PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – The family of a woman killed this week in a murder-suicide said the victim was far from home, and susceptible to the attentions of the man who killed her.

Heather Mullins-Keltz grew up in several southern states and had moved to Groton, Conn., with her husband, an enlisted Navy man. She was lonely in her new home, said her cousin, Samantha Ramsey.

Ramsey told The Providence Journal that Mullins-Keltz and Michael Shechtman, the man police believe killed her, communicated online at first.

Ramsey said she believes Shechtman tried to entice Mullins-Keltz, 20, by offering what she lacked in her life in Groton: He had a lucrative job and a new house in a nice suburb. He was 13 years older, educated and charming.

“The guy really convinced her that she deserved better than the enlisted life,” said Ramsey, 26, by phone from her home in Maryland. “He could offer her this lifestyle. He manipulated her and played her like a fiddle.”

A SWAT team found Mullins-Keltz’s decapitated body in Shechtman’s Plainfield, Conn., house Wednesday morning as Shechtman was leading the police on a chase through Rhode Island. Her head was in the car when Shechtman crashed on Route 10 in Cranston, then fatally shot himself.

Shechtman was accused by a former girlfriend of threatening her life in 1993. That same year, the police found a cache of weapons, including a sawed-off shotgun, an AK-47 and a pipe bomb, in Shechtman’s room at his parents’ home in North Kingstown.

Shechtman had told police that he met Mullins-Keltz and her husband shortly after they moved to Connecticut.

According to a Plainfield police report, Shechtman and his then-fiancee were involved in a “relationship” with Mullins-Keltz and her husband as early as December.

On Monday evening, Dec. 8, 2003, Shechtman went to the police station and reported that he was concerned about some threatening remarks John Keltz had made, Plainfield, Conn. Police Chief Gary Sousa said.

Shechtman explained that he had taken his fiancee and Mullins-Keltz to New Hampshire for the weekend. Now John Keltz, Shechtman said, “was upset with the relationship.”

Ramsey said Mullins-Keltz moved into Shechtman’s house in Plainfield a few weeks ago, but the family said it was not a serious relationship.

Mullins-Keltz and her husband had been arguing, “like they-got-married-too-young kind of spats,” Ramsey said.

According to Ramsey, Shechtman magnified the couple’s marital problems, trying to convince Mullins-Keltz to stay with him. “He was overblowing the spats and telling her lies that her husband was being abusive,” Ramsey said.

According to the Plainfield police, Shechtman was telling them a similar story. On March 6, Shechtman and Mullins-Keltz went to the Plainfield police station to inform them that she was planning to file for divorce from Keltz.

The couple wanted the police to know, they said, because they feared that Keltz would try to take his wife away. On Tuesday, Mullins-Keltz and her husband went out. Ramsey said she believes that the couple had planned to reconcile.

That night, Mullins-Kletz’s father, Fred Mullins, received a call from Shechtman, Ramsey said. Shechtman told Mullins that he was worried about Heather. He said she had been gone with Keltz for several hours. Shechtman was telling Mullins what he thought Keltz might to do.

Mullins was concerned, but his daughter returned home during the telephone conversation. Police found her body the following morning.

AP-ES-03-27-04 1916EST