Ohio Family Shootings: Mother was awake and making breakfast?
robert...@gmail.com
"The four victims in the farmhouse appeared to have been shot in their
sleep, (Sheriff) Henry said."
with this:
"Before leaving the farmhouse, Davidson spoke briefly with Sheri "Kay"
Shafer, who had just risen and invited him to return to the farmhouse
for breakfast. She was the last person he spoke with before leaving the
house."
RstJ
Slayings stun Logan County
No one knows what caused carnage
By Anthony Gottschlich and Ben Sutherly
Dayton Daily News
BELLEFONTAINE | The 911 caller's voice trembled as she tearfully
searched for her wounded sister in the weather-worn farmhouse where
four others lay dead or dying from gunshot wounds suffered a short
while earlier Sunday.
"My sister just called me and said her mom and her had been beaten up
and her mom isn't waking up," the caller, who identified herself as
Nicole, told the Logan County emergency dispatcher.
The caller, responding to her sister Stacy Moody's cell phone call for
help, drove to the scene of the carnage and found the body of
37-year-old Sheri Shafer, Stacy Moody's mother, first.
"I can't wake her mom up," she said. "I can't feel a pulse."
Moments later, another deathly scene.
"Oh my God, Scott!" Nicole cried out. "The son and the girlfriend are
beat up, too!"
Scott Moody, 18, who was to graduate from Riverside High School in
nearby DeGraff on Sunday, lay dead in an upstairs bedroom, apparently
from a self-inflicted rifle wound, according to Logan County Sheriff
Mike Henry. His 14-year-old girlfriend, Paige Harshbarger, who had just
completed her freshman year at Riverside on Friday, lay nearby, also
dead.
Downstairs, the grisly discoveries continued for Nicole.
"Oh my God, there's one in the living room, too," she said, sobbing.
And still more death about 500 yards down the road in a small,
two-story farmhouse along Ohio 47. There, in the kitchen, sheriff's
deputies later found the bodies of Sheri Shafer's parents, Gary and
Sharyl Shafer, 67 and 66, respectively.
All told, six people died Sunday from gunshots believed to have been
fired by Scott Moody between 7 and 10 a.m. Stacy Moody, 15, Scott Moody
and Nicole's sister, was taken to Ohio State University with critical
injuries.
The shooting followed a small graduation party Saturday evening for
Scott Moody and fellow Riverside graduating senior Megan Karus, 19, who
also died from the shootings.
Logan County Sheriff Michael Henry believes Scott Moody was the shooter
in each case, based on the evidence at the scene. He said the murder
weapon was a .22-caliber Marlin rifle, which is undergoing ballistics
tests with the Ohio Bureau of Identification and Investigation. The
Montgomery County Coroner's Office, where the bodies were taken Sunday,
also is assisting in the investigation.
Henry said deputies had responded to the property on nuisance calls,
such as loud music, on several occasions in the past but not for any
serious incidents.
The four victims in the farmhouse appeared to have been shot in their
sleep, Henry said.
That's about all authorities knew on Monday, or were willing to
disclose. The "why" remains to be answered.
"That is the main, No. 1 question - why?" Henry said during a news
conference Monday.
Investigators found no drugs in the homes, Henry said.
Lucky to be alive
An eighth victim might have been Bret Davidson, 18, a friend of Scott
Moody's who attended the party in the home at 2647 Ohio 47 but left
when he awoke at 6 a.m. and decided to head home to work on his
family's farm.
"It's a good thing I didn't get lazy," Davidson said. " ... If I would
have been there, I would have probably been shot, too."
Before leaving the farmhouse, Davidson spoke briefly with Sheri "Kay"
Shafer, who had just risen and invited him to return to the farmhouse
for breakfast. She was the last person he spoke with before leaving the
house.
Later Sunday, Davidson, who will be a senior at Riverside this coming
school year, went to a Cincinnati Reds baseball game. He received a
cell phone call in the fourth inning and learned of the shootings. "I
couldn't believe it," Davidson said.
He said Scott Moody, with whom he judged dairy cattle through the
Riverside FFA (formerly Future Farmers of America) chapter, "acted
fine" Saturday evening. "He was joking around just like the rest of
us."
He said Scott Moody and his friends had talked about school, farming,
friends and classmates Saturday evening, all the while shooting pool
and watching "some movie (starring) Arnold Schwarzenegger." He said
Sheri Shafer's boyfriend also was at the house and left about 3:30 a.m.
Davidson said Scott Moody and Harshbarger, his girlfriend of 1½ weeks,
slept in one room; Scott's sister, Stacy, slept in another. Davidson
said he and Karus, whose mother rents a house from Davidson's family,
slept in another room, with one sleeping on a couch and the other on a
love seat.
Like most interviewed Monday in this rural area, Davidson sat stunned
and shocked by the killings, especially about the possibility that his
friend might have been responsible.
"I've never seen him lose his temper around the cows," he said. "He was
always one of those kids that would go with the flow."
Davidson said Paige Harshbarger was a "real popular girl at school."
Scott Moody "really liked Paige," Davidson said.
He said Scott "didn't have a clue" what he would do after graduation,
but was likely going to stay on and help with the family farm.
Davidson said he and other FFA members and their adviser have been
milking the Moody family's cows since the shootings.
Scott Young, 29, of DeGraff worked as a hired hand at the Moody dairy
for nearly a year. He said Kay Shafer milked the herd of about 25 cows
with help from Scott and Stacy, as well as a hired hand.
"He was wanting to take over up there," Young said of Scott Moody.
Farm in disrepair
According to The New York Times, neighbors said the 650-acre farm was
overgrown and produced little milk. It began to fall into disrepair
about a decade ago, and then the owners, Steve and Sheri Shafer,
divorced, said a neighbor, Clifford Kelly. Sheri Shafer was left with a
school-age son and daughter, and the farm to run with her parents.
For years Scott Moody, Sheri Shafer's son, found himself relied upon to
guide the family through its mounting problems, neighbors said. But
neighbors said they think the struggles overwhelmed the youth.
The farm was tied up in an estate battle because Moody's
great-grandmother wrote "a bad will," Kelly said.
The family turmoil, he said, seemed to change Moody from a polite young
boy to an abrasive teenager.
A community in shock
Throughout Bellefontaine and DeGraff, a village of 1,200 about eight
miles southwest of the shootings, residents echoed the same refrain
time and again.
"This doesn't happen here," Judy Kellogg of Bellefontaine said while
having breakfast with her husband, Chris, and three children at
Homecoming Restaurant on U.S. 68. "It's sad."
A DeGraff man who said he was related to Harshbarger, the 14-year-old
victim, declined to give his name or comment, saying only, "That was
one of our family. It's just a bad thing. Stuff like that's not
supposed to happen."
Word of the killings reached Riverside High School students and staff
members toward the end of Sunday's graduation.
"It was really something to sit there and see the faces of the
children, to see their expressions," said Bonnie Orsborne of DeGraff,
whose grandson was among the graduates.
Megan Karus was to start work Tuesday at the Ameristop Shell Station on
Ohio 235 in DeGraff, where manager Ashly Copeland said: "She seemed
like a good girl. I know she wanted to go to college."
Karus planned to attend nearby Bluffton College in the fall on a
scholarship, said a Shell customer who said she knew Karus but did not
want to be identified.
eartha...@yahoo.com
robert...@gmail.com wrote:
> Sure the hell sounds like it. So how to reconcile this:
>
> "The four victims in the farmhouse appeared to have been shot in their
> sleep, (Sheriff) Henry said."
>
> with this:
>
> "Before leaving the farmhouse, Davidson spoke briefly with Sheri "Kay"
> Shafer, who had just risen and invited him to return to the farmhouse
> for breakfast. She was the last person he spoke with before leaving the
> house."
>
>
> RstJ
Another article I read made it sound like the friend went and woke up
the mother to tell her he was leaving, then she went to the door with
him and invited him back for breakfast. Made it sound like she may
have gone back to bed, not that she was going to start making breakfast
at that moment. It was 6:00 am, they had all stayed up late and Scott
had told everyone the night before they didn't have anything to do on
Sunday anyway but the grad ceremonies which were in the afternoon.
robert...@gmail.com
eartha...@yahoo.com wrote:
<...>
> Another article I read made it sound like the friend went and woke up
> the mother to tell her he was leaving, then she went to the door with
> him and invited him back for breakfast. Made it sound like she may
> have gone back to bed, not that she was going to start making breakfast
> at that moment. It was 6:00 am, they had all stayed up late and Scott
> had told everyone the night before they didn't have anything to do on
> Sunday anyway but the grad ceremonies which were in the afternoon.
That doesn't make much sense. Why would he wake her up to tell her he
was leaving? And the friend said that he and Scott were up late. He
didn't say anything about the others.
When the stepsister arrived, Stacy Moody was in the kitchen. When she
made the call to her stepsister, she only mentioned that she and her
mother had been beaten up. She apparently didn't mention any of the
other victims. Now we read that the mother told the friend to come back
for breakfast, which makes it likely that she was in the kitchen too,
unless we think she was going to go back to sleep, wake up again when
the friend came, and then cook breakfast. Grandparents were both shot
up while *they* were making breakfast, so it sounds to me like someone
showed up around 7am, killed them, headed over to the other house,
killed the mother, wounded Stacy, and then shot everybody else,
possibly after beating Stacy and her mother. That makes me wonder if
maybe a farmhand or two should be getting investigated.
So Scott decides to kill everyone on the farm. After making this
decision, he figures he'll sleep on it a bit. The friend said Scott was
asleep when he left.
The part I don't get is why the staging? Unless you believe the
"switched hands and shot himself again" story.
RstJ
eartha...@yahoo.com
Mother was in her bedroom upstairs when found. The friend had been
sleeping downstairs, went upstairs to the bedroom to tell her he was
leaving. I believe kitchen was downstairs. She was not in the
kitchen. I believe she went back to bed.
>From the Columbus Dispatch:
He said he woke Sheri Shafer, Scott's mother, who is known to everyone
in De Graff as "Kay.''
"She was asleep, but I whispered to her that I was going to get on
home,'' said Davidson, 18. "She got up, walked me to the door and told
me I was welcome to come back for breakfast later, once I was done with
chores. Then she shut the door behind me and I left.''
snip
Kay Shafer's boyfriend and another friend of Stacy's were there but
left before the others went to bed.
The teens watched an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie -- Davidson couldn't
recall which one -- and then played pool into the middle of the night.
The upcoming graduation was a hot topic.
"Scott told us none of us had to worry about getting up early, 'cause
none of them really had much to do until the graduation started,''
Davidson said. "How much more normal could it get?''
Eventually, the others went upstairs to bed; Davidson and Karus fell
asleep in the living room. Davidson said he'd gotten a few hours of
sleep before awaking about 6 a.m.
San in Bmore
>Davidson said Scott Moody and Harshbarger, his girlfriend of 1½ weeks,
>slept in one room; Scott's sister, Stacy, slept in another. Davidson
>said he and Karus, whose mother rents a house from Davidson's family,
>slept in another room, with one sleeping on a couch and the other on a
>love seat.
This is the part that I don't get: he slept in the room with his
14-year old girlfriend of 1 1/2 weeks? Wonder if her parents knew
that.
eartha...@yahoo.com
I didn't get that either. She looks like a kid in the pictures, and
the descriptions of her make her sound very young. Plus he and another
girlfriend had just broken up a few weeks before and everyone said he
didn't take it badly because he immediately found another girlfriend.
Why does that mean he wasn't upset about it, he may have been
rebounding and found a quick replacement, may have kept his feelings
hidden.
His mother was 37 so she was very young when she had him. Her
boyfriend had been over the night before but didn't spend the night.