Daphne Wright: Jealousy and Horror

A New Friendship Spurs Darlene VanderGiesen’s Murder
(‘Hear No Evil,’ Forensic Files)

Daphne Wright didn’t contribute a whole lot to her community, but no one foresaw how much she would take away from it.

The Sioux Falls, South Dakota resident thought that her on-again off-again girlfriend was spending too much time with a factory worker named Darlene VanderGiesen, so she decided to eliminate the competition.

Darlene VanderGiesen holding a black and cream Siamese cat
Murder victim Darlene VanderGiesen

All three of the women were deaf and two of them were gay, so the novelty of the story captured many headlines. And the gory manner of death sparked debate over whether Daphne should become the first woman in South Dakota history to receive the death penalty.

For this post, I searched for more biographical information about Darlene and her killer and checked on whether she’s (fingers crossed) still in prison.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Hear No Evil” along with extra information from internet research.

Darlene VanderGiesen was born deaf. She graduated from the Iowa School for the Deaf and attended junior college before moving to South Dakota.

She worked in the shipping department at JDS Industries Inc., a company that makes sports trophies and promotional items in Sioux Falls, a town known for its large community of people with hearing impairments.

An employee for 13 years, Darlene loved her job and also enjoyed camping, softball, going to the Deaf Club and collecting Beanie Babies in her spare time, according to her obituary.

Daphne Wright in a yearbook photo
Daphne Wright long before she committed a grisly murder

On February 3, 2006, Darlene’s parents received word that their daughter hadn’t shown up for her job for two days in a row. Gene and Dee VanderGiesen left a family reunion in Nebraska and headed back to Sioux Falls to look for her.

They were particularly concerned because Darlene had started using online dating websites. According to Deadly Affairs, Darlene had no shortage of friends in Sioux Falls, but she wanted to find a serious relationship.

“Oh, Darlene, be so careful,” Dee recalled telling Darlene. “There are so many, excuse the expression, ‘weirdoes’ out there.”

(“When a mom excuses herself for using the term ‘weirdoes,’ you have no doubt she raised her daughter to be a good person,” one commenter said on YouTube.)

At Darlene’s apartment in the Timberland Village complex, her parents found her cell phone lying on a table. Normally, she took it everywhere for texting. The VanderGiesens didn’t see her truck in the parking lot, and her cats looked hungry, according to “Playing With Hearts,” an episode of Deadly Affairs.

Still, the VanderGiesens had no reason to believe someone wanted to harm their daughter.

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“She has no enemies,” Darlene’s friend Cheryl Brimmer later told the Argus Leader. “Why anyone would want to kill her is beyond me. I never saw her mad or upset or anything negative about her.” 

Many of Darlene’s friends gathered at the VanderGiesens’ home to offer moral support. Daphne Wright, an acquaintance Darlene met at a Deaf Club, showed up, too. “She gave me a hug and she said she was sorry that Darlene was missing, that they were friends, and she would be praying that we would find Darlene soon,” said Dee VanderGiesen, as reported by the Argus Leader. “And I thanked her for coming.”

Police got what looked like a promising lead in a man Forensic Files calls Jeff Flynn — a local field hand who Darlene had recently dated. He seemed nervous during questioning and investigators found dried blood in the back of his car.

But testing proved the blood came from a deer, and Jeff could prove he had been out of town when the murder happened.

Darlene’s car soon turned up abandoned in a Pizza Hut parking lot on 26th Street and Sycamore Avenue, but police found nothing out of order inside. No one had used Darlene’s bank cards.

Meanwhile, her sister found emails on Darlene’s account from someone named Wendy Smith who declared her hatred of Darlene. “Wendy” called Darlene fat and said she had elephant feet. In other emails, the writer identified herself as the lover of Sallie Collins (Forensic Files uses the pseudonym “Sally Ford”).”You always visit Sallie when [I] am not here,” the message said. “Enough please.”

Sioux Falls waterfalls
Sioux Falls features waterfalls in the middle of town

Police spoke to Daphne Wright, who said that she and Darlene were friends and they liked each other. But soon enough, Daphne cracked and admitted she had created the email account in the name Wendy Smith and sent the disturbing emails to Darlene. At first, she denied meeting her at the Pizza Hut, but later acknowledged that she did.

And news of a dramatic incident involving Daphne came to light. A few days before she died, Darlene had gone out to dinner with Sallie Collins.

Daphne showed up and confronted Darlene and Sallie with accusations and got so out of hand that the police were called to escort Daphne off the premises. (Forensic Files says the outburst happened at a restaurant, but a newspaper account gave Sallie Collins’ house as the venue.)

Darlene later said that she made peace with Daphne. Darlene and Sallie Collins were just friends. Darlene wasn’t gay. But, in reality, Daphne still harbored suspicions. According to her mother, Daphne had some boyfriends in her youth before coming to terms with her gayness. Maybe Daphne thought Darlene would do the same—and then steal Sallie.

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A look at her background showed that Daphne did have some understandable anxiety over abandonment. As a child, Daphne — who lost her hearing to rubella at the age of 10 months — faced rejection from other kids and even some members of her extended family. Daphne’s parents had to leave her at a school for the deaf 125 miles away from their home in North Carolina.

Her father died when she was a teenager.

As far as Daphne’s intellect, opinions vary widely. According to her mother, Daphne did well in athletics but had trouble reading in school. One mental health professional described her as “mildly retarded.” Another assessment placed her nonverbal IQ at 114 to 117, a higher-than-average score.

Snapped described Daphne as working in a series of low-paying jobs. She reportedly received Social Security. Daphne’s roommate, Jacki Chesmore, would later say that Daphne spent most of her time sleeping and playing video games.

Sallie Collins
Sallie Collins

Fortunately for police, Daphne didn’t channel much energy or intelligence into her murder plan. She left forensic evidence scattered over a 20-mile area starting in South Dakota and ending in Minnesota.

When police searched Daphne’s apartment at 1806 S. Phillips Ave., they smelled chemicals and found a receipt for a chainsaw from Ace Hardware. Her basement floor had random spots painted blue, and a storage room had a freshly painted floor in the same blue color. Investigators found some human tissue and bone pieces there.

Their DNA matched Darlene’s and so did blood found beneath the blue paint.

A hardware store employee remembered selling a deaf customer a chainsaw. She had handed the worker a note that said “tree cutting machine” and then bought the cheapest model available, a 1.5-horsepower that cost $60.

With the preliminary forensic evidence unmistakably grim, Darlene’s family went ahead and held a memorial service for her.

Shortly after, there was gruesome confirmation of Darlene’s fate. At a landfill, investigators found the pelvis, thighs, feet, and lower legs of an adult female along with a sweatshirt printed with sign language. It had Darlene’s bloodstains on it.

Just across the South Dakota border near Hills, Minnesota, a county snowplow driver named Keith Schmuck discovered a female upper torso and severed head wrapped up in a plastic bag in a ditch near Interstate 90. A drawstring was tied around her neck.

The body parts had a petroleum smell — as did Daphne’s basement, especially after investigators scraped the blue paint off the floors, according to Jessica Lichty, a forensic chemist with the Sioux Falls Police Department.

Darlene VanderGiesen in a formal blue gown and holding a flower bouquet
Darlene VanderGiesen

All the body parts belonged to Darlene. She died of either blunt force trauma to the head or suffocation, or both.

Police arrested Daphne 10 days after the murder. Media stories described the case as a “lesbian love triangle,” despite that Darlene self-identified as straight.

On the witness stand at the trial, Sallie Collins described the confrontation that preceded the murder. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press reported her testimony:

“[Daphne] saw Darlene, and she got very mad and said, ‘Why are you destroying our relationship?’ And she was very angry and then she sat down, and I said, ‘Daphne, you are wrong,’ Collins said. VanderGiesen left and put her middle finger up to her face as a gesture toward Wright, who refused to leave, so Collins said she went to a neighbor’s house and called police. She left when officers arrived, Collins said.

Sallie also said that Daphne was antsy after the murder and smoked “a cigarette every minute.”

During Sallie’s testimony, Daphne chewed gum and shed some tears, according to an AP account.

Daphne Wright might have looked tough, but she had no criminal record before the murder

Police theorized that on February 1, 2006, Daphne met Darlene at the Pizza Hut and somehow persuaded Darlene to get into her Suzuki SUV. Once at Daphne’s apartment, the prosecution alleged, Daphne hit Darlene in the head and threw her down the steps to the basement, where she ultimately died.

Daphne then used the chainsaw to dismember the body in a room formerly used to store coal. She tried to burn the body parts — hence the gas smell — and then disposed of them in the dumpster in South Dakota and along the highway in Minnesota. She used the blue paint to cover up the blood in her basement.

Jacki Chesmore, Daphne’s helpful roommate, said that Daphne left the house with some cinderblocks and garbage bags and stayed out for two hours around the time of the murder.

When the prosecution showed photos of Darlene’s body parts, Dee VanderGiesen left the courtroom in tears, according to reporting from the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, which also noted that Daphne rarely let her emotions show, and mostly watched an interpreter stationed near the front of the court room.

Much to his credit, Judge Brad Zell decided the evidence was already gruesome enough and declined the prosecution’s request to show a video demonstrating a chainsaw carving up a pig’s body.

It’s unclear why Daphne didn’t just bury Darlene’s body whole instead of doing the ghastly work of sawing it up. By disposing of it in different places, Daphne made it easier to find and she branded herself forever as not only a murderer but also a depraved murderer.

And an inept one at that. At the sites where Daphne dumped the body parts, investigators found bed sheets, coal dust, rope, and carpet fibers, all of which originated from her house.

Daphne Wright
Daphne Wright was reserved during the trial


Public defender Traci Smith had an uphill battle but she managed to throw a few salvos. She tried to shift suspicion to Sallie Collins, because a T-shirt with the logo of her employer, Wells Fargo, turned up at one of the crime scenes. Traci Smith also suggested that some unknown man Darlene met online could be her killer.

The defense claimed that the prosecution made too much out of the emails. “These childish words have been spun into the death threat which gave rise to the state’s theory of their case,” Traci Smith said. She also hinted that a pack of cigarettes, not Darlene’s regular brand, found at her apartment implicated an unknown suspect.

In the end, however, Traci Smith was no match for the prosecution’s evidence. The jury of 11 women and one man convicted Daphne of kidnapping with gross personal injury and first-degree murder.

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After the verdict, Darlene’s sister, Sandra Sidford, who is also deaf, said thank you and hugged state attorney Dave Nelson. “Deaf bloggers around the country felt the same elation, loss, and sadness,” the Argus-Leader wrote.

Friends from the deaf community explained their grief through interpreters. “I just can’t believe she’s gone,” said Monique Lion-Boothe. “We want her back so bad.”

The death penalty was in play and, as mentioned, the media publicized that Daphne could be the first woman executed in South Dakota.

Andrew Imparato, president of the American Association of People with Disabilities, said that Daphne didn’t deserve any leniency because of her deafness. “I think it’s very dangerous to argue that deaf people as a general matter shouldn’t be eligible for the death penalty,” he told ABC News, according to information available on Murderpedia.

A newspaper headline asks, "Will it be death?"
The trial was a sensation in Sioux Falls as well as in deaf communities across the country

The victim’s sister and brother-in-law said they felt comfortable leaving the punishment up to the jury’s discretion. According to an AP account, during the penalty phase, some jurors cried when they heard Eugene VanderGiesen describe the last time he saw Darlene — when she “put her big arms around me and gave me a great big hug” and said “I love you” in sign language.

But the testimony of Carolyn Tucker, Daphne’s mother, probably affected them as well. She said that Daphne’s father was an alcoholic and physically abusive and Daphne had witnessed his violence. According to an AP account, Daphne did poorly in school as she struggled with her sexuality.

Tucker told of the scene when she and her husband left Daphne at the school for deaf students. “She came out and thought she was going with us,” Tucker said, “but we had to leave her and she was screaming and crying, running behind the car.”

The jury decided Daphne deserved life without parole rather than the death penalty.

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Today, Daphne Wright lives in South Dakota’s Women’s Prison in Pierre. Her inmate profile describes her as 5-foot-7 and 203 pounds. The South Dakota Department of Corrections lists her status as life, with no chance of parole mentioned.

In one of the few bright notes to the story, the families of both the murderer and the victim came to terms with each other without rancor. “As one mother to the other, I express my sorrow to your family,” Dee VanderGiesen told Carolyn Tucker, according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. “We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God’s grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life.”

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR


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Stacey Castor: No Loyalty to Anyone

The Antifreeze Killer Progressed From Evil to More Evil
(‘Freeze Framed,’ Forensic Files)

Before launching into the recap, I’d like to share some great news. A book version of this blog is available in stores and online. Forensic Files Now: Inside 40 Unforgettable True Crime Cases offers informed recaps of favorite Forensic Files episodes — plus extra information that didn’t appear in my posts or on TV. So please help spread the news.

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Now, let’s switch up and talk about someone who was all bad news: Stacey Castor.

She counts among a handful of Forensic Files criminals who plotted to kill their own children. They include Debora Green, who orchestrated her kids’ demise in a fire to punish her husband, and Brad Jackson, who suffocated his daughter because she didn’t get along with his girlfriend.

Stacey Castor

But Stacey was working on a whole different level. When she tired of her husbands, she poisoned them to death for the insurance money. Then she attempted to kill her daughter while passing off the blame for the murders on her.

Stacey’s behavior was so devious that her story spawned not only the Forensic Files episode but also an episode of 20/20 and a Lifetime movie titled Poisoned Love: The Stacy Castor Story starring Nia Vardalos.

Fortunately, Stacey’s daughter Ashley Wallace survived the homicide attempt and lived to testify against the mother who betrayed her. For this week, I looked for more biographical details on Stacey and checked into Ashley’s life today. I also read up on David Castor Sr. — the second of Stacey’s two husbands — to find out whether he deserved the unflattering portrayal of him in the made-for-TV movie.

So let’s get going on the recap of “Freeze Framed” from season 14 of Forensic Files.

Stacey Ruth Daniels was born on July 24, 1967 and grew up in the area around Syracuse, New York.

As a child, Stacey was bold and inquisitive, her mother, Judie Eaton, told David Muir during the “Black Widow” episode of 20/20. “She was only allowed three why’s in a day sometimes,” Judie said.

Stacey acknowledged she could be difficult. “I was very stubborn and headstrong, even as a kid, so my mom had her work cut out,” Stacey told ABC.

First husband Mike Wallace was the father of Stacey’s daughters

According to information available on Murderpedia, Stacey was just 17 when she met Mike Wallace, and the two married young.

Stacey worked for an ambulance dispatch company. Mike was a mechanic.

They had Ashley in 1988 and Bree in 1991.

Sadly, Mike died of a heart attack at the age of 38. Stacey said that he had a bad heart and had struggled with drug and alcohol dependence. Mike’s side of the family believed his health declined because of some kind of mystery illness. They had seen him looking unsteady and suffering from coughing, swelling, and purpled skin.

The family wanted an autopsy. Stacey vetoed the idea.

She had him buried in a grave next to a plot she bought for herself.

Stacey took her daughters to Disney World after Mike Wallace died. Bree said that the three survivors were close and enjoyed good clean fun at home, watching TV and generally acting like three best pals, just as Poisoned Love portrayed them.

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At some point, Stacey got a job as an office manager at Liverpool Heating and Air Conditioning, owned by a divorcé named David Castor Sr.

David Castor Sr. made himself a nice living. During his Forensic Files interview, his adult son, David Jr., noted that his dad had high standards for workmanship.

The younger David was the product of David Sr.’s longtime marriage to his high school sweetheart. David Jr. described home life as happy with a lot of togetherness.

Things deteriorated, however, after David Sr. injured his head in an ATV accident and his personality changed, according to his son.

Police took this footage of the house where Stacey Castor lived with her second husband and two daughters.

“He didn’t have a lot of consideration of people that he loved [and how] what he said would make them feel,” David Jr. told ABC. “I believe what made my mom leave is not only the way it made her feel, but made everybody that she loved feel.”

The father and son became alienated. David Sr. found comfort in his relationship with Stacey.

In 2003, the two got married. Stacey, Ashley, and Bree moved into his house.

The TV movie portrayed David Sr. as an aspiring disciplinarian (which always goes over so well with stepchildren) who punished one of the girls by removing her bedroom door.

It’s not clear whether that particular incident happened in real life, but he got pretty low marks overall as a stepparent, according to 20/20. The girls said that, on one hand, he told them that he didn’t want to be a father to them, but on the other, he liked to boss them around a lot.

But Bree and Ashley didn’t have to contend with him for long. On August 22, 2005, Stacey called 911 from the Castors’ home in Onondaga County, New York. (Media sources vary on the towns where she lived and came from. Salina, Clay, and Liverpool were all mentioned.)

Stacey told first responders that David Sr. had recently lost his father and was very sad.

“David got upset, took a bottle of Southern Comfort, went into the bedroom and locked himself in and got drunk — wouldn’t come out,” Stacey explained, according to Sergeant Michael Norton with the Onondaga County Sheriff’s Office, as recounted in The Sun in a July 22, 2022 story.

Stacey was a BFF to her kids until she tried to kill one

She said her husband stayed in the bedroom all weekend.

When a police officer kicked the door in, he discovered David Castor naked and face down on the bed. He had vomited.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Two drinking glasses, one with a green liquid, sat on the night table.

An empty bottle of antifreeze lay on the floor. A lab found antifreeze in the green liquid in the glass. Oh, and there was a turkey baster with traces of antifreeze in the kitchen.

It turned out that David Sr., then 48, had no alcohol in his system. He died from ingesting ethylene glycol, the poisonous compound in antifreeze. Investigators thought it unlikely that David Sr. would choose to kill himself by slowly by ingesting antifreeze — the Castors had a gun in the house.

Lead detective Dominick Spinelli found it suspicious when Stacey casually let on that she knew that the poison ethylene glycol was the main component of antifreeze. That part didn’t seem like a red flag to me. If she claimed she didn’t know, he might have suspected her of lying because a bottle of the stuff with its ingredients clearly listed was in her bedroom.

What really tripped her up regarding the antifreeze was that she mispronounced it as “antifree.” But that’s getting a little ahead of the story.

After David Castor’s death, detectives tapped Stacey’s phone line.

Judie Eaton, seen standing at far right, believed Stacey’s story that Ashley killed Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr.

On September 5, 2007, the authorities upped the stakes by having the body of first husband Mike Wallace exhumed. “I remember thinking, while Michael Wallace’s casket came out of the ground, I wonder if he’s saying, ‘It’s about time you guys are looking at this, because I didn’t just die on my own,'” Spinelli told ABC.

The medical examiner found calcium oxalate crystals in his organs, a sign of ethylene glycol poisoning. The crystals can stay in a dead body for years.

On Ashley’s first day of college, investigators came to tell her that Mike Wallace — her biological father — died of antifreeze poisoning, not a heart attack. Investigators recorded the phone call she made to her mother.

“Mommy, they came to my freaking school,” Ashley said. “I’m freaking out.”

Stacey began to panic as well — she sensed that police were circling in on her.

Ashley Wallace

So Stacey suggested that she and Ashley indulge in a little mother-daughter drinking to take the edge off. Stacey picked up some watermelon-mimosa flavored Smirnoff Ice. Ashley would later say that it was the first time her mother had encouraged her to drink alcohol. And the beverage tasted “nasty,” but at the time she had no reason to suspect her mother of trying to harm her. They were best friends.

The Smirnoff Ice made Ashley feel ill, so her mother gave her a pill to help her sleep, according to ABC. Ashley went back to school the next day.

Next up, Stacey proposed another home cocktail hour, except with hard liquor. Investigators would later allege that she knocked out Ashley with drugs secretly mixed in a drink of vodka, orange juice, and Sprite. She used a teaspoon to get more of the tainted drink down Ashley’s throat, according to the Journal News.

Fortunately, Bree discovered her older sister unresponsive but alive in bed the following morning. She alerted Stacey, who then had no choice but to call 911. Ashley received medical treatment in the nick of time, only to wake up to a detective asking about a suicide note of which she had no knowledge.

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Stacey had told authorities that Ashley took morphine and codeine on her own and left a 750-word suicide note confessing to the murders of Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr. Next to Ashley’s bed, there were empty bottles of sleeping pills and vodka.

The motive? According to Stacey, Ashley resented Mike because Bree was his favorite. And Ashley wanted to get rid of David Sr. because he was mistreating Stacey.

But Ashley, who was 12 when Mike Wallace died, told David Muir that they had a good relationship. He went on Girl Scout outings with her and helped her win badges. And while her stepfather might have been difficult, she didn’t kill him.

Forensic examination of the home computer revealed that the suicide-confession letter was written while Ashley was in school.

The note misspelled “antifreeze” as “antifree,” suggesting that Stacey penned it. When interviewed, Stacey allegedly slipped up and said that she gave David Castor the antifreeze—mispronouncing it as “antifree”— although she quickly corrected herself, saying that she gave him cranberry juice.

Stacey and David Castor Sr.

As one YouTube commenter put it, “Anti-free made Stacey Castor anti-free.” (It’s strange that Stacy never caught on about the “ze” at the end of the word. Maybe she thought “antifreeze” was a plural form.)

Stacey, who received more than $50,000 from her first husband’s death, had about $200,000 to gain via property and insurance from David Castor Sr.’s demise. Hence she joined another Forensic Files club, that of killers who get away with one murder and push their luck by committing another (Mark Winger, Tim Scoggin) out of greed.

David Sr. “had motorcycles, jet skis, snowmobiles, a house, a business,” ex-wife Janice Poissant Farmer told ABC. “And I figure that Stacey just had made plans to take it all.” Stacey started redecorating the house after David Sr. died.

She produced a fake will that left everything to her and her daughters and nothing to David Jr., who apparently had reconciled with David Sr. by this time.

Investigators believe Stacey got David Sr. to drink the antifreeze disguised as something innocuous. When it didn’t kill him right away, she used the turkey baster to force more of the toxic liquid into his mouth while he was incapacitated.

At Stacey’s trial in 2009, Ashley told the court about the strange-tasting alcoholic beverages her mother gave her. Bree also testified for the prosecution.

Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick said that Stacey, having worked for a paramedical company, knew that David Castor and Ashley Wallace needed medical help immediately, but she chose not to summon it in a timely fashion.

Ashley and Bree Wallace

Fitzpatrick, who introduced the word “vomitus” into the Forensic Files lexicon, also pointed out that the confession note spelled antifreeze wrong in the same way (“antifree”) four times — and that Stacey said “antifree” when questioned. Stacey said she deliberately cut off the “ze” because she interrupted herself with another thought.

In return for immunity, Stacey’s friends Lynn and Paul Pulaski testified that Stacey persuaded them to act as false witnesses to the signing of the phony David Castor Sr. will.

When Stacey took the stand, she insisted that Ashley killed Mike Wallace and David Castor Sr.

In February 2009, after days of deliberation, the jury found Stacey guilty of murder in the second degree, attempted murder in the second degree, and filing a bogus will. According to The Journal News:

“There was a loud gasp from the front row where Wallace sat with her younger sister and other members of the Wallace and Castor families. The relatives shared a round of hugs…’There isn’t enough punishment but we’ll take what they give her,’ David Castor Jr. said. A sobbing Ashley Wallace left the courthouse without comment.”

“If there is a ceiling on the terms of evil, [Stacey] is at the ceiling,” prosecutor William Fitzpatrick said after the verdict.

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During her victim impact statement at the sentencing, Ashley Wallace said she couldn’t understand why her mother did what she did. “There are so many things that she has ruined,” Ashley said. “She’ll never be able to see Bree graduate. My father will never walk me down the aisle. She’ll never get to see her grandchildren. All these things, she took away from me.”

Onondaga County Judge Joseph Fahey said that he had never seen a parent willing to sacrifice a child in order to escape blame.

After telling Stacey that “you are in a class all by yourself,” the judge gave her a sentence of a minimum of 50 years.

The authorities saw no need to try Stacey, then in her late 40s, for Mike Wallace’s murder. “In light of her age,” Fitzpatrick said, “it is very likely she will die in prison.”

Meanwhile, Stacey’s lawyer, Charles Keller, complained that the evidence about Mike Wallace’s death shouldn’t have been allowed and that it was “piling on” Stacey.

Investigators theorized that Stacey wasn’t able to make David Sr. drink enough from the glass of antifreeze

In reality, Stacey was probably the one who had been piling on — piling on more victims. In 2010, Fitzpatrick told CNYcentral.com that his office was looking into the 2002 death of Stacey’s father, Jerry Daniels. He reportedly died after Stacey brought him an open bottle of soda to drink while visiting him in the hospital.

So what happened to Stacey Castor’s surviving victims?

Ashley is still living in central New York and is engaged. According to OprahDaily.com, she credited her counselor, doctor, and loved ones for helping her survive the trauma without turning to substance abuse. But Ashley has also said that she wishes the media attention would stop and that she hopes no more shows are made about the case.

David Castor Jr. and his mother, Janice Poissant Farmer, sued Stacey and the Pulaskis. In 2011, the state Supreme Court awarded them $127,118.65 in compensatory damages and $250,000 in punitive damages. An appellate court overturned over the judgment in 2014.

Stacey’s lawyer, who went on to run for County Court Judge, would later say that he had no regrets about representing her. “I measure success by professionalism, ethics, and hard work,” Charles Keller said in March 2016, noting that sometimes legal professionals have to take unpopular positions.

But no lawyer would ever have to worry about Stacy Castor’s litigation needs again.

In June 2016, she was found unresponsive in her cell at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women in Westchester County, NY. Numerous media accounts reported that she died of natural causes, probably a heart attack because an autopsy showed she had an enlarged heart.

Local reporter Russ Tarby noted surprise that she had a heart at all.

That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. RR


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