Stacey Castor

Stacey Castor is, or was, in a league of her own, even the judge in her case said so. Sure we have seen cases where a defense attorney will claim that one of their client's children may have been responsible for a murder, or at least had more motive. You have even from time to time seen a parent say the same thing in their own words. It is on the most rare occasions in which you have a parent “set” a child up to take the fall or be accused. But, what you do not see is a parent who is willing to kill their own child AND set them up for murders you have committed. It is this behavior that made Stacey Castor stand out on her own.

On January 11, 2000 thirty-eight year old Michael Wallace, Stacey's first husband and the father of her two daughters, Ashley and Bree, died in their Weedsport New York home. He had not been feeling well for a few months. Eleven year old Ashley was home alone with her dad that day and knew he looked sick but she did not think much of it. I did not find the exact circumstances in which he was found but as I recall from television shows he may have been found dead on the couch. The coroner believed his death was caused by a heart attack. Some of his family members wanted an autopsy performed but Stacey had refused.

In 2003 Stacey would get married again. David Castor had also been previously married and had a son, David Jr. with his ex-wife. It is not clear as to if Stacey and her girls moved in with David in his home or if the couple bought a home in Liverpool, about a twenty minute drive from Weedsport. Life was not exactly tranquil in the Castor home pretty early on. Most agree that David and Stacey's oldest daughter, Ashley did not get along very well. There was also tension between Stacey and David Jr. On August 22, 2005 Stacey called the sheriff's department and stated that David had locked himself in their bedroom the day before after they had had an argument and he would not respond to the door. She asked them to come to the home because she claimed he had been depressed as of late and she was concerned. When the officer arrived he did not get a response from David either and decided to “bust” the door down. David was in his bed and he was no longer alive.

On the table next to David's body was a container of antifreeze and a glass half full of a florescent green liquid. The coroner ruled David's death a suicide through a “self-administered” lethal dose of antifreeze. However, to the investigator things did not look right. Despite the coroner's ruling evidence had been taken from the bedroom and from around the house. A turkey baster had been found and collected in the house. Again, while my research did not specify where this had been found, or even why it was collected, as I recall through television shows it had been strangely been found in the trash. It was discovered that Stacey's fingerprints were on the glass next to the bed, but oddly David's was not. It was also found that the tip of the turkey baster contained David's DNA.

The investigators were able to set up cameras overlooking not just Stacey's home, but also at the cemetery were both David and Michael had been buried, side by side. Michael's tombstone showed that Stacey planned to be buried there upon her death. David's tombstone had the inscription of “husband of Stacey R.” In fact, not only were David and Michael right there but so was Stacey's father who died in 2002. The story is that her father, Jerry Daniels, was in the hospital and was getting better and going to be released soon. Stacey then visited him and he soon died. She was the executor of his estate and she had his body cremated. In 2010 the district attorney confirmed that they investigating his death to determine if she was involved. Despite all of the cameras and the eyes and ears on Stacey it seems they were not getting very far. Then it was decided to exhume Michael's body. A test later determined what they had suspected, it appeared he too was poisoned with antifreeze. Investigators were also able to have Stacey's phone tapped but she was playing it pretty close to the best.

Not long after that investigators took Stacey in for more questioning, but they still did not seem to have enough to get an arrest warrant on her, and she was less than cooperative. Then on Ashley Wallace's first day of college in September 2007 investigators showed up and informed her not only of the exhumation of her father but the results of the tests. After investigators left Ashley called her mother upset that her father had been removed from his “resting place.” Stacey decided to go pick her up and when she did she suggested to the twenty year old that they should drink away their troubles. Ashley would later say this was unusual explained that it sounded wonderful to a teenager whose mother just gave her permission to drink, and buy it for her. They spent the rest of the day drinking. Ashley would later say that she thought the drink tasted funny but Stacey told her that was how it was supposed to taste and she trusted her mom so she continued drinking. In fact, the two did the same thing the next day. Seventeen hours later Ashley's younger sister, Bree, found her unconscious on her bed. Stacey called 911 and Bree would say that she only left her sister for a second and when she returned by her side she found a note next to her. The note was typewritten and appeared to not just be a suicide note, but also a confession letter. In it Ashley took responsibility for the deaths of both David Castor and her father, who died when she was eleven. Bree watched as her mother was quick to show the emergency responders the note.

Tests done at the hospital showed that Ashley had a massive dose of painkillers in her system and doctors theorized that had she not been found when she had she would have died. For her part Ashley was confused not only by the fact that when she woke up she was in the hospital but because investigators were questioning her about a note they said was found next to her on her bed. Ashley would claim that the last thing she remembered was Stacey was making her a drink and she adamantly denied typing the letter they found.

It did not take long before investigators figured out that it was not Ashley that wrote the letter, nor had she, or was she again, confessing to murdering two people. Stacey was arrested and charged in the second degree murder of David Castor and in the attempted murder of her daughter Ashley.

Stacey went on trial in January of 2009. Ashley would testify against her mother. Prosecutors had come to believe that Stacey had “force fed” David the antifreeze using the turkey baster. His prints had not only not been found on the glass next to him but they were not on the container of antifreeze either. They would come to believe that she had been feeding him the antifreeze for a few days and had gone to using the turkey baster when he became too incapacitated to do anything else, including drinking anything. Prosecutor would also allege that she had murdered David to get his life insurance. They had also discovered that prior to his death Stacey had forged and changed David's Will and excluded his son, David Jr.

As far as her charges involving Ashley, the prosecutors were able to show that the computer in Stacey's home contained several drafts of the alleged suicide/confession note and that most of the time stamps on the documents were at times in which Ashley was away at school. Prosecutors came to believe that after investigators had again interrogated Stacey she had come up with the plan to murder her daughter and frame her for the murders of her father and stepfather. One of the points that the prosecution made in attempting to prove Stacey wrote the note was in the way Stacey pronounce “antifreeze.” In interviews that were apparently audio taped Stacey would call it “anti-free.” The note had this written in this manner four times throughout.

It is unclear how the defense addressed the evidence that the note was written when Ashley could not have possibly done so, but they did seem to stick with the story that Ashley was the culprit. They claimed that she had killed her father out of jealousy. It was alleged that Michael was much closer to Bree than he was to Ashley, that it was obvious and it had angered Ashley. As far as for David's murder the defense would simply claim it was done because she did not get along with him.

Stacey took the stand in her own defense and “implied” that Ashley was, and had been mentally ill. On cross examination the prosecutors pointed out that she never sought therapy for Ashley and they alleged (although I am unsure she was officially tested) showed no sign of mental illness at that time.

On February 5, 2009 the jury found Stacey guilty in the second degree murder of David and the second degree attempted murder of Ashley. They also found her guilty of forgery with the issue of David's Will. On March 5^th she was sent to twenty-five years to life for murder, twenty-five years for attempted murder and 1 ½ to four years for the forgery charge.

The following month the television show 20/20 did an episode on this case. Not only did Stacey continue to blame Ashley saying “Ashley brought this on” but Stacey's mother stood by her, also blaming Ashley. The one person who did not blame Ashley was her sister, Bree. Even a year later it would be said that Stacey's mother visited her monthly in jail and had no relationship with her granddaughters.

So Stacey went off to jail with her earliest possible parole date being in the year 2055 when she was eighty-eight years old. In April of 2016 David Castor Jr. filed a case in the courts asking to have his father's body exhumed and moved. David Jr. cited the fact that one day when Stacey were to die she apparently had planned to be buried next to his father, a man she was convicted of murdering. A hearing was schedule for June 29^th to discuss the issue. Then on June 11^th Stacey Castor unexpectedly died in her prison cell. A cause of death was not immediately known. David Jr's attorney got an emergency hearing on his case and four days after Stacey had died a judge ruled that not only could David Jr. move his father's body but the stone in which had been at the sight since his death in 2005 was ordered to be destroyed.

Several months after her death it was revealed that Stacey had died of an apparent heart attack. It is not clear if she was buried in the cemetery next to Michael Wallace. Stacey had never been charged in his death but it is widely and absolutely believed she was responsible. She was not charged at the time in which she faced trial for David's murder and Ashley's attempted murder because Michael's death had occurred in another county, meaning a different jurisdiction. Later it was said that considering the verdict in the case against her they did not feel the need to put her daughters through another trial and more issues. I was unable to determine if anything came from the investigation into her father's death. It appears that even if she was responsible it would have been difficult to prove considering he had been cremated.