The note seemed to settle everything. It was typed, it spoke in the voice of Stacey Castor’s eldest daughter, and it blamed that daughter for the deaths of both her father and her stepfather. If its account were accepted, a young woman’s apparent suicide attempt would explain two poisoning investigations at once. But Ashley Wallace survived. When she regained consciousness, she said she had not tried to kill herself and had not written the note. The document that purported to speak for her now had a living witness against it. [1]
Case brief
Clay, New York · 2005–2007
- Recorded outcome
- Stacey Castor convicted of David Castor’s murder, attempted murder of her daughter and offering a false instrument; 2009 judgment affirmed in 2012; further motion denial affirmed in 2015.
Key moments
People in this case
- David Castor
Murder victim
Photo at source · ABC News · photograph courtesy of David Castor Jr. - Stacey Castor
Convicted of murdering David Castor and attempting to murder Ashley Wallace
Photo at source · ABC News · courtroom photograph
There was another problem with the supposed confession. Computer evidence placed drafts on September 11 and September 12, 2007, when Ashley was not at home. Her account of the drink her mother prepared began on September 13. The note’s existence preceded the medical emergency that was supposed to give it meaning. That sequence became a central part of the case against Castor: a murder investigation had acquired an attempted murder, and a document meant to redirect suspicion became evidence of the effort to do so. [1]
John Marino from Pittsburgh · Image source · CC BY 2.0 · This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit.
A death initially called suicide
David Castor was found dead on August 22, 2005. Investigators initially considered his death a suicide by antifreeze poisoning. Stacey was his wife. She also had responsibilities concerning his estate, a distinction that later mattered to the courts. When police sought fingerprints that September, she spoke with an attorney retained in connection with the estate. At that point, the lawyer understood the death to be a suicide, according to his later testimony. [1] [2]
The death did not remain confined to that initial explanation. By September 2007, investigators were revisiting it and had examined the death of Stacey’s first husband, Michael Wallace, who died in 2000. An autopsy following exhumation indicated that he, too, had died from antifreeze poisoning. The similarity made the earlier death important to the investigation, but it did not make the two deaths legally interchangeable. Castor’s eventual murder conviction concerned David. Michael’s death entered the trial as evidence of an uncharged act. [1]
For Ashley, the distinction was more than a legal footnote. Michael was her father; David was her stepfather. The typed note assigned responsibility for both deaths to her. It also reached backward to a time when she had been twelve. The prosecution’s case would ask the jury to consider why a document naming her as the killer appeared as the investigation of her mother’s husbands intensified. Ashley’s survival allowed that claim to be tested against her testimony and the computer’s record. [1]
The investigation reaches the family computer
On September 7, 2007, Castor spoke with investigators after waiving her Miranda rights. A few days earlier, police had received the autopsy results concerning Michael. The appellate account describes a tightening sequence: the earlier death was being investigated, Castor knew about the exhumation, and an expert later found that the first draft of the purported suicide note had been created four days after she learned of it. The timing supplied context for the prosecution’s argument about the note. [1]
A typed document can appear detached from the person who created it. A reader sees the completed page, not necessarily the revisions, the machine used, or the hours in which someone worked on it. Here, the drafts brought those hidden stages into the case. They did not merely show that a note existed. They placed its creation in a period when its supposed author was away from home, before she became ill. The final page and the underlying chronology could not be evaluated separately. [1]
That evidence also changes how the gallery at the end of this story should be read. The diagram of the note’s chronology is an explanation of the court record, not a screenshot from the family computer and not a reproduction of Ashley’s handwriting. Its significance lies in the order of events. It identifies the contradiction without manufacturing a document that could be mistaken for the actual exhibit. The linked opinion contains the account on which the comparison rests. [1]
A drink, a bedroom, a rescue
Ashley testified that on the afternoon of September 13, her mother prepared an alcoholic drink for her. She described its unpleasant taste and said that she felt ill afterward and went to bed. The court recorded that she did not leave her bedroom before medical personnel took her to the hospital the following morning. Her testimony placed the onset of illness after the preparation of the drink and after the creation of the note drafts. [1]
On September 14, Castor’s younger daughter found her twenty-year-old sister unresponsive. Prescription medication and alcohol were involved in the emergency. Ashley survived and denied that she had intentionally taken drugs mixed with alcohol. She also denied the apparent confession. Those denials were not the only evidence the jury heard, but they mattered because the document’s proposed explanation depended on her having chosen both the ingestion and the written account. [1]
The note reached police through a detail that later became important in a search challenge. Castor asked an officer to take it from her younger daughter. The appellate court therefore distinguished the note from other items seized from the house: it was already in police possession through that request. Officers initially entered in response to the emergency call and remained while awaiting a warrant. The court addressed those circumstances rather than treating every item as the product of one undifferentiated search. [1]
Joegrimes at English Wikipedia · Image source · Public domain · This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit.
The first husband’s death was a different legal question
Evidence about Michael’s death presented a difficult question. A jury deciding charged crimes ordinarily cannot be asked simply to punish a defendant for every suspicion surrounding her. The trial court had to determine whether the uncharged evidence met the requirements for admission and served a permitted purpose. In this case, the appellate court upheld the finding that the prosecution had supplied clear and convincing evidence of a distinctive method and Castor’s connection to the earlier death. [1]
The opinion identified several pieces of that showing. Castor had obtained life insurance on Michael, had refused consent to an autopsy when he died at thirty-eight, and had acknowledged rat poison in the household. The purported note referenced rat poison in connection with his death. The court also considered Ashley’s age at the time and the relative sophistication of the alleged poisoning. These were parts of the evidentiary ruling, not a second jury conviction for Michael’s murder. [1]
The earlier death also helped explain the note itself. Its references would have been hard to understand without the background, and the exhumation supplied a possible reason for an effort to place blame elsewhere. The trial court instructed the jury on the limited purpose for which the uncharged evidence could be considered. Preserving that limit is essential to telling the case accurately: similarity and admissibility do not erase the difference between an uncharged act and the crimes actually proved beyond a reasonable doubt. [1]
A conviction and a separate remand
The March 5, 2009 judgment included convictions for second-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, and offering a false instrument for filing. In October 2012, the Appellate Division affirmed the judgment. On the attempted-murder count, it pointed to Ashley’s testimony, her uninterrupted period in the bedroom, her denial of authorship, and the dates of the drafts. The court held that a rational jury could find the elements proved. The supposed confession had not displaced that combined evidence. [1]
Yet the same appellate decision required further proceedings on a separate motion. Castor argued that her right to counsel had attached in 2005 when the estate attorney communicated with police, making a later statement inadmissible. The appellate court required a hearing to resolve what that attorney had actually represented. That remand did not reverse the murder judgment. Two different legal questions had produced two different dispositions in the same opinion, a distinction easily lost in a compressed retelling. [1]
After the hearing, the county court denied the motion in December 2013. The attorney testified that his work concerned Castor’s role as the estate’s personal representative, that he did not know she was a criminal suspect, and that criminal advice would have conflicted with his estate role. In May 2015, the appellate court affirmed the denial. The hearing supplied the factual record that had been missing; it did not establish the counsel violation Castor had alleged. [2]
Kenneth C. Zirkel · Image source · CC BY-SA 4.0 · This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit.
The person the note tried to erase
CBS/AP reported in June 2016 that Castor had died in prison. [3]
The most consequential voice in the case was the one the typed page tried to replace. Ashley could describe the drink, reject the supposed suicide attempt, and say that the confession was not hers. The computer evidence let the jury compare that testimony with a chronology beyond the finished page. Neither the testimony nor the timestamps should be reduced to a magic clue that decided every issue alone. Their force came from how they met: the document claimed one story, while the surviving daughter and the recorded drafts supported another. [1]
The chronological map follows those stages, from David’s death through the appeals, while keeping Michael’s uncharged death separately identified. Its markers are town, county and legal-seat references, not the family’s private address. The evidence gallery likewise separates the computer timeline, the medical emergency and the appellate rulings. The purpose is to let the reader see exactly where the case turned without asking a diagram—or a supposed confession—to say more than the record supports.
Look closer · 9 visuals
Inside the evidence.
Open a visual to explore what it contributed to the case—and the limits of what it shows. Photographs, historical reproductions and original illustrations are individually labeled. Open the notes for each image’s source, credit, and limitations; setting photographs do not depict crime scenes.
Who could have written the note?
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The computer timeline challenged the note’s claim to be Ashley’s confession.
A timeline diagram, not the original note or a forensic screenshot.
Two poisoning investigations
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
David’s murder conviction and the admitted evidence about Michael must remain legally distinct.
No second murder conviction is claimed.
The daughter who survived
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
Ashley’s testimony and survival supplied evidence that the supposed confession could not answer.
No reenactment of a poisoning or invented drink recipe.
A note handed to police
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The opinion explains why the note was already in police possession before the disputed search.
The image does not reproduce signatures or authentic wording.
Two rulings in one appeal
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The 2012 opinion preserved the convictions while requiring a separate hearing.
A remand of one motion is not an acquittal.
Estate counsel and criminal counsel
Original editorial illustration — not an actual evidence photograph or exhibit.
Read the evidence notes
The later opinion found that the estate lawyer had not entered the criminal investigation.
Case-specific ruling; not general legal advice.
Syracuse and Onondaga Lake from above
Geographic context photograph — not a crime-scene image.
Read the evidence notes
Syracuse and Onondaga Lake from above. Geographic context photograph; not a crime-scene image or evidence of an event shown on the map.
This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit. The source and reuse terms are linked below.
John Marino from Pittsburgh · Image source · CC BY 2.0
Onondaga Lake Park in 2005
Geographic context photograph — not a crime-scene image.
Read the evidence notes
Onondaga Lake Park in 2005. Geographic context photograph; not a crime-scene image or evidence of an event shown on the map.
This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit. The source and reuse terms are linked below.
Joegrimes at English Wikipedia · Image source · Public domain
The former Hotel Syracuse in downtown Syracuse
Geographic context photograph — not a crime-scene image.
Read the evidence notes
The former Hotel Syracuse in downtown Syracuse. Geographic context photograph; not a crime-scene image or evidence of an event shown on the map.
This photograph provides setting or historical context. It is not an authentic crime exhibit. The source and reuse terms are linked below.
Kenneth C. Zirkel · Image source · CC BY-SA 4.0
★ Key evidence used in a conviction · ✓ Exclusion or reversal · ◇ Disputed evidence · ⊘ Excluded at retrial · ◆ Identity / investigative finding, not a conviction. A symbol does not mean one item proved the whole case.
Follow the locations
Put the story on the map.
Follow the dated entries, then select an event to find its regional setting. Shared-location pins open a group of events. Evidence symbols identify important findings and their limitations.
Open the map in its own window ↗Sources & further reading
- People v. Castor, 99 AD3d 1177 — New York Appellate DivisionCharged crimes, daughter’s testimony, note drafts, uncharged-act ruling, direct affirmance and motion remand.
- People v. Castor, 128 AD3d 1357 — New York Appellate DivisionEstate attorney hearing, 2013 motion denial and affirmance.
- Woman who poisoned husband with antifreeze dies in prison — CBS/APDated death report only; fewer than 25 derived words. Its inconsistent poisoning year is not used.
Editorial review: 2026-10-06 · 1561 words