Liverpool’s most infamous murderer killed her husband in 2005 and tried to pin it on her daughter
By Russ Tarby
Contributing Writer
Convicted husband-killer Stacey Castor, 48, died Saturday morning, June 11, at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility where she was serving 51 and 1/3 years in state prison.
The state Department of Corrections declined to cite a cause of death. An autopsy is being conducted by the Westchester County Medical Examiner’s office.
Castor was convicted in 2009 of fatally poisoning her second husband, David Castor, with antifreeze at their home at 4127 Wetzel Road and of attempting to similarly murder her daughter, Ashley Wallace.
An Onondaga County Court jury of two men and 10 women pronounced her guilty on Thursday Feb. 5, 2009, of second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing. There was also speculation that she killed her first husband, Michael Wallace, in Auburn five years before Castor’s killing.
When she dosed her daughter two years after David Castor died, it was to pin the crimes on someone other than herself. Wallace was then a student at Liverpool High School.
On March 5, 2009, Onondaga County Court Judge Joseph Fahey ordered her to serve the maximum sentence allowed by law.
Castor’s murder trial was a local and national sensation. Testimony was carried live over WSYR-TV channel 9.2HD, and Time Warner’s News 10 Now carried Castor’s testimony and the lawyers’ closing arguments. The case was covered by ABC-TV’s newsmagazine, “20/20,” and became the subject of at least one true-crime book, “Mommy Deadliest,” by Michael Benson.
In December 2013, Judge Fahey denied her motion to retry the case on grounds that authorities deprived her of the right to counsel before a police interrogation in 2007. In June 2015, a state appeals court affirmed Fahey’s ruling, effectively ending Castor’s appeal.
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From trial coverage as published by the City Eagle, Feb. 6, 2009:
On the witness stand, Castor said ‘no’ while nodding ‘yes’
By Russ Tarby
As she testified in her own defense, Stacey Castor often used her left hand to brush her long reddish-gray hair from her right forehead. Such simple gestures coupled with her forthright manner may have convinced the jury of her humanity, but her chilly demeanor under 95 minutes of heated cross-examination by District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick made her look like an implacable ice queen, capable of anything.
She barely flinched when Fitz had her confess to enlisting two friends to falsify and back-date David Castor’s will, suggesting her motive for offing the husbands was the more than $100,000 she’d reap from their estates and insurance policies.
Yes, Castor remained cool as a cucumber and also displayed a flair for simple similes:
Michael Wallace “smoked like a chimney,” she testified. David Castor snored “like a chainsaw.” Ashley and a certain teacher were “like oil and water.”
Stacey testified bluntly about her family’s internal strife. On the weekend he died, David and she argued long and hard about the two daughters. He wanted to take a vacation without them. She wanted to bring their younger daughter, Bree, but he refused and started slamming Southern Comfort. Sometime over the weekend his cocktails were laced with antifreeze, a type of poisoning that causes a slow and agonizing shutdown of the inner organs.
David’s favorite TV show, Stacey said, was “Dr. Phil,” and no wonder. The poor guy was probably desperate to cope with his own dysfunctional family. Those simmering in-house conflicts caught up with him once and for all on Aug. 22, 2005 when he was found dead in his bed on Wetzel Road.
So we know why Stacey Castor might have lied on the witness stand, but to determine if she was in fact lying under oath, let’s take a close look at her most crucial testimony.
“Did you kill David Castor by poisoning him with antifreeze?” defense attorney Chuck Keller asked her during direct examination on Thursday, Jan. 29, in Onondaga County Court.
“No, I did not,” Castor answered, her head bobbing up and down.
“Did you try to murder your daughter by poisoning her with alcohol and pills and trying to frame her for the murders of David Castor and Michael Wallace?” Keller asked.
“Absolutely not,” Castor answered emphatically, again with three noticeable nods.
A nod, of course, means “yes.”
While her words denied the crimes, her body language unconsciously assented.
