Services set for doctor, sons killed in Florida fall

ALTON, Ill. -- Services are set for Monday for a St. Louis-area doctor and the two young sons he threw from a Florida hotel balcony last week before plunging to his death -- a tragedy investigators still are trying to unravel.

Edward Van Dyk, a radiation oncologist at Alton Memorial Hospital, died with his two boys -- Carl, 8, and Spencer, 4 -- May 27 in falls from a 15th-floor balcony at the posh Loews Hotel in Miami Beach, Fla., police there have said.

The victims, along with Edward Van Dyk's wife, Qinuo, were vacationing, celebrating the couple's 10th wedding anniversary, authorities said.

Investigators said Edward Van Dyk, 43, left no suicide note.

Edward Van Dyk did not suffer from mental illness and was not on any sort of medication, his father has said. But Oebele Van Dyk, of Syracuse, N.Y., said his son seemed delusional when the two spoke by telephone two days before the tragedies, and that his son might have been temporarily insane when he killed his sons and himself.

On Friday, Miami Beach police Detective Juan Sanchez said investigators reviewed the hotel's lobby surveillance tape, hoping to see if Edward Van Dyk's body language when he arrived there the night before the killings showed anything erratic, but found nothing.

Madison County authorities continued to scour Van Dyk's home computer Friday to see if it would yield anything useful about what happened, sheriff's Capt. John Lakin said.

"It's a tedious process we have to go through, a lot of time-consuming work," Lakin said of the task, which he said he hoped to see completed within days.

Visitation for Edward Van Dyk and his two sons will be from 3 to 7 p.m. Sunday at the Gent Funeral Home here, where services will be at 11 a.m. Monday. Burial will be private.

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On the Net:

Gent Funeral Home, http://www.gentfuneralhome.com