Overview
- Police in 2005 found David Castor dead in a locked bedroom beside a green liquid, with an antifreeze bottle under the bed, a turkey baster with antifreeze traces in the kitchen, and Stacey Castor’s fingerprints on the glass.
- Investigators exhumed the earlier husband, Michael Wallace, and an autopsy found microscopic crystals consistent with ethylene glycol poisoning, later confirmed by toxicology.
- During questioning, a detective recounted that Castor began to say “when I poured the anti-free-” before correcting herself to cranberry juice, a slip investigators viewed as incriminating.
- Investigators concluded Castor tried to frame her daughter Ashley by inducing an overdose and leaving a signed note falsely confessing to both deaths; hospital staff found potentially lethal levels of painkillers, and Ashley survived.
- Castor was convicted of second-degree murder and attempted murder, received a sentence of 51⅓ years to life, and died in prison in 2016 of a heart attack.