The desperate voice on the 9-1-1 tape was calm, even rehearsed, as she described finding her nineteen-year-old daughter unresponsive in bed, an empty bottle of vodka and scattered prescription pills beside her. Authorities now say that call, made on September 14, 2007, was the final, calculated act of a woman consumed by self-preservation, a mother willing to 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her own child to escape a murder investigation. Stacy Castor, a woman who would later be convicted of poisoning two husbands, attempted to silence her daughter, Ashley Wallace, with a lethal cocktail in a diabolical attempt to frame her posthumously for the crimes.
The investigation that ultimately 𝓮𝔁𝓹𝓸𝓼𝓮𝓭 Castor’s web of deceit began quietly in a suburb of Syracuse, but it would culminate in a revelation that chilled the quiet community of Clay, New York, forever. The image of the perfect mother, a woman seen laughing and drinking with her teenage daughter as a “best friend,” was disintegrating under the harsh light of forensic science. With each layer pulled back, a portrait of a serialized criminal emerged, whose victims were not just the men who loved her, but also the empathy that should have existed between a mother and her children.
The case hinged on two separate deaths, years apart, that were initially ruled to be natural or suicidal. The first victim was Michael Wallace, Ashley’s father, who died in January 2000 after weeks of a mysterious illness characterized by dizziness and extreme fatigue. Shelly Ledford, the district attorney’s office would later tell reporters, noted that Michael had been poisoned with antifreeze, a compound that attacks the nervous system and causes devastating, often misdiagnosed, symptoms.
His widow, Stacy, refused an autopsy, citing his fear of surgery, and pocketed a $55,000 life insurance payout. She had often lamented that the holidays were a bad time to file for divorce; in just two years, she had cleared the path.
The second victim was David Caster, a successful contractor who married Stacy shortly after her first period of widowhood. On August 22, 2005, Stacy called 911, reporting that her husband had locked himself in the bedroom for a day and that his father had recently died, which she suspected had driven him to erratic behavior. When deputies broke in, they found him dead, naked, with an open bottle of antifreeze beside him.
Initially, the combination of factors—significant depression over family loss and an apparent suicide scene—made the case vanish quickly. But investigators scrutinized the detail: a turkey baster with antifreeze residue was found in the kitchen sink, a clue a suicidal man who had locked himself in a bedroom would have no reason to use.
The turning point arrived in 2007 when forensic evidence on the glass confirmed the presence of antifreeze and, more critically, Staphylococcus DNA with three fingerprints belonging to Stacy Caster. She had, in detective language, created a mess. Under wiretap, she heard her desperate need to find a way out.
The way she chose was to simultaneously 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁 her daughter and create a fictional permanent record of her guilt. On September 14, detectives monitored a phone call where Stacy cried for help, claiming Ashley had tried to commit suicide and left a typed, 750-word confession.
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The letter, typed on September 12th, went into explicit detail about how Ashley had killed her father Michael Wallace and stepfather David Caster. Yet, the evidence inside told a different story. Ashley had been at school on that date; the computer was the domain of her only mother.
The horrific fantasy fell apart when Ashley, fighting for her life and in the ICU, woke up. As she recounted the terrifying story, she described how her mother had started them drinking nights prior to the crisis, suggesting they get “just totally drunk” to bond, handing her a drink that tasted “of astringent” bitter taste of antifreeze.
Ashley, her eyes wide and glazed, had been touched by an overwhelming dose of the poison and taken to hospital. But before she fully woke, a detective was at her bedside, that chilling recording from the 9-1-1 call playing in her head: “I wake up in the hospital and the detective asking me what I did?” She was prepared to answer, not because she did it, but because she never believed her mother could.
The realization hit her with overwhelming force: “I absolutely knew that I didn’t do it and she was the only one there so it had to have been her.”
The attempted murder of a daughter by a mother is a transgression of nature, but in the Warren County courtroom in January 2009, the trial turned into a test of breath. The defense’s only strategy to user was to point out a fictional narrative that Ashley, not Stacy, had killed both fathers. Prosecutor William Fitzpatrick had to induce the jury to see the forensic truth: the note’s creation while Ashley was in class, the specific lab results revealing a straw inserted into her drink to inject the bitter antifreeze, and the DNA of Stacy on the key evidence.
“My God, you’d walk out of his grave,” Fitzpatrick shouted, exposing the emotion of the charade.
The trial was a test of endurance for Ashley, forced to face the woman, in a courtroom, who was both her mother and attempted killer. The key trial, was held on the stand, and the jury witnessed her face after she recounted the moment she saw her father suffocate, she was only gutted by grief. The judge, John J.
Caster, wrapped up the family saga case, the true price of double-murder was not just the loss of loved ones, but the attempted erasure of a child’s life. She whisked her back, but the longest legacy was the resolve of Ashley Wallace, who chose not to be defined as the victim, but as a survivor.
After a heavy week of deliberations, the jury found Stacy L. Castor, 47, an old school babysitter, guilty of the murder of Wallace and David Caster, as well as the attempted murder of her daughter. She was also found guilty of criminal possession of a forged instrument, pure defamation, for $55,000.
Shortly after, the judge collated her sentence: a prison term of 51 years to life, ensuring she would never again harm the general public or people who may love her. The prosecution was over.
Days later, the prosecutor was still able to reproach with a profound statement, mentioning that there was evidence to suggest that she had poisoned her own twin father in 2002, a case that remains officially unsolved. Stacy Collar lived in prison until 2016, when she succumbed to esophageal cancer, never honestly acknowledging the depth of her betrayal. However, what happened by her sentence had to hang in the air—a cold case forever.
But the residual pollution of the crime extends beyond the prison gate. Ashley Wallace, now an accountant with a successful career, continues to grapple with the legacy. She misses a lot of her youth, but the therapy and the love of the family have helped her rebuild.
“I have to get up every day and put a smile on my face,” she says to tweed, with a determination. The other part of Ashley’s arc only proves that even a mother’s ability to control her child’s fate cannot break the bond with a sister, a sister who found her in the moments of her unimaginable condition. In the end, the love of the survivor did prove the mother’s total guilt.
