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[Music] In a fraction of a second, it changed my life. Now I'm someone else. No warning, no
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premonition, nothing. My name is Corey Shaughnessy and I used to own Gallery Jewelers in Austin,
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Texas. The thing that made the jewelry business really fun is selling engagement rings, selling jewelry to
00:00:37
people because they're marking special occasions. Ted kind of had the same passion. He loved colored gemstones. We
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called ourselves gallery jewelers. It should have been called Ted's Jewelers because it it really was all about him.
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March 1st was just a boring day. He came home from work. We had dinner. I basically rolled over to go to
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sleep. And the next thing I know, one of the dogs barks. This was early morning hours. Two
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shooters enter the Shaughnessy home. They quietly move through the home. Ted sits up in bed and he grabbed his
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gun to go see what it was. I hadn't even gotten my head back on the pillow, I don't think, before I heard the first
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gunshot. And then there was a barrage of gunfire. One of the shooters advances towards the
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master bedroom where Cory is. I grabbed my gun. I started shooting back and I ran out of ammo. I just
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bailed into the closet. Travis County 911. Do you need police fire or a paramedic? I don't know. I'm in the
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closet. There were shots fired. Help me. Okay. Well, we're helping you, ma'am. Help me. I s heard this. I mean,
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horrible, horrible moaning. And when I came out of the closet and I saw Ted's legs and I could tell that he was dead.
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Okay. Oh my god. Take a deep breath. You're doing awesome, Corey. Okay. Oh god. Theodore Shaughnessy was shot dead
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in his Austin area home by an intruder. Cory Shaughnessy shot back at the intruder and wasn't hurt. I was under
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the impression that this was a a robbery that had gone bad. There was nothing stolen. We weren't finding anybody that
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had any ill feelings towards either one of them. We didn't have any idea who committed this murder. Anybody that can
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do this is a sociopath. It's just absolutely crazy. I don't even know why. I really don't
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know why. [Music] [Music] [Music] When Travis County Sheriff's detectives Paul Salo and James Moore arrived to
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investigate a shooting at Ted and Corey Shaughnessy's Austin, Texas home early on March 2nd,
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2018. They first thought it might be a robbery gone wrong. It looked as though there was a home
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invasion and a homeowner was killed. Inside the sprawling suburban home, it looked like a
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battlefield. 55-year-old Ted Shaughnessy laid dead in a pool of blood near the kitchen table. He was
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shot in the head, the back, the thigh, and the buttocks. One of the family's two pet Rottweilers,
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Bart, had been shot to death as well. There was broken window glass everywhere. Bullets lodged in the walls,
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casings all over the floor. Authorities noticed they were not all the same type.
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We had 40 caliber and 380. So that told us that we had two shooters. Corey would tell police she
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and Ted kept about 20 guns in the home and said she'd used her 357 revolver to shoot back at the attacker. It was a
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hell of gunfire. Investigators had noticed a single wideopen ground floor window around the
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side of the house and wondered if the intruders had used it to get in. Somebody took the screen off, set it
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next to the window outside. That open window led into an unoccupied bedroom. And there, inside a drawer,
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police found what seemed like an unlikely coincidence. There's a 40 caliber gun box in that drawer. It's
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missing out of the box. Well, hang on. 40 caliber is one of the caliber that you were just describing. Yes. It meant
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that Shaughnessy's empty gun box could have held a pistol that one of the intruders used and had ejected bullet
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casings near the victim. That information gets past me while I'm outside. Outside near Detective Moore, first
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responders were looking after Cory Shaughnessy. Cory's hysterical. Cory would tell police she had not seen the
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attackers faces, but she did have a hunch about why they'd come. Being a jeweler, you might someday be a target.
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When you hear they own a jewelry store, what does that prompt in in in your minds? Automatically a motive. Someone
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figuring there was some safe with a bunch of jewelry. Absolutely. Yes, that's right.
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Corey broke the news by phone to the Shaughnessy son Nick, then 19, who lived two hours away with his girlfriend,
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Jackie, in College Station, Texas. They immediately drove to Austin, arriving about 800 a.m. Nick comes over and he's
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he's emotional. He asks me what happened. Nick, Jackie, and Corey all agreed to help the investigation in any
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way possible. Cory allowed police to search her phone. And though Nick said he hadn't been in
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Austin for about a month, he and Jackie did the same. All three also agreed to answer
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questions at the station. I'm trying to think of anything that could be helpful. Our goal was to just try to get
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as much information as possible. I I didn't hear anything until the dog started barking. But Cory says the more
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police questioned her in the coming days, the more a traumatic situation went from bad to worse. I'm trying to
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think of anything I can to help. She says they were not treating her like a victim. I was extremely angry
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at the sheriff's department. Investigators still weren't sure if the murder was part of a random
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attack, a jewel heist gone bad, or whether it was a targeted assassination. They weren't finding any
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relevant unidentified prince at the scene. So, they had to wonder if their sole surviving victim, Cory
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Shaughnessy, was actually a suspect. She's the only person in the house and we have her husband who has been shot to
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death. We know that she owns firearms, so it's obviously an option for us. They called her in for a series of
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interviews. For the last one, she brought a lawyer who is seated on the left. Even though I didn't know Ted,
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it's not right. Somebody killed him. No, it's not. And I want to find them. Me, too.
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You got a distraught wife. You got a dead husband. You have to ask about the marriage, don't you? Yes. Ted was the
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people person. He was the front part of the story. Investigators learned Cory and Ted had
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met in the early 80s at a video arcade in Phoenix. They'd quickly discovered they had a lot in common, including a
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love of jewelry and eventually of each other. They married and opened Gallery Jewelers. Everything seemed to be just
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about perfect. As the jewelry business grew, Ted and Corey had decided to grow their family,
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too. In 2000, they adopted Nick at 16 months old from an orphanage in Ukraine. It was just instant love. It was. Yeah.
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Instant. Cory says they all bonded even before bringing him home. There were animal crackers involved.
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Skillful distribution of animal crackers. Yes. Yes. And by the time we left, we were a family. She says Ted had
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a knack for helping people express their love with a sparkle. Everybody loved Ted. Didn't have any enemies.
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By the time of the murder, the Shaughnessies were worth millions. But maybe even more valuable to them, they
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counted some of their customers as close friends. We were very happy for Cory. Being a parent was worth its
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weight in gold. Nicholas had everything a kid could want. Yes. What was he into? He liked
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animals and he loved cars, especially fast ones. His father drove race cars for fun and often took him to
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the track. He loved putting on Ted's helmet and his racing gloves and and all of those things. In high school, she
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says her son found another love. Her name was Jackie Edison. After her parents' divorce, Jackie had moved from
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New Jersey to Austin to live with her father. Nick brought her to meet his parents in 2016. It was an awkward
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dinner, but Corey says Jackie eventually won them over and before long she was spending so much time in the
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Shaughnessy's house, they actually let her move in. Did you settle into a Okay, a serious girlfriend seems to be part of
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Nick's life and she's okay. I I did. She was all right. In August of 2017, Nick and Jackie moved
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out to start a new life in College Station. She and School, he as a day trader with his parents' financial
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backing. Ted and Corey would have less than a year to enjoy their empty nest before that horrible night in
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March. Police stayed on the scene for hours trying to process all the evidence. I was actually on call when
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the murder occurred. Amy Meredith was an assistant district attorney and says police asked her to
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come help them process and preserve the scene. An unusual request. She arrived around 11:00 a.m. and after looking
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around began to believe, as they did, that Ted Shaughnessy probably knew who ever had attacked him. This was not a
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stranger. This was not a stranger killing. Meredith was sure the home was just too
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big and too dark for a pair of random robbers or jewel thief wannabes to find their way around. Maybe even more
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importantly, there was nothing stolen. Nothing from that safe. No valuables missing from the rest of the
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house. So everything for you pointed to inside job. Yes, without a doubt. [Music]
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Cory Shaughnessy's frustration with investigators was growing. Thank you. All right. Well, again, I appreciate you
00:13:17
guys coming in. She says she'd known from the start that she was a suspect in her husband's murder. She says she
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needed money for the business in the following weeks. And it didn't help when she tried to cash in his milliondoll
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life insurance policy. I was the only beneficiary. That could only mean that they suspected me. Let me just ask, did
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you have anything to do with this? Absolutely not. But Amy Meredith says Corey had started raising red flags
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immediately after leaving the scene. Within hours of the murder, she reportedly stated there would be no
00:13:53
funeral and inquired about having the house cleaned. We had to make sure that she did not have any involvement.
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But Cory wasn't the only member of Ted's family who was raising suspicion. The Shaughnessy son, Nick,
00:14:08
had been more than a 100 miles away at the time of the murder. At the scene that morning, he'd been emotional. But
00:14:14
what struck Detective So was one of Nick's first questions. I tell him, "It looks like somebody came into the home
00:14:22
and shot your dad to death." And how did he absorb that news? He asked me, "Did he suffer?" Was that an odd
00:14:34
question? It definitely struck me as odd. Yes. Even more so, police say, because as the morning wore on, Nick
00:14:42
became much less interested in speaking with police than with the reporters who had started showing up. Nick and Jackie
00:14:50
continuously tried to talk to the media. We asked him to to stop and to stay in the scene. And then Nick did something
00:14:58
really odd, says Detective Moore. He walked directly over to examine that ground floor wide openen side window.
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The room it led to had once been his. Him going to that side of the house to look specifically at that window, which
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you can't see from just the front of the house. So for him to know that that was
00:15:20
even involved, he did not have that information. How does he know the entry point unless he was involved in creating
00:15:28
the entry point? Sometimes people will get information from cross talk with detectives or law enforcement. And so I
00:15:36
I didn't automatically get super suspicious, but it was catching my attention. Something on Nick's phone had caught
00:15:45
their attention as well. An app that gave him access to his parents' alarm. Cory told them the family often chose
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not to arm the system and that it had been switched off that night. But authorities noticed something in the
00:16:00
account history. There was an activation for an open window. The time of the window being opened was
00:16:08
4:27 that morning. Following that was glass break activations. We believe that's when the
00:16:16
bullets started breaking the glass in the house. That's when Ted died. That's when the shots were being fired. Was
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this important to have streamline? Police also saw something that seemed important in Jackie Edison's behavior.
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We were going to do gunshot residue tests on their hands. We then separated them. And at that time, Jackie broke
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down hysterically. And what'd you make of it? That was a major red flag for me. We knew there was something more to this
00:16:47
at that point. A woman officer put your mom on the phone and then your mom told you what
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happened? Yeah, just like someone came in the house, there was an exchange of gunfire.
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I believe she fired a shot and then she ran to the closet. In questioning later that
00:17:07
day, Nick and Jackie reminded police they'd been at their home in College Station when the shooting happened. We
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both moved to College Station and he just works from home. A few days later, investigators got a
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search warrant. Once we get in the apartment, we're going through it. We're finding ammunition.
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Though common among gun owners, the ammunition was the same brand and caliber that was found at the crime
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scene. And investigators were about to find proof the couple was keeping secrets. We find a marriage certificate
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for Nick and Jacqueline. You discovered that Nick and Jackie were married by searching Nick's apartment. Yeah. In all
00:17:49
of the conversation you were having, they never said that they were married. No. Hastings, a teenage friend of Nicks
00:17:56
named Spencer Patterson. Spencer Patterson, who'd been certified as a minister online, had married them eight
00:18:04
months earlier. Police weren't the only ones surprised. You and Ted never knew. No.
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Cory Shaughnessy says Nick and Jackie didn't tell her about their clandestine marriage until after the murder. And I
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told him, I said, "This is not, you shouldn't have done this. You're too young. Trying to be a good mom, she says
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she promised to help them plan a proper wedding. I said, "You need to do it the right way." Corey had ample opportunity
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to make sure it happened because over the next few days, Nick and Jackie moved back into her house. We were planning
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the engagement party. We had the guest list. Jackie was picking out invitations.
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That's especially chilling because while police initially had looked at all three
00:18:55
for the murder, they now suspected just two and that Nick and Jackie had also targeted
00:19:02
Cory. But it was still only a working theory. You can't say anything to Corey. No. That's a hard line to walk. If you
00:19:12
have two people who planned her killing now living with her, are you worried about Corey's safety? Of course.
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Of course. But Corey Shaughnessy says what worried her was the possibility authorities were trying to frame her son
00:19:29
who by now was working in his father's place at the jewelry store. There is a set of circumstances that the police are
00:19:36
trying to to to make work in the easiest way that they can. On March 10th, 2018,
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she hired her son the best defense attorney she could find. You could have told me aliens landed on the front yard,
00:19:51
and I would have believed that before. I would have believed that Nicholas and Jackie plan to have us killed.
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[Music] Corey Shaughnessy knew police were suspicious of Nick and Jackie, but she
00:20:22
says she had no reason to think they were right. After all, she says, "I don't know. They've been wrong about
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her. The last thing that I would ever do would be kill my husband." And I thought, well, if they think I did it,
00:20:38
it's not a stretch for them to think Nicholas did it. But the closer police looked, the more incriminating evidence
00:20:45
they seemed to find that Nick and Jackie had planned to have both Shaughnessies killed. While phone records showed Nick
00:20:52
had been more than 100 miles away at the time of the murder. They also showed he
00:20:57
was lying when he said he hadn't been to Austin for a month. We ultimately see cell phone usage in Austin on February
00:21:08
28th, which is just two days before Ted ends up getting killed. Investigators wondered if he had been in
00:21:16
town making final preparations. There were text messages on Nick and Jackie's phones that police say showed a
00:21:24
suspicious conversation. How important was the text message that he had sent out? February 23 24 Nick is saying he's
00:21:32
working on it and Jackie's response to the text message was do they want 50k or not? And she says we can't afford to pay
00:21:41
half before. In another exchange, Nick asks her to withdraw money from her account. Quote,
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"So if it happens cash in hand, they do make this withdrawal." Jackie withdrew $1,000 from the bank
00:21:58
just days before the murder. Authorities suspected it was no coincidence. Then in May of 2018, they
00:22:06
talked to the man who had officiated Nick and Jackie's wedding, that high school friend, Spencer Patterson. Trying
00:22:14
to get a hold of Spencer was kind of difficult. At first, investigators believed
00:22:19
Patterson might be a suspect. But when they finally reached him, he proved to be a critical witness
00:22:26
instead. He told them just before the murder, Nick had talked about coming into $8
00:22:32
million with Ted and Cory gone. Nick had put a dollar sign on the lives of his parents. Yes, that's chilling. It is.
00:22:44
Patterson showed them text messages that were even more chilling. There was also
00:22:48
communication between Spencer and Nicholas. Nicholas was trying to hire him to kill a family. Just walk in and
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shoot a family, writes Nick. Steal all their no mask needed cuz they'll all be dead. Spencer didn't want to go along
00:23:05
with it, but Nick still pitched the idea. Police cleared Patterson and on May 29th, 2018, they arrested Nick
00:23:15
Shaughnessy and Jackie Edison for criminal solicitation. Cory couldn't believe it.
00:23:22
I'm still under the assumption that he's being wrongly accused. For months, Cory had stood by Nick. But
00:23:32
she told us when she read the arrest affidavit and saw the evidence, her rocksolid belief in his innocence began
00:23:39
to crumble. I got to where I understood that yes, they were involved in some way. But as a mother, she says she still
00:23:47
couldn't convince herself they deliberately tried to kill anyone. I was then hoping that they had maybe
00:23:55
gotten caught up in something in College Station where maybe Nicholas owed someone money or maybe there was some
00:24:00
sort of a strange drug thing or maybe he told the wrong person that we were jewelers.
00:24:05
Confident Nick and Jackie were behind the attack. Police hoped some time in jail
00:24:11
might make them come clean about who had actually pulled the trigger. For the moment though, neither one was talking.
00:24:19
The next step was who were the actual shooters and how do we figure this out? The evidence trail had essentially run
00:24:26
cold. So, we kind of hit a stall point when in early July, 4 months after the murder, Detective Moore decided to
00:24:35
review some security video from Nick and Jackie's porch recorded just 2 days before the attack. I see two individuals
00:24:44
show up to his front door. Moore says he noticed something about one of the men that made him freeze the video.
00:24:51
Something he was wearing. A green Anderson t-shirt. Window company. A window company. This feels like a break.
00:25:00
And it only happens because you isolated a frame of the video from the security camera. Yeah. He and drove to the window
00:25:09
company where their hard work ran into more good luck by sheer coincidence. An employese's daughter said she'd actually
00:25:18
met the man in the freeze frame. Apparently, he'd only worked there for a few days, four years earlier. And this
00:25:26
woman still remembered his name. Sergeant, what are the odds of a hit like this on the identity? It was crazy
00:25:34
that we we got that break. His name was Cameron Vosmeck and he wasn't home that day. But his wife answered the
00:25:43
door and quickly got their attention. I know why you're here. That kid who hired
00:25:50
somebody to to kill his jewelry store parents. Hang on. She doesn't know who you guys are.
00:25:58
You identify yourselves as detectives. And she says, "I know why you're here." Yes.
00:26:04
She said a few months earlier a man named Johnny Leon had asked her husband to commit murder for money, but he
00:26:12
turned him down. Police ruled out Vazmeck as a suspect, but Leon turned out to be the other person in the
00:26:20
security video from Nick and Jackie's porch. When they brought him in for questioning,
00:26:26
he told them he was no murderer, but he admitted Nick had tried to hire him. going to lie to you. If someone offers
00:26:34
you 100k, you're going to think about it. He's luring you into this to commit murder.
00:26:41
Police were convinced that Leon had taken the bait. I'm just saw you. We know you're involved in this. We know
00:26:49
what happened. You know I'm involved. Absolutely. There's no doubt. Leon was arrested for capital murder and
00:26:58
on his phone, police found evidence he may not have acted alone. There was a flurry of contacts around
00:27:05
the time of the killing with a Fort Worth man named Aryan Smith. They also discovered both men had
00:27:12
arrest records. In fact, the two had been arrested together for drugs a year earlier. Detective Moore and I
00:27:21
interviewed him. He did admit that he had met Nick. He gave us a lot of good information.
00:27:28
Smith opened up about the details of that night and broke down in the process. You're the only person I've
00:27:34
shown regret. I don't understand how how could you kill somebody and not have any
00:27:39
emotion about it. And you actually killed him. I was just in the situation. I'm I'm I'm devastated. I cannot sleep
00:27:45
at night. Prosecutors were closer than ever to having everything they needed to make their case. We've got enough now.
00:27:54
Let's go to trial. something Nick Shaughnessy told us he'd wanted to avoid. Did you pay these two
00:28:04
men to go kill your parents? After police arrested the last of their four suspects, Aryan Smith, Detective
00:28:28
Sos says Smith told them he wasn't just there for Ted's murder. Yes, I was there. He acknowledged firing the fatal
00:28:36
shot and then made a stunning request. I request the death penalty. the death penalty.
00:28:45
I killed somebody. I deserve to die. Where is it? He also told police where to find the murder weapon. It was the 40
00:28:54
caliber pistol missing from that box they'd found in Nick's old bedroom. The 40 caliber gun that killed Ted was
00:29:02
Ted's. Yes. For a mother who'd struggled for months to keep faith in her son, it felt like
00:29:11
the last straw. Too much had happened that pointed to Nicholas and Jackie having involvement.
00:29:18
And Corey was horrified to realize she'd spent months sheltering the very people
00:29:24
who'd planned to have Ted and her murdered that night. What a chilling thought. Two people who tried to have
00:29:31
you killed and they're living in your home. Very It's very chilling. I bought all the groceries. I paid all the bills.
00:29:39
I bought her clothing. This is diabolical. Absolutely. They thought they had gotten away with it. Do you Do
00:29:45
you prefer Jackie or Jacqueline or Jackie? But after their arrest, it took just a couple of weeks for Jackie to
00:29:52
blame Nick. Did Nicholas hire somebody to kill his parents? Yeah. And Jackie seemed to know why he'd done
00:30:02
it. She says Nick was in desperate financial straits with a failing day trading business and thousands in
00:30:09
overdue loans, including at least one from Corey. I think his mom gave him $30,000 and she expected money in
00:30:21
return, but he wasn't paying her. After her cooperation, authorities released Jackie on a reduced bond and prosecutor
00:30:29
Amy Meredith resolved to go after Nick for the maximum. We're going to try Nicholas Shaughnessy for capital murder.
00:30:40
At this point, were you prepared to testify against Nick? Yes. Nick Shaughnessy and the two alleged
00:30:48
hitmen were charged with capital murder. But by the spring of 2021, Amy Meredith
00:30:54
had left her job as assistant district attorney. And there was a new DA, Jose Garza, whose office made the men an
00:31:03
offer, avoid a possible death sentence by pleading guilty to a reduced charge of murder and serve 35 years with the
00:31:12
possibility of parole. Leon and Smith agreed, and Corey wrote to Nick to suggest he do the same.
00:31:21
If I could speak to Ted, I think that would have been his choice. Nick Shaughnessy accepted the deal. He
00:31:30
could be released when he's 36. In the summer of 2023, we visited him in prison near Houston. Did you hire people to go
00:31:41
kill your parents? Yes, Jackie and I participated in multiple aspects to Never mind. Participated in multiple
00:31:49
aspects. Did you pay these two men to go kill your parents? Yes. Nick told us he's sorry for all of it. I know that
00:31:59
I'm here because of those actions. Nick, at the end of the day, are you sorry for
00:32:03
what you did or are you sorry that you got caught? I'm most truly passionately sorry for what I did. And Nick told us
00:32:12
he never would have done it if not for Jackie. It was a very toxic relationship. Although he stood to
00:32:19
inherit his parents' money eventually, he told us he wasn't prepared to wait. Were you at all thinking, "What am I
00:32:28
doing?" Of course, it was always in the back of my head, like red flags, like, "Stop. Don't go." The back of your head.
00:32:36
Yeah. Why not the front of your head? I guess the the the validation or approval
00:32:42
from Jackie. It is hard to know how much Jackie Edison should be blamed or what punishment she deserves. And jurors
00:32:51
won't get to decide. She too got a deal from the office of the new DA for pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit
00:32:59
capital murder by terror threat or other felony. a jail sentence of 120 days and
00:33:06
10 years probation. It's It's astounding. It's absolutely astounding. She began serving her time in June of
00:33:14
2023. It is an outright dismissal of everything that I went through as a victim and it's a dismissal of Ted's
00:33:21
life. Three are doing 35 years. One is doing 120 days. Cory says that's outrageous. What are your thoughts? I
00:33:33
had no involvement once I left the district attorney's office on Jackie's case. Amy Meredith was working elsewhere
00:33:39
before prosecutors offered the plea deals. Cory's feelings aren't lost on her. Do you understand her rage? I I
00:33:49
absolutely understand that she is upset. Cory is so upset that when the new prosecutors asked her to appear at
00:33:57
Jackie's 2023 plea hearing, she refused. Instead, recording this video at home to
00:34:04
be played in court. I'm alive because your plan to have me murdered didn't succeed. You are a monster. You are evil
00:34:15
and everyone needs to know it. You knew what was about to happen and yet you sat home and did nothing because
00:34:25
you wanted it to happen. We wanted to ask Jackie Edison about that and other things, but she declined our request for
00:34:33
an interview. On the day she was released from jail, our producer, Jenna Jackson, approached her. Hey,
00:34:41
Jacqueline. What do you make of Nick Shaughnessy's apology? See more evidence from the case
00:34:49
at 48 [Music] hours.com. Cory and Nick Shaughnessy haven't spoken directly since his 2018 arrest.
00:35:13
When you look in the mirror, do you see evil? My mom stated that me being evil, I don't see evil in me. And these days,
00:35:22
it's safe to say they don't see eye to eye. In fact, there may be only one thing they do agree on. Jackie is not a
00:35:32
victim. This is a 50/50 thing. Most definitely. Did Jacine Edison get away with murder? Absolutely.
00:35:40
On October 17th, 2023, Jackie Edison walked out of an Austin area jail after serving her 4mon sentence.
00:35:52
Hey, Jacqueline. We've been asking for an interview for months. I don't want to do any interviews. But our producer,
00:35:58
Jenna Jackson, has some questions for her anyway. Nick got 35 years. The hitman got the same. You got 120 days.
00:36:06
Are you getting away with murder? No. I think that I think that it's fair. I think it accurately
00:36:15
reflects the level of involvement Corey and Nick have both told us is that you were your partner in this murder
00:36:23
plot. Yeah, I think Nick is is saying whatever he has to say to kind of clear his name. Um, and Corey is
00:36:33
very much in denial about what really happened. You weren't in on this plot and Not in it. Didn't get money out to
00:36:40
pay the hitman. No, ma'am. Is she innocent? OB. Absolutely not. No. She knew. She knew what he was trying to
00:36:50
do. She could have stopped this at any time. I tried to stop him. But investigators say there is no
00:36:58
evidence Jackie ever tried to stop the murder. She's no princess in this. And according to what Nick told authorities,
00:37:05
Jackie had been making plans for spending the Shaughnessy's money. I found out that Jackie had already picked
00:37:13
out the car she was going to buy her mother with the money that they made off of the murder of you and Ted. Yes. I'm
00:37:19
not defending her to by any degree. Though she did eventually help them make their case against the person they
00:37:26
identified as the key culprit. They're both to blame. Who took more action? It's Nick. You take Nick out of this,
00:37:35
you don't have the incident. You take Jackie out. Still happens. Do you understand Cory's frustration? I
00:37:45
do. Absolutely. We empathize with her. But Mo and Salo say Jackie's plea deal wasn't their call. Our job ended at the
00:37:55
arrest, and there's not a single step further that we can take it. We wanted to ask DA Joseé Garza exactly
00:38:03
why Jackie Edison got 120 days after the other three got 35 years, but he wouldn't agree to an interview. A
00:38:13
district attorney's spokesperson sent us a statement saying, quote, "Our office takes acts of violence seriously and is
00:38:20
committed to holding people who commit violent crimes accountable." The statement also said Edison is on 10
00:38:27
years probation and if she violates the terms, she could face 20 years in prison. Cory Shaughnessy says a full
00:38:36
explanation from authorities would have helped her make sense of something that has always struck her as impossibly
00:38:43
wrong. So, no one's ever explained to you why this enormous disparity in sentence? No, absolutely not. It's a
00:38:54
slap in the face to my mother. Now you're concerned about your mother? Most definitely.
00:39:00
True or not, Nick Shaughnessy told us he hopes someday Corey will agree to speak
00:39:06
with him. What would you say to her? I wish I could tell my mom how truly sorry I am that this is not something
00:39:17
I'm proud of and I failed her as a son. It means nothing to me. Do you think he believes it? What he's saying? I don't
00:39:28
know that person. I have no idea who Nicholas Shaughnessy is. And Corey says there is no point
00:39:39
responding to an apology she was never meant to hear. In my mind, I am supposed to be
00:39:47
dead and so I'm a ghost and ghosts can't speak. But even after a betrayal no mother
00:39:55
should ever have to see, Corey still can't bring herself to condemn her son altogether. Do you still love your son?
00:40:04
I love the person I knew to be my son before this happened. You love that 8-year-old boy racing cars with his dad.
00:40:12
Yes. She knows that boy is gone forever. And so is the life she and Ted tried to
00:40:19
build around him. Nicholas and Jackie destroyed my entire world. They took my husband. They took memories. They took
00:40:31
my business. They took everything I had that I cared about. But now living out of state under a
00:40:40
different name, Corey is determined to make the most of every day. It'll always be
00:40:48
there. It'll always be a part of who I am, but I've been given life and I need to do something with
00:41:11
it. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman.
00:41:17
But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder?
00:41:22
Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder wherever you get your podcasts. You've
00:41:27
probably heard of the NCIS from the hit TV series, but we're about to take you inside its real life work. Listen to 48
00:41:35
hours NCIS early and ad free on the 48 hours plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.
00:41:42
[Music] Welcome to Postmortem. I'm your host Ann Marie Green and with me today are CBS
00:42:02
News chief investigative correspondent Jim Axelrod and producer Jenna Jackson to discuss shootout at the Shaughnesses.
00:42:09
Thank you so much for joining us guys. Thanks for having us. Yes, thank you. The thing about this hour is, you know,
00:42:16
the story starts off one way and it ends in a way that's completely different than you expect. There's a breakin at
00:42:23
Ted and Cory Shaughnessy's home in Austin, Texas. Ted is killed, but his wife Cory actually survives. And
00:42:30
initially, it seems like this could have been, you know, a robbery gone wrong. But as the police start investigating,
00:42:36
it looks more and more like this is an inside job. So before we get into the discussion, let's just hear a quick
00:42:44
recap of the broadcast. Before dawn on March 2nd, 2018, intruders entered the home of Ted and
00:42:51
Cory Shaughnessy, killing him and one of the family's Rottweilers, Barton. Cory says she shot back and called 911. I'm
00:43:01
in the closet. There were shots fired. Help me. Okay, we're helping you, ma'am. Help me. Paulo and James Moore of the
00:43:10
Travis County Sheriff's Department say bullet casings were scattered on the floor. We had 40 caliber and 380. It was
00:43:18
a hell of gunfire. At first, Cory Shaughnessy thought it was a botched robbery. The family business had made
00:43:25
them wealthy. Being a jeweler, you might someday be a target. But Ted Shaughnessy
00:43:33
didn't have any known enemies. And then assistant DA Amy Meredith says it didn't
00:43:39
look like a robbery. There were still valuables all over the house. There was nothing stolen. But there was something
00:43:46
missing from the Shaughnessy's house. A handgun from a bedroom once belonging to
00:43:52
their son Nick. He and his high school sweetheart Jackie Edison rushed to Austin from the home where they were
00:43:58
then living 2 hours away. We began discussing the alarm system for the house. Cory says the family only armed
00:44:07
the alarm when they were away, though Nick had access to the settings through a phone app. Police suspected he and
00:44:14
Jackie were involved in the murder, but in the following days, the couple moved in with Corey. You could have told me
00:44:22
aliens landed on the front yard, and I would have believed that before. I would have believed that Nicholas and Jackie
00:44:28
planned to have us killed. I was incredibly impressed by her. She's an impressive woman. She really is. She
00:44:38
had a literal shootout. Like, I feel like part of that even gets missed in all this craziness. She literally had to
00:44:45
shoot back at two hitmen who broke in in the middle of the night. I can't fathom
00:44:50
that. And then hid in the closet when she ran out of bullets. Like, there's so much trauma. You know, she had a good
00:44:56
marriage. like you you go to bed and you've got somebody next to you in the bed who you love. You have a gorgeous
00:45:04
home. You have a thriving business. That guy, that husband of yours is beloved in
00:45:10
the community. So, as you close your eyes, you're thinking, you know what? This is good. Life's a heavy lift and
00:45:18
we're making it happen. You're awakened a few hours later and there is a hail of
00:45:24
gunfire in your house and your husband's dead. Like think about how you have to fold all of that into your real just
00:45:33
that just that is traumatic and then the rest of this craziness unfolds and it's
00:45:40
the other person you love most in the world who did this. There was some incredible detective work done here by
00:45:47
detectives uh Paulo and James Moore. They discovered these text messages on Nick and Jackie's phones that seem to
00:45:55
suggest their involvement in hiring the shooters. But the trail kind of runs cold until Detective Moore spots a small
00:46:05
detail on the security video from Nick and Jackie's porch uh recorded just two days really before the attack. Here's
00:46:12
Detective Moore talking with Jim about what he saw on the security video. I see two individuals show up to his front
00:46:20
door. Moore says he noticed something about one of the men that made him freeze the video. Something he was
00:46:27
wearing. A green Anderson t-shirt. Window company. A window company. This feels like a break. And it only happens
00:46:36
because you isolated a frame of the video from the security camera. Yeah. He and Saleo drove to the window company
00:46:44
where their hard work ran into more good luck. By sheer coincidence, an employes
00:46:51
daughter said she'd actually met the man in the freeze frame. Apparently, he'd only worked there for a few days, 4
00:46:59
years earlier. And this woman still remembered his name. Sergeant, what are the odds of a hit like this on the
00:47:06
identity? It was crazy that we we got that break. Okay. So, that was a lucky break for
00:47:14
sure. Right. But it's not just luck because I didn't even I couldn't even figure out why he zeroed in on that
00:47:19
t-shirt. Something about it stuck out to him. Yeah. You know, this is sort of one
00:47:23
of the controlling principles of police work. But this case in particular, luck is the residue of design, right? The
00:47:33
harder you work, the luckier you get. I mean, you can say luck all day long, but
00:47:37
unless Detective Moore is staying on this to the degree he did and kept his behind in the chair in front of the the
00:47:46
screen and went over and over, they would have missed it. Jim's exactly right. It's they left no detail unturned
00:47:53
and they searched and searched to figure out who this guy was and thankfully found somebody who remembered him from
00:48:00
four years earlier, you know. So, it's pretty amazing. It still makes my hair stand up in the back of my neck that
00:48:07
that's how they broke this case. That shirt would not have jumped out at me enough to follow up on it. Yeah. And
00:48:13
then once they drive all over the state, you know, they they drove all over the state for like several days in a row to
00:48:19
finally figure out which office of this window place someone remembered this guy. Okay. But but even let's take it
00:48:27
one step further. They managed to find someone who remembered the guy while he was working there for the brief number
00:48:33
of hours he was. Yeah. And they remember that. I mean, that is a stroke of luck,
00:48:39
but again, it's only enabled by an incredible amount of hard work. Now, we should add that the man in the t-shirt
00:48:47
they identified in the video was not involved in the killing, but he knew someone who was. And that led police to
00:48:54
Nick Shaughnessy and his girlfriend Jackie, who we later find out is actually his wife, right? So, you know,
00:49:01
the way this investigation sort of unfolds and comes together is really incredible. What was Nick's relationship
00:49:07
though, like with his parents, it seemed like they adored him. They gave him all
00:49:13
sorts of opportunities. Nick Shaughnessy had everything. He had two parents doing
00:49:18
on him. He had every material comfort, anything he wanted. So, he was indulged and people might say, well, he was
00:49:25
overindulged and but that doesn't create somebody who launches this kind of plot,
00:49:31
right? I mean, they even helped him start his business as a day trader, giving him money. Everything seemed like
00:49:38
he was on the right path. And I I think his parents thought he was on the right path for the most part. Corey said at
00:49:45
one point during our conversations, he wasn't super motivated yet. I mean, I'm a mom of twin teenagers. That is not
00:49:53
unusual. You know, I think they thought their relationship was fine. So, as I'm watching the hour, this episode is
00:50:00
really a masterclass in interviewing. Not only securing an interview, but also getting answers to tough questions. Both
00:50:07
of you did that. Jim, your interview with Nick was really something. And Jenna, you approached Jackie right after
00:50:16
she's released from prison for an interview. I thought there's no way this woman's going to talk and then she
00:50:21
stands there and answers your questions. Let me just hop in here for a second because this needs to be said. The
00:50:27
degree of difficulty of walking up to someone who you know doesn't want to talk to you and you approach them and
00:50:33
not only get them to talk as opposed to just clamming up or running away or but then tell you things that become helpful
00:50:40
in understanding the scope of the story. No one understands how hard that actually is. You see the final product
00:50:47
on TV sometimes you're like, "Oh, you know, Jenna really needs to be called out for what a topshelf job that was."
00:50:56
And Jenna, what were you thinking when you were approaching her? I mean, apart from trying not to throw up, right? I I
00:51:04
knew she didn't want to talk to us cuz I had been to visit her twice in jail and
00:51:08
the second time she wouldn't even come out to say hello. So, she knew who I was. She She didn't want to talk. I
00:51:15
genuinely always want to hear someone's story, whatever it is. And I feel like people always surprise you. And people
00:51:22
generally want to tell their story. So, I was just trying to be, you know, not intimidating and like, "Look, we're
00:51:29
doing this story. You're a part of this story. We really want to hear what you have to say." And while she said, "I
00:51:35
don't want to talk," I said, "Okay, well, I'm going to ask you some questions anyway." And she just kept
00:51:40
answering them. And I was sort of caught off guard listening to her answer. she had thought about this, you know, so
00:51:47
whatever you make of her, it at least gives a little more insight into her, which was nice. So true. And then Jim,
00:51:55
your interview with Nick in prison after he's incarcerated. First off, you're sitting across from him. There's a glass
00:52:01
separating you two. What's it like interviewing someone in a maximum security prison? Do you have to sort of
00:52:08
block out the environment? The biggest impediment in a situation like that is most of the time when you interview
00:52:15
someone you've never met before about something sensitive, you want to establish a sense of trust. And that's
00:52:22
done before the lights go on and the camera goes on by, you know, how you doing? I just want you to understand
00:52:27
this is what I'm going to talk to you about. All that's out the window when you have to walk in and some public
00:52:35
information officer from the prison is saying, "All right, you got five minutes to sit down and let's get going." tweak
00:52:40
the camera. Let's and then you have an hour. And this is my one shot. The first thought in the front of my mind was look
00:52:46
in his eyes. Make sure he knows you are listening to him because that is crucial. And I said to him, I'm like,
00:52:55
"Look, Nick, you know, I'm going to ask you questions that are not going to be comfortable, but this is your chance to
00:53:02
actually explain to a lot of people who are wondering what kind of guy would do this." So if you have something to say,
00:53:09
now is the time to say it. That doesn't mean I have suspended my own sense as a human being of, "Oh my god, I'm sitting
00:53:17
across a guy who tried to have his parents killed." You're describing um kind of the delicate balance, all the
00:53:24
different thoughts that go through your head, and that's part of the reason why I was so impressed with um your approach
00:53:29
to him because you did ask the questions that the outraged viewer would ask, but
00:53:36
not that would stop him from answering your questions. So, I I want to play part of
00:53:43
your interview with Nick. He very quickly accepts what he did, but accepting what he did is different than
00:53:48
taking accountability, right? So, Jim, here's what you ask Nick. Were you at all thinking, "What am I doing?" Of
00:53:58
course, it was always in the back of my head like red flags like stop, don't the
00:54:04
back of your head? Why not the front of your head? I guess the the the validation or approval from Jackie.
00:54:13
So that's when I was like, there it is. Best moment ever, Jen. Yes, there it is.
00:54:20
Because the whole time I'm thinking, geez, he seems, you know, really ready, willing, and able to take responsibility
00:54:26
for this. Somebody said to me, and this is the highest compliment I think I've ever received. They said, "Man, that was
00:54:34
disappointed dad vibe." Oh, yeah. So, as I was watching the interview with Nick,
00:54:40
I kept on thinking, "Why am I unsatisfied with his answer?" He's taking responsibility. I know, but it I
00:54:49
still feel unsatisfied. And it's because you don't say those words without breaking down, without tears in your
00:54:56
eyes. Something that is such a great observation on your part. So Jackie only had to serve 120 days in
00:55:06
jail. Uh Nick and his two accompllices, they each got sentences of 35 years. Big
00:55:11
difference. Um Jenna, you know, you spoke to Jackie and you asked her about that and she seemed to think that was
00:55:18
fair based on her what she says is her involvement. Um what was your reaction to hearing the sentences that everyone
00:55:25
got? I'm from Texas and and have been crime reporting here for over 20 years. Even 35 years for a murder and an
00:55:34
attempted murder is pretty low in Texas. I was kind of amazed at those plea deals, but Jackie did cooperate
00:55:41
eventually with the police. She filled in some blanks. So, you know, that could be what sort of led them to these plea
00:55:50
deal talks. Yeah. And I don't know if we'll ever know fully what went into that decision. We we won't. But there
00:55:57
was a woman who survived the murder of her husband and she was a target too. And after the entire process has been
00:56:07
completed, she is feeling a sense of not just sadness and frustration but rage about the system not protecting her
00:56:17
because she feels the people who are responsible for this were not dealt with and it it plagues her. DA Jose Garza did
00:56:29
not speak with us, but he did provide a statement. Let's play a clip from the show.
00:56:35
A district attorney spokesperson sent us a statement saying, quote, "Our office takes acts of violence seriously and is
00:56:43
committed to holding people who commit violent crimes accountable." The statement also said
00:56:48
Edison is on 10 years probation and if she violates the terms, she could face 20 years in prison. Corey Shaughnessy
00:56:57
says a full explanation from authorities would have helped her make sense of something that has always struck her as
00:57:05
impossibly wrong. So, no one's ever explained to you why this enormous disparity in sentence? No, absolutely
00:57:14
not. So, this is why sometimes DAs simply issue a statement because I can tell you if that was done at a news
00:57:24
conference, the first question that I'd be asking is, hang on, you do not answer
00:57:29
the question, why the disparity? So, appreciate the statement, but could you please tell me why the disparity? Yeah,
00:57:38
I mean, I agree with Jim. They're not answering the question that we asked. You spoke to
00:57:44
investigators and they were convinced Jackie knew something about the murder plot and did nothing about it. Nothing
00:57:51
to stop it. Let's hear a clip from detectives Moore and Saleo. They're both to blame. Who took more action? It's
00:57:59
Nick. You take Nick out of this, you don't have the incident. You take Jackie out. Still happens.
00:58:07
That's a really important point. Let's let's underscore that, Emory. You take Nick out of it, it doesn't happen. Take
00:58:13
Jackie out of it. It still happens. So yes, disparity, sure, maybe. But this much disparity, I think that's the
00:58:23
frustration and anger of Corey and others. It's not that they were she was treated differently. It's like we're not
00:58:30
even in the same universe of sentencing. At the heart of this broadcast is Corey.
00:58:35
Not only does she have to live through this nightmare of an experience of witnessing her husband's murder, but
00:58:41
also an emotional journey to discover that her son, what could be more heartbreaking than this, her son is
00:58:47
behind it. When we get back, we're going to get into more of Corey's side of the
00:58:59
story. Welcome back to Postmortem. Now, the real victim in this story is Corey, who not only loses her husband and
00:59:07
nearly loses her own life, but ultimately also loses her only son. Jim, you played Corey a clip from your
00:59:15
interview with Nick in which he apologizes to her. Let's hear Nick's apology and then Cory's reaction to it.
00:59:23
I wish I could tell my mom how truly sorry I am that this is not something I'm proud of and I failed her as a
00:59:31
[Music] son. It means nothing to me. Do you think he believes it what he's saying? I
00:59:40
don't know that person. I have no idea who Nicholas Shaughnessy is. And Corey says there is no point
00:59:51
responding to an apology she was never meant to hear. In my mind, I am supposed to be dead and so
01:00:00
I'm a ghost and ghosts can't speak. Was such an interesting way of phrasing that feeling. It gives me goosebumps
01:00:10
every time I hear that. You know, as a parent, I mean, I just don't know how you accept that news and then how you
01:00:18
deal with it. You heard Nick's bloodless, almost pulseless tone when he was apologizing
01:00:27
to his mom. It's it's like robotic. And then Corey, who's working hard to keep it all together all these years later,
01:00:35
still you could hear the emotion in her voice as she's, you know, sort of I'm I'm not I'm not even going to respond
01:00:42
cuz I'm supposed to be dead. Like she has to still every day of her life try to make sense of the absolute senseless.
01:00:51
Do you believe Nick's apology? I mean, he's sorry he's sitting in prison for 35 years.
01:00:58
And no tears, no emotion, no if those signs matter to you in terms of judging authenticity, did I feel like I was
01:01:06
talking to somebody barre? No. Um, it it's hard to believe that the child that you poured so much into, and we're all
01:01:15
parents here, so we know how much the parenting process also changes us. We become different people as a result of
01:01:24
being parents. So, I can only imagine how difficult it was despite the evidence for her to come around to to
01:01:31
finally sort of believe that he was part of this plot. What's your take on that process that she talked about it? Why it
01:01:37
took so long? I mean, I I think as a mom, if you told me one of my twin boys plotted to kill me, I would immediately
01:01:46
think you were trying to frame them. Like, no one's going to believe that, you know? And I think she she felt like
01:01:51
a suspect in the beginning. And so then I think she was like, "Well, they're just grasping for straws. Now they're
01:01:57
going after my kid. That's not gonna happen." You know, one of her attorneys told me a story at one point. There was
01:02:04
a moment of realization for her that was heartbreaking. She was in a conference room at the law firm and this was after
01:02:12
Nick had admitted to everything, had been presented with all the evidence and you know, Jackie had already turned
01:02:18
against him and he was about to take this plea deal. And it took up till that point for Corey to hear every piece of
01:02:26
the evidence connected and laid out in front of her. And this attorney said you could see it just wash over her. Oh my
01:02:33
god, he really did this. Like and she had to leave the room because she got so emotional. And then she came back and
01:02:40
she was like, "Okay, like what's the next step?" I I thought about this a lot afterward. Like as in my particular case
01:02:48
as a parent, at the end of the day, as you get to be older, really what what else matters? Your relationship with
01:02:53
your kids, with your family, with what you're going to leave behind. Those are your fingerprints and footprints. And I
01:03:02
just kept thinking about Corey as she gets older. She will not have the luxury of being able to fold in even more,
01:03:13
grasp even tighter to her kid. She has to do just the opposite, which is figure out emotionally how she
01:03:23
can how she can forget him, move on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so to to your point, Jim, um, when you ask Corey how
01:03:34
she feels about her son now, she says something really interesting. I want to play some of that sound. Do you still
01:03:42
love your son? I love the person I knew to be my son before this happened. Do you love that
01:03:49
8-year-old boy racing cars with his dad? Yes. I don't know how you do both. Yeah. You
01:03:57
know, Corey's got a life sentence of her own if you think about it. Um, she's she's got this uphill emotional
01:04:07
climb. I feel for her. I do, too. She's in an impossible situation. You know, there's no good answer. And at some
01:04:15
point, even if it's the full 35 years from now, her son's going to walk out of prison. So, you know, it makes it even
01:04:24
more difficult. You know, you asked about how do you interview Nick in prison? I gotta be honest with you. I
01:04:32
thought more that that was easy in a sense like I knew where the lines were. I knew what my objectives and goals
01:04:39
were. It was more complicated to sit down with Corey because I had to also establish a safe sort of interview
01:04:49
space. I've interviewed murderers before. I've never interviewed somebody whose kids or son and and prospective
01:04:58
daughter-in-law were plotting to kill her. Like, I had never done that before. And and I didn't quite know where the
01:05:07
lines were or how to get Corey to be able to talk about some of this stuff, but I was much more intimidated trying
01:05:13
to get Corey's story out of her than Nick's out of him. Yeah. Yeah. I to I totally agree. Lastly, you end the hour
01:05:22
with a postcript that reads, "As a parole requirement for the next 10 years, Jacine Edison must spend the
01:05:29
night in jail on the anniversary of Ted Shaughnessy's murder. In your experience
01:05:35
reporting true crime, is this unusual?" I've never heard of it, Jenna. I have never heard of it. I think it's sort of
01:05:42
brilliant. I mean, it is brilliant. It is. However, there are the other 364 nights of the year. That's right. I
01:05:51
mean, it's still it still seems like getting off easy compared to her cohorts who are every night in prison, but you
01:06:00
know, I I did think it was an interesting thing that was an addition to this um probation that I have never
01:06:07
heard of before. Well, it was a great hour. Fantastic storytelling, incredible interviewing. Thank you so much for
01:06:15
joining us this week. Thanks for having us. Thank you. [Music] So join us next Tuesday for another
01:06:22
Postmortem and watch 48 hours Saturdays 10:9 central on CBS and streaming on Paramount Plus. And if you are liking
01:06:30
the show, please rate and review 48 hours on Apple Podcast and follow 48 hours wherever you get your podcast. And
01:06:38
you can also listen adree on the Amazon Music and Wondery app or with a 48 hours
01:06:43
plus subscription on Apple Podcasts.