‘How did you guys find out about this?’: Man shocked when police find dead brother’s body in his home with ‘hatchet still in his head,’ authorities say

A 58-year-old man in Missouri is accused of killing his own older brother, allegedly hacking the 64-year-old man to death with a hatchet that authorities found still buried in the victim’s skull.

Timothy Fox was taken into custody on Tuesday and charged with one count of first-degree murder and one count of armed criminal action in the brutal slaying of Peter Fox, court records reviewed by Law&Crime show.

According to the criminal complaint, officers with the Webster Grove Police Department on Tuesday responded to a home in the 500 block of South Old Orchard Avenue in St. Louis after receiving a request for a welfare check on Timothy Fox.

Police said the call requesting service came from “the defendant’s place of employment” after he failed to show up to work or call in for two days. The caller informed police that they had last seen Timothy Fox before he left work on Friday, Jan. 24, and noted that he lived in a home that he shared with his brother.

Upon arriving at the scene, first responders made entry into the home and “discovered the victim on the couch with a hatchet still in his head and blood platter on the floor, wall, and ceiling near the victim’s head.”

“After doing a protective sweep of the residence, officers located the defendant in the back living room of the residence and he appeared to be highly intoxicated,” authorities wrote in a probable cause affidavit. “While being detained, the defendant made several spontaneous utterances to the effect of ‘How did you guys find out about this?’ and ‘How did you know he was here?’ to the officers on the scene.”