Tracey Grissom: An unarmed man is gunned down at the side of the highway in front of horrified witnesses. Murder? It’s more complicated than that.
Tawny Sue Gunter: The childminder had already escaped prosecution for one suspicious death. Now another child is dead. Will she get away with it again?
Kate Southern: Georgia 1878, a society ball. The band was just finished playing a popular polka when a cry goes up. There’s blood on the dancefloor.
Annette Cahill: A small town mystery. Who killed Corey Wieneke the local football hero? After 25 years, the truth comes out. It’s a shocker.
Sara Moore: An elderly man hires a live-in caregiver on Craigslist. She turns out to be a junkie and a thief. Then things get considerably worse.
Loretta Burroughs: Daniel wanted to move to Florida. His wife, Loretta, did not. The impasse gets resolved the old school way... with a knife.
Tracey Van Dungey: She was a hard-drinking, tough-talking woman with aggression on tap. You’d cross the street if you saw her coming. You’d be wise to.
Tashia Stuart
In the beginning, Judy Hebert thought she was just being paranoid. After the incident in the garage, she’d have cause to rethink that assessment. Judy was a 58-year-old divorcee, living a quiet life at her well-maintained home on Salmon Drive in Franklin County, Washington. Quiet, that is, until her daughter, Tashia Stuart, showed up, asking if she could move in. Tashia did not come alone. Her husband, Todd, and 7-year-old daughter came with her. Judy welcomed them without a second thought.
Tashia wasn’t Judy’s biological child. She was the daughter of her twin sister, who’d proved such an unfit mother that Judy felt the need to step in. She took custody of Tashia when she was just six months old and raised her as her own. She and her husband, Rolfe, later made it official and adopted the little girl. They’d been there for Tashia through her childhood tribulations and troubled teens. They’d supported her as she grew into a flighty and somewhat irresponsible adult. Now, here she was, standing on Judy’s doorstep, broke and unemployed, asking for a place to stay.
But no sooner had Tashia and Todd moved in, than Judy started to form the impression that they were plotting against her. It wasn’t anything specific, just how they were always whispering together, how they stopped talking when she entered the room, how they always seemed to be directing sideways glances at her. Judy told herself that she was overreacting. Then came the incident in the garage.
It happened on the afternoon of February 20, 2011. Judy had been planning to build a wall in her garage and was looking to hire a contractor when Todd offered to do the job. First, though, he’d have to take some measurements. He asked Judy to help him by holding the tape measure. While she was doing so, he directed her to a spot in the middle of the floor. Judy had just reached that spot when something fell from a storage area in the ceiling. It was an 18-gallon tub filled with old paperbacks and quite heavy. It struck Judy on the head, knocking her out and driving her to the floor.
Just a few minutes later, at a nearby home, Rolfe Hebert’s phone started ringing. Rolfe and Judy were divorced but remained on good terms. Now, Rolfe had his daughter Tashia on the phone, telling him about the accident. Rolfe asked if Tashia had called 911. She said that she had not. She seemed more interested in obtaining the combination to her mother’s safe. She said that she wanted to retrieve Judy’s “do not resuscitate” order and her will. Rolfe told her to get her priorities straight, to hang up and call 911 immediately.
A short while later, Rolfe’s phone started ringing again. This time it was Judy who was on the line, telling him about the accident and saying that she felt “really beat up.” Rolfe urged her to go to the hospital, to at least have herself checked out. Judy insisted that she was okay. Later, once she had recovered somewhat, she began to reflect on the accident. It all seemed too much of a coincidence.
How was it that Todd had directed her to that precise spot in the garage? How was it that the tub of books (which she was certain had been secured) had fallen at that exact moment? The more she thought about it, the more she was sure that this was not an accident after all. She began to think that Tashia had been hiding in the partially-floored rafters and had dropped the tub on her once she was in position.
In fact, Judy became so convinced of this theory that she shared her suspicions with several of her friends and neighbors. She believed that Tashia and Todd were trying to kill her. She asked one neighbor to check on her from time to time, and the pair even agreed a code word they could use if Judy could not speak freely on the phone. She told another neighbor that if she disappeared, then Tashia and Todd had killed her, and she was likely buried in the backyard. To another, she shared her suspicion that her houseguests were messing with her medication.
And then, Judy Hebert had even more reason to suspect that something was going on. Two unauthorized ATM withdrawals appeared on her bank account, and there was an unknown retail purchase. After that, Judy called the bank and canceled her debit card. Then she called Rolfe, and told him about the unauthorized transactions and concerns over her medication. “I think Todd is trying to kill me,” she said. Perhaps she should have been more concerned about Tashia.
At around 2:25 p.m. on March 3, 2011, the Franklin County 911 line got a hang-up call from the Hebert residence. The dispatcher returned the call, which was answered by Tashia Stuart. She said that the fire alarm had been accidentally triggered while she was changing the battery. There was no need to send a unit. Everything was in order.
A short while later, a neighbor heard several loud bangs coming from Judy Hebert’s home. Concerned, he called her phone, which was again answered by Tashia Stuart. She said that something had exploded on the stove. Another neighbor, the same woman who Judy had asked to check on her, also called. She was given the same story. She then asked to speak to Judy and was told that she was unwell and was “throwing up in the bathroom.”
These were not the only inquiries that Tashia would have to field about the strange goings on inside the Salmon Drive residence that night. About ten minutes later, Officer Kevin Erickson arrived, following up on the failed 911 call. Tashia tried to convince him that there was nothing to be concerned about, but the officer insisted that he needed to talk to the homeowner. Tashia told him she’d have to put her dogs away before letting him enter the house. She then slammed the door in his face.
It did not take a genius to figure out that something was wrong here. Still, Officer Erickson waited. He was still standing outside when a neighbor approached and told him about the sounds he’d heard earlier. He was convinced that they were gunshots. Erickson then called for backup and unsnapped the holster of his gun. Then the door was flung open, and Tashia was standing there, an ax in her hand, a crazed look in her eyes. Erickson’s hand went to the butt of his pistol. He was sure she was going to come at him. He demanded to know about the shots neighbors had heard. “I shot someone,” Tashia admitted.
That “someone” turned out to be her adoptive mother, Judy Hebert, the woman who’d taken her in when she had nowhere else to go, the woman who’d raised her from a baby. Judy was sprawled out in the doorway of her bedroom, blood on her chest, a machete lying on the carpet nearby. Officer Erickson felt for a pulse and detected none. He then walked back to the living room and placed Tashia Stuart under arrest.
Tashia was taken to the police station, where she relayed her version of the day’s events. According to her, the trouble between her and her mother had started that morning, when Judy accused her of stealing from her by using her debit card without permission. Tashia admitted using the card but reminded Judy that she had given her the card and told her to withdraw the money. Judy refuted this and said that she was going to have her arrested.
This argument raged on and off throughout the day. At some point, according to Tashia, she asked her mother to open the safe so that she could check if her birth certificate was there. Todd had departed the house two days earlier, and she was afraid that he might have taken it. Judy agreed to do this. Tashia followed her to the closet where the safe was kept. She was standing behind Judy as she worked the dial.
However, when Judy turned towards her, it wasn’t the birth certificate she held but a machete, the same blade the police later found at the scene. She swung at Tashia, who only narrowly avoided injury. Tashia’s escape route was blocked. The only safe place was the closet, so she backed inside and pulled the door shut behind her. That was when she spotted her mother’s .357 Magnum.
She picked up the gun, not even knowing if it was loaded. Then she opened the closet door a crack. Not seeing her mother, she stepped out into the bedroom, holding the gun in a firing position for protection. That was when Judy came at her, swinging the machete like a madwoman. Tashia pulled off three rapid shots, hitting her mother three times, collapsing her to the floor. She couldn’t even remember pulling the trigger, she said. She was in fear for her life. It was self-defense.
There was one big problem with Tashia Stuart’s story. If this was really how it had played out, if she’d acted in self-defense, why had she lied to the 911 dispatcher, to the neighbors, to Officer Erickson? Why hadn’t she simply reported the shooting? Tashia said that it was because she was afraid her story would not be believed. She was right on that score. She was charged with first-degree murder.
As the matter headed for trial, the evidence continued to stack up against Tashia Stuart. Prosecutors learned of the incident with the falling tub, they learned of Judy Hebert’s fears that her daughter was planning to kill her, and they learned of the nature of the woman who Tashia claimed had attacked her. Judy was described as a kind soul who got along with everyone. Despite all of the trouble that Tashia had caused her, she loved her daughter unreservedly. This was a long way from the machete-wielding maniac Tashia had described. Tashia had also claimed in her statement that her mother was an alcoholic and was addicted to prescription drugs. Rolfe Hebert strongly disputed this, saying that Judy never used drugs or abused alcohol.
Prosecutors learned also of Tashia’s desperate attempts to get her hands on her mother’s will. This, they believed, was the motive for the shooting. Tashia was hoping to alleviate her money problems by moving her inheritance along. The theory was given credence in a damaging statement provided by Charles Adney, Tashia’s ex-boyfriend and the father of her child. Shortly after the falling tub incident, Tashia had called and offered him $1,000 to forge her mother’s will. “That bitch should be dead in a few days,” she’d told him. “I dropped something on her head. She is bleeding out of her eyes and nose.”
In the end, the prosecution’s case was strong enough to convince the jury of Tashia Stuart’s guilt. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to 45 years in prison, with parole eligibility in 25 years. Yet even now, found guilty by a jury of her peers, Tashia refused to take responsibility for her actions. She accused the prosecution witnesses of conspiracy. “Without their lies and deceit, there is no case against me,” she told the court. “I hope that I will get a new trial so that the truth really will come out.” Most would argue that the truth has already been told.
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