Stacey Castor

Stacey Ruth Castor (née Daniels, formerly Wallace; July 24, 1967 – June 11, 2016) was an American convicted murderer from Weedsport, New York. In 2009, she was found guilty of murdering her then-husband David Castor with antifreeze in 2005 and attempting to murder her daughter, Ashley Wallace, by spiking her drinks with pills in 2007. In addition, she was suspected of having murdered her first husband, Michael Wallace, in 2000; his grave laid next to David's until the latter's remains were disinterred and buried elsewhere in 2016. The story made national news, and Castor was subsequently named the "Black Widow" by media outlets.

Early life

Stacey Castor was born Stacey Daniels in Clay, New York, on July 24, 1967. Her parents were Jerry Daniels and Judie Eaton. Castor met her first husband, Michael Wallace, in 1984 when she was 17. The couple married and had their first daughter, Ashley, in 1988. A second daughter, Bree, was born in 1991.

Castor was employed by an ambulance dispatch company, while Wallace worked nights as a mechanic, but the family had little money. According to Castor, Wallace was very close to Bree, showing a favoritism that Castor made up for by becoming "best friends" with elder daughter Ashley. Despite their closeness with their children, the couple grew apart, and it was rumored that each was having extramarital affairs.

Murders

In late 1999, Wallace began feeling intermittently ill. Family members variously remember him as acting unsteady, coughing and seeming swollen. As his inexplicable sickness persisted over the holiday season, his family encouraged him to seek medical care, but he died in early 2000 before he could do so. Physicians told Castor that her husband had died of a heart attack. Although Wallace's sister was skeptical and requested an autopsy, Castor refused, saying she believed the doctors were correct.

In 2003, Stacey married David Castor, whose surname she used from that point forward. David was the owner of an air conditioning installation and repair company, and she served as his office manager. One afternoon in August 2005, Castor called the Onondaga County sheriff's office to tell them that her husband had locked himself in their bedroom following an argument and had not been seen nor heard from for the past day, claiming he was depressed. Upon visiting the house for a wellness check, Sergeant Robert Willoughby kicked in the door of the bedroom and found David dead. Among the items near his body were a container of antifreeze and a half-full glass of bright green liquid. Willoughby says he remembers that Castor screamed, "He's not dead, he's not dead."

The coroner reported that David had committed suicide through a self-administered lethal dose of antifreeze, but when police found Castor's fingerprints on the antifreeze glass and located a turkey baster that had David's DNA on the tip, they began to suspect she had engineered his death. They believed Castor had used the turkey baster to force-feed David once he became too physically weak.

Investigators secured audio and visual surveillance on Castor's house and the gravesites of her husbands, who had been buried side by side at her request. Detectives reasoned that if Castor were truly genuine about her love for her late husbands, then she would eventually visit their graves. Castor, however, never visited. Investigators soon felt the only way to prove she was responsible for both homicides was to have Wallace's body exhumed. A toxicology screen ruled that Wallace had also been killed through antifreeze poisoning.

Attempted murder

In September 2007, Castor panicked as suspicion mounted over the deaths of her husbands. After learning that police had exhumed Wallace's body and found traces of antifreeze in his system, she was believed to have devised a plan to set up her daughter Ashley for the murders.

On Ashley's first day of college, investigators came to her school to question her about Wallace's death and to inform her that he had been poisoned. An upset Ashley called Castor. Soon after, Ashley said, Castor invited her to the family home in Liverpool to have a drink together. Ashley agreed because Castor was not only her mother but her "best friend".

The following day, Castor invited Ashley to drink at home again, offering a "nasty-tasting" drink that she initially refused. Seventeen hours later, Ashley was found comatose in bed by her younger sister Bree. Bree demanded that help be sought, and Castor made the 911 call. Ashley's sister left her side for a moment and when she returned, she found a suicide note next to Ashley that contained a supposed confession to the murders of her father and stepfather. Castor quickly took the note and later gave it to paramedics.

Tests revealed that potentially fatal painkillers had been found in Ashley's system, and that she most likely would have died if she had been taken to the hospital just a few minutes later. When Ashley woke up, police questioned her about the murders and the suicide note; she said the last thing she remembered was her mother making her an alcoholic drink, something she had never done before. She told the officers that she did not write the note and was confused about their questions.

Arrest and trial

For two years, investigators had collected evidence against Castor for the deaths of her husbands. In 2007, she was arrested for second-degree murder in David's death and for attempting to murder and frame Ashley.

Prosecutors argued that Ashley's computer-written "suicide note" had actually been written by Castor. Ashley was 12 at the time of her father Wallace's death. When brought on the stand, she testified that she did not murder either her father or her stepfather nor did she write the suicide note. Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick and Chief Assistant District Attorney Christine Garvey argued that David's "suicide" had never made sense given the lack of his fingerprints on the glass or container tainted with ethylene glycol, a toxic substance found in antifreeze, and the turkey baster found in the kitchen garbage bearing both ethylene glycol and his DNA. They felt that this suggested he was force-fed the antifreeze. Given evidence of the evolution of David's illness, they concluded that Castor had fed her husband antifreeze through the baster before trying to make it look like a suicide. She had said that her husband got the idea to kill himself with antifreeze while both were watching a news report about Lynn Turner, who murdered two past lovers by using the poison.

Prosecutors presented evidence showing how antifreeze poisoning can be identified from the growth of calcium oxalate crystals in the kidneys, and that this was seen in Wallace and David's autopsies. In addition, they noted money as one of the main reasons Castor murdered her husbands. She had wanted to collect on their life insurance and estates, and had changed David's will to exclude his son by a previous marriage from the money left to him by David.

"In 2005, people started to put it together," Cayuga County Sheriff Dave Gould said. "If Mr. Wallace had been cremated, or if Mr. Castor had not died, we would never have known we had a homicide."

Having searched Castor's computer, prosecutors had found several drafts of the purported suicide note. Forensic investigators found that based on the timestamps, it had been written while Ashley was in school, proving she couldn't have been its author. They argued that the "suicide attempt" had actually been a premeditated murder attempt. On the stand, Ashley retold how her mother had convinced her to drink before her near-death. She repeated that she only drank the "nasty-tasting" beverage because she trusted her mother. She maintained her innocence in the murders and denied writing of the suicide note.

Castor's defense team—attorneys Charles Keller and Todd Smith—was set on creating reasonable doubt about Castor's role in the murders. They wanted to "poke holes" in Ashley's version of events and prove that she could have been capable of murdering Wallace when she was 11 years old. They noted Wallace showed favoritism toward Bree rather than Ashley and cited jealousy as a possible motive for Ashley having murdered at such a young age. For David, they noted his and Ashley's tumultuous relationship. Castor's mother believed her granddaughter to be guilty. In a final attempt to convince the jury that she was not guilty, Castor took the stand.

On cross-examination, Fitzpatrick pointed out what he felt were flaws in Castor's version of that night. She maintained that it was Ashley who murdered Wallace and David although she would not speculate about motives beyond implying that her daughter was mentally ill. Fitzpatrick pointed out that Castor had never sought therapy for Ashley and that Ashley had never exhibited signs of mental illness.

Fitzpatrick asserted that Castor's behavior during David's and Ashley's illnesses made no sense, given the years she had worked for an ambulance company. She did not seek care for Ashley for seventeen hours and indicated that David, who was staggering and vomiting and unable to stand, "looked OK". Likewise, he questioned how a woman who had lost two husbands to poisoning would not seek help for a daughter in Ashley's state. Fitzpatrick frequently shouted at Castor, causing Keller to frequently object and even request a mistrial.