NATION : Woman Held in Family Slayings

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. —  A retired police captain was in jail today, charged with shooting to death her husband and retarded son. Police said the mother killed her son because she planned to commit suicide and he needed special care.

Dorothea Sweeten, 66, was arrested Wednesday at her home after a SWAT negotiator talked her into dropping a pistol she had held to her head for about an hour.

She was charged with murdering her husband, Tom, 55, a public relations employee for the Tennessee Valley Authority and a former managing editor of the Knoxville Journal, and her son, Charles H. Forester Jr., 39. She was jailed on $40,000 bail.