Debra Sundstrom
I
have often stated here that while I obviously do cases that involve
the murder of a spouse I have to be in the “mood” to do them to
give them the same justice other cases receive by me. This is mainly
because these sorts of crimes are almost commonplace in our world
right now. While researching this case I read an article published
in 2013 that stated that 750 marriages end in murder (by a spouse)
every year in America. The article went on to say that 80% of those
crimes are committed by the male in the relationship. This may be
why a lot of the spousal crimes that I blog about are in the other
20% that are committed by the female. This is one of them.
On
February 19, 2013 local Walton New York police officers went to a
cabin home owned by the Bosco family. They had gone there looking
for Debra Sundstrom. Debra had been dating Dominick “Nick” Bosco
for close to a year, but they were not there for anything related to
their relationship. No, officers were there to serve a bench warrant
on Debra. She had failed to appear in court to answer to theft
charges a few days prior. Authorities had been given the tip that
Debra often stayed with Bosco in the family cabin. Sure enough when
they got there Debra opened the door. They obviously told them what
their business was and Debra asked if she could go change her
clothes. Walton New York is a small town where most everyone knew
everyone else and while the officer executing the warrant has stated
it was out of the norm to allow a person to do this, he felt he had
known Debra for several years and it would be fine. It did not take
long for him to realize it was the wrong decision.
Not
long after Debra went behind the closed door of her bedroom officers
on the scene heard two gunshots. They barged into the bedroom and
found not just Debra apparently dead from a gunshot wound, but also
her beloved dog. The responding officer was attempting to check her
body and examine things when another officer on the scene yelled to
him to get out of the home as it was on fire. By the time
firefighters were able to get on the scene to extinguish the fire the
only thing that would remain would be the wrap around porch.
Officers knew that they were going to find Debra's body at the scene
but they immediately realized that they could not find, nor did they
know where Dominick Bosco was. A neighbor contacted Dominick's
brother when the cabin was on fire and he made his way to the scene.
On the way to the scene Dominick's brother repeatedly tried to call
Debra and Dominick's telephones. He did not receive an answer from
either phone, but then again he was not sure that he would hear
Dominick answer. About two weeks prior to the fire Debra had called
Dominick's brother and told him that Dominick had lost his phone and
that if he wanted to reach his brother he should contact her. That
was the last time he had spoken to either Debra or Dominick.
While
combing through the remains of the burnt home authorities not only
found Debra's body but they also found the body of Dominick Bosco.
Authorities determined that his body was found in an area that would
have put him at the bottom of the basement stairs of the home. It
was pretty obvious that Debra's cause of death was suicide.
Authorities knew that there was no way that Dominick could have
killed Debra and made it down the stairs. An autopsy revealed that
Dominick was dead at least one to three days prior to Debra but it
seems an exact cause of death was not able to be determined. It had
been several days, if not up to two weeks since anyone had physically
heard or seen Dominick. It appears that while his family may not
have heard from him in recent days that the time of death was likely
determined based on his work record and other people who had seen or
heard from him. Knowing this authorities knew that Debra had been in
the home, at least at some point, while Dominick's body lay at the
bottom of the stairs and they found it hard to believe that she did
not know. It seems that it was very quickly determined that this was
a murder/suicide situation but unlike most that we see.
Authorities
were obviously puzzled at the events that had transpired. Yes, Debra
was facing criminal issues but they were petty. The odds of doing
“hard time” for the actions that happened prior to February 19th,
were little to none. Debra had recently been fired from her job as a
cashier at a grocery store when not only was she accused of taking a
customer's wallet after he mistakenly left it behind, but lied about
it, and the store had it on video. The customer had chose to press
charges and that was why Debra had been due into court a few days
prior. But, she did not show and that resulted in the bench warrant
being issues, and the reason the officers showed up at the door that
day. These charges seemed hardly a reason for Debra not only to kill
herself but commit murder. While technically the case was closed as a
murder/suicide, authorities wanted some more answers as to the “why.”
This led them to Debra's actual home on the other side of town in
Walton.
Nearly
twenty-five years before Debra had met and married Randy Sundstrom.
At the time that they met Randy was living with his girlfriend and
had a two year old daughter in a nearby town. It seemed to be common
knowledge that once Randy met Debra he not only left his girlfriend,
but had no more contact with his daughter. In 2013 the daughter, now
a grown woman would tell authorities as well as journalists that she
had received a few birthday cards over the years, a necklace for
Christmas one year and a gift card when she graduated high school but
she would not have known him if she saw him walking down the street
because she had no memory of ever seeing him. She had been told that
most people believed that it was Debra who had prevented Randy from
being a part of his daughter's life and many of his friends would
later say it was something that Randy expressed that he regretted. At
any rate, Debra and Randy had created what most believed was a good
life in Walton. They had a few very close friends but they spent a
lot of their time concentrating on things such as gardening and
living more of a homestead life outside of their work. In the late
1990's they got very involved in growing “giant” pumpkins and
became somewhat of local celebrities in 2008 when they grew one that
weighed nearly 1,500 pounds. From the outside everything seemed
fine.
Then
in February of 2010 Randy was just gone. Debra began telling people
that Randy had left her for another woman. In some versions the
“other woman” was pregnant. In many versions of her story she
seemed relieved he was gone because she claimed that Randy was
abusive. Although none of their friends ever seemed to have seen
anything, nor had they even suspected such a thing, claiming that
Randy always seemed to be a very loving person to Debra, it appears
that it did not take much to convince them that he had been abusive
to Debra. Most people lived with the idea that we do not know what
happens behind closed doors and did not want to believe that Debra
was lying. In fairness, there seemed to be one person who had no
issue believing that Debra was abused, a neighbor. He would claim
that he had seen two incidents first hand of what he called abuse but
from my understanding, even by his own accounts, he did not see Randy
literally abusing Debra but saw Debra running and screaming from the
home. At the time that Randy left he had two siblings but he had not
apparently spoken to them in years and since he never had contact
with his daughter, the only person who could report him missing was
Debra. She never did since she claimed that he simply left. After
the events of February 2013 more would be revealed about Debra.
In
the course of the investigation investigators got a search warrant
for Debra's own home. They were looking for answers as to why not
only that Debra would do this to herself but why she would have
murdered Dominick. Whether something made them suspicious at the
home or whether they were already thinking about Randy is unclear but
cadaver dogs were taken to the property. Three days after the
incident at Dominick's cabin authorities came across a 55 gallon
barrel on the Sundstrom property that contained the body of Randy
Sundstrom.
It
is unclear through my research if a cause of death was ever
determined for Randy or Dominick but the manner was ruled homicide in
both cases. There are those who still believe that Randy was
possibly abusive to Debra and that was the motive behind his death.
But, again, most of those people did not see abuse. It just seems to
be the only explanation to them for Randy's death. When it comes to
the motive of Dominick's death it is more cloudy. No one knows if
possibly Dominick's discovered what happened to Randy or if he
learned of Debra's current legal issues. It has been said that
Dominick's had told his mother that Debra had lost her job recently
but the story he told his mother was not the story of what happened.
It has been theorized that it is possible the story he told his
mother was the story Debra had told him and that possibly he
discovered the truth and was upset he had been lied to.
In
my opinion if we can say that the motive in Dominick's death was
based off him discovering she lied about why she lost her job then I
believe it is also plausible that something similar could have
happened in the case of Randy. By all accounts Dominick
was
“crazy” about Debra and it does not necessarily appear that if he
had known about the petty theft that it would have been something
that would have been a big deal, unless of course it was not the
first incident of something like this. It is more likely that it was
the fact that she had lied to him about things. The theory of this
would be then that obviously an argument ensued and in the course of
that argument Debra killed Dominick. If we can believe this theory
then who is to say the same sort of thing happened with Randy? Who is
to say that she did not lie to him about something and then found out
he had been lied to? Who is to say that the two did not have an
argument over something with his daughter that he had abandoned? No
one knows, nor will they ever know exactly why either man was
murdered by Debra.
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