Wife of slain Austin jeweler says daughter-in-law Jaclyn Edison got away with murder

[Soros Needs To Die]

When "48 Hours" found Jaclyn Edison sitting on a bench with a book
in her hand, we might have mistaken her for a young professional on
her lunch break. But Edison wasn't on the job. She was on probation.

She was sitting in front of an Austin, Texas, jail, where she'd just
finished serving time after pleading guilty in a 2018 murder plot
that sent three others to prison for up to 35 years. So why did
Edison get a sentence of 120 days behind bars?

"48 Hours" contributor Jim Axelrod reports on the crime – and the
punishments – in "Shootout at the Shaughnessys,'" an all-new "48
Hours" airing Saturday, Jan. 13 at 10/9c on CBS and streaming on
Paramount+.

The March 2, 2018 shooting murder of affluent jeweler Ted
Shaughnessy, and the near-murder of his wife Corey shocked people in
Austin, where many knew the couple and assumed they'd been targeted
as part of some sort of botched robbery. With no relevant prints
from any outsiders at the scene, authorities had to consider the
victim's widow herself as a suspect.

But in the following weeks, they cleared Corey Shaughnessey and
concluded her son Nicolas Shaughnessy had planned the murder with
his high school sweetheart Jaclyn Edison so they could live large on
the Shaughnessys' money, hiring two hit men to do the dirty work.

It was just after 4 a.m., when police say two intruders entered the
Shaughnessys' sprawling suburban home. Corey said she woke up when
she heard one of their two pet Rottweilers bark.

"Ted sits up in bed … and he grabbed his gun … to go see what it
was," she said. "I hadn't even gotten my head back on the pillow …
before I heard the first gunshot … And then there was a barrage of
gunfire."

Corey said she was still in bed when the shooting suddenly turned in
her direction. She grabbed a .357 revolver from above her headboard
and returned fire. "I ran out of ammo … I just bailed into the
closet."

Trapped in the closet with bullets flying, she said she called 911.

"Travis County 911 … do you need police, fire, or paramedic?" asked
the dispatch operator. "I don't know," Corey responded. "I'm in the
closet!" "There were shots fired … Help me!" "OK, we're helping you
ma'am," the operator said. "Help me!" Corey sobbed again.

Even in her hiding place, Corey couldn't escape the horror unfolding
in the house. "I heard this horrible, horrible moaning," she said.
"When I came out of the closet … I saw Ted's legs and I could tell
he was dead."

When police arrived at the scene minutes later, it looked like a
battlefield. Broken glass and bullet casings were scattered on the
floor. Ted's lifeless body lay in a pool of blood near the kitchen
table. One of the dogs had been shot dead in the master bedroom.

Corey told authorities she hadn't seen the attackers' faces. But she
did have an idea why they'd come. Though she said she and Ted rarely
kept valuables from their business in the house, "being a jeweler …
you might someday be a target."

Sitting in the back of a police cruiser before dawn that morning,
Corey spoke by phone with Nicolas, then 19, who lived with Edison,
then 18, in the city of College Station more than 100 miles away.

The couple made the two-hour drive to the scene, arriving around 8
a.m. They had met in high school when Edison moved to Austin from
New Jersey after her parents divorced. Nicolas brought her home in
2016.

"It was an awkward dinner," said Corey.

She said Edison struck her as socially awkward, but before long, she
was spending so much time at their house, Corey and Ted actually let
her move in. Edison lived with the Shaughnessy family until she and
Nicolas moved 116 miles away to College Station.

About two hours after Corey notified Nicolas about the murder, he
arrived with Edison at the scene. According to investigators they
began acting strangely. When Edison learned they planned to test her
hands for gunshot residue, she broke down sobbing.

"That was a major red flag for me," said Sgt. James Moore, who was
then a detective for the Travis County Sheriff's Office. "We knew
there was something more to this at that point."

Investigators began to suspect even more strongly that they were
involved in the murder when they searched the couple's College
Station home.

"Once we get into the apartment we're going through it, we're
finding ammunition," Moore said.

Though common among gun owners, the ammunition was the same brand
and caliber found at the crime scene. And investigators were about
to find proof that Nicolas and Edison weren't telling the whole
truth about themselves.

"We find a marriage certificate for Nick and Jaclyn," Moore said.

"In all of the conversation you were having … they never said that
they were married?" asked Axelrod. "No," Moore said.

Corey said they'd never told her or Ted either. In fact, they didn't
tell her the news of their marriage until after the murder.

"I thought it was incredibly stupid," said Corey. "You're too young.
This was really dumb."

Trying to be a supportive mother to Nicolas, Corey said she accepted
the marriage, but demanded the couple plan and host a proper
wedding. She had ample opportunity to supervise that process,
because just days after the murder, Nicolas and Edison moved back in
with her.

As investigators continued looking into the couple, they discovered
suspicious text exchanges on their phones, written just days before
the murder. To authorities, it sounded like they were in cahoots and
arranging a hit.

"Nick is saying he's 'working on it,'" said Axelrod, paraphrasing
one of the texts. "Yeah," said Moore. "And Jackie's response to the
text message was, 'do they want 50K or not?'" added lead detective
Paul Salo. "And she said, "'we can't afford to pay half before.'"


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Over the next three months, police would come to believe Nicolas and
Edison had masterminded the attack and on May 29, 2018, authorities
arrested them for criminal solicitation in the murder of Ted
Shaughnessy. When Corey read the arrest affidavits, she said her
long-standing belief in her son's innocence started to crumble. And
she remembered a particularly awkward conversation she'd had with
Jaclyn back in 2017.

"She even asked me … one evening when we were getting ready to go
out, what would happen to all my jewelry when I was dead," said
Corey. "I just chalked it up to bad manners."

Just two weeks after her arrest, Edison began cooperating with
investigators – and pointing the finger at Nicolas. She acknowledged
he had hired someone to kill his parents, but claimed she didn't
know who.

After her cooperation, authorities released Edison on a reduced
bond.

Using video from Edison and Nicolas' home security cameras, they
then tracked down one of the attackers, 21-year-old Johnny Leon, who
eventually acknowledged having been in the Shaughnessys' home the
night of the murder. Leon's phone records around that time showed
intensive communications with a man named Aerion Smith, age 20, who
later confessed to firing the fatal shot. Both were arrested for
capital murder.


Corey thinks Edison's sentence is outrageous.

"It is an outright dismissal of everything that I went through as a
victim, she said. "And it's a dismissal of Ted's life."

"Do you understand Corey's frustration?" Axelrod asked Salo.
"Absolutely," he replied.

"Is she innocent?" Moore asked rhetorically. "Absolutely not."

"She knew, Amy Meredith added. "She knew what he was trying to do."


In a prison interview during the summer of 2023, Nicolas told "48
Hours" that Edison was a full partner in crime.

"Was this a fifty-fifty thing?" asked Axelrod. "Most definitely,"
Nicolas replied.

And though Edison denies it, Nicolas told us killing his parents was
largely her idea.

Edison declined our multiple interview requests, but when she walked
out of jail on Oct. 17, 2023, "48 Hours" producer Jenna Jackson was
waiting.

"Nick got 35 years, the hit men got the same," Jackson said to her.
"You got 120 days … are you getting away with murder? "No … I think
that it's fair, Edison responded. "I think it accurately reflects
the level of involvement."

Edison insisted the Shaughnessys are overstating her role.

"Corey and Nick have both told us is that … you are a partner in
this murder plot," Jackson told her. "Yeah … I think Nick is, is
saying whatever he has to say to kind of clear his name," Edison
responded. "Corey is very much in denial about what really
happened."

"48 Hours" asked the district attorney for an interview to discuss
why his office gave Edison 120 days behind bars, but Garza would not
agree to speak with us on camera. A district attorney's spokesperson
sent us a statement saying, "Our office takes acts of violence
seriously and is committed to holding people who commit violent
crimes accountable." The statement also said Edison is on probation
for 10 years and if she violates the terms, she faces 20 years in
prison.

Corey says a full explanation from authorities would have helped her
make sense of something that has always struck her as impossibly
wrong.

"So no one's ever explained to you why this enormous disparity … in
sentence?" asked Axelrod. "No, absolutely not," Corey replied.

Now, more than five years after the murder and living out of state
and under a different name, Corey seems finally to have made her
peace with what happened. She hasn't spoken directly to Nicolas
since the day of his arrest, but made sure Edison got the message in
a video for authorities, played at Edison's plea hearing.

"I'm alive because your plan to have me murdered … didn't succeed,"
said Corey. "You are a monster. You are evil and everyone needs to
know it."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ted-shaughnessy-murder-austin-jeweler-
jaclyn-edison-48-hours/