After her trial was featured on ABC-TV’s newsmagazine “20/20,” Stacey Castor became Central NY’s most famous convicted murderer.
The Wetzel Road woman’s notoriety continues to grow by leaps and bounds. The Black Widow weaves her webs again in a new book by veteran true-crime author Michael Benson.
The paperback is titled “Mommy Deadliest.”
Can the made-for-TV movie be far behind?
Disturbing details
While Benson makes a few mistakes – for instance, he identifies Great Northern Mall as “Great North Mall” and refers to the “town of Liverpool” – the 403-page book recounts the Castor case in great detail. Despite Benson’s obsessive repetitiveness, it’s a riveting, yet disturbing, story that leaves two husbands dead of anti-freeze poisoning and a daughter dosed will pills and booze and blamed for the men’s murders.
Benson’s trial coverage gives both the prosecution and defense equal time, though the evidence against the 38-year-old mother of two eventually proved overwhelming.
Published in December by Pinnacle Books of New York City’s Kensington Publishing Co., “Mommy Deadliest” costs $6.99.
It presents “16 pages of shocking photos,” one of which is a close-up of the street sign at the corner of Glenwood Drive North and Wetzel Road, where David Castor lost his life in 2005.
Benson has written more than 40 books, including “Who’s who in the JFK assassination.” His 2006 book, “Betrayal in blood: The murder of Tabatha Bryant,” is set in Rochester where a young wife was killed by her half-brother at the request of her husband, wealthy attorney Kevin C. Bryant.
Teachers say no way
As expected, the United Liverpool Faculty Association said “no way” to a proposed pay freeze.
ULFA’s selfishness is a slap in the face of Liverpool Central School District taxpayers, a slap which stings all the worse because teachers in other local districts are stepping up and doing the right thing, accepting their fair share of the budget burden.
Teachers in the North Syracuse School District recently agreed to hold off on raises until the budget gap tightens. Likewise teachers in the West Genesee District, who saved many of their own jobs last year by accepting less-than-average raises, are again considering concessions.
If Liverpool teachers had agreed to re-open their contract to accept the pay freeze, it would’ve saved LCSD $1.4 million, nearly one-third of its anticipated $5 million shortfall. Guess who’ll make up the difference instead: that’s right, you, the taxpayer.
LCSD administrators got raises in October
And let’s not forget that LCSD administrators received four percent pay raises last fall. True, a few of them agreed to this proposed pay freeze, but-like the teachers and unlike the taxpayers-the bosses have already gotten theirs.
Other management types who are members of the Liverpool Administrators Association are unlikely to willingly freeze their salaries which are, on average, far higher than most teachers’ pay.
Why should any of these school employees take less money? They know that when the May budget vote rolls around, they’ll simply tell us “it’s for the kids,” and we’ll agree like sheep to let them hike our taxes again.
