Embattled former Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax killed his estranged wife and himself inside their million-dollar home outside the nation’s capital early Thursday, cops said.
The 47-year-old Democrat repeatedly shot Cerina Fairfax in the basement of their Annandale residence just after midnight before turning the gun on himself in another part of the abode, according to Fairfax County Police Chief Kevin Davis.
The couple’s two teenage children were inside the home at the time of the murder-suicide, and their son called 911 to report the shootings.
“It is high-profile in nature, it’s tragic in nature. Certainly a fall from grace for a relatively high-profile family that seemingly had had a lot of things going in their favor,” Davis told reporters shortly before the couple’s bodies were removed from the home.
“So, tragic for the children to lose both parents, extra tragic for them to actually be in the home when it occurred. So yeah, there’s a lot going on.”
Fairfax was seen by many as an up-and-coming member of the Democratic Party in the 2010s after working on the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry before establishing a legal career.
After a stint as a federal prosecutor, Fairfax unsuccessfully ran for commonwealth attorney general in 2013, narrowly losing the Democratic primary to Mark Herring.
Four years later, Fairfax was elected lieutenant governor to Ralph Northam, but his own ambitions for higher office were derailed in 2019 after multiple women came forward to accuse him of sexual assault.
The Fairfaxes, who had been married 20 years, were still living together amid ongoing divorce proceedings, cops confirmed.
Justin Fairfax had been ordered to appear for a hearing Tuesday morning, according to court records.
Cerina slapped her husband with divorce papers in July 2025, a year and a day after the couple initially separated.
Under Virginia law, a member of a couple seeking a divorce must live “separate and apart without interruption” for at least one year before filing.
“This has been an ongoing domestic dispute surrounding what seems to be a complicated or messy divorce,” Davis said.
“I don’t think it’s a secret that there’s been a divorce proceedings that have been ongoing. From what I understand in this early stage, former Lieutenant Governor Fairfax was recently served some paperwork associated with an upcoming court proceeding that apparently led to this incident last night.”
Conservative columnist Sophia Nelson, who described Fairfax as a “close friend,” claimed on X that he was “deeply depressed” due to the ongoing divorce battle, but insisted “we never saw this coming. Ever. We are all devastated.”
Police had responded to the family home back in January after Fairfax accused his wife of assaulting him.
Investigators later determined he’d lied after reviewing footage from multiple cameras that Cerina had set up inside the home.
The couple married on June 17, 2006, after meeting as undergraduates at Duke University. Their two teenage children are in high school.
At least two women publicly accused Fairfax of sexually assaulting them in 2000 and 2004.
Vanessa Tyson, an associate professor at Scripps College and fellow at Stanford University, accused Fairfax of raping her at a hotel during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.
Fairfax denied the accusation, saying the encounter was consensual.
Then a second woman, Meredith Watson, came forward to claim Fairfax raped her in a “premeditated and aggressive” attack in 2000 while they were both at Duke.
Fairfax also denied that allegation, saying, “I have never forced myself on anyone ever.”
He also questioned the timing of the accusations and claimed they were part of a conspiracy to force him out of office just when it looked like he could ascend to become governor.
At the time, Northam was fighting off controversy over a photo in his medical school yearbook that showed an unidentified person in blackface and an unidentified person in a Ku Klux Klan hood.
Northam, on whose page the photo appeared, was accused of being the person in blackface. He immediately apologized for the photo but then later back-pedaled, saying he couldn’t remember if it was him or not.
A months-long investigation could not “conclusively” determine who was in the photo or even how the image came to be in the yearbook.
Despite pressure from national Democrats, including future President Joe Biden, Northam refused to resign and served out his term, leaving office in 2021.
Fairfax sought to succeed his former boss, but finished a distant fourth in the Democratic primary behind former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, earning just 3.5% of the vote
