How do you go on when your mother tried to kill you? The Stacey Castor story is so bizarre, so incredible, I don’t think Lifetime Television would consider it’s story line. Surely there are no self-help books on this one. How many people would need to buy it?
When David Castor of Syracuse died of suicide by antifreeze poisoning in 2005, authorities never stopped thinking about Castor’s wife. The drinking glass on the night stand held the fingerprints of only one person; Stacey Castor.
For two years prosecutors worked to build a case of murder and in 2007 their efforts led them to another crime. They exhumed the body of Stacey Castor’s first husband David Wallace who died of a suspected heart attack in 2000. A subsequent autopsy revealed he died of antifreeze poisoning too.
With the truth bearing down on Stacey, the mother of two warned her daughters, 20-year old Ashley and 15- year old Bree, that the police were opening old wounds and causing trouble for all of them. The girls believed their mother was a victim and did not deserve this stress after all the tragedy in her life.
On the eve of Ashley’s 21st birthday, Stacey offered to give her daughter a first celebratory cocktail. She mixed two vodka drinks and the pair sat down to enjoy the evening. Ashley recalls her mom encouraging her to finish every last drop of the drink.
That night, Bree inquired about her sister and her mom said Ashley was resting in her room and would sleep until morning. Ashley’s boyfriend telephoned her, but Stacey said the girl was sleeping and should not be disturbed. He asked Stacey to look for an item left behind in Ashley’s bedroom and Stacey returned to the phone to say she looked and couldn’t find it. The boyfriend was calling from just outside the house and never saw the light go on in Ashley’s room.
The following morning, Bree entered her sister’s room and found Ashley dazed and incoherent at the foot of the bed. Bree went to get her mother and when she returned a few minutes later, she saw a typewritten suicide note on the bed that was not there a moment earlier. In it, Ashley confessed to killing both her father and her stepfather, however the note bore no fingerprint from Ashley. Only Stacey and Bree, who had picked it up to read it left fingerprints on the paper. Ashley was rushed to the hospital and recovered from her poisonous cocktail of alcohol and prescription drugs and her mother was arrested.
Stacey Castor was convicted last week of murdering her second husband and attempting to murder her daughter. Prosecutors in an adjacent county are now building a case of murder against Castor for her first husband’s death. Castor is 4o and will likely never live outside prison again, and yet it is the life sentence of the daughter that I can’t shake.
What will it take for Ashley to repair her wounds? She told prosecutors she considered her relationship with her mother to be close, which makes it even worse. Had they been competitive or estranged from one another, Ashley would have had a little distance to protect her. This attack came from deep inside the heart.
I think of all the life events where Ashley will want a mother. New jobs, a bridal shower, a wedding, pregnancies and parenting advice. Holidays, birthdays, Mother’s Day. All the moments through all the years where we place a phone call home or we come together and toast to the happy occasion.
Will Ashley ever have a drink when she doesn’t remember her mother’s special recipe? Will she ever have a cocktail again at all?
The courtoom photograph of a sobbing Ashley shows the finality of what her mother tried to do. Did Ashley harbor any doubt about the truth until that moment when a body of informed adults confirmed it? We cannot know. Hopefully Ashley will receive counseling and friends to carry her to the other side of this nightmare, where the woman who brought her into this world also attempted to take her out.
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