those efforts proved unsuccessful. In June 2025, Cerina Fairfax told her husband through a lawyer of her intent to divorce him, according to court documents. She filed for divorce the following month. A dispute over whether her intent to separate had been permanent led to a protracted legal fight in which Justin Fairfax represented himself. A circuit judge ruled in his favor over a technical dispute in the divorce in January 2026.

Justin Fairfax was raised in his grandparents’ home in a Northeast Washington – where his pharmacist mother moved Fairfax and his three older siblings after her divorce. He told reporters in 2017 that he had a good relationship with his father, a Harvard-educated consultant to nonprofit organizations.

Fairfax attended DeMatha Catholic High School in Hyattsville and Duke University on a scholarship. He worked as a staffer for the Senate Judiciary Committee for two years before moving to New York to earn his law degree at Columbia Law School.

Fairfax rose to prominence as a federal prosecutor in Northern Virginia. His ambition and ingratiating style rubbed some the wrong way, but his out-of-nowhere challenge to insider favorite Mark Herring for the Democratic Party’s state attorney general nomination in 2013 put him on the political map.

An outsider from Democratic Party circles, Fairfax came closer than expected in that primary, losing to Herring by three percentage points. He then won the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor in 2017.

His victory in the general election that fall made him only the second Black person elected statewide in Virginia since Reconstruction, after former governor L. Douglas Wilder, whom Fairfax considered a mentor and confidant.

On the day he was inaugurated, Fairfax carried in his pocket a copy of the manumission document that freed his ancestor, Simon Fairfax – born into slavery but emancipated on June 5, 1798. Fairfax’s father had shown him the document that morning for the first time. His wife and young children joined him for the swearing-in.

“I was reminding myself what our ancestors had to go through to get to a point like we’re having now,” Fairfax said of the moment a few days after taking office. “We can make progress if we keep our eyes on the future.”

In a little over a year, Fairfax was embroiled in an executive branch scandal that, for a moment, raised the possibility that he would be elevated to governor. Northam had been tied to a racist photo in a medical school yearbook from decades earlier; Northam first apologized for wearing blackface in the image and then denied that it was him in the photo, but admitted that he had worn blackface in a separate incident a few years later.

With Democratic leaders universally calling for Northam to step down, Fairfax summoned a handful of reporters to his office on a Saturday and discussed the logistics of his presumed rise to the governorship.

But Northam stayed in office, and within a matter of days Fairfax also faced calls to resign when two women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault decades earlier. Fairfax denied the charges, stayed in office and called for an investigation.

While Northam recovered his popularity and put the racial scandal behind him, Fairfax was never able to shed the stigma of the sexual assault allegations. Shunned by the party, he ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2021 and came in fourth place, with just over 17,600 votes. He spent the years since then struggling to resume his law practice and attempting to clear his name, but never got the FBI investigation or court vindication that he sought.

If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.

This is a developing story and will be updated.
–Joe Heim, Juan Benn Jr., Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post