Kenneth Jerome Boom claimed the shooting was accidental, but investigators cited messages Penny Boom sent before her death.

WELLSBORO, Pa. — A Pennsylvania man accused of fatally shooting his wife told authorities the shotgun discharged while he was cleaning it, but investigators say messages the woman sent before her death described a threat to shoot her if she left him. Kenneth Jerome Boom, 62, was charged with criminal homicide and several other offenses in the July 30 death of 61-year-old Penny Boom at their Delmar Township home.

The case turns in part on sharply different accounts of what happened inside the couple’s home along Route 287. According to police and court information reported by several news organizations, Penny Boom told a former neighbor during an argument that her husband had threatened to shoot her after she said she would leave. Hours later, Kenneth Boom told a different friend that he had done “something bad,” authorities said. When he eventually called emergency services, however, he described the shooting as an accident that occurred while he was cleaning a 12-gauge shotgun. The allegations have not been proven in court, and Boom is presumed innocent unless convicted.

Police said the dispute unfolded during the evening of July 30. Investigators were told the couple had been arguing, with one point of conflict involving cats in the home that Kenneth Boom wanted removed. According to an affidavit described by PennLive and Law&Crime, Penny Boom communicated with a friend and former neighbor while the disagreement was taking place. One message said she had told her husband she was going to leave and that he responded by saying he would shoot her. In another message, she sought to make sure someone knew whom she feared if something happened to her. Those communications became a significant part of investigators’ reconstruction of the hours before the shooting.

A neighbor provided another piece of the timeline, telling investigators that a sound described as a “pop” came from the direction of the Boom residence between about 8 and 9 p.m. Police believe Penny Boom was shot during the evening, although the emergency call that brought authorities to the property did not come until early the next morning. The home is in Delmar Township outside Wellsboro in Tioga County, a rural part of north-central Pennsylvania not far from the New York state line. Local reporting said emergency medical personnel were dispatched to the residence shortly after 5 a.m. July 31 but were recalled after police arrived.

Investigators also obtained an account from a friend whom Kenneth Boom allegedly tried to reach repeatedly in the hours before the 911 call. Authorities said Boom placed 11 attempted calls to that friend between 3:19 and 4:34 a.m. The friend responded at about 4:40 a.m., according to the police account. During their conversation, Boom allegedly said, “I did something bad,” and said he had shot his wife after an argument in which she had threatened to leave him. The friend later told investigators he had expected Boom to describe the shooting as an accident but did not hear him do so during that conversation. The friend urged him to call 911.

Boom contacted Tioga County emergency services at about 5:15 a.m., according to reports based on the criminal complaint. By then, his explanation differed in a critical respect from the account attributed to him by his friend. Boom told the dispatcher he had accidentally shot his wife while cleaning his shotgun, police said. State troopers who went to the residence found Penny Boom dead in the living room and recovered a spent 12-gauge shotgun shell nearby. Local reporting identified the firearm described in the complaint as a Silver Eagle semiautomatic 12-gauge shotgun. Troopers also reported smelling alcohol on Boom’s breath and said his speech appeared slurred.

Police said Boom later demonstrated how he said the shotgun discharged while he was cleaning it. Investigators confronted him with the messages Penny Boom had reportedly sent before her death. According to the police account, Boom criticized the former neighbor who had received the messages but acknowledged that his wife had said she would leave after he told her the cats had to go. Authorities treated the combination of the earlier alleged threat, the communications from Penny Boom, the overnight call to Boom’s friend and the later accidental-shooting account as evidence requiring further investigation rather than accepting the death as an accidental gun discharge.

State police initially described the matter as a death investigation after finding Penny Boom at the residence early July 31. Later that day, authorities filed a criminal case against her husband. Court-record summaries show Boom was charged with criminal homicide, two aggravated-assault counts, recklessly endangering another person and possession of an instrument of crime with intent. He was arraigned before Magisterial District Judge Robert L. Repard and was ordered held in the Tioga County Prison without bail, according to local reports based on the docket. The criminal homicide charge is an allegation; the publicly available reports reviewed for this story do not establish that a court has determined Boom’s guilt.

Penny Boom’s obituary describes a life in Wellsboro that extended far beyond the circumstances of her death. Born Penny Marie Gleason in Blossburg on Jan. 14, 1965, she was a lifelong Wellsboro-area resident and worked in the radiology department at UPMC Wellsboro. Her family wrote that she enjoyed walking in the Wellsboro Cemetery early in the morning and around the Green during work breaks, spending time with friends and filling her home with children and grandchildren. The obituary said she enjoyed cooking for her family, summer fires, grilling and motorcycle rides, and that she regularly contributed to benefits and collected pull tabs for Ronald McDonald House programs.

The obituary said Penny Boom had devoted 38 years to her marriage and described her as a central figure in a large family. It listed a daughter, Andrea Ilniski; a son, Avery Bentley; grandchildren and a great-grandson among her survivors, while noting that another daughter, Misty Bacon, had died nine years earlier. A memorial notice later scheduled visitation and a service for Sept. 13 in Wellsboro. Those biographical details provide a fuller public record of the woman whose death is now at the center of the criminal case, rather than defining her only by the allegations against her husband.

Early reports said Boom was due for a preliminary hearing Aug. 11. Searches of publicly accessible reports through Sept. 20 did not establish the outcome of that proceeding or identify a subsequently scheduled court appearance, so the present procedural status beyond the filed charges could not be independently confirmed from the material reviewed. The central factual dispute described by investigators remains clear: Boom told authorities the gun fired accidentally while he was cleaning it, while police have cited Penny Boom’s earlier messages and Boom’s alleged statements to a friend as evidence that prompted them to pursue a homicide case.

Author note: Last updated September 20, 2026.