WILTON – In the four years since they carved out a home on a former horse pasture in Wilton, Benjamin L. Duling and Shelly McGrade revealed themselves to neighbors as friendly people and devoted parents.

Inside the house, however, their relationship was marked by turmoil, according to a neighbor who says Duling sometimes confided in him.

"I told him, 'Split the pillows,'" said Forrest Rollins, 65. "Why would you want to fight every day of the week? There's got to be a better life than you have.'"

►Google Maps: 32 Duling Lane, Wilton, NH

McGrade, 35, was found dead in the family's two-story home last Friday night. Authorities, who termed her death a homicide, said she and Duling had been fighting.

Duling, 34, was injured in the struggle. He has not been charged with a crime.

The cause of the fight was still shrouded in mystery yesterday. Senior Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin had little to say about the case, other than to note he expected the autopsy results would be released some time today.

As a friend and neighbor, Rollins said he was shocked to hear there had been violence in the family's home. So far as he knew, he said, the couple had never fought physically. He described Duling, in particular, as a "laid-back, mellow type of guy."

Disagreements, however, were frequent, he said. Mostly, he said, their arguments boiled down to differences in the way each preferred to treat McGrade's two children from a previous marriage.

One of Duling's most common complaints, Rollins said, was that McGrade and her ex-husband spent too much money on toys, such as iPods and video game systems, for their son and daughter.

"He didn't like that," Rollins said. "And I agreed with him. No child should be able to snap their fingers and get what they want."

Two boys who said they often played with McGrade's eldest son, Brandon, offered diverging assessments of the couple's relationship, based on what they saw. Greg Valin, 17, said Duling and McGrade "seemed peaceful and happy."

"They didn't seem like the type of people this would happen to," Valin said.

Chris Taylor, 12, said he often heard the couple yelling in the background when he called Brandon on the phone.

Duling and McGrade moved to a middle-class neighborhood in Wilton four years ago. They built a spacious, two-story house at the end of a private, unpaved road, now recognized as Duling Lane.

McGrade commuted roughly an hour a day to Lowell, Mass., where she worked for 10 years as a student database administrator for the local school district. Jean Franco, the district's interim deputy superintendent of curriculum instruction and assessment, called her a "valued employee" and "team player."

"It's tragic," Franco said, "that anyone would lose their life like that. Just tragic."

Neighbors said they always assumed Duling and McGrade were married. Authorities described them as boyfriend and girlfriend.

Rollins said Duling was a loving father to both of his children with McGrade: a boy about 5 and a girl about 2. "He never came here alone. He always came with his little boy," Rollins said. "You never saw Ben without his son."

Duling stopped by Rollins' home some time around Christmas last year. He came with a gift: a miniature bob-house for ice fishing, one of Rollins' favorite pastimes.

"My wife was so impressed," Rollins said, "she made a huge fruit basket and made me take it down to them.

"If you met him, one on one, you'd know," he said. "This guy was plain and mellow. Just a good person."

Rollins said he heard some yelling Friday night while he stood outside, smoking. He didn't think anything of it, he said, until he saw the police cruisers about an hour later.

On Saturday afternoon, he said, he saw a hearse drive out of the neighborhood.

"My heart sank for one simple reason: I knew who was in the hearse," he said. "And I'm thinking, 'Well, goodbye, Shelly.'"

__

New Hampshire Union Leader staff writer Carol Robidoux contributed to this report.